Whatever Billy Allen's intentions were when he strode through the front door of Hyman's, they had become irrelevant. For the record, the preponderance of testimony at Holliday's hearing went to show that Allen was not armed, but by then the overriding Western credo of ?no duty to retreat? had won the day with public sentiment. ?No duty to retreat? was a belief, enacted in the laws of several states, that a man who was without blame for provoking a confrontation was not obliged to flee from his assailant but was free to stand his ground regardless of the consequences. As one state Supreme Court justice put it in 1877, ?Indeed, the tendency of the American mind seems to be very strongly against the enforcement of any rule which requires a person to flee when assailed.? This implied, as American West historian Richard Maxwell Brown points out, that to flee under such circumstances would be cowardly and un-American.

Holliday faced a tortuous legal process, his popularity notwithstanding. He?d had similar experiences in other places?Texas, Arizona and New Mexico territories, and most recently in Denver and Pueblo. The day after the Allen shooting, Captain Bradbury swore out a warrant for his arrest, charging him with assault with intent to kill. He was taken to court, and bail was set at $5,000. John G. Morgan, proprietor of the Board of Trade saloon, and Colonel Sam Houston, one of the managers, signed on as Holliday's sureties, and he was released. His freedom was short-lived, however.

When Holliday presented himself before Judge Old five days later, he was stunned to learn his bail had increased by $3,000. Bondsmen additional to Morgan and Houston were required, and at first no one stepped into the breach. Recognizing the possibility of serious consequences, the Daily Democrat of August 27, opined, ?Should Holliday be obliged to remain behind bars up to the day of his trial it would probably go very hard with him, as his constitution is badly broken and he has been really sick for a long time past.?

One probable reason why the bond was raised to $8,000 was the questionable condition of the shooting victim, who turned out to be difficult to treat. ?Billy Allen, shot by Doc Holliday, is on the mend, although it will be a much longer time than was first anticipated before he will be able to be out,? the Daily Democrat reported. ?His arm is frightfully swollen from wrist to shoulder and exceedingly painful. The case has been a good deal complicated from the first by Allen's inability to take narcotics with the required effect. Pain kept him awake and the heaviest doses of morphine simply caused him to become delirious.? Allen possessed a remarkable constitution, however, and as if to belie the gloomy prognostication, he was out on the street the very next day. The judge lowered Holliday's bond to $5,000 again, but for some reason Morgan and Houston failed to post it until September 6.

The imbroglio over his bond caused him to be held for more than a week in the county jail, which, though preferable to the sinkhole where city prisoners languished, was not calculated to improve his health and was symptomatic of the dire straits in which he found himself. One is compelled to ask: If he could rustle up bondsmen to the tune of $5,000 among the gambling fraternity, where his reputation was sterling, why could he not have negotiated a loan of $5 to pay off Allen and avoided all this trouble? There is no definitive evidence, but one might suspect it was a matter of pride. He approached Sam Houston only days before the shooting but met with a rebuff. Once may have been enough. He would not want to advertise that he was down and out. He had already pawned his jewelry, and Allen had taken a gun from him and put it in hock as well. (Why this did not cancel the debt or if it applied to another debt, testimony at the August 25 hearing never made clear.) And once Allen had made threats in front of witnesses, Holliday could not admit they had cowed him. He must have felt he had no choice but to stand up to his persecutor. A gambler who showed the white feather was not long for his profession, and Holliday had proved his staying power for over a decade.

The trial, postponed until Friday, March 27, 1885, proved to be anticlimactic. Holliday's attorneys, Scott Ashton and Joe Taylor, consumed the morning and afternoon of the first day wrangling with District Attorney William Kellogg over procedural points, each side maneuvering to gain a technical advantage. The legal tussle continued through jury selection, a point of overriding importance for Holliday since he counted on gaining widespread community sympathy. The court called three venires (groups of potential jurors) before empaneling 12 good men and true to the satisfaction of defense and prosecution.

Billy Allen led off the prosecution's case at 6 o?clock Friday evening. The defense made it plain in their opening remarks they would rely on the ?no duty to retreat? precept, arguing that Allen had threatened to kill their client over the $5 debt and had hunted the streets for him carrying a deadly weapon. In view of these circumstances, Ashton and Taylor argued, Holliday was fully justified in arming himself and using whatever force was necessary for his self-defense. Allen testified that he was unarmed at the time Holliday shot him, that he had never threatened Holliday's life, and that he did not even know Holliday was in Hyman's Place when he entered it on the afternoon of August 19, 1884.

