The gambler's gambler

Isn't it interesting to see what people do when they feel they have nothing to lose? No better example can be found of a man who had concluded that if life didn't care about him, then he wasn't going to care too much for life. His name: John 'Doc' Holliday (1851-1887), legendary gunslinger and professional card player. Ruthless, intelligent and fearless, he was a man's man and the gambler's gambler.

Doc Holliday new a bad hand when he saw one: he had been dealt one at the age of twenty-two when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Fully qualified as a dental surgeon, he had only recently opened up his own practice. The shocking and unpredictable coughing fits that wracked his young frame made it impossible for him to treat his patients and, having been given only a short time to live, his path was cut out for him. To steal a few more years on earth, he headed West in search of a healthier climate.

Not expecting to survive, Holliday put his natural talent for gambling into play. His life soon became a constant ride in the roughhouse. The pattern was fixed: serious card games, violent confrontations and quick exits out of town. This was the cutting edge of desperation. Dreading a slow and painful death by natural causes, Holliday was more than prepared to gamble on a speedy end by courtesy of the fateful bullet. Ironically, he was something of a born survivor. He claimed that at least nine attempts of one type or another were made on his precarious life. But beneath all the reckless disregard for danger, something in his character remained true to the well-connected and community-respecting background from which he had sprung as a child. When the chips were down, Holiday tended to side with the lawman against the troublemaker. This was proven when he made firm friends with Wyatt Earp and his brothers in Tombstone, Arizona. It was standing shoulder to shoulder with these no-nonsense mercenaries where Doc Holliday played the biggest gamble of his life - and struck his name into American history.

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26, 1881. Living on borrowed time, Doc was more than happy to walk down the street to this violent showdown as a combination of faithful friend, deadly killer and lawman for the day. He may have been dead as far as the future was concerned, but on this day he was as alive as anyone in the world.

Something like thirty shots in thirty seconds: that's all it took to settle the issue with the Clanton Gang. On the winning side only Wyatt Earp escaped injury. His two brothers along with Doc were wounded but not critically. Of the five defeated Clanton boys, three were shot dead and two got away unharmed. It was up close and personal - literally a couple of feet away from each other - and about as lawless as the law allowed.

Doc Holliday had survived the big gamble. He lived on, just as recklessly, for another six years. But the fateful bullet never found him. His body gave way before his courage ever did; after two months in his sickbed, much of the time delirious, he awoke on the morning of November 8, 1887, and calmly asked for a glass of whisky. He knocked it back in his usual style, said, "This is funny", and then passed away. It wasn't the end he had expected and looked for, but even the best of gamblers cannot always predict the final card.