Doc Holliday Card Game
David Rudabaugh was born in Fulton County, Illinois in July 1854. However, his family moved to Eureka, Kansas in 1870. Later he lived in Greenwood County, Kansas before following the cattle trail west into Colorado. Little is known about his life until he joined the “outlaw trail.”
Nicknamed “Dirty Dave” because he rarely bathed and wore filthy clothes, he came to notoriety in the 1870s as the head of a gang of thieves and rustlers in Texas. But Rudabaugh didn’t limit his thieving to the Lone Star State. When he and his gang robbed a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp in Kansas in November 1877, Wyatt Earp was issued an acting commission as a U.S. Deputy Marshal to pursue the outlaw out of the state.
Following Rudabaugh’s trail for 400 miles to Fort Griffin, Texas, Wyatt Earp visited the Shanssey’s Saloon, asking about Rudabaugh. Owner John Shanssey said that Rudabaugh had been there earlier in the week, but didn’t know where he was bound.
- He then directed Wyatt to Doc Holliday who had played cards with Rudabaugh. Wyatt was skeptical about talking to Holliday, as it was well known that Doc hated lawmen. However, when Wyatt found him that evening at Shanssey’s, he was surprised at Holliday’s willingness to talk. Doc told Wyatt that he thought that Rudabaugh had back-trailed to.
- A simple roll and move game with Doc Holliday chasing down some bandits. Please review the condition and any condition notes for the exact condition of this item. All pictures are stock photos. The condition of the item you will receive is VG/EX.
He then directed Wyatt to Doc Holliday who had played cards with Rudabaugh. Wyatt was skeptical about talking to Holliday, as it was well known that Doc hated lawmen. However, when Wyatt found him that evening at Shanssey’s, he was surprised at Holliday’s willingness to talk.
Sophie Walton, a young mulatto woman, a retainer in the household of John Stiles Holliday, taught Doc how to play cards. Among the games Sophie taught to John Henry and his cousins was 'Skinning,' the original rules of which were adapted from faro! It seems young John Henry was quite adept at this - a portent of things to come?
Doc told Wyatt that he thought that Rudabaugh had back-trailed to Kansas. It was this first meeting between Earp and Holliday that would form their lifetime friendship. Wyatt wired this information to Bat Masterson and the news was instrumental in apprehending Rudabaugh.
Trying to stay one step ahead of Wyatt, Rudabaugh had in fact returned to Kansas but would rob yet another train before being caught. On January 27, 1878, Rudabaugh, along with five other men, unsuccessfully attempted to hold up a train in Kinsley, Kansas. He and his accomplice Edgar West were caught within days by Sheriff Bat Masterson and his posse, which included John Joshua Webb (J.J.). When Rudabaugh went for his gun, Webb stopped him and forced him to surrender. The other four accomplices were arrested later. Rudabaugh then informed on his cohorts and promised to go “straight.” Rudabaugh’s accomplices were sent to prison, but Dirty Dave was soon released, drifting to New Mexico and returning to thievery once again.
In 1879 he reunited with some of his acquaintances from Kansas and for the next six months they terrorized Las Vegas, New Mexico, committing train and stagecoach robberies as the “Dodge City Gang.” Members of the gang included “Mysterious Dave Mather,” Joe Carson, “Hoodoo Brown,” the Justice of the Peace; and City Marshal John Joshua Webb, Rudabaugh’s former enemy in Dodge City.
On October 14, 1879, a train was robbed in the Las Vegas area by masked men. The robbers made off with $2,085, three pistols, and all the lanterns on the train. Two years later, when Rudabaugh was finally arrested, he would confess to participating in the robbery.
Doc Holiday Card Game
Las Vegas, New Mexico Saloon
On January 22, 1880, T.J. House, James West, John Dorsey, and William Randall were parading about town sneering, laughing, and looking for trouble. When they entered the Close & Patterson Variety Hall, Marshal Joe Carson asked them to check their guns, and they refused. A wild gunfight ensued and Carson was killed immediately, while Deputy “Mysterious” Dave Mather killed Randall and dropped West.
