Katharine Horony

            On Monday morning my right hip muscles bothered me a little more than it has lately but as usual after I’d moved around for a while the discomfort subsided.

            I finished working out the chords to Serge Gainsbourg’s “Frankenstein".

            I cleaned a small section of my living room floor with Murphy’s Oil Soap.

            I had a few short ribs for lunch.

            I did some exercises for my hip muscles and then I took a short bike ride. I rode to Sorauren and Queen, back to Jameson, south to King, west to Beaty, back up to Queen and home. The fragrance of lilacs on Beaty was pleasant.

            I uploaded “Young Women and Older Men” to YouTube.

            I boiled a few small potatoes, sautéed a zucchini with onion and jalapenos, heated some gravy and had the rest of my short ribs while watching two episodes of Stories of the Century.

            The first story was about Doc Holliday. It begins with Holliday helping the Clanton gang wreck a train to rob it. The Clantons kill two men but after all that trouble it turns out there is no loot on the train. The two fictional detectives, Matt Clark and Frankie Adams are called in to investigate. They learn from the engineer just before he dies that one of the robbers was called Doc. They decide that it can’t be the local physician and so it must be either the veterinarian or the dentist. Frankie goes to Holliday’s office with a fake toothache. She mentions the train wreck to him, saying she read about it in the paper but it hadn’t been reported yet. Doc threatens to pull out all of her teeth if she doesn’t talk. Matt arrives and they fight. One of the Clantons takes her to their hideout. Doc slugs Matt and catches up with the Clantons. They want to kill Frankie but Doc wants nothing to do with murder. He shoots one Clanton and slugs the leader then he rides off with Frankie. He leaves her outside of town while he goes to warn sheriff Wyatt Earp about the Clantons. Doc and Wyatt and the other Earp brothers have a shootout with the Clantons at the OK corral and the Clantons are defeated. Doc is wounded and in 1885 those wounds contribute to his later death from TB.

            According to historians the ambidextrous Doc Holliday probably only killed one or two men in his life. Doc got the beginnings of TB while taking care of his mother as she was dying of the disease. According to Bat Masterson Holliday killed two African Americans in Georgia because he didn’t want to share a swimming hole with them. Other than Masterson’s claim there is no evidence of this having happened. Holliday moved out west because the drier climate was better for his condition. The only woman with whom Holliday is known to have had a relationship was Mary Katharine Horony, also known as Big Nose, who was a Hungarian born dance hall girl and sometimes a prostitute. In Dodge City Holliday was gambling in a back room of the Long Branch Saloon when some cowboys were shooting up the main bar. Wyatt Earp had heard the commotion from the street and burst in only to be facing drawn guns. Holliday drew his gun and intervened, perhaps saving Earp’s life. A year or so later Holliday joined a team formed by Deputy Marshal Bat Masterson to intervene in a guerrilla war between two railroads that were fighting to be the first to claim a right of way through the Royal Gorge. Doc and Mary had many fights and after one of them a sheriff that had it in for Holliday got Mary drunk and got her to sign an affidavit implicating Doc in an attempted stagecoach robbery and the murder of its passengers. Later the Earps were able to find witnesses to testify that Holliday had been nowhere near the robbery and Mary admitted that she had been coerced into signing a document she didn’t understand. Later that same year in Tombstone Holliday was deputized by Wyatt Earp for their showdown with the Cochise County Cowboys, among who were the Clantons. After the shootout two of the Earp brothers were ambushed with one wounded and one killed. Earp formed a private posse that included Holliday to go after the Cowboys, who Earp was sure were responsible. But Earp’s posse was illegal and so another posse was formed to go after Earp’s posse. Early the next year Holliday and Earp had a falling out when Holliday called Earp a Jew boy because he was staying in the home of a Jewish businessman. But later in Denver when Holliday was charged with an Arizona murder Wyatt intervened by getting marshal Bat Masterson to draw up papers charging Holliday with a fake crime in Colorado so that he could be extradited and rescued from the Arizona charge. When Doc was dying Mary Kate was with him till the end. Wyatt Earp said of him when he died, “I found him a loyal friend and good company. He was a dentist whom necessity made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long, lean blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skilful gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.”

            The second story was about the Younger Brothers. They learned guerrilla tactics while they were members of Quantrill’s Raiders during the Civil War and applied them to train and bank robberies. They were staying at Belle Starr’s place in the Indian Nations. After they’d robbed a bank over the Missouri line the cavalry goes after them. Most of the gang are wiped out but Cole and Jim escape. The four that are left plan on joining the James Gang to rob banks in Minnesota. In the story the Youngers' African American housekeeper shoots John Younger to protect the fictional detective Frankie Adams. Nellie mentions that she raised the boys when their parents died before the war. That would suggest that she’d originally been a slave. In Northfield Minnesota the boys try to rob a bank but only get $50 because the employees refuse to open the safe. There is a gunfight and some of them escape. A posse surrounds them outside of town and only four are left. They are full of bullets but survive to stand trial and are sentenced to life. >

            The real story is that after the Civil War the Younger brothers joined Archie Clement’s gang. When they formed the James-Younger gang they managed to avoid capture longer than most outlaws because they had a lot of support among former Confederates. After the failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota they were pursued by hundreds of Minnesotans in various posses. Bob died in prison of TB; Cole and Jim were paroled but Jim committed suicide a year later. Cole wrote a memoir, gave lectures and joined a Wild West show with Frank James. He died in 1915.