Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  Will McLaury stayed in town, waiting for the grand jury to determine whether it would take up the case. His wait was in vain. On December 16 the grand jury determined not to reverse Spicer's decision. The Earps would not be held for trial.

  On the day he was released, December 1, Wyatt Earp registered to vote in Cochise County, a necessity since previous Pima County registration had to be updated. It would begin a most unsettling month for the family that came to Tombstone to find their fortune. Virgil and Allie, along with Morgan, moved into the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where Virgil and Morgan would be in a safer location to recover from their wounds. The hotel provided greater protection from a cowboy raid than the row of cabins where, apparently, Mattie and Jim's family remained most of the time. Wyatt seemed to move around from the hotel, to the family dwellings, to Fred Dodge's cabin.

  The situation had been difficult for the entire Earp family. Back at the clan's San Bernardino County home in the newly demarcated town of Colton, a drunken Nicholas Earp began yelling "vile epithets" at lawyer Byron Waters, in a bank. The argument moved outside, with the elder Earp apparently following Waters down the street screaming. Waters finally knocked Nick down, and the city marshal arrived to lead the old man away. There is no record on what antagonized Nick Earp, but he certainly would have been sensitive to just about any remark about his sons.56

  Something else had changed while Wyatt and Doc sat in Behan's jail during the hearing. Big-Nose Kate left town under very peculiar circumstances. Kate would later write that John Ringo had twice visited her room at Fly's boardinghouse, where she remained alone hoping for Doc's release. She said Ringo advised her to return to Globe. "He said the Clantons were watching for Doc to come to the room and intended to get him there," Kate wrote. When she told Ringo that she had no money, he gave her $50 to return to her home in Globe.

  Remarkable as it seems, Doc Holliday's occasional wife kept company with an outlaw leader while her husband sat in a jail cell facing a trial that could lead to his execution. Almost poetically, Kate described Ringo as "a fine man anyway you took him. Physically, intellectually, morally. . . . His attitude toward all women was gentlemanly. He must have been a gentleman born. Sometimes I noticed something wistful about him, as if his thoughts were far away on something sad. He would say, 'Oh, well,' and sigh. Then he would smile, but his smiles were always sad. There was something in his life that only he, himself, knew about."57

  Neither Earp nor Holliday mentioned Kate's friendship with Ringo in later interviews, but one can only imagine that Holliday did not take it kindly. The dentist and Ringo would emerge as intense enemies during the next few weeks, and there may well have been a personal grudge between the two because of Ringo's visits with Kate. How far that friendship developed can only be imagined.

  Another development took place while the hearing mesmerized Tombstone. Off in Shakespeare, New Mexico, the citizens had taken it upon themselves to lynch two rustlers on November 9-Sandy King and "Russian Bill" Tettenborn. The Epitaph warned that such a hanging could scare a few cowboys out of New Mexico and direct them toward Cochise County.

  Virgil, still incapacitated from his wounds and suspended by the city council, had been replaced by Jim Flynn as town marshal after the shootout, and Flynn sought election on his own in January. Mayor Clum and most of the vigilantes continued to support the Earps as the town divided into factions, but the ever-present, usually unspoken, threat of pending violence hung over Tombstone. Everyone knew that between oysters and ice cream socials, bullets could fly at any time.

  TOMBSTONE

  IN TERROR

  THE COWBOYS KEPT ONE SPECIAL ROOM at the Grand Hotel, with the shutters always closed except for one slat, which had been removed. Ringo, Milt Hicks, and others remained inside the room, keeping watch on the street. In early December, the story circulated that a man had entered the room to find one of the cowboys aiming his Winchester down at the street.

  "What in the hell are you doing there?" the newcomer asked.

  "I'm going to shoot that damned son of a bitch Rickabaugh," the gunman answered. Lou Rickabaugh, Wyatt Earp's partner at the Oriental, walked down the street, unaware of impending danger.

  "Don't do that. He has never injured us. He has only spent his money for his friends the Earps, and that is what either you or I would do for our friends," the newcomer said.'