The defense was able to produce witnesses to refute Allen's second and third assertions. He had threatened to ?do up? (kill) Holliday at least once, promising to ?beat his brains out.? No doubt Allen could have made good on that promise; Holliday was debilitated and weighed 122 pounds, Allen robust and 170 pounds. Billy's own boss at the Monarch, Cy Allen, admitted he had warned Billy against venturing into Hyman's because Holliday was there, and Captain Bradbury had also advised against it, but Billy Allen had said he would go anyway because he wanted to'speak? to Doc.

The defense put unemployed gambler Pat Sweeney on the stand, and he recounted an incident earlier on the day of August 19, when Holliday was still in his room and Billy Allen marched into Hyman's after the noon deadline for repaying the loan had passed and ?looked around the gambling room as if hunting someone?the butt end of a revolver in his hand.? Sweeney then hustled up the Avenue to tell Holliday that Billy Allen was armed and turning the town upside down looking for him. Thus the defense established that Holliday had cause to believe his next meeting with Allen could result in a fatal outcome, and it would be foolish not to be prepared to counter force with force. Their argument carried the day with the Leadville jury on March 28. The Leadville Carbonate Chronicle of April 4, 1885, reported, ?The courtroom was then cleared for the purpose of allowing the jury to deliberate, and after a very short time a verdict of acquittal was rendered.?

For all intents and purposes, the decision brought an end to the vendetta between the Holliday and Tyler factions. There was one more flurry of activity during the last week of October 1885, when word on the street told of more gunplay, but the Leadville police, now under Marshal Patrick A. Kelly, brooked no foolishness from the adversaries, keeping a strict watch out for concealed weapons, and no violence came to pass. Certainly bitter feelings persisted, but by the winter of 1885, Holliday had decided against chancing another bout of pneumonia in the city in the clouds and had migrated to the more congenial climate of Denver.

John Tyler was still living in Leadville early in 1886, residing across the street from his crony, Tom Duncan, on West 4th, near the gaming parlors of the Avenue. Both had moved their place of business to the clubrooms in the Tabor Grand Opera House, 310 Harrison. Cy Allen and Alexander Scott, former owners of the Monarch, had leased the premises in 1885, and in 1887 Duncan would buy out Cy Allen's share and become Scott's partner. Tyler disappeared from Leadville after 1886, perhaps shipping out to the Far East and retiring to Honolulu.

Billy Allen's career after Leadville was long and adventurous. Researcher Gary Roberts has traced him to Garfield County, Colo., in 1887, where he served as an Army scout during the Ute troubles. Afterward, he worked as a fireman in Pueblo and later as fire chief in Cripple Creek. By 1900 he was participating in the Klondike gold rush and was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal. The manager of the insurance underwriters of Colorado once described the popular Allen as ?a strong, brave, determined man.? He died in the Old Soldiers? Home in Orting, Wash., on March 21, 1941, at age 82.

Holliday's fortunes did not improve in Denver, but the city provided the backdrop for a final meeting with Wyatt Earp, in either the winter of 1885-86 or the following spring. The comrades came together in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel. They knew the circle was closing, and both acknowledged it. Sadie Marcus watched their last conversation from a discreet distance and would later describe the skeletal Holliday as having a continuous cough and taking his leave ?on unsteady legs.?

The last stop for Doc Holliday, in May 1887, was Glenwood Springs, Colo., a necropolis the old, familiar gamblers? circuit had bypassed, as if by superstition. Holliday arrived aboard a stagecoach from Leadville, 75 miles to the south.

He came to drink in the medicinal waters, but even more, to take advantage of the altitude. ?[It] is shown by the experience of consumptives to be the happy means that relieves their suffering from lung diseases,? noted the Leadville Herald Democrat of January 1, 1888. Holliday registered at the fashionable Hotel Glenwood, aVictorian confection of gingerbread, arches, dormers and wrought-iron battlements. How he could afford to stay there is uncertain, but he probably worked various jobs (including dealing faro) despite his bad health and also got money from friends. Unfortunately, the curative powers that enthusiasts attributed to the altitude and the springs proved unequal to the ravages of disease. Holliday, 36, died in his bed at the hotel, the morning of November 8, 1887.

Those who knew him best during his final years in Colorado lived in Leadville. It was there that he chose to make his stand against those who had harried him for half a decade. And in making it he had won for himself a last measure of dignity. He stood his ground when he could have decamped for any number of reasons?failing health, poverty, the threat of extradition for murder and formidable enemies eager to take advantage of his weakness. His obituary appeared in the Leadville Carbonate Chronicle on November 14, 1887:

There is scarcely one in the country who had acquired a greater notoriety than Doc Holliday, who enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most fearless men on the frontier, and whose devotion to his friends in the climax of the fiercest ordeal was inextinguishable. It was this, more than any other faculty, that secured for him the reverence of a large circle who were prepared on the shortest notice to rally to his relief.

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This article was written by Roger Jay and originally appeared in the December 2003 issue of Wild West magazine.

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