The Coffee House Philosopher

In December of 1878, Doc Holliday and “Big Nose” Kate Elder managed to complete their winter trip over Raton Pass in northern New Mexico, and headed further south to the luxurious quarters of the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. The St. James Hotel had been built by Henry Lambert, who once had been the personal chef of President Abraham Lincoln.

The hotel was situated near the end of the Santa Fe Trail between Raton and Las Vegas, New Mexico. The hotel’s location offered fine 19th century accommodations to travelers of both the “Mountain Route” and the “Cimarron Cutoff” branches of the trail. The Cimarron Cutoff was shorter and didn’t include mountainous terrain, but it also had the added danger of attack by hostile plains Indians.

The hotel was very modern by standards of the time, and attracted virtually every celebrity traveling in the area. However its clientele also included some very rough customers. Twenty-six men were killed in shootouts in and around its barroom. A common inquiry heard on the streets of Cimarron was “I wonder who got shot at Lambert’s place last night.”

Because of Doc’s deteriorating health, after spending only one night in Cimarron, both he and Kate pushed on to the Montezuma Hot Springs just north of Las Vegas. The sulfurous vapors of the Springs were anything but pleasant – their odor smelled like rotten eggs. But the vapor’s supposed healing qualities for all kinds of respiration maladies drew large numbers of visitors from all over the United States.

For a couple of years thereafter, Holliday stayed in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and opened a saloon. This way he could earn a living at gambling and also frequent the Montezuma Hot Springs to get some relief from his tuberculosis. In addition he continued his tempestuous on and off relationship with Kate Elder.

Following this two-year period, Doc would only stay in one place for a brief period of time that ended whenever he got into a row with someone (usually over a card game) and injured or killed him. Then he would rapidly change his place of residence, and move on to Texas or Kansas, at times barely staying ahead of a pursuing posse. More than once he used an alias to avoid being captured.

He also periodically returned to the eastern Colorado or New Mexico area for the drier air and vaporous springs near Las Vegas that helped control his tuberculosis. Throughout this time, Doc continued to make his income primarily by playing poker and faro, though occasionally he would hang out his dentistry shingle to please Kate.

When Doc was sober and unprovoked, he could be the consummate southern gentleman, albeit with an unsympathetic intellectual and calculating mind. But all too often, his violent temper could be triggered by any combination of his progressing disease, marathon high stakes poker games, taunting by intoxicated competitors or bystanders, and his constant consumption of alcoholic drinks.

When trouble with Doc started, it usually began with an angry argument, often followed by a confrontation at the table, and occasionally it ended by the antagonists shooting it out in a gunfight in the street. Antagonists for Doc might include a competitor at the table, a saloon owner or a troublesome bystander.

Doc could be categorized as a “card shark” of the time – that is, a professional gambler at the card table. But gambling at cards is known to have other than Marquess of Queensberry types participating in the sport. And thus we have the so-called “card sharp” who was not only a professional card player, but one who would use illegal means to come out on top – i.e., he would cheat to win.

In a lengthy game of poker or faro, Doc was extremely hard to defeat. And three of his fundamental rules of playing a game were: 1) at the beginning of the game agree as to what the rules of the game shall be, 2) agree what the stakes of the game will be, and 3) agree when the game shall end. It was earlier said that there was no one in Dallas that could beat him, and later on he readily took on all comers.

However two people managed to spoil Doc’s perfect record of poker wins. One was a person named Wyatt Earp, with whom Doc only managed a tie or stalemate. The other was Carlotta J. Thompkins, an attractive petite lady gambler from Kentucky, who once took Doc for $30,000 (approximately $500,000 in today’s money) in a marathon all-night game of poker.

Carlotta, better known by her acquired professional poker playing name as “Lottie Deno,” was a female tiger at the poker and faro tables. She had been born into a family of tobacco farmers, and her father began to teach her at an early age to learn the art of high stakes gambling. By the age of 16, she was already a veritable assassin in a game of poker, having a razor sharp mathematical mind, and the instincts of a natural predator.

When Lottie was 17 in 1861, she was devastated to learn that her beloved father had been killed while fighting for the South in the Civil War. Consequently it fell upon her diminutive shoulders to earn enough income to keep her family afloat financially. By following her wake of numerous defeated male gamblers, it is clear that she was more than adequate to her assumed task.

(Next time: Doc’s death and Lottie’s life as a professional gambler, plus accounts of other lady card players.)