  The Epitaph reported the story of the shuttered room weeks later, but that tale and others had swept through Tombstone earlier, leaving the pro-Earp faction feeling tense and targeted. Clum would later write: "It was rumored about town that several residents of Tombstone had been 'marked for death' by the rustler-clan, and I was assured that my name was written well up toward the head of their grim list, which besides myself included the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, Judge Spicer, Tom Fitch, Marshall Williams and one or two others whose names I do not now recall. And in order that we might more fully realize the certainty of our fate, it was whispered that the Death List had been prepared with most spectacular and dramatic ceremonials enacted at midnight within the recesses of a deep canyon, during which the names of the elect had been written in blood drawn from the veins of a murderer. Not one of those whose names appeared on this blood red Death List would be permitted to escape from Tombstone alive. We did not believe all we heard. Nevertheless, we realized that the situation was extremely serious."2

  In fact, the situation was so serious that Mayor Clum telegraphed to Acting Governor Gosper requesting guns to arm the Citizens Safety Committee. Gosper forwarded the message to President Chester A. Arthur and asked for repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, saying that the release of the Earps "enrages cow-boys -new dangers apprehended. Give us use of the military and we will give you peace at the borders."3

  Clum had business out of town, and it was a good time to leave. He wrote: "As for myself, I felt that if a fight should occur within the city, the rustler-clan would not overlook an opportunity to rub me out, but I did not believedesperate as I knew them to be-that they would deliberately plan to murder me. I was mistaken. I did not then realize that their fight with the police on the streets of Tombstone was destined to go down in history as the first, last and only fight the rustlers would make in open daylight; that henceforth these desperadooutlaws would operate only as cowardly midnight assassins -and that the Fates would single me out as the first of their intended victims."

  Shortly before the mayor mounted the stage on the evening of December 14 for a trip back East, he spoke with Epitaph business manager Oscar Thornton. "I told Mr. Thornton, of the Epitaph staff, that my greatest probable danger was that, if the rustlers knew I was going, they would pull off a sham stage-robbery, during which they would make it convenient to properly perforate my anatomy with a few spare bullets, and thus definitely blot me out of the picture."4

  John P. Clum, mayor, editor, and postmaster, had already reached the peak of paranoia when he boarded the stage to the train depot in Benson with four other passengers. Clum took the middle seat, fearing he might have to make a quick exit. Jimmy Harrington drove the six-horse team, followed by an empty bullion wagon driven by Dick Wright, always called "Whistling Dick." The little party passed through Malcolm's Station, a lone dwelling and water stop four miles outside Tombstone.5 The stage rolled into a gully and Harrington heard the cry "Hold," followed almost immediately by a volley of shots into the team of horses. The panicked team bolted and ran past the robbers.

  "The four men with me dropped to the floor of the coach the instant the shooting began, and they called to me to do the same or I would be shot," Clum said. "But I had other plans. I had two six-shooters, and I was thinking fast how I might be able to use them to the best advantage if we were commanded to halt a second time."

  Clum said he stepped out the door of the careening coach, with one foot on the step so he could jump off if the need arose. The stage bounced about a halfmile past the point of the gunshots, when Harrington pulled the coach to a stop. Whistling Dick had been shot throug
h the leg, and one of the horses had been badly wounded and would have to be left behind. The two lead horses were cut from their harnesses, and the stage prepared to proceed.

  "I stepped about fifty paces into the darkness to look and listen for sight or sound of horsemen," Clum wrote. "As I looked at the coach with its side-lights I realized that my presence in the coach only jeopardized the other passengers and that I was in a much better situation with my feet on the ground. Very promptly I decided to walk."

  The four men inside the coach assumed Clum to be riding atop the stage or with Whistling Dick in the wagon, so his absence was not discovered until the stage pulled into Contention. News that Clum was missing was wired back to Tombstone, where Sheriff Behan and Charles Reppy, Clum's partner in the Epi taph, mounted a search party. They rode out and found two pools of blood and the carcass of a horse, but no Clum.

