Doc Holliday by Gary L Roberts

Author:Gary L Roberts [Roberts, Gary L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 2005022233
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

The scene in the sheriff’s office was chaos multiplied. Even there Mallon continued to nervously point his revolvers at Holliday, causing Doc to remark, “Oh you can drop that. Nobody is trying to get away from you. I have no weapons.”

This set off a heated verbal exchange between the two. Mallon dramatically declared, “No, you won’t get away from me again. You killed my partner, you blood-thirsty coward, and I would have taken you at Pueblo if the men I had with me had stood with me.”

Disgusted, Doc made it clear that he did not intend to be abused and appealed to a growing number of men gathering in the room that he be allowed to make a statement.

The officers were visibly nervous about the crowd, and Deputy Linton impatiently reminded Doc, “This is not a court or jury.”

Doc persisted, demanding to know “[i]f it is customary in this country to deny a citizen the right of speech? Is it right? Is it justice?” The melodrama continued as Doc told the onlookers he could expose Mallon as a fraud, and Mallon flourished his pistols again. “I can show you his reason for bringing me here,” Doc exclaimed. “I can show—”16

At that point, Linton cut him off, but Mallon rambled on about Doc having killed his partner, until Holliday was hustled into a hack and taken to the county jail. As the officers started out the door with their prisoner, a Tribune reporter asked Doc if he could come along. Doc responded, “Come on; you are just the man I want to see.”17 The news of the arrest had spread quickly because the Tribune reporter was only one of several reporters there, along with a number of citizens including what the Tribune described as “rough looking characters” from out of town whom no one seemed to know. Once he arrived at the jail, Doc grew more reticent, declaring that he wanted to speak with Bat Masterson and an attorney before he said any more. Not until Doc was pushed into a cell did the reporter hear someone call him “Doc” and realize who the prisoner was and why the sheriff’s department was so officiously nervous.18

Bat Masterson must have caught wind of what was happening early on. Doc had hardly been lodged at the jail before Bat and Frank A. Naylor, a prominent Denver attorney, moved to secure a writ of habeas corpus. En route to see the judge, they encountered the Tribune reporter. Bat told him “that Holliday was a responsible man, a Deputy United States Marshal, and for a time Deputy Marshal of Tombstone, and that the cowboys only wanted to assassinate him as they had Virg and Morgan Earp.”19

Bat also told the Denver Republican’s reporter, “I tell you that all this talk is wrong about Holliday. I know him well. He is a dentist and a good one. He was with me in Dodge City where he was known to be an enemy of the lawless element.”20 By 3:30 A.

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