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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Signers of the Old West

Mary Todd Lincoln screamed.  Clara Harris, seated in the balcony adjacent to President Abraham Lincoln’s wife, jumped out of her seat and rushed to the hysterical woman’s side.  “He needs water!”  Harris cried out to the audience at Ford’s Theatre staring up at her in stunned silence.  “The President’s been murdered!”  The full, ghastly truth of the announcement washed over the congregation and the scene that ensued was as tumultuous and as terrible as one of Dante’s pictures of hell.  Some women fainted, others uttered piercing shrieks and cries for vengeance, and unmeaning shouts for help burst from the mouth of men.

Beautiful, dark-haired actress, Laura Keene hurried out from the wings dressed in a striking maroon colored gown under which was a hoop skirt and number of petticoats that made the garment sway as she raced to a spot center stage.  She paused for a moment before the footlights to entreat the audiences to be calm.  “For God’s sake, have presence of mind, and keep your places, and all will be well.”  Laura’s voice was a brief voice of reason in a chaotic scene.  Few could bring their panic under control.  Mary Lincoln was in shock and sat on her knees beside her mortally wounded husband rocking back and forth.  She cradled her arms in her hands and sobbed uncontrollably.

Laura ordered the gas lights around the theatre turned up.  Patrons bolted toward the building’s exits.  As they poured out into the streets they told passersby what had occurred.  Crowds began to gather and there were just as many people coming back into the theatre as were trying to leave.  Laura stepped down off the stage and began fighting against the current of people pressing all around her.

Word began to pass through the frantic group that John Wilkes Booth was responsible for shooting the President.  Sharp words were exchanged between the individuals coming in and going out of the building.  Insane grief began to course through the theatre and ugly suppositions started to form.  “An actor did this!”  Laura wrote in her memoirs about what people were saying at the event.  “The management must have been in on the plot!  Burn the damn theatre!  Burn it now!”  Laura disregarded the remarks and somehow worked her way to the rear box where Mr. Lincoln was and stepped inside.

To learn more about Laura Keene and her career after President Lincoln’s assassination read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

The last news Kate heard about Doc (after the Gunfight at the OK Corral and the Vendetta Ride) was that he was in Leadville, Colorado, and on trial for shooting a bartender named Billy Allen. “They arrested him and telegraphed to Tombstone that they had Doc Holliday,” Kate recalled years later.

“A deputy from Tombstone was sent for him with a requisition. Governor Tabor of Colorado refused to sign the document and told the Arizona deputy that Doc Holliday was too good a man to turn over to the Arizona cow thieves. He would not sign the requisition. Doc was free.” Doc was eventually acquitted and moved to Denver.

Kate received a letter from Doc in April 1887. He had plans to travel to Glenwood Springs and wanted her to meet him there. Kate couldn’t refuse the invitation. “Holliday at last broke away from the Earps at Gunnison,” Kate wrote years later. “A [chain] mail shirt was the cause of their parting company. Wyatt had a job to pull and was going to wear the mail shirt. But Doc said to Wyatt, ‘No, you don’t. If you want me to go into anything with you, you have to take the same chance I do or else we quit right here. I thought you had got rid of that shirt long ago.’* “Wyatt insisted on wearing the mail shirt, so Doc left that evening and hit the trail for Leadville. But it was too cold for him, and he went from there to Denver, and later to Glenwood Springs. All those places were in Colorado.”

Kate and Doc reunited in Glenwood Springs in May 1887. Doc’s health had substantially deteriorated. The disease that had been in remission for a time was now fully awake and eating his lungs from the inside out. His lungs were now mostly engulfed in liquid and sloshing around in his chest. Doc struggled to breathe and coughed all the time. Kate noted in her memoir that when he arrived in the area he had tried to return to dentistry to support himself, but the persistent cough made the work impossible to do. Doc then took a short-term job guarding a mining claim for a well-known prospector. According to Kate, Doc also served as “Under Sheriff of Garfield County under Sheriff Ware.”

To learn what became of Kate and Doc read

According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

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According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

“Doc and Ike Clanton had some words in a restaurant,” Kate recalled about the events of the first night she returned to Tombstone in late October 1881. “In the morning Ike Clanton came to Fly’s photograph gallery with a Winchester rifle. Mrs. Fly told him that Doc was not there. Doc was not up yet. I went to our room and told Doc that Ike Clanton was outside looking for him and that he was armed. Doc said, ‘If God lets me live long enough to get my clothes on, he shall see me.’ “With that he got up and dressed.

“On going out he said, ‘I won’t be here to take you to breakfast, so you had better go alone.’ I didn’t go to breakfast. I don’t remember whether I ate anything or not that day. In a little more than a half an hour the shooting began. This lady friend and I went to the side window, which faced the vacant lot. There was Ike Clanton, young Bill Clanton, Frank McLowry [sic], and his brother Tom on one side, Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday on the other.

“Before the first shot was fired Ike Clanton ran and lost his hat and left his young brother and the McLowry boys to fight it out.* I was at the side window looking on and saw the fight. Doc had a sawed-off shotgun. He fired one barrel, but after the first shot something went wrong. He threw the gun on the ground and finished the fight with his revolver. I saw him fall once. His hip had been grazed by a bullet. But he was on his feet again in an instant and continued to fire.

