| |
Eye-witness
version of
the gunfight at the O.K. Corralby
Maggie Van Ostrand |
Page
2
When
she was 89, however, she wrote a letter revealing that she was with Doc in his
room in Fly's Boarding house, next to the O.K. Corral, and that she actually witnessed
the shootout. Many details were included in her writings that strongly suggest
she was telling the truth.
In Kate's story, on the day of the gunfight,
a man entered Fly's boarding house with a bandaged head and a rifle. He was looking
for Holliday, who was still in bed after a night of gambling during which he'd
had one argument with Ike Clanton that had been stopped by onlookers. The man
was turned away by Mrs. Fly. He was probably Ike Clanton, although how Clanton's
head had come to be bandaged is unknown. Clanton was known to have headaches,
and perhaps he had been treated for that even before Virgil Earp hit him over
the head and removed his weapons a short time later. In any case, Clanton's actually
entering Holliday's rooming-house with a rifle would have given Holliday and the
Earps all the reason they needed to believe that a gunfight between Holliday and
the cowboys was inevitable.
While Clanton was being disarmed, arrested,
and taken before a judge, Kate claims that Holliday put on his clothes and went
up to see the Earps. They had gathered at the corner of 5th Street and Allen,
where they could keep an eye on the courtroom to the South, the O.K. Corral a
block west, and the various cowboys who were believed to be coming and going from
out of town. Eventually, the Earps and Holliday walked down Fremont Street to
confront the cowboys in the vacant lot West of Fly's (and Holliday's) boarding
house. Kate would have been able to see the fight, just feet away, from her window
overlooking the vacant lot. In Kate's version of the gunfight, Holliday had a
problem with this "rifle" after the shooting started. He threw it to the ground
and drew his pistol. This report fits with what is known of the events, although
what Holliday actually threw down would have been his double-barrelled short shotgun
(the gun he had emptied when killing Tom McLaury).
It is only from Kate
that we know what happened after the fight. Doc Holliday went back to his room
and examined a minor flesh wound on his hip, which he had gotten from a bullet
fired by Frank McLaury. He sat on the edge of the bed and wept from the shock
of what had just happened. "That was awful," Kate claims he said. "Just awful."
Kate
stayed at the Arizona Pioneers' Home until her death on November 2, 1940, five
days before her 90th birthday.
Kate was a larger-than-life character
who lived to see stories of her own life and death (in that alleged gunfight in
Bisbee) told as a legend of the Old West. In real life, she died in bed, having
survived a world that was hard on both women and horses.
Kate said of
life: "Part is funny and part is sad, but such is life any way you take it."
Katie Elder: Her True Story
- Page 1 | Page
2 |
Copyright
Maggie Van Ostrand
"A Balloon In
Cactus" - May 26, 2006 column
Related Topics:
Outlaws
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Texas | Online
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Sources:
Doc
Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner, University of Omaha Press,
1998 (ISBN 0-8061-3036-9).
Wyatt
Earp: Frontier Marshal, by Stuart Lake, Pocket Reprint, July 1994 (ISBN 0671885375)
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia: Katie "Big Nose" ElderWebsite:
www.legendsofamerica.com |
|
| The
Legend of the O.K. Corral |
| Gunfight
at the O.K. Corral |
| | | |
