Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  Stride by stride, the march continued. The Earps and Holliday walked a block down Fourth Street, then turned left on Fremont, past the post office and toward Bauer's butcher shop. Behan, still talking to the cowboys, stood at the front of the vacant lot and saw the Earps approach. Turning to the Clantons and McLaurys, Behan said, "Wait here. I see them coming down. I will go up and stop them." Ruben Coleman, standing nearby, said he heard one of the cowboys call out, "You need not be afraid, Johnny, we are not going to have any trouble."

  The Earps and Holliday marched past the Papago Cash Store, then across the rear entrance to the O.K. Corral, about ninety feet from the vacant lot. Behan came forward.

  "Gentlemen, I am sheriff of this county, and I am not going to allow any trouble, if I can help it," Behan said were his words to the Earps. They just brushed past, and he followed from behind, calling for them to stop. Wyatt Earp recalled Behan's words as, "For God's sake, don't go down there or you will get murdered."

  "I am going to disarm them," Virgil replied. There was then some misunderstanding. The Earps thought Behan responded with, "I have disarmed them all." Behan said his words were "I was there for the purpose of arresting and disarming them."25

  Virgil Earp carried the walking stick in his left hand with his right on the pistol jammed into his pants, but when he took Behan's comment to mean the cowboys had already been disarmed, he switched hands, placing the walking stick in his right. He also shoved his gun to his left hip.

  The butcher at the Union Market had just finished cutting a piece of meat when Martha King heard someone yell "there they come." She stepped to the door to see the Earps pass. The town had been waiting for trouble, and it would come to pass this afternoon.26

  The wind kept blowing open Holliday's long gray coat. "I knew it was a gun because his overcoat flew back and I saw it," King testified. Her dinner meat sat on the counter as she stood by the door and watched the four men walk past. "What frightened me and made me run back, I heard him [one of the Earps] say, 'Let them have it.' And Doc Holliday said, 'All right,"' King said. She could not identify what preceded the "let-them-have-it" remark, words that may have changed the perception of the comment.27 "Then I thought I would run, and ran towards the back of the shop, but before I reached the middle of the shop, I heard shots; I don't know how many." King and most of the other witnesses were stunned by what occurred so quickly.

  The Clantons, the McLaurys, and Billy Claiborne stood talking at the front of a 15-foot-wide vacant lot when the Earps arrived. West Fuller approached from the other side of the lot, and Behan and Billy Allen trailed the Earps. Behan moved toward the door of Fly's rooming house. Fuller ducked and moved back. Claiborne stepped aside, and the Clantons and McLaurys slipped deeper into the vacant lot, standing at a slant between Fly's and a house owned by W. A. Harwood. Much to the Earps' surprise, the cowboys had not been disarmed. According to Virgil Earp, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury had their hands on their six-shooters while Tom McLaury reached for a rifle in a scabbard on a horse's saddle.

  "Boys, throw up your hands, I want your guns," Virgil Earp yelled. He lifted the walking stick in the air with his right hand, his shooting hand. He said Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury reached for their six-shooters, and he heard the click click of the guns being cocked, probably as they were being pulled from their holsters, and saw Ike Clanton throw his hand into the opening of his shirt.

  "Hold, I don't want that," Virgil said, throwing both hands in the air. Virgil said Billy Clanton lifted his cocked six-shooter and two shots exploded at nearly the same time, one from Billy and one from Wyatt. Virgil changed the cane to his left hand and drew his gun with his right, "and went to shooting; it was general then, and everybody went to fighting."28

  The cowboys told a much different version -that both shots came from the Earp side. All agreed that the first two shots erupted virtually at once, almost with the same sound. By the Earp version, Clanton missed while Wyatt took aim at Frank McLaury, the most dangerous gunman of the bunch, and drilled him in the stomach. Frank McLaury staggered but returned to the fight. The two shots sounded almost in harmony, then came a momentary pause. Tom McLaury failed to get the Winchester from the saddle scabbard as the horse jumped, startled by the shots.

  The gunfight came in bursts, snippets and spurts so rapid that witnesses and participants never agreed on an order of events. Gunfire exploded in the cold afternoon air; cowboys struggled to control their twisting, bounding horses. It was a scene of disarray, where impressions were left frozen in time.

