TOMBSTONE’S PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER AND FIREFIGHTER, IKE ISAACS.
BEFORE THE O.K. CORRAL GUNFIGHT, VIRGIL EARP PLAYED POKER ALL NIGHT WITH TOM MCLAURY, IKE CLANTON AND JOHN BEHAN. WAS IKE ISAACS THE INTRIGUING “FIFTH GAMBLER” WHOSE IDENTITY HAS SO LONG REMAINED UNKNOWN?
Ike Isaacs came to Tombstone from Virginia City, Nevada, as did many others seeking out the next boom town. At V.C. he was active as a gambler and a firefighter. While in Tombstone he would run in similar circles to some of Tombstone’s most famous names. Like the Earps, he was a professional gambler, and he also had a keen interest in politics. He shared the Earps devotion to the Republican Party as well. And, just as Wyatt Earp and Virgil Earp did, he joined the ranks of the local firefighting fraternity.
Ironically, a mining business partner of the Earps, Billy Allen Le Van, testified against the Earps at the Spicer Hearing which occurred in the wake of the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral. And Ike Isaacs served as Chief Engineer of the firefighters who would later attempt to save Billy Le Van’s most important Tombstone property, the Le Van House. And his personal penchant for politics motivated him to keep track of races for offices in both places, in his personal scrapbook. Remarkably, this scrapbook has survived the ages, and today is in the personal collection of the author, John D. Rose.
Ike Isaacs preserved a Virginia City election handbill that advertised Richard Rule as running for office before relocating and becoming a known name in Tombstone. Richard Rule, working for the Tombstone Nugget, penned an important account of the O.K. Corral Gunfight that is still referenced today by historians as they endeavor to better understand this very famous event. Though Ike enjoyed a number of forms of gambling, he marketed himself in Tombstone as “Keno Ike,” as his Keno game was a primary line of revenue for him. Under the colorful headline of “Republican Rioting,” the Tombstone Weekly Epitaph told its readers on October 7th, 1882 that “Keno Ike, chairman of the committee announced that it would require $3,000 to run the county campaign…”
Isaacs appears further in Tombstone’s press, promoting his gambling business. In the summer of 1881, he made changed his choice of Saloon’s in Tombstone from which to operate his gambling enterprise. It was a fateful decision. He could have no idea that this simple change of surroundings would bring him closer to an event yet to occur but remembered over a century later-The Gunfight near the O.K. Corral. On July 13th, 1881, the Tombstone Daily Nugget reported, “The keno game has been removed from the Bank Exchange to the Occidental Saloon, next door to Wells, Fargo…Ike Isaacs, who has been connected with Messrs. Orendorff & McGee, will run the game. Any one who knows Ike, will know that the game will be run on the square.” In his work as a professional gambler Ike made the acquaintance of Billy Allen’s younger brother, Lewis. On January 9th 1882, he received a signed receipt from Lewis Kissinger (aka Le Van) for rent due at the Occidental. “Received Tombstone Jan 9/82 of Isaacs & Colby Fifty dollars balance due for rent from Jan 1st to Feb 1st 82 for Keno Room in back of Occidental Saloon.”
Ironically, a mining business partner of the Earps, Billy Allen Le Van, testified against the Earps at the Spicer Hearing which occurred in the wake of the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral. And Ike Isaacs served as Chief Engineer of the firefighters who would later attempt to save Billy Le Van’s most important Tombstone property, the Le Van House. And his personal penchant for politics motivated him to keep track of races for offices in both places, in his personal scrapbook. Remarkably, this scrapbook has survived the ages, and today is in the personal collection of the author, John D. Rose.
