The man brought under suspicion as the fourth highwayman was Doc Holliday. The suspicion against the right bower of the Earp faction seemed to have a certain semblance of logic, and Tombstone was soon rolling the delicious tidbit of scandal over its tongue. Holliday’s many friends were indignant at what they denounced as a new trick of the Behan crowd. Holliday’s many enemies gleefully and promptly returned a verdict of guilty in the first degree. The insouciant doctor, wit, and desperado, took the matter lightly.
“So I’m a stage robber,” he remarked with cynical good-humour. “Well, I don’t believe it. They’ll have to prove this to me. If I had been there, you can bet a stack of blue chips that eighty thousand never would have got away.”
The doctor seemed to resent the implied reflection on his well-known artistry.
“And I’ve made incriminating statements, eh?” the doctor smiled derisively. “Well, it’s just like me to talk the rope around my neck. I shoot up the stage, kill a couple of fellows, and blab it all over the country. No honest stage robber’ll trust me after this, and serve me right.”
The doctor was noted for a pleasant garrulity, but he had never been known to reveal any of his own secrets. He was habitually too wise in the treacheries of the underworld to place his own safety unreservedly in the hands of any man.
“They seem to think being armed with a rifle and a six-shooter makes the case against me look pretty black,” he pursued. “Humph! The next time I ride out into the brush in this outlaw country, I’ll wear kid gloves and carry a bunch of Sunday-school tracts.”
Holliday declared he had gone to Charleston on personal business. He denied having been anywhere in the neighbourhood of Contention, and denied also that he had kept a fresh horse standing for several hours in the street after his return to Tombstone. The story of this fresh horse may have been true or it may have been a case of bad reporting on the part of the newspaper. If true, the saddled horse waiting in the street was a gravely suspicious circumstance which suggested rather vividly preparedness for instant flight. The story was contradicted by another that became rife at the same time, that after the attempted stage robbery, Holliday had ridden to the Clanton ranch near Charleston and obtained a fresh mount there for his trip back to Tombstone.
A little adventure that befell Mr. and Mrs. John Slaughter on the Charleston road that night added to the suspicion against Holliday. Slaughter, afterward famous as the fighting sheriff of Cochise County, had drawn $10,000 that afternoon from the Charleston bank. He had the money with him when he and his wife at ten o’clock at night set out to drive to the dairy ranch of Amazon Howell, Mrs. Slaughter’s father, at William Springs, between Charleston and Tombstone.
At a lonely spot in the road, a horseman rode toward them out of a dry wash. He may have had some sinister design. Or he may have been following the wash as a shortcut from Charleston to Tombstone. But, at any rate, he had a drawn six-shooter in his hand, and Slaughter suspected the fellow meant to rob him.
“Look out, John,” cried Mrs. Slaughter in alarm, “that man has a gun in his hand.”
“Well,” replied her husband calmly, “so have I.”
And Mrs. Slaughter saw her husband’s hand gripping a six-shooter held in his lap, its barrel grimly following the shadowy figure moving in the darkness. Whatever was in the mind of the man on horseback, he made no menacing move with his revolver, but riding on without a word, disappeared on the road to Tombstone. Slaughter recognized the horse. “That was Charlie Tribolett’s blaze-face roan,” he said. “I’d know that horse anywhere.” Slaughter believed the man on the horse was Doc Holliday. Moreover, he always remained of this opinion.
Suspicion against Holliday grew when it was learned that he had been a close friend of Bill Leonard. This friendship, however, had been of several years standing. Leonard and Holliday had first known each other in Las Vegas. There Leonard was a prosperous jeweller and stood well as a business man. He came to Tombstone from Las Vegas and for a long time worked in a jewellery shop, and in Tombstone also, during this period of employment, his reputation was good. He was an expert watch repairer, and some of Tombstone’s old-timers still recall his deftness at his trade. Gambling, drinking, and bad associates caused Leonard’s fall. He became intimate with the Clantons and other Curly Bill outlaws, and was soon taking part in their criminal affairs. For several months before the Benson stage holdup, Leonard, Head, and Crane had been “batching” in a cabin at a place called the Wells, ten miles from Tombstone, over toward Contention. It was bruited about that Holliday several times had visited Leonard there, and it was suspected that he had seen Leonard at the Wells a few hours