  After the two shots and the pause, the rest of the fight took perhaps twenty seconds. Early in the shooting, a bullet passed through Billy Claiborne's pants leg as he stood near Behan, by Fly's doorway. Behan grabbed the Kid and shoved him inside.

  Doc Holliday lifted the shotgun from under his gray coat and stalked Tom McLaury behind the horse. Holliday closed in, then fired, sending a charge that hit Tom under the right armpit and left him staggering into the street.

  In the strangest moment of the affair, Ike Clanton lurched forward and grabbed one of Wyatt Earp's arms. Wyatt saw Clanton had no gun and shoved him aside as he coolly told him, "The fight has commenced. Go to fighting or get away." Ike Clanton took flight, racing through the Fly house, into a vacant lot, through Kellogg's saloon, and finished his sprint two blocks away on Toughnut Street, where he was later arrested.

  The volleys continued. Virgil took a shot through the calf, most likely from the wounded Frank McLaury, and dropped to the ground. A bullet, probably Morgan's, crashed into Billy Clanton's chest, then another into his wrist, then a shot hit his stomach. Young Billy switched gun hands, then leaned back against Harwood's house and slowly crumpled to the ground. He continued firing, with his pistol balanced against his knee, as he sat in the dirt.

  Morgan stumbled and fell, yelling, "I am hit," then rose again to return to the fight before stumbling, probably on the dirt mound dug for the new water pipes. Holliday threw away his shotgun and drew his nickel-plated revolver.

  From the alley to the east of Fly's Photo Gallery, a sound rang out, possibly shots or an errant bullet glancing off a piece of metal. Wyatt Earp would forever think a gunman-Behan, Ike Clanton, Billy Allen, or Claiborne-had fired from hiding.29

  Badly wounded, Frank McLaury tried to use a horse for cover as he pushed the animal toward Fremont Street. He ran into the street, holding the animal's reins, then shot at Morgan. McLaury's horse broke away and ran, leaving Frank to squat in the street in exhaustion. Holliday pursued. Frank stood and lifted his pistol to take aim, saying, "I've got you now."

  "Blaze away. You're a daisy if you have," Doc replied, according to the Nugget account. Others would recall Holliday's response as, "You're a good one if you have." McLaury shot Holliday through the pistol pocket, grazing his hip. "I'm shot right through," Doc yelled.30

  Frank McLaury, shot in the stomach, staggered across the street. Morgan Earp and Doc both fired at Frank. Morgan's shot crashed through the right side of McLaury's head. Doc's charge penetrated McLaury's chest. Frank still seemed to be showing some signs of movement, and Doc Holliday ran up screaming, "The son-of-a-bitch has shot me, and I mean to kill him."31

  Under the haze of white gunsmoke that covered Fremont Street, Tom McLaury had collapsed at the corner of Third and Fremont, and lay dying at the base of a telegraph pole. Billy Clanton tried desperately to reload his pistol as the shots subsided. Photographer Fly came from his rooming house to grab Clanton's pistol. The bloody fight had ended, and the Earps took stock.

  Virgil had been shot cleanly through the calf and Holliday just grazed. Morgan's wound proved far more severe. The bullet entered through one shoulder, chipped a vertebra, and passed out through the other shoulder.32 Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and Billy Clanton were obviously dying. Ike Clanton, the instigator, was the sole cowboy survivor. Wyatt Earp emerged unscathed.

  The fight lasted less than thirty seconds. Estimates were that about thirty shots exploded into the air.
Justice had gone awry in that little vacant lot of a frontier boomtown, and townspeople struggled to comprehend what had happened and why blood had settled into the Arizona dust.

  "The inmates of every house in town were greatly startled by the sudden report of fire arms, about 3 P.M., discharged with such lightening-like rapidity that it could only be compared to the explosion of a bunch of fire-crackers," Clara Brown wrote.33 The fight erupted so quickly that not even the participants were quite certain exactly what had just happened.