Ike Isaacs preserved a Virginia City election handbill that advertised Richard Rule as running for office before relocating and becoming a known name in Tombstone. Richard Rule, working for the Tombstone Nugget, penned an important account of the O.K. Corral Gunfight that is still referenced today by historians as they endeavor to better understand this very famous event. Though Ike enjoyed a number of forms of gambling, he marketed himself in Tombstone as “Keno Ike,” as his Keno game was a primary line of revenue for him. Under the colorful headline of “Republican Rioting,” the Tombstone Weekly Epitaph told its readers on October 7th, 1882 that “Keno Ike, chairman of the committee announced that it would require $3,000 to run the county campaign…”
Isaacs appears further in Tombstone’s press, promoting his gambling business. In the summer of 1881, he made changed his choice of Saloon’s in Tombstone from which to operate his gambling enterprise. It was a fateful decision. He could have no idea that this simple change of surroundings would bring him closer to an event yet to occur but remembered over a century later-The Gunfight near the O.K. Corral. On July 13th, 1881, the Tombstone Daily Nugget reported, “The keno game has been removed from the Bank Exchange to the Occidental Saloon, next door to Wells, Fargo…Ike Isaacs, who has been connected with Messrs. Orendorff & McGee, will run the game. Any one who knows Ike, will know that the game will be run on the square.” In his work as a professional gambler Ike made the acquaintance of Billy Allen’s younger brother, Lewis. On January 9th 1882, he received a signed receipt from Lewis Kissinger (aka Le Van) for rent due at the Occidental. “Received Tombstone Jan 9/82 of Isaacs & Colby Fifty dollars balance due for rent from Jan 1st to Feb 1st 82 for Keno Room in back of Occidental Saloon.”
Ike had rented the back room at the Occidental for his game, which was his mainstay. One of the broadsides that he had printed to promote his game at differing Tombstone saloons said “IKE” and the other referred to “Isaacs & Co.” The role of Web Colby (referred to in the receipt from Lewis Kissinger as “Colby” of “Isaacs & Colby”) may have been that of a quiet partner, as Ike was clearly the public face in the saloons, dealing with patrons on a regular basis. When the Nugget announced Ike’s move to the Occidental, no mention was made of Colby, and it reported that Ike would be running the game.
An amusing anecdote followed the next year in the April 10, 1882 Tombstone Daily Epitaph: “If the gentleman who broke into the cabinet in Ike’s keno room will come around this evening he will be presented with two more Chinese dice and have the set complete, as he is known.” These articles show that Ike was running a regular business out of the Occidental from July 1881, at least through January 1882. Given his status as a professional gambler, it is reasonable that he would have been there consistently, including through the time of the O.K. Corral gunfight.
Although Ike Isaacs had chosen to preserve that particular receipt in his scrapbook, it was but one of many that he would have received. On May 14th, 1882, the Epitaph noted that he was still running his game at the Occidental. “Ike Isaacs’ keno rooms, in the rear of the Occidental Saloon, is one of the quietest and coziest places in town to while away an hour or two. Not to speak of the numbers who drop in frequently to indulge in a quiet game and admire Ike’s elegant picture gallery, [and] there is always a large crowd who go to take a chance in the big pool that is given away on Saturday and Sunday evenings.”
An amusing anecdote followed the next year in the April 10, 1882 Tombstone Daily Epitaph: “If the gentleman who broke into the cabinet in Ike’s keno room will come around this evening he will be presented with two more Chinese dice and have the set complete, as he is known.” These articles show that Ike was running a regular business out of the Occidental from July 1881, at least through January 1882. Given his status as a professional gambler, it is reasonable that he would have been there consistently, including through the time of the O.K. Corral gunfight.
Although Ike Isaacs had chosen to preserve that particular receipt in his scrapbook, it was but one of many that he would have received. On May 14th, 1882, the Epitaph noted that he was still running his game at the Occidental. “Ike Isaacs’ keno rooms, in the rear of the Occidental Saloon, is one of the quietest and coziest places in town to while away an hour or two. Not to speak of the numbers who drop in frequently to indulge in a quiet game and admire Ike’s elegant picture gallery, [and] there is always a large crowd who go to take a chance in the big pool that is given away on Saturday and Sunday evenings.”
Ike Isaacs was present in the Campbell & Hatch Saloon on the evening of March 18th, 1882, when an assassin’s bullet claimed the life of Morgan Earp. Ike testified at the coroner’s inquest into the incident, and was standing near the wood stove near George Berry, who also was struck, giving him an uncomfortable, but not fatal, flesh wound.
On Tuesday evening, October 25th, 1881, and through the night until dawn of Wednesday the 26th, the same room that Ike used for his Keno game would also play host to one of the most famous poker games in the history of the American West. An important catalyst for the coming violence was Doc Holliday’s public humiliation of Ike Clanton. It set in motion a series of threats not only against Holliday, but also the Earp brothers.
Ike Clanton estimated that his row with Holliday occurred at 1:00 a.m. and that he joined the game already in progress at the Occidental a half hour later. Sharing his rented room with these all night poker players would offer Isaacs some late week-night business after some of his Keno games had concluded. The November 24th, 1881 Tombstone Daily Epitaph noted, “The keno game in the Occidental saloon gives away…$2.50 at 9 o’clock every night.”
Of that remarkable card game, Ike Clanton recalled that “A half hour after that [after their quarrel in the Alhambra], I presume, I came back to the next saloon on the west, called the Occidental. I sat down in the saloon and played poker all night, until daylight. Tom Corrigan was tending bar there in that saloon. Virgil Earp and Tom McLaury and another gentleman, I don’t know his name, and Johnny Behan were playing the game.”
Although there is no way to prove with certainty that Ike Isaacs was the fifth gambler, the Occidental Saloon receipt contained within the Isaacs scrapbook along with the other research above, offers for the first time in over 130 years a tantalizing possibility. Ike leased the back room of the Occidental and was active in running his Keno games. It is reasonable that Ike would be involved in the gambling that would take place in the room that he leased. If he were involved with his room when it was being used then he would have been the fifth gambler; however, definitive proof that Ike Isaacs was the fifth gambler did not surface in related Spicer Hearing testimony.
THE ALL NIGHT POKER GAME CONCLUDES
It was a fateful sunrise that illuminated the streets of Tombstone on October 26th, 1881. As the daylight reached into the back room of the Occidental, two key players in that game and the drama to come decided to leave. Earlier that evening Ike Clanton had a row with Doc Holliday, and Holliday’s public humiliation of him was part of the lead up to the O.K. Corral Gunfight. If the all-night poker game had at all helped Ike diminish his anger, it was soon reignited, now focused at Virgil Earp.
Ike lamented that “When the poker game broke up in the morning at daylight, I saw Virgil take his six-shooter out of his lap and stick it in his pants. I got up and followed him out of doors on the sidewalk. He was going down Allen Street towards the Cosmopolitan Hotel. I walked up to him and told him in regard to…playing poker with a six-shooter in his lap, that I thought he stood in with those parties that tried to murder me the night before. I told him if that was so, that I was in town. He said he was going to bed. I went back and passed my chips into the poker game and had no more talk with Virgil that morning.”
Virgil Earp offered a different recollection of their conversation as the poker game concluded. “On the morning of the 26th, somewhere about six or seven o’clock, I started to go home, and Ike Clanton stopped me and wanted to know if I would carry a message from him to Doc Holliday. I asked him what it was. He said, ‘the damned son of a bitch has got to fight.’ I said, ‘Ike, I am an officer and I don’t want to hear you talking that way at all. I am going down home now, to go to bed, I don’t want you to raise any disturbance while I am in bed.’”
Ike Clanton estimated that his row with Holliday occurred at 1:00 a.m. and that he joined the game already in progress at the Occidental a half hour later. Sharing his rented room with these all night poker players would offer Isaacs some late week-night business after some of his Keno games had concluded. The November 24th, 1881 Tombstone Daily Epitaph noted, “The keno game in the Occidental saloon gives away…$2.50 at 9 o’clock every night.”
