Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  E. L. Bradshaw, Waters's close friend and cabin mate, came up and saw the shirt for the first time, then made a disparaging comment. Waters laid into him with his fists. Bradshaw left to bandage a cut above his eye and returned armed. "Why did you do that?" Bradshaw asked. Waters made some remark and apparently turned away. The angry Bradshaw, described as "very reserved and peaceable," fired four shots into his friend; two entered the center of Waters's back.

  In a twist of irony, the Epitaph ran the story next to an advertisement for a local merchant who "has just received a large supply of checkered shirts."

  Two weeks later, shots rang through Tombstone again, and the crowd raced to an alley behind the Headquarters Saloon to find Tom Wilson with a gunshot through his heart. Witnesses had seen Roger King approach the door of the saloon, fire one shot, then race in. Wilson ran out the back door with King in pursuit. King fired again, and Wilson fell. King calmly walked up the street and turned himself in to an officer, saying he had killed Wilson for robbing him.

  King, employed as a stable-keeper, had already received some notice in Tombstone as leader of the anti-Chinese movement, an outgrowth of the Work- ingmen's Party in San Francisco, which advocated an end to Chinese immigration. The movement protested against the railroads, which brought in shiploads of Chinese workers to take the jobs of other workers, often Irish immigrants, at lower salaries. King quickly found support in Tombstone, where many of the boomers came because of the paucity of jobs elsewhere.

  Wyatt Earp had the responsibility of delivering Roger King to Tucson for trial. He held him in town for several days to await orders to proceed. Much to his surprise, Tombstone resident John Pace came up to Earp and handed him a telegram directed to Deputy Babcock stating, "You will please deliver prisoner to J. J. Pace. C. Shabell." The message and misspelled signature puzzled Earp, and he told Babcock he thought it was a forgery. Babcock believed it genuine and advised Earp to give the prisoner to Pace. Earp followed his own hunch and wired Shibell, who affirmed that the message was a forgery. The Nugget praised Earp and made it clear that Wyatt Earp was nobody's fool.16

  Temporarily, at least, the anti-Chinese fervor quieted in Tombstone, and the city received a report and a reprimand from Nugget owner and editor Artemus Fay.

  The anti-Chinese movement seems to have entirely disappeared along with its leader, King, who is presumably expounding his favorite doctrine to the inmates of the jail at Tucson. The usual bonfire was lighted last Saturday night and the President stated that no means save violence could be devised for rooting out the pest and as that was not for a moment contemplated, the matter had better be dropped, an opinion that was met with no signs of dissent. The legitimate workingmen of the camp had better fight shy of the next self-constituted leader who comes along and endeavors to induce them to make asses of themselves. 17

  Oddly, neither King nor Bradshaw, also tried in Tucson, was convicted. The Epitaph blamed politics for King's going free; apparently the county magistrates feared losing the votes of Anti-Chinese League members.

  Perhaps the most celebrated murder of 1880 occurred just before Earp stepped into the role of deputy sheriff. Frank Leslie, a bartender and part owner of the Cosmopolitan, wore buckskin clothing and claimed to have served as an army scout. He was one of the most colorful characters in a colorful town and a well-known ladies' man. After chambermaid May Killeen separated from her husband, Mike, a bartender at Lowry and Archer's saloon, she began devoting her affections to Buckskin Frank Leslie. This did not sit well with Mike Killeen.

  On the evening of June 22, Leslie and his friend George Perine stopped off at Lowry and Archer's for a drink and were greeted pleasantly by Mike Killeen. But later in the evening, Leslie told Perine that Killeen had threatened to kill both him and May if they attended an upcoming ball. About midnight, May Killeen showed up at the saloon and saw Leslie and Perine talking. She invited Buckskin Frank to sit on the porch of a nearby hotel. "Wait, I won't be gone over three minutes; wait in the barroom," Leslie said to Perine.