  MOMENTS AFTER THE FIRING CEASED, loud whistles from the steam hoisting works sounded through town, a signal to townsmen who made up a vigilante force whose existence had previously only been rumored in Tombstone. Most in town did not know what had happened, and Clara Brown described the frenzy: "'The Cowboys!' cried some, thinking that a party of those desperadoes were 'taking the town.' 'The Indians!' cried a few of the most excitable.... In the midst of this, when the scene upon the streets was one of intense excitement, the whistle again sounded, and directly well armed citizens appeared from all quarters, prepared for any emergency. This revealed what was not before generally known, the existence of a 'Vigilance Committee,' composed of law abiding citizens who organized with the determination of upholding right and combatting wrong, and who agreed upon a signal of action from the mines. Their services were not needed, however, on this occasion, as no further trouble ensued."34

  As the armed vigilantes congregated in the streets, Harry Woods and West Fuller helped carry Billy Clanton into a nearby house. Clanton was "wonderful with vitality," the Nugget would write. "He was game to the last, never uttering a word of complaint, and just before breathing his last he said, 'Good-bye, boys; go away and let me die." Fuller would recall Clanton asking him to examine his wounds-near the left nipple and in the belly-then saying, "Get a doctor and give me something to sleep."35

  Carpenter Thomas Keefe told of a less noble departure by Billy Clanton, "halloing so with pain ... that I sent for a doctor to inject morphine in him.... The doctor [William Millar] arrived, and I helped him inject morphine into him, alongside the wound. He was turning and twisting, and kicking in every manner, with the pain. He said, 'They have murdered me. I have been murdered. Chase the crowd away from the door and give me air.' The last words [Billy Clanton] said before he died were, 'Drive the crowd away."'36

  Frank McLaury died in the street before he could be moved. Tom McLaury was carried into the house and braced against a pillow on the carpeted floor, near Billy Clanton. His clothes were loosened, and he died without speaking. Coroner Henry M. Matthews arrived a few minutes later to examine the bodies. On Tom McLaury he found a dozen buckshot wounds from a shotgun, a cluster he could lay his palm over, and a significant amount of money-$2,943.45 in cash, checks, and certificates of deposit. Most important, the coroner did not discover either a gun or cartridges on the body.37

  Wells, Fargo secret agent Fred Dodge showed up moments after the shooting to help the Earps. "Wyatt was cool and collected as usual, and was quietly giving directions for the removal of Morg and Virg to their home," Dodge wrote. "I helped them all that I could and when they were fixed as comfortable as possible, Wyatt and I started up town. When about opposite to the Sheriff's office, Johnny Behan come across the street and said to Wyatt, 'I will have to arrest you.'

  "Wyatt looked at him for two or three seconds and then Wyatt told him - more forcibly than I had ever heard Wyatt talk before-that any decent officer could arrest him. But that Johnny Behan or any of his kind must not try it."

  Ruben Coleman recalled the exact words as, "I won't be arrested. You deceived me, Johnny, you told me they were not armed. I won't be arrested, but I am here to answer what I have done. I am not going to leave town."

  Theater manager William Cuddy said city official Sylvester B. Comstock entered the conversation. "There is no hurry in arresting this man. He done just right in killing them, and the people will uphold them."

  "You bet we did right," Earp responded to Behan, according to Cuddy. "We had to do it. And you threw us, Johnny. You told us they were disarmed."38

  Ike Clanton was finally found and arrested on Toughnut Street. Fin Clanton arrived in Tombstone that evening and placed himself under sheriff's guard. He stopped by the morgue to see Billy's body, then spent the night visiting Ike in jail, with an extra ten deputies placed on guard to protect the prisoner.

  On the evening of the 26th, after one of the bloodiest gun battles in the history of the frontier, the injured Earps were resting at home when Johnny Behan came to call. Also present were James Earp, three of the four Earp wives, another man, probably Sherman McMasters, and Winfield Scott Williams, who would soon be appointed deputy district attorney. The events of that evening would be recalled far differently in the weeks to come. The sheriff later said he received an angry reception at the little cabin. Behan said he told Earp he did not want to argue, he was just there to do his duty. According to Behan, they discussed the gunfight, then Virgil accused him of trying to get the vigilantes to hang Holliday and the Earps. Behan denied the charge. This little conversation would take on greater meaning as the weeks passed.

  Contrary to any notion that the vigilantes wanted to hang the Earps, most of them cheered the action, as if Doc and the Earps had exterminated rodents from their houses. Clum editorialized in the Epitaph the next day: "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves, which they did most bravely. So long as our peace officers make effort to preserve the peace and put down highway robbery-which the Earp brothers have done, having engaged in the pursuit and capture, where capture have been made of every gang of stage robbers in the county-they will have the support of all good citizens. If the present lesson is not sufficient to teach the cow-boy element that they cannot come into the streets of Tombstone, in broad daylight, armed with six-shooters and Henry rifles to hunt down their victims, then the citizens will most assuredly take such steps to preserve the peace as will be forever a bar to further raids."

