True West Magazine
Doc Holliday vs Mike Gordon
Hoodoo Brown’s court invents “excusable homicide”
Gambler draws a “pair of sixes” and is “froze out.”
By Bob Boze Bell
Based on the research of Gary L. Roberts
Doc Holliday was serious about his Las Vegas business ventures. He was building an annex to his saloon, which some believe was for a dental office. A shootout with a drunk would derail everything.
– Illustrations by Bob Boze Bell –
July 19, 1879
Mike Gordon has been on a multi-day binge-drunk when he comes into the Holliday Saloon on Centre Street, Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, and demands that his “mistress” accompany him to another saloon on Railroad Street. She refuses because she is working, so he makes threats and leaves, allegedly swearing he will “kill someone, or be killed himself before morning.”