  While Frank and May sat on the porch, two shots cut through the darkness, one creasing Leslie's scalp. Leslie said he wrestled with his opponent, drew his gun, and shot the assailant in the chest. Mike Killeen fell back mortally wounded. When the police arrived, Leslie claimed self-defense. May Killeen backed up his story, but Mike Killeen in a dying statement said that he had seen the couple on the porch and was leaving the area when Perine yelled, "Look out, Frank, here is Mike!" With that, both Leslie and Perine started shooting at him. He grappled with them and beat them both over the head with his pistol but was shot by Perine. The first judge to hear the case ruled out Killeen's dying statement and discharged Buckskin Frank. Free and happy, Leslie wed May Killeen August 8 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the ceremony officiated by Judge James Reilly. Six days later, Deputy Sheriff Earp received a warrant to arrest George Perine for murder.

  E. T. Packwood, who heard Killeen's dying statement, testified at the hearing, and Dr. Henry M. Matthews contended that the position of the wound indicated that it could not have been inflicted by Leslie. Judge Reilly presided over a long, tumultuous hearing and held the prisoner to await the grand jury on charges of manslaughter. Perine, unable to raise the $5,000 bail, spent two months in a Tucson jail before the grand jury failed to return charges against him.18 Community opinion considered Leslie responsible for the killing, but four decades later Earp would make clear that he believed Perine had fired the shots.19

  Judge Reilly became the focus of much controversy in Tombstone during the Perine hearing. Before his appointment to the bench, Reilly and a local lawyer named Harry B. Jones had been opponents on a case. The case came up again-in Reilly's court -and Jones protested Reilly's serving as judge on a case where there might be a conflict of interest. When Jones arrived in court, Reilly ordered him to leave until he apologized for questioning the judge's integrity. Jones refused. But Jones had another problem. He was serving as George Perine's attorney, and the preliminary hearing was held before Reilly on August 17. Jones entered the court and sat beside Perine. According to the Nugget report, "Upon this Reilly, with the majesty which would have shamed a Roman Emperor, thundered forth, 'Mr. Jones,' and pointed with a massive finger in an unmistakable manner toward the door. Jones understood the signal, and replied that he was there as an attorney and had a constitutional right to remain. Reilly ordered the officers in attendance to remove the offending attorney."20

  Wyatt Earp, who was in the courtroom, hesitated, and Reilly rose and started toward Jones. But Jones drew a pistol and refused to leave. As Earp tried to step between the two, Reilly reached around and grabbed Jones by the coat collar. Jones responded by slugging Reilly on his judicial cheek. Earp leaped in to take control of the situation, arresting both judge and barrister, then leading them to the court of Justice Mike Gray. Jones was charged with assault and released on his own recognizance. He immediately returned to Reilly's courtroom, where the judge fined him $25 for contempt of court and sentenced him to 24 hours in the county jail.

  The sentence meant Earp would have to waste his time taking the otherwise law-abiding lawyer to Tucson to sit in jail overnight. The sentence hardly warranted the trip, and Earp released Jones on his own recognizance before the two took the stage to Tucson. Reilly ordered Earp back to court the next day to show cause why he should not be fined for contempt for not immediately removing Jones to Tucson when Reilly made the order. In typical Wyatt Earp style, just as he had done with Bob Wright two years earlier in Dodge, the deputy sheriff turned the tables on Reilly by telling him to consider himself under arrest on a charge of assault as soon as he adjourned his court. It was typical of Earp to arrest a judge in his own courtroom. Wyatt would mollify saloon fights and negotiate when needed, but he would not take any guff from a petty politician whose silliness wasted his time. Earp escorted Reilly to Mike Gray's court, where the truculent judge was released on his own recognizance. Earp's case was postponed, then dropped. The situation seemed so absurd t
hat the Tucson Star, after hearing the story from Jones, scoffed, "We think Harry Jones must have given the Star reporter a fill at Earp's expense.""

  With a dandy bit of prognostication, the Nugget wrote: "Thus endeth the first chapter but it is more than probable that there will be succeeding ones of accumulating interest."22 The succeeding chapters grew increasingly interesting as Earp made a powerful enemy whose revenge would echo for a century. Reilly, a first-class eccentric who had been humiliated by Wyatt Earp, would emerge as a premier spokesman of the anti-Earp group nearly two years later, when the circumstances in Tombstone would be much different.

  On the afternoon of Earp's court appearance a petition began circulating around town calling for Reilly's resignation. The judge responded by running an ad in the Epitaph stating he would resign his office if a petition to that effect were signed by "forty or fifty names of men who make an honest living, as business or professional men, or as mechanics, miners or laborers." He obviously did not include Earp's pals in the saloon crowd. Tombstone responded. The next day the petition appeared in the Epitaph bearing 115 signatures calling for Reilly's resignation. Among the signers were Wyatt and Morgan Earp, city marshal Fred White, businessman Pete Spence, Mayor Alder Randall, Judge Bryant L. Peel, the owners of the town's two largest hotels, and numerous merchants. Reilly answered by chastising the businessmen for being "misled by the statements of persons in whose truth, integrity, and disinterestedness you had no good reason to rely," and for acting unfairly and without dignity.23 Reilly refused to resign and, apparently, held a grudge against the Earps for years to come.

  In about September of 1880, an old Earp friend from Dodge drifted into town. After his stay in Prescott, Doc Holliday found himself ready for a new array of gambling tables. His life in the territorial capital had been fairly quiet. Strangely, census records taken in June show that Holliday wound up living in the same rooming house as John J. Gosper, territorial secretary under Governor John Fremont, before making the trek south. The dentist brought along Big-Nose Kate for an investigation of the booming new mining town.

  "I did not like it in Tombstone," Big-Nose Kate wrote in 1940. "I went to Globe, I wanted Doc to go with me, [but] the Earps had such power I could not get Doc away from them. I used to get letters from Doc to come to Tombstone, begging to pay him [a] visit. I went to see him three times."24 More than a year would pass before Kate again visited Tombstone.

  The unusual friendship between Earp and Holliday can never be fully understood. Earp would say Holliday saved his life in Kansas, which created a bond. Kate would say the friendship really grew on the trip West. Perhaps for Holliday, a factor was simply that Earp accepted the tubercular dentist at a time when many people feared the disease and would not think of coming near anyone who had it.25

  On the evening of October 10, 1880, Holliday made his first trouble in town, engaging in a dispute with John Tyler, both described by the Nugget as "well-known sports." Holliday had probably known Tyler from Dodge. He and Tyler were gambling in the Oriental Saloon when an argument broke out. Several men stepped between the two, and Tyler left the saloon. Owner Milt Joyce chastised Holliday for creating a disturbance. When Doc argued back, Joyce threw him out of the saloon. The belligerent Holliday returned, demanding his pistol from behind the bar, where it had been placed by the officer who disarmed him during the shouting match with Tyler. The bartender refused to return the gun. Holliday left, only to return a few minutes later. Walking toward Joyce, Holliday swore lustily and fired a pistol from not more than ten feet away. Joyce leaped at the dentist and crashed a pistol against Doc's head. Marshal Fred White and a deputy raced in to pull Joyce off the bruised Holliday and confiscate the pistols. When the disruption ended, Joyce had taken a shot through the hand, and William Crownover Parker Jr., a 19-year-old partner in the bar, had been nicked in the big toe of his left foot. The shot totals were uncertain, but bartender Gus Williams was accused of firing in the melee.26

  Charges were quickly dismissed against Williams, but Holliday was not so fortunate, receiving a $20 fine and $11.30 in court costs, the sentence handed down by Judge Reilly. Court records show that prosecuting witnesses failed to appear, and Doc plea-bargained from assault with a deadly weapon to assault and battery. The shooting began a stormy relationship between Holliday and Joyce that would affect the Earps. Joyce would become a political player in the area and align himself solidly against the Earps in coming months. Tyler would also become a nuisance around town; he would have a run-in with Wyatt Earp some weeks later.27

  During his few months as deputy sheriff, Earp developed a reputation as a competent officer. A young lawyer named William J. Hunsaker practiced law in Tombstone during 1880 and early '81 before moving to Los Angeles and earning a reputation as one of the top legal minds in southern California. Hunsaker wrote about Earp: "His conduct as a peace officer was above reproach. He was quiet, but absolutely fearless in the discharge of his duties. He usually went about in his shirtsleeves without a coat and with no weapon in sight. He was cool and never excited, but determined and courageous. He never stirred up trouble, but he never ran away from it or shirked responsibility. He was an ideal peace officer and a law-abiding citizen."28

  Summer and fall of 1880 proved most eventful in southern Pima County, and newspaper reports show Wyatt Earp dealing busily with all kinds of criminal activity. He chased horse thieves, arrested lot-jumpers, foiled petty criminals, and hunted killers, with Morgan often serving as his deputy. Morgan earned particular distinction in August after a horse theft in Contention. Wyatt dispatched Morgan and Virgil, serving as deputy sheriffs, to chase the horse thieves, when they came upon another band of rustlers with stolen army mules in their possession. One thief resisted, "but gave up when a six-shooter was run under his nose by Morgan Earp," the Epitaph reported.29 The Earps just kept getting in the way of rustlers trying to earn a dishonest living.

  Morgan had another odd moment in September while he was riding shotgun messenger on the Benson stage. Ten bars of silver bullion rode on the stage, with two in the hind boot. Much to Morgan's dismay, upon arrival at Contention, he and the driver discovered the boot had broken, and the two bars had fallen out somewhere along the road. They turned the stage and went hunting for the silver, finding the bars a mile apart down the road.30

  Enforcing the law in the Tombstone district proved a far different experience from taming Texans in Dodge. These were no longer good of boys getting rambunctious after a party, these were real criminals: hard cases out rustling, stealing, and even killing on occasion. While Earp had tasted crime-solving in Dodge, his main job had been keeping the peace. Most problems could be solved by bruising a skull or letting a troublemaker sober up. Now he was facing off against the likes of Pony Deal, career criminals who lived outside the boundaries of society. The job called for a different level of skill than had been demanded in Dodge and Wichita. Earp met the challenge.

  Wyatt Earp had already spent four months wearing his badge when another former lawman showed up in town in September of 1880. Nobody could help but like Johnny Behan, who had served in the territorial legislature and as sheriff of Yavapai County. He was the image of a budding politician, always bustling but never too busy to stop for a quick chat or to pass along a good story. Unlike the quiet and somber Earps, Behan had that good-guy, everyone's-pal quality that enabled him to make friends easily. He had already heard talk back in Prescott that a new county would be carved from Pima, meaning a big share for county officials who would get a piece of the tax money raised from mines, railroads, and other operations; Behan had the right political connections to wrangle an appointment when the time was right. Meanwhile, he served as a bartender at the Grand Hotel and became a partner with John Dunbar in a livery stable known as the Dexter Corral. In the past, Behan had gone through a bitter divorce, held government jobs, and built political alliances. He could spin stories, make friends, and influence just about anyone he met. These abilities would serve him well in Tombstone,
at least for a time.

  WHISKEY TINGLED THE TONGUE and addled the brain, and for some reason shootin' and sippin' seemed to go just fine together when the boys joined up for a night on the town in Tombstone. Shortly after midnight on October 28, a few rowdy sorts assembled to tipple at a saloon, then decided to take the fun outside and try to shoot the moon and stars out of the sky, the Epitaph reported. It was all good fun, the rowdies believed, rousting the townsfolk in the middle of the night. City marshal Fred White had a different idea. He came to break up the fracas and chased one of the boys into a vacant lot. The man he pursued would turn out to be Curley Bill Brocious, one of the leaders of the cowboy crowd with a reputation as a dangerous man with a gun.

  Wyatt Earp, unarmed as usual, had been at Billy Owens's saloon when he heard three or four shots fired. Earp dashed into the street and saw the flash of a pistol through the darkness. Several more shots sounded as he sped toward the flashes and ran into his brother Morgan and Fred Dodge. Morgan pointed and said he saw several men run behind a building. Wyatt borrowed Dodge's pistol and chased after the shooters, passing a man named James Johnson as he ran. As Earp approached, he heard Fred White's voice saying, "I am an officer, give me your pistol." Curley Bill pulled his gun from the holster, and White grabbed the barrel .31 Earp said he threw his arms around Curley Bill to check for other weapons. White yelled out, "Now you God-damned Son of a bitch, give me that pistol." The marshal gave the gun a quick jerk, and the pistol discharged. White held the pistol as he fell to the ground, a ball through his groin. He screamed, "I am shot," as his clothing caught fire from the muzzle blast. Earp immediately crashed his pistol onto the shooter's head, knocking Curley Bill to the ground. Stepping over Bill's body, he picked up the six-shooter, then grabbed Bill's collar and ordered him to get up. "What have I done? I have not done anything to be arrested for," Curley Bill protested.