“Bill Clanton and the McLowry boys were killed. Morgan and Wyatt [she meant Virgil Earp] were wounded. It’s foolish to think a cow ‘rustler’ gunman can come up to a city gunman in a gunfight. After the fight was over, Doc came to our room and sat on the side of the bed and cried and said, ‘Oh, this is just awful—awful.’ I asked, ‘Are you hurt?’ He said, ‘No, I am not.’ He pulled up his shirt. There was just a pale red streak about two inches long across his hip where the bullet had grazed him. After attending to the wound, he went out to see how Virgil and Wyatt [she meant Morgan this time] were getting along.”

To find out all that Kate recalled about the most famous gunfight in the West read

According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

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According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

It was a chilly evening in mid-March 1881.  Kate had traveled from Globe to Tombstone to see Doc.  According to her, she had made the trip at his request.  She noted in her memoirs that they lost no time settling their differences.  The smoke from an oil lamp in his room coiled wraith-like to the ceiling, smirching the cobwebs that festooned the top of the faded curtains.  Kate studied the sad looking, window coverings in the reflection of the mirror into which she was staring.  She had been pinning her hair up and playing with a pair of earrings when she noticed the breeze from the partially opened window ruffle the curtains.  Kate anticipated spending a great deal of time with Doc in the room and pondered whether to update the décor.

Doc had taken up residence on Sixth Street in a small boarding house positioned between a funeral parlor and a winery.  The furnishing was sparse and covered with dust.  Kate’s things were scattered about the room.  Doc had promised to take her to dinner when he returned from the errand he had rushed off to handle.  Once she finished getting ready for the night out she turned her attention to a copy of the Arizona Weekly Citizen lying on a chair by the door.  A story about a murder and an attempted stage robbery twenty-eight miles from Tombstone caught her eye.

“Detective R. H. Paul was on the box with the driver at the time, and his double-barreled Winchester rested by his side,” the March 20, 1881, article noted.  “It is believed that the Cow-boys were completely surprised to find Paul upon the stage, as no two of them would attempt to tackle Paul.  At the first word, ‘Hold!’  Paul coolly reached for his gun, exclaiming, ‘By God!  I hold for nobody!’  It is a question who fired first, Paul or the robbers; but the crack of the rifles were almost simultaneous, frightening the leaders into a run.  Paul emptied both barrels of his gun, and his revolver, while the stage was rattling along as fast as the horses could haul it.  The driver had fallen dead from the box, and a passenger who was upon the box was dying with a mortal wound.  As soon as Paul could regain the lines that had fallen from the hands of Bud Philpot, who was shot through the heart, he drove and transferred Wells, Fargo & Co.’s box and the United States mail intact to J. D. Kinnear, the agent of the line at Benson, and the frightened passengers were sent through to Tombstone.  Paul then started back, accompanied by four men, to the scene of the attack.  Later particulars are awaited here with great interest.

“A vigilance committee was lately formed at Tombstone, backed by all the money necessary to take these parties in hand and teach them a lesson.”

To find out what Kate says happened leading up to the gunfight at the OK Corral read

According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

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According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

The main street of Las Vegas, New Mexico, was so crowded the passing streams of people moved as if unseen hands were dragging them this way and that.  In addition to the throngs of people crossing back and forth across the dusty thoroughfare, there were teams of horses pulling buckboards and business buggies, cowhands leading their mounts to the livery, and ranchers hauling supplies in and out of town.  Kate and Doc added to the chaos when they arrived just before Christmas 1878.  After tending to their rides and securing a room at the Adobe Hotel in Gallinas Canyon north of the central plaza of town, Kate put Doc to bed.  He was coughing a wet cough that produced enough blood to saturate a handkerchief.  Doc wasn’t the only tuberculosis sufferer in Las Vegas.  Many patients had gathered in the New Mexico location.  Dry air and rest were the only remedies for the disease.  Sometimes bundled in blankets and sheltered from precipitation, patients there endured outdoor life in all weather, hoping the regimen would heal their damaged lungs.

Tuberculosis patients also sought to rid themselves of the disease by soaking in the hot springs six miles northwest of town.  The September 30, 1878, edition of the Daily Gazette noted that the hot springs near Las Vegas contained the same mineral constituents as those in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Thermal Springs in Europe.  Frontier physicians recommended soaking in the calcium and sodium enriched hot springs because the bicarbonates boosted blood circulation, reduced pain, and repaired tissue damage.  According to Kate, she tried to convince Doc to consider staying put until his health was somewhat restored.  She hoped he would take advantage of the hot springs and the rest.  The attack he had in Dodge City had left him weak and unsteady on his feet.  Kate promised to provide for them both while he was recovering, but Doc refused to go along with her plan.

As soon as Doc was able, he located office space on Bridge Street and opened his practice.  Las Vegas was a stopping point for those traveling along the Santa Fe Trail, it was the biggest city between San Francisco and Independence, Missouri.  Doc anticipated there would be many people in need of a dentist.  The army post, Fort Union, was twenty miles north of Las Vegas, and soldiers routinely spent time in town enjoying the nightlife.  If Doc’s practice faltered for any reason, he could also sustain himself at the poker table.  Las Vegas continually played host to cavalrymen, desperados, and outlaws looking for a fast game.  The number of card players eager to be separated from their money swelled when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad reached the area.  Before Doc had an opportunity to fully fleece amateur card sharps, the New Mexico territorial legislature passed a bill prohibiting gambling.  The law didn’t stop Doc from dealing, however; he kept his games of chance quiet while maintaining the semblance of an upstanding citizen as the community’s respectable dentist.

To learn more about Kate Elder and Doc Holliday’s relationship read According to Kate