  The San Francisco Exchange, a business paper read by moneyed investors, immediately heralded the killings as a major step forward for the mining town.

  The people of Tombstone have reason to congratulate themselves that they have not only courageous Marshals but Marshals who are dead shots. That performance yesterday, wherein three cowboys were left dead on the field and one lodged in jail, is among the happiest events Tombstone has witnessed, and especially so as it was attended with so little injury to the law vindicators.

  Marshal Earp and his assistants deserve well of their fellow citizens, and we hope the Tombstoners appreciate the fact. The cowboy class are the most despicable beings on the face of the earth. They are a terror to decent people and a disgrace to even frontier civilization.... Southeastern Arizona with its rich mines, varied resources, and increasing civilization and prosperity, should rise up if need be and drive every wretch of them beyond the border.39

  The Earps were held up as heroes, from Arizona to the Pacific Coast. Immediately after the fight, they heard little other than congratulations from the press and their peers. Parsons recorded his thoughts on the fight by writing: "A bad time yesterday when Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp with Doc Holliday had a street fight.... Desperate men and a desperate encounter. Bad blood has been brewing for some time, and I was not surprised at the outbreak. It is only a wonder it has not happened before. A raid is feared upon the town by the cowboys, and measures have been taken to protect life and property. The 'Stranglers' were out in force and showed sand.... Had to laugh at some of the nervousness. It has been a bad scare, and worst is not yet over, some think." Parsons would prove remarkably correct. The worst, indeed, was yet to come.

  The bodies of Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury were loaded onto wagons and carried to a cabin behind Dunbar's Stable on Fifth Street for examination by Coroner Henry M. Matthews. The corpses then wen
t for another ride, moving on to Ritter and Ream, City Undertakers, in preparation for the ceremonies that would follow. Almost a portent of what would soon happen, the three bodies in coffins were propped behind the window in the undertaker's parlor under a large sign, "MURDERED IN THE STREETS OF TOMBSTONE." The Earps' reign as heroes would pass quickly.

  Almost forty-eight hours after the shooting, the business class of Tombstone was stunned by the turnout for the funeral. Under the headline "An Imposing Funeral," the Nugget wrote: "While it was not entirely expected, the funeral of Billy Clanton and Thomas and Frank McLowry [sic] yesterday was the largest ever witnessed in Tombstone. The bodies of the three men, neatly and tastefully dressed, were placed in handsome caskets with heavy silver trimmings. Upon each was a plate bearing the name, age, birthplace and date of the death of each." Tombstone's brass band led the procession, playing a "solemn and touching march for the dead." Billy Clanton's body rested in a single hearse, followed by another carrying the remains of the McLaury brothers. Ike and Fin Clanton rode in the wagon following the caskets. Then came about three hundred on foot, twenty-two carriages and buggies, a four-horse stage, and a line of horsemen. Onlookers packed the sidewalks for nearly four blocks. The procession stretched two blocks long, the Nugget reported, as the party marched off to the graveyard. The McLaurys were buried together in one grave, with Billy Clanton nearby.

  Surprised by the size of the procession, Clara Brown wrote: "A stranger viewing the funeral cortege, which was the largest ever seen in Tombstone, would have thought that some person esteemed by the entire camp was being conveyed to his final resting place.... No one could witness this sight without realizing the solemnity of the occasion, and desiring proper regard to be observed for the dead; but such a public manifestation of sympathy from so large a portion of the residents of the camp seemed reprehensible when it is remembered that the deceased were nothing more or less than thieves."40

  Death often became a show in late nineteenth-century America, with spectators joining in the mourning. Certainly, not all the three hundred or so who tramped to the graveyard were friends and admirers of the Clantons, but the procession proved imposing, larger even than the funeral parade for Marshal Fred White a year earlier. Almost immediately a sense of remorse set in among the residents of Tombstone, including some of the people who had been calling for the mass murder of cowboys just a few days earlier. Clara Brown assessed the conflicting reactions: