Doc Holliday, [Stacy Keach] and Kate Elder, [Faye Dunaway], cross paths in a roadside saloon on the way to Tombstone, Arizona. Doc outplays Ike Clanton, [Michael Witney], in a tense game of Five Card Stud and wins Kate for the night. The next day they ride on together, with Doc explaining that he hopes to reconnect with his old friend Wyatt Earp, [Harris Yulin], the deputy marshal of Cochise County who is running to become the town’s sheriff.
Upon arriving, the pair split up: Kate goes to work at a brothel while Doc passes the time at the gambling tables. Wyatt Earp has arrived and explains that once he takes the sheriff’s office, they will become rich, with Doc helping run the town’s gambling operations. That night, Wyatt pistol-whips Ike Clanton and throws him out of the saloon.
Doc grows fond of Kate; he returns to the brothel and brings her back to his hotel room, presenting her with gifts the next day as if to retire her from a life on the road. They eventually move into a house Doc rents, settling into a tense, uneasy alliance mixed with care and dependence.
A stagecoach robbery leads Wyatt and Doc to the Clanton Ranch in search of Johnny Ringo, [Fred Dennis], whom Wyatt believes committed the crime. The Clantons are ready for trouble and draw their weapons as Ike Clanton, [Michael Witney], challenges Wyatt to a duel; for a moment, Ike appears to have the upper hand against the newly minted sheriff.
Following that confrontation, Wyatt proposes a trade: he offers Ike the reward money for the stagecoach robbery in exchange for Ike delivering Ringo. He believes solving the robbery could bolster his chances in the upcoming election against Johnny Behan, [Richard McKenzie].
Once Wyatt becomes sheriff, the Earp faction faces fierce resistance from the Clanton Cowboys, including Ike Clanton, Tom and Frank McLowery, and Billy Clanton, [Bruce M. Fischer]. Doc Holliday, still close to the action, teaches The Kid, [Denver John Collins], how to handle a pistol, sharpening a dangerous partnership that threads through the mounting tension in town.
Doc’s backstory gradually unfolds: after the Civil War, he left Atlanta and traveled to Richmond, Virginia, then Baltimore, Maryland, to practice dentistry. Seeking relief from tuberculosis, he wandered west for a drier climate and even consulted a Chinese herb healer, a journey underscored by his use of laudanum at times.
In the climactic showdown at the OK Corral, which unfolds amid a festive fiesta, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday stand alongside Virgil Earp, [John Bottoms], and barely survive the gunfight. The gunfight spares the survivors—Wyatt, Virgil, and Doc—but claims the lives of Ike Clanton, Tom and Frank McLowery, Billy Clanton, and Morgan Earp, [Philip Shafer], sealing the fates of the men who opposed the Earp brothers.