  Rather than returning the five miles to Tombstone, Clum set off on a twenty-mile hike toward Benson. On that dark night he found himself walking through fields filled with mining pits, where one misstep could mean a fall to death. Clum later told a daring tale of his meander through the mines before arriving at the Grand Central Quartz Mill. The mine superintendent there relayed the message to Tombstone to tell of Clum's safety, then the mayor borrowed a horse and rode off. He said he rode through a camp of sleeping rustlers, who never stirred, and on to Benson.

  "There has never been the least doubt in my mind that those rustlers intended to assassinate me in the darkness. They had declared that I should not leave Tombstone alive," Clum wrote. "In the gulch near where the attack was made was ample evidence that horses had been picketed there on several occasions, indicating that these would-be executioners had been anticipating my departure for about a week; that each evening all but one of the conspirators assembled at this rendezvous half an hour before the coach was due to pass that point; that one of the gang remained in the city to watch my movements, and that when this spy saw me enter the coach on the night of December 14th, he went quietly to his horse on the outskirts of the city, and then raced to the gulch and informed his pals that their intended victim was rapidly approaching the trap they had set for him."

  Clum pointed out that the stage carried no valuables, and the absence of a shotgun messenger indicated there was nothing aboard worth stealing. His political foes scoffed at such a crazy idea as assassinating Clum, and made fun of the disappearing mayor. On December 15, the Nugget wrote: "At this writing, 2 A.M., several hours have elapsed, no tidings have been received from him. The prevailing opinion is he is still running."

  The shaken Clum finally mounted the train for the trip East, where he encountered Thomas Gardiner, a founder of the Los Angeles Times, who wrote back to his paper: "The Hon. John P. Clum jumped the train I was on, looking paler than ever before. He had been shot at the night previous and was the worst scared man I have ever seen for some time. In passing Deming [N.M., a cowboy hangout] he crawled under a seat, tramp fashion, to keep the cowboys from raising his hair in case they happened to pass through the cars."6

  Seward Chapin, sitting in for Clum at the post office, sent a message to Clum, balancing black humor with a warning of pending danger:

  Dear Johnny,

  Enclosed find copy of newspaper with letter to Spicer. You may get one when you get back.

  All is quiet and it rains, but there is another storm brewing, more than rain and hail. When it commences, look out for blood [written in red ink].

  Had a fine old hunt for you the night you left. Why didn't you get shot so we could find your remains or get some satisfaction out of our hunt?7

  The Nugget's frivolous line about Clum's flight enraged Reppy, who ran the Epitaph in Clum's absence. The Epitaph responded by saying:

  Whether the affair was a brutal attempt at assassination or a bungling effort to rob the stage, the passengers and drivers had a narrow escape from death amidst the whistling bullets, and it is hardly presumable that the most ignorant Hottentot or brutal Apache would be so callous and unjust in the meagre light of yesterday morning's news, as to attempt to ridicule any person who was upon the coach. This was reserved for yesterday morning's Nugget, and when this is said the utmost dregs of possibility have been reached.'

  In the same edition, the Epitaph ardently editorialized against the cowboys and said there could be no doubt the stage attack had been a plot to kill Clum, calling the assault "the greatest outrage ever perpetuated upon the traveling public of Arizona and is an event calculated to do more harm to the business interests of Tombstone than all other causes operating against us put together." The paper condemned the rumored death threats against the Earps, Spicer, Fitch, and Williams and railed for military intervention to quiet a situation that had grown outrageous: "The killings and attempted killings heretofore recorded in Tombstone and the surrounding country have been the outgrowth of drunkenness, wrongs or fancied wrongs, suffered at the hands of one or the other parties to the difficulties. This last has neither the one nor the other to plead in extenuation of the crime. As affairs now stand, there seems to be no remedy for our evils other than for the general government to step in and declare military law, and to keep a sufficient force here to maintain peace and order. It is evident the civil authorities are unable to put down the lawless element that surrounds us. The remedy is one that we exceedingly dislike to see applied, but where all other remedies fail we must accept the only remaining one, for life and property must be made as safe in Tombstone as elsewhere in the Union, or else all good men will abandon the place."

  A day later, a letter in the Epitaph signed "A Citizen" made the stage robbery seem even more likely to have been an assassination attempt:

  The fact of firing about fifteen shots into the stage and the exclamation which two of the passengers heard them make of "Be sure to get the old bald-headed son of a b-," explains it all! They were assassins seeking to murder our mayor, and to do so even willing to murder a stage load of passengers. If there could be any doubt of their intent, it would be at once removed by knowing of the previous threats made by the gang to murder, not only the Earps but also Clum, Spicer, Williams, Fitch and Rickabaugh.

  The letter-writer's interpretation was never verified by an independent witness, but it was enough to convince most of the purported members of the hit list that a bloodbath could be coming any day, and even walking the streets could lead to death. The Earps and the citizens who supported them believed that the cowboys' intent was murder. Fitch would be the lone dissenter, writing the Epitaph to say he had received no such letter; he then quickly changed his residence to Tucson.

  The Nugget scoffed at the skittish citizenry, running letters stating that Clum had panicked when the bullets started flying and that he would be a wasted target for assassination because his term expired in three weeks anyway. The Nugget said that Clum's trip to Washington was to seek reappointment as Indian agent at the San Carlos reservation, and that the mayor flattered himself by thinking that any outlaw would think him worthy of assassination. But in the divided, uneasy community of Tombstone, no explanation could satisfy a citizenry that feared for its safety.

  The attempted stage holdup incited another ugly happening. A day after the shots sounded, supervisor Milt Joyce stood in the Oriental Saloon talking with Virgil Earp. According to the Nugget account, "Joyce laughingly remarked to Earp that he had been expecting something of the sort ever since they [the Earps and Holliday] had been liberated from jail." This was an indirect accusation that the Earps were involved in the stage robberies. What followed was another confrontation that would further divide the Earps from the county political leadership. According to the Nugget, Virgil took offense and slapped Joyce in the face. Several heavily armed Earp partisans rushed forward, and Joyce took his leave with the words, "Your favorite method is to shoot a man in the back, but if you murder me you will be compelled to shoot me in the front." The Nugget praised Joyce for remaining calm, saying "his coolness and good judgment undoubtedly saved Tomb
stone from the disgrace of another bloody tragedy, all who are cognizant of the peculiar characteristics of the Earp party will readily admit." 9

  Something else happened in that December confrontation, and details are subject to question. Nearly a half-century later, Billy Breakenridge would recount that Joyce carried two six-guns into a saloon the following day. Confronting the Earps and Holliday, he asked if they wanted to fight as much as they did the day before. Joyce called the Earps bastards and said he was ready to fight, only to be stopped when Johnny Behan grabbed him from behind and arrested him. The Epitaph offers some confirmation, stating that Behan arrested Joyce for disturbing the peace, and the supervisor received a $15 fine. "Up to this time, Joice [sic] and Behan were close friends, but from this time Joice was very bitter toward him," Breakenridge wrote.10

  In an already edgy town, a physical confrontation between the chairman of the board of supervisors and the suspended town marshal could only serve to further frazzle the nerves of the community.

  THE EPITAPH AND THE NUGGET, with offices across the street from each other on Fremont, had never been good neighbors. The attack on Clum's stage set off a full-scale war between the two newspapers, with two San Francisco papers, the Exchange and the Stock Report, throwing in a few licks and reprimands. The Exchange, an afternoon business paper, covered Tombstone extensively for the moneyed interests in the big city. Copies, with puckish comments, analysis, and reports from correspondents, usually arrived in Arizona a day or two late. With its constant barbs at the cowboys, the Exchange did much to create the image of wild Tombstone in the minds of the West's movers and shakers. The smallercirculation Stock Report sent off its weekly editions to Tombstone, also laced with attacks on the cowboy crowd.