Big-Nose Kate's Man

by Marie Antoinette Parks

June 1956 Real Western . No record of copyright.

THEY had Doc Holliday in jail in Fort Griffin, and they were going to lynch him for killing a gunman named Ed Bailey. Holiday and Bailey had been gambling in a saloon, and Doc had accused Bailey of cheating. When the gun smoke and roar had cleared away, Ed Bailey was a very dead man, for the dentist never missed; and before be knew what had happened, Doc Holliday was in the local calaboose.

"They's talk about lynchin' you, Holliday," the sheriff grumbled. "Bailey was well-liked, he was, an' he has lots of friends."

And to this Doc Holliday, of course, could say and do nothing; he wished his friend, Wyatt Earp, were in Fort Griffin - but Earp was in Dodge City.

By the time word of this got to Earp, he, Holliday, would have a limber neck.

But Holliday had reckoned without him sweetheart, Kate Fisher.

Big Nose Kate, they called her, and she had met Doc in Dodge, where she had been what was called at that time a "dancehall girl." She had immediately fallen in love with the consumptive dentist-turned-gunman, and she had followed Doc to Fort Griffin. Now her lover was in jail, waiting for the hangman's noose, and the bars were thick and closely spaced. . .

"Well," said Doc Holliday, "I haven't long to live, anyway. This consumptive bug is having a field day on my carcass. You going to protect me, Sheriff."

"Sure," the sheriff said; "oh, sure."

"You don't sound too enthusiastic, Sheriff."

"My bunions are actin' up almighty rough today," the sheriff returned, aiming to head downtown to listen to the lynch talk and to mooch some free drinks.

"Deputy, you take over an' watch the prisoner."

"I'd like to go down town with you, Sheriff."

"You'd jes' git drunk on me," the sheriff said. "You mooch too many drinks, fella; this job needs a sober an' reliable head an' gunarm."

And with this, the sheriff left to get his free drinks.

"You think they'll get a necktie party up for me?" Doc Holliday asked the deputy. "My neck is almighty touchy; I have trouble wearing a stiff collar, even if I don't wear a tie."

"You should have stayed with drilling teeth," the deputy said dejectedly, sinking into a chair and promptly going to sleep. Soon he was snoring like a saw running through an oak knot.

Doc Holliday, sick and sorry, contemplated his fate.

***

Big Nose Kate had her own ideas about Doc Holliday; she had fallen in love with the slender consumptive when she had first met him in Dodge City a few months before. Their courtship and love affair had been a boisterous one, and Doc had once summoned all his strength to put her across his bony knees and paddle her ample bottom.

That had happened in their hotel room in Dodge, where they had been living as man and wife. Big Nose Kate had hollered and kicked, but Doc had worked her over to his satisfaction. Later on in the saloon where she worked, she pulled her dress high to show the blue marks left by the gunman's bony hand.

"I do declare," she would state, "but I think that man loves me."

Now there was lynch talk, and a necktie party was to honor her lover. Big Nose Kate sipped her beer, listened, and did some thinking. The main thing, she reasoned, was to get everybody away from the jail. And what would be the best way to accomplish that?

She sipped again and did some more thinking. The bar wherein the lynch talk was taking place was part of a hotel. She had a room upstairs. Well, now, that room - She had her plan, then.

She went upstairs, and men's eyes followed her pretty legs. She had a big nose - for Nature had endowed her with an awesome snoozle - but she had a beautiful body, and she knew it. Right now, however, she was not interested in masculine stares. She went to her room, piled up some old newspapers she got out of a linen closet, and to these she added other things - the sheets from the bed and doilies from the center table and the dresser. She took the kerosene lamp, unscrewed the wick, and trailed kerosene around the room, throwing some on the wall directly over the heap of old newspapers. Then she said to herself, "Here goes nothing," and set the mess on fire.

She did not hesitate long, just stayed only long enough to see that the fire burned well, then she went down the backstairs to the alley, where she stood and watched.

Soon, flames shot out of the window in her room. Smoke rolled out, mixed with it were more scarlet tongues of ugly flame. It was a frame building, dried by the hot sun and the hotter wind of the plains, and soon the back end was burning right smartly.

Somebody screamed, "The hotel - it's on fire!" A man dashed into the bar, his excited words momentarily extinguishing the lynch talk. A fire was a fire - and fire had to be fought.

Big Nose Kate had getaway horses saddled and ready, so she now went to the jail.

The excitement had not awakened the deputy; she shook him awake and he opened his eyes wide at the sight of a woman standing over him with a sixshooter in her hand.

"Got a present for you, fella'-"

"A present?"

"Yeah, and here it is!"

The barrel of the pistol made a loud noise on an empty skull; the deputy went back to sleep, and forgot his prisoner and his family and his job. The keys hung on a ring hooked over a nail in the wall, and soon Doc Holliday was free.

"Sure glad to see you, Katie girl. You rode over from Dodge City, I take it."

"Followed you into town, found out you was in trouble - and here is little Big Nose Kate. Our hosses is in the back."

"I'll, take my guns from the rack. Say, honey, you must love me at that, even though I did paddle your behind."

"Nobody is gonna lynch my man."

They got away from Fort Griffin, without lead following them, and once in Dodge,

Big Nose Kate got plastered.

She picked up with a young Texas cowboy at a bar, and this made Doc Holliday mad.

"I ought to take you out in the alley and paddle you," he said.

"You paddled me once, Doc, but you ain't man enough to paddle me again. Far as I'm concerned, you can get to hell outa my life."

"I don't want no trouble." The young Texan had heard of Doc Holliday's fast and deadly gun.

Big Nose Kate pulled her friend close; he had a wallet full of greenbacks and golden eagles. "Honey boy, this man don't mean nothin' in my life. How about orderin' me a new drink, boy. This one isn't strong enough. Goodby, Holliday."

Doc Holliday walked away - puzzled, as man always is puzzled at womanhood.

Later that night, she came to Doc's room and sat on the bed. She was pretty drunk and sleepy. "How are you, Doc?"

"Okay."

"You mad at me."

"Yes."

She leaned over and kissed him. "I'm glad you're mad at me," she said. "You see, Doc, I love you."

Doc kissed her in return. "You sure take a funny way to show it," he said still mystified.

"I was jus' tryin' ta make you jealous…and I wanted the greenbacks and the eagles that Texan sported. That part was jus' business. Same as if you and him was in a poker game." She kissed Holliday. "But you're still my man. You understand business, don' you?"

"Yeah. I understand business," Doc said. "But I'm damned if I understand you."

Big Nose Kate just smiled.

The End