Of that remarkable card game, Ike Clanton recalled that “A half hour after that [after their quarrel in the Alhambra], I presume, I came back to the next saloon on the west, called the Occidental. I sat down in the saloon and played poker all night, until daylight. Tom Corrigan was tending bar there in that saloon. Virgil Earp and Tom McLaury and another gentleman, I don’t know his name, and Johnny Behan were playing the game.”
Although there is no way to prove with certainty that Ike Isaacs was the fifth gambler, the Occidental Saloon receipt contained within the Isaacs scrapbook along with the other research above, offers for the first time in over 130 years a tantalizing possibility. Ike leased the back room of the Occidental and was active in running his Keno games. It is reasonable that Ike would be involved in the gambling that would take place in the room that he leased. If he were involved with his room when it was being used then he would have been the fifth gambler; however, definitive proof that Ike Isaacs was the fifth gambler did not surface in related Spicer Hearing testimony.
THE ALL NIGHT POKER GAME CONCLUDES
It was a fateful sunrise that illuminated the streets of Tombstone on October 26th, 1881. As the daylight reached into the back room of the Occidental, two key players in that game and the drama to come decided to leave. Earlier that evening Ike Clanton had a row with Doc Holliday, and Holliday’s public humiliation of him was part of the lead up to the O.K. Corral Gunfight. If the all-night poker game had at all helped Ike diminish his anger, it was soon reignited, now focused at Virgil Earp.
Ike lamented that “When the poker game broke up in the morning at daylight, I saw Virgil take his six-shooter out of his lap and stick it in his pants. I got up and followed him out of doors on the sidewalk. He was going down Allen Street towards the Cosmopolitan Hotel. I walked up to him and told him in regard to…playing poker with a six-shooter in his lap, that I thought he stood in with those parties that tried to murder me the night before. I told him if that was so, that I was in town. He said he was going to bed. I went back and passed my chips into the poker game and had no more talk with Virgil that morning.”
Virgil Earp offered a different recollection of their conversation as the poker game concluded. “On the morning of the 26th, somewhere about six or seven o’clock, I started to go home, and Ike Clanton stopped me and wanted to know if I would carry a message from him to Doc Holliday. I asked him what it was. He said, ‘the damned son of a bitch has got to fight.’ I said, ‘Ike, I am an officer and I don’t want to hear you talking that way at all. I am going down home now, to go to bed, I don’t want you to raise any disturbance while I am in bed.’”
Virgil’s refusal to deliver his threat to Holliday prompted Ike to expand the threat to him as well. “I started to go home,” Virgil continued, “and when I got ten feet from him he said, ‘You won’t carry the message?’ I said, ‘No, of course I won’t.’ I made four or five steps more. He said, ‘You may have to fight before you know it’…I made no reply to him and went home and went to bed. I don’t know how long I had been in bed. It must have been between 9 and 10 o’clock when one of the policeman [sic] came and told me to get up, as there was liable to be hell.”
Regrettably, that prediction would soon come true as violence was visited upon Tombstone’s streets in the hours that followed. And three young men with their lives ahead of them would not live to the sunset that fateful day, October 26th, 1881. But the gunfight, and also the poker game that preceded it, were not to be forgotten then, or even today, well over a century afterward.
Regrettably, that prediction would soon come true as violence was visited upon Tombstone’s streets in the hours that followed. And three young men with their lives ahead of them would not live to the sunset that fateful day, October 26th, 1881. But the gunfight, and also the poker game that preceded it, were not to be forgotten then, or even today, well over a century afterward.
The above information is in part excerpted from Witness at the O.K. Corral: Tombstone’s Billy Allen Le Van, by John D. Rose. For more on this legendary story and other research breakthroughs, this book is available at https://www.createspace.com/5258114 as well as Amazon.com. See the next page to view the cover of this landmark book on Billy Allen Le Van, the Gunfight near the O.K. Corral, Tombstone A.T., Belle Le Van and her family history, and so much more.
Copyright John D. Rose, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. All rights reserved.