Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  After the Nugget gave its elaborate description of the funeral for the McLaurys and Billy Clanton, the Exchange lambasted the Tombstone paper, saying, "A cow-boy met the natural fate of all cow-boys in Camp Rice yesterday, being riddled with bullets. The Tombstone Nugget should send down a special reporter to weep over the remains. That journal is now recognized in Arizona Territory as the great obituary organ of all slaughtered cow-boys."" The Report got even nastier the week after the imposing funeral:

  Drooling and driveling over the three murderous young thieves who were executed in such an inexpensive and timely manner in Tombstone, the other day the Nugget remarks:

  "No unkind remarks were made by anyone, but a feeling of unusual sorrow seemed to prevail at the sad occurrence. Of the McLowery brothers we could learn nothing of their previous history before coming to Arizona.... They did not bear the reputation of being of a quarrelsome disposition, but were known as fighting men, in a quiet and orderly manner when in Tombstone."

  Was ever more cowardly trash penned by an editor? We don't believe what he says. We believe the citizens of Tombstone said the ruffians were served just right and were glad they were out of the way. The Nugget man himself could give no explanation of his latter sentence except that it was meant to please the surviving members of the gang the McLowerys belonged to. The Nugget ought to change its name to the Cowboy-The Tombstone Daily Cowboy.12

  In three separate stories, the Report lambasted the Nugget for praising the grit of the cowboys. "If we are to gush over the courage of murderers and desperadoes when they resist arrest, why not eulogize the skill of burglars, the alertness of sneak thieves, the boldness of garroters, and the enterprise of incendiaries. To read such stuff as this-it is from the Nugget-is enough to make the healthiest feel sick.... We depend on the Epitaph to neutralize the effect of the Daily Cowboy's affection for Tombstone's ruffian population."

  The Republican Epitaph delighted in the title "Daily Cowboy" and constantly pulled it up to joust the Democratic Nugget and its proprietor, Harry Woods, the undersheriff who had allowed Luther King to escape after the Philpott killing. Woods and editor Richard Rule responded with jibes against the "Daily Strangler," a reference to the Epitaph's boosting of the vigilantes in the Citizens Safety Committee. Daily taunts passed back and forth, with the situation growing increasingly mean after the gunfight, then becoming decidedly nasty after the attack on Clum's stage. With an election coming in early January, the two Tombstone papers were playing for high stakes. Whoever controlled the city government determined where lucrative advertising funds would be placed. Under Clum's administration, the Epitaph received the city ads, while the Nugget received most of the advertising in Democratic Cochise County. The papers were playing for more than just civic pride when they battled each other.

  Reading the papers a century later, it becomes evident each was devoted more to furthering its own agenda than to reporting the news. The Epitaph relished every report of cowboy outrages in the county. The Nugget jousted with the mayor's administration and ran numerous cracks about baldness, an obvious reference to Clum's state of pate. Because the Republican paper emphasized crime reports, the Nugget charged the Epitaph with irresponsibility, saying such tidbits would only serve to scare investors away from Tombstone.

  Other players moved on the scene briefly in 1881. The Tombstone Union and the aptly named Evening Gossip both appeared during the year, and in December, ex-judge James Reilly-the same Reilly arrested by Wyatt Earp a year earlierstarted the Tribune and used it as a forum to back his ardently Democratic views. Tombstone's Tribune also died a quick death. The Nugget and the Epitaph would be the major papers during the few months when Tombstone would shoot its way to national attention.

  Newspapers were the lifeblood of a frontier town, chronicling events for the citizenry. Both the Epitaph and the Nugget had daily and weekly editions, with the weeklies usually mailed out to investors around the country to summarize local events and herald investment prospects. Local papers played a big role in molding public opinion and electing candidates.

  The Epitaph gave Tombstone a legacy it could never escape in 1880 when it picked up an exchange from the Harshaw Bullion that said: "Tombstoners have a man for breakfast occasionally. They lock up the dead man in jail; the murderer has better accommodations. "13 With those few words, spread across the West, Tombstone became the town that had a "man for breakfast every morning." The comment referred to the citizenry awakening to find a dead body left over from the night before. The comment was inaccurate-most of the murders occurred out in the wilds of Cochise County, not within the bounds of Tombstone. But for the gentle sojourners who had landed in Tombstone, the violence was far more than they had ever expected. While the man-for-breakfast slogan had been applied to other towns before, latter-day writers would embrace the title and make it part of the Tombstone legacy. Inadvertently, the Epitaph had forever colored the image of Tombstone.

  The Nugget unintentionally gave Tombstone another nickname. In July of 1881, a miner wrote to the paper and told of his friends who had come to Arizona seeking their fortune. Instead they wound up washing dishes or working at other menial jobs. Most people who came to Tombstone found a "Hell Dorado" rather than the fabulous riches of the legendary El Dorado, the miner wrote.14

  That turbulent December of 1881 began with the Spicer decision and ended with bullets flying through the night air. In between came the attack on Clum's stage and a fierce political campaign that the papers believed would determine the future of Tombstone. Both papers were embarrassed early in the month when a letter from Acting Governor Gosper to U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine became public. Gosper wrote of the problems in the territory and said, as quoted in the Epitaph, "And back of this ... I found two daily newspapers published in the city [Tombstone] taking sides with the deputy marshal and the sheriff, respectively. Each paper backing its civil clique and berating the other."15

  An angry response sounded from Reppy, sitting in for Clum. "So far as the Epitaph is concerned, that is not true. With whatever feeling there has existed between the city and county officers we have never sympathized nor taken sides. It is true that the Epitaph has criticized the conduct of the sheriff's office, as it also has given it good words upon occasions.... If we have criticized the Sheriff's office unfavorably, it has been because there were ample grounds for so doing."

  As the days of December passed, Tombstone grew even more tense. On December 15, the Nugget reported rumors that leaders of the anti-Earp faction had been threatened, but "a Nugget reporter investigated the matter, and found no such notifications had been received by the parties mentioned, although there is no doubt but threats have been freely indulged in by certain members of the selfappointed committee."

  The Epitaph took seriously the threats against Spicer, Clum, and the Earps, but disbelieved the seriousness of threats against Behan and supervisor Milt Joyce. Spicer responded to his hate mail with humor, joking that he would like to meet the anonymous writer. "I think he would be an amiable companionwhen sober." In his December 15 letter to the Epitaph, Spicer said he did not believe the Clantons were involved in the threats-"The real evil exists within the limits of our city." But the judge stated his position in an emotional and courageous reply:

  I am well aware that all this hostility to me is on account of my decision in the Earp case, and for that decision I have been reviled and slandered beyond measure, and that every vile epithet that a foul mouth could utter has been spoken of me, principal among which has been that of corruption and bribery. It is but just to myself that I should here assert that neither directly nor indirectly was I even approached in the interest of the defendants, nor have I ever received a favor of any kind from them. Not so the prosecution -in the interest of that side even my friends have been interviewed with the hope of influencing me with money, and hence all this talk by them and those who echo their slanders about corruption. And here, too, I wish to publicly proclaim every one who says that I was
any manner improperly influenced is a base and willful liar.

  There is a rabble in our city who would like to be thugs, if they had courage; would [be] proud to be called cow-boys, if people would give them that distinction; but as they can be neither, they do the best they can to show how vile they are, and slander, abuse and threaten everybody they dare to. Of all such I say, that whenever they are denouncing me they are lying from a low, wicked and villainous heart; and that when they threaten me they do so because they are low-bred, arrant cowards, and know that "fight is not my racket"-if it was they would not dare to do it.

  In conclusion, I will say that I will be here just where they can find me should they want me, and that myself and others who have been threatened will be here long after all the foul and cowardly liars and slanderers have ceased to infest our city.

  History teaches us that in all contests between law and order on one side and lawlessness on the other, that the former invariably prevails. So it will be here, and that too very soon.

  Angry over the dangerous state of affairs, the citizenry sought scapegoats. Many townsmen blamed the Earps for exacerbating the situation. The pro-Earp faction fell squarely against Behan and Woods. The San Francisco papers had branded the Nugget as "The Cowboy Organ," and the Epitaph did everything it could to make the nickname stick. And like-minded readers did their part, as in a December 17 letter to the Epitaph over the signature "A Citizen":

  The Nugget may think it is funny, and they are so cunning when they write their witty articles making merry over the pastimes and sports of their pretty pets-such as breaking up religious services and making the preacher dance at the mouth of their revolvers, insinuating improper motives to those who oppose them, and becoming exceedingly hilarious over a race for life made by our mayor to escape being assassinated by them.... The constant repetition of outrages by this gang of despera does known as cow-boys is driving capital, capitalists and enterprise out of the country, and for a journal published in our midst to treat these outrages with levity is an insult to the entire community.

  Up in the big city, the Exchange took notice of how its favorite little mining camp had spun out of control. "Tombstone seems to be in a nice condition of disorder," the paper wrote on December 20. "The cowboys rule the town, and the Sheriff claims that he is powerless to keep that formidable nuisance within bounds. Of course the saloonkeepers take sides with the cowboys, for the latter, contrary to the custom of other classes of desperadoes, pay for their liquor, and spend twenty dollars where the law abiding citizen will spend one. There is ... honor but there is certainly no peace of mind in being Mayor of Tombstone, as Mr. Clum discovered when the stage in which he was seated was riddled with bullets, all aimed with the design of leaving the Tombstone municipalities without a head. Yet there are soldiers enough in the territory to enforce order unless the people have made up their minds to let the cowboys run things to suit themselves."

  As to the Nugget's displeasure with the Exchange's barbs, the big-city journal responded with a cute twist of words:

  The Tombstone Nugget objects to the Daily Exchange calling it the "cowboy obituary organ," and says: "The cause of the alleged witticism arose from the fact that we published a full account of the funeral of Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLowry, which we consider was just and proper."

  Thanks, esteemed contemporary, we are glad you have at last become convinced that the relegation of the Messrs. Clanton and McLowry to another world where there is probably no whisky to drink, no greasers to shoot and no stock to steal was the correct thing to do under the circumstances. 16

  As Christmas approached, the Nugget kept up its attacks on the Earps. "It is reported that the Earps have received intelligence of a lively mining camp in San Bernadino [etc] county, California, and that they contemplate making it the scene of their future operations," the Nugget commented on December 23. "Should the report prove true, it would be rather rough on the aforesaid mining camp in San Bernadine county."

  On the same day, chief-of-police candidate Jim Flynn took out an ad in the Nugget to proclaim his independence from any of Tombstone's factions. Flynn had been Virgil Earp's deputy and was closely associated with the Earps, a fact he knew could prove a detriment in his upcoming election against Deputy Sheriff Dave Neagle.

  Former judge Reilly, in a letter to the Nugget, made the strongest anti-Earp attack. He decried the effort to organize the vigilantes, called the attempt on Clum a sham, and implied that the Earp-Clanton gunfight had been premeditated assassination. "Holliday and the Earps have no fear (and to judge them by their acts neither have they any conscience, character or respect for the laws or the rights of their neighbors)."

  Reilly said the vigilantes believe:

  it is necessary not only to tolerate but encourage and sustain them in defying law, order and public opinion, and in shooting