John Dorsey, though wounded, and T.J. House managed to escape. On February 5th the Dodge City Gang learned that Dorsey and House were hiding out at the home of Juan Antonio Dominguez in Buena Vista, thirty miles north of Las Vegas. A posse comprised of J.J. Webb, Dave Rudabaugh, and five other men, surrounded the House and called for the men to surrender.
Dorsey and House complied after assurance of protection from the citizens of Las Vegas was given. However, the assurance would be hollow, as, within hours of the men being placed in the Old Town Jail, vigilantes relieved the jailers of the prisoners. Taking them to the windmill on the Plaza to hang, Mrs. Carson opened fire on the men before the vigilantes had a chance to hang them. Escaping justice for this murder, Rudabaugh and the rest of the gang continued to rob and rustle until J.J. Webb was arrested for the murder of Mike Kelliher on March 2, 1880. A lynch mob formed but were held off by the Dodge City Gang with “Dirty Dave” at the helm.
On April 30th, Rudabaugh, along with a man named John Allen burst through the Sheriff’s office to free Webb. Though the jailbreak was unsuccessful, Rudabaugh murdered jailer Antonio Lino in the process. Webb’s sentence was appealed and commuted to life in prison.
Rudabaugh, along with Dodge City Gang member, Tom Pickett fled to Fort Sumner and joined forces with Billy the Kid. According to some sources, Billy the Kid was afraid of only one man and that man was Dave Rudabaugh.
On November 30, 1880, Billy the Kid, David Anderson (aka Billy Wilson,) and Rudabaugh rode into White Oaks, New Mexico and ran into Deputy Sheriff James Redman. Taking shots at the deputy, Redman hid behind a saloon as several local citizens ran into the street, chasing the fugitives out of town.
As a posse gave chase, the outlaws hid out at the ranch of a man named Jim Greathouse, who they held hostage. Accosted at dawn by a posse, they traded their hostage, Jim Greathouse, for Deputy Sheriff James Carlyle who was volunteered to negotiate with the outlaws in an attempt to give themselves up. Continuing to surround the house, the posse waited for hours. Around midnight, the posse called out that they were going to storm the house. Just then a crash came through a window and a man came tumbling out. Shots ripped through the air and Carlyle lay dead. The bullet could have come from either the outlaws or the posse, but many suspect that the posse killed their own man. With this accident, the posse abandoned the siege and the outlaws escaped. Later, Billy the Kid would be blamed for killing Carlyle.
Trailed by the resolute Pat Garrett; Billy the Kid, Billy Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, Tom O’Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and Tom Pickett rode wearily into Fort Sumner, New Mexico on December 19, 1880, and were confronted by Garrett’s posse which had been hiding in an old post hospital building. Lon Chambers and several others leaped from cover as Garrett ordered the outlaws to halt. However, several of the posse members didn’t wait for the outlaws to respond to Garrett’s demand, instead, opening fire on Pickett and O’Folliard, who were riding in front. Pickett and O’Folliard were shot from their saddles, Rudabaugh’s horse caught a bullet and collapsed. Rudabaugh managed to jump onto Wilson’s horse and he and the other outlaws escaped, holing up in an abandoned cabin near Stinking Springs, New Mexico.
Soon, the determined and his posse tracked the outlaws down to Stinking Springs, New Mexico and surrounded the hideout. Inside of the house were Billy, Charlie Bowdre, Rudabaugh, Tom Pickett and Billy Wilson.
When Bowdre passed before an open window, he was shot in the chest. The siege continued until the next day when Rudabaugh finally waved a white flag and the bandits surrendered. Billy the Kid and his gang were captured on December 23, 1880, and taken to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Rudabaugh was then taken to Las Vegas to stand trial. In February 1881, he attempted to avoid being charged with a capital offense, by pleading guilty to the Las Vegas train robbery in October 1879. However, his attempt was unsuccessful and he was sentenced to hang for murder. He was then taken to the Las Vegas Old Town Jail to await his execution, where J.J. Webb was continuing to serve his time.
In the meantime, Billy the Kid was jailed at Lincoln, New Mexico where he escaped on April 28, 1881. However, he was soon tracked down and killed by Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881.
