|
Couldn't Have Whipped a Boy
Physically,
Doc Holliday
was a weakling who could not have whipped a healthy fifteen-year old boy in a
go-as-you-please fist fight, and no one knew this better than himself, and the
knowledge of this fact was perhaps why he was so ready to resort to a weapon of
some kind whenever he got himself into difficulty. He was hot-headed and
impetuous and very much given to both drinking and quarrelling, and, among men
who did not fear him, was very much disliked.
He possessed none of the qualities of
leadership such as those that distinguished such men as H. P. Myton,
Wyatt Earp, Billy Tilghman and other
famous western characters.
Holliday
seemed to be absolutely unable to keep out of trouble for any great length of
time. He would no sooner be out of one scrape before he was in another, and the
strange part of it is he was more often in the right than in the wrong, which
has rarely ever been the case with a man who is continually getting himself into
trouble.
The indiscriminate killing of some negroes
in the little Georgia village in which he lived was what first caused him to
leave his home. The trouble came about in rather an unexpected manner one Sunday
afternoon --unexpected so far at least as the negroes were concerned. Near the
little town in which
Holliday
was raised, there flowed a small river in which the white boys of the village,
as well as the black ones, used to go in swimming together. The white boys
finally decided that the negroes would have to find a swimming place elsewhere and notified them to that effect. The negro boys were informed that in the
future they would have to go further down the stream to do their swimming, which
they promptly refused to do and told the whites that if they didn't like
existing conditions, that they themselves would have to hunt up a new swimming
hole.
Shot a Crowd of Negroes
As
might have been expected in those days in the South. the defiant attitude taken
by the negroes in the matter caused the white boys to instantly go upon the war
path. They would have their order obeyed or know the reason why. One beautiful
Sunday afternoon, while an unusually large number of negroes were in swimming at
the point in dispute,
Holliday
appeared on the river bank with a double-barreled shot-gun in his hands, and,
pointing it in the direction of the swimmers. ordered them from the river.
"Get out, and be quick about it," was his
peremptory command. The negroes, as a matter of course, stampeded for the
opposite shore, falling over each other in their efforts to get beyond the
range. of the shot gun.
Holliday
waited until he got a bunch of them together, and then turned loose with both
barrels, killing two outright. and wounding several others.
|
|
