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Kate Elder sat on the balcony of the Dodge House hotel in Dodge City, Kansas cradling a rifle in her lap. It was a warm night in mid-June 1878. She was wearing a white, cotton and lace slip dress that accentuated her curves and did little to cover her other assets. The sound of an inexperienced according player squeezing out a tune mixed with the laughter from the patrons in the billiard hall next door filled the night air.
Kate studied a pair of drunken soldiers as they exited the billiard hall, climbed aboard their horses waiting for them, and rode off in the direction of Fort Dodge, the military post five miles east of town. Once the soldiers were out of sight, she relaxed the hold she had on the gun and rubbed her tired eyes. Kate had too much character in her face to be outright pretty, but she attracted men like flies. At that moment, the only man’s affections she cared to attract were John Henry Holliday’s, a Georgia dentist and gambler prone to settle disagreements in a violent manner.
An unfortunate incident with the law had made it necessary for Kate and Doc to leave Fort Griffin, Texas, in a hurry and seek refuge in Dodge City. Their abrupt exit from the southwestern cavalry fort had Kate worried the authorities would be searching for them and, when they were found, Doc would be made to return to answer for his wrongdoings. Kate wasn’t going to let that happen.
Since arriving in Dodge City in late May 1878, Kate had reacquainted herself with the cow town where she’d lived and worked in 1875. Dodge City was a wild burg that straddled the Santa Fe rails. Cowpunchers found it to be the best place to end a drive. The saloons were endless and always open. Gamblers found numerous individuals to challenge, sporting women swarmed like bees, and bad men frequently sharpened their aim on citizens. The men behind the badges in Dodge City were well-known Western figures. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman all took a turn at maintaining law and order in the trigger-happy town. How Kate Elder, from Pest, Hungary, came to be a fixture in a wide-open town primed with free-flowing money from the cattle trade and inundated by hordes of gunmen, outlaws, rustlers, and ladies of easy virtue was a question Kate pondered on a regular basis.
She shifted the gun in her lap and stared out at the massive, night sky and the stars that riddled the great expanse, contemplating a similar sky that hung over the steamer that brought her parents, brothers and sisters, and her from Bremen, Germany, to America when she was ten years old. Kate remembered her life before when she was filled with hope and the promise of prosperity and success.
To learn more about Kate read
According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder,
Doc Holliday’s Love