Rudabaugh, Webb, and two other men by the names of Thomas Duffy and H.S. Wilson tried unsuccessfully to shoot their way out of jail on September 19, 1881. Duffy was mortally wounded and their attempt was unsuccessful. However, Webb, facing life in prison, and Rudabaugh the threat of hanging, were determined.
Two months later, Webb and Rudabaugh, along with five other men, chipped a stone out of the jail wall and escaped out of a 7″x19″ hole. Rudabaugh and Webb raced to Texas and then to Mexico where Webb disappeared. Later Webb returned to Kansas, where he took the name “Samuel King,” and worked as a teamster. He died of smallpox in 1882 in Arkansas.
There are two stories as to what became of Rudabaugh, the most common of which is:
On February 18, 1886, Rudabaugh was involved in a cantina card game in Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico which broke up after accusations of cheating. Rudabaugh and a Mexican man faced off and Rudabaugh shot him through the head. When another player drew and fired Rudabaugh put a bullet into his heart. Unable to find his horse, Rudabaugh returned to the cantina, which was now in total darkness. On entering Rudabaugh was jumped and decapitated. For the next several days, his killers were said to have paraded through town with his head on a pole.
Another story tells that Rudabaugh finally left Mexico with a herd of cattle headed to Montana where he lived a normal life, married and fathered three daughters. Later he died, an alcoholic in Oregon in 1928.
How Fast Was Doc Holliday
© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated June, 2018.
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Back in 1956, Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side offered advice that has never grown old, to wit: 'Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.' It's the first part that concerns us today. Because a card player named Doc usually wasn't a moonlighting member of the medical profession. Usually a player named Doc was someone who could 'doctor' a game to their advantage — you know: cheating. According to True West Magazine, there were even companies in the 19th Century that advertised things like marked decks, so a player who knew the code could read the other player's cards just from the backs. And that company was called Doctor Cross & Co. of New Orleans.
Or did the advice originate with Doc Holliday, the 'deadly dentist' of Tombstone, Arizona? Was he just another card cheat who had a moment of courage (or recklessness) and stood with Wyatt Earp and his brothers Virgil and Morgan against the cowboys during that famous street fight near the O.K. Corral in 1881?
At first, he practiced dentistry as he moved West for his health
John Henry Holliday was a son of Georgia, born August 14, 1851, in Griffin, as Biography tells us. Even his infancy was distinguished; he was born with a cleft palate, and survived a groundbreaking surgical procedure to correct it. Like many young people of the times, he'd received the basics of schooling at home from his mother, but later he took a classical education at the Valdosta Institute — mathematics, Latin, composition, science, and other classes, according to Doc Holliday: The Life and the Legend by Dr. Gary L. Roberts. It prepared him for an important move, both personally and geographically: In October 1870, Holliday began studies at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia.
Doc Holliday Card Game
By all accounts, Holliday was a superb student. Classes were six days a week, a mix of rigorous academics and practical application. After the first year of classes he returned to Valdosta to work with a practicing dentist there for eight months, then headed back to Philadelphia to complete his studies. (True: it took much less time to become a dentist in those days.)
Tuberculosis robbed him of more than years
He wrote a successful thesis on 'Diseases of the Teeth' and was prepared to graduate on March 1, 1872. There was a problem, though not with his qualifications; it was his age: the soon-to-be Doctor Holliday was too young by five months to be licensed to practice dentistry — you had to be at least 21 then, and he wasn't. He joined a classmate who opened a practice in St. Louis, then moved back to Georgia, practicing in Atlanta for a time. By the mid-1870s, however, Holliday was diagnosed with consumption — tuberculosis, for which there was no effective treatment in those days. The best he could do was buy himself time — it was believed the drier climate of the West was helpful. He wandered — Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and back again, following the gambling circuit, sometimes trying to establish a dental practice, but more and more frequently earning his living gambling. His last attempt at practicing dentistry was in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the late 1870s.
Doc Holliday The Real Story
He was slightly wounded during the O.K. Corral fight, and seriously wounded on another occasion, but Doctor Holliday wasn't killed in a gunfight, or even in a saloon brawl. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 36 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, on November 8, 1887, according to History. No one is quite sure where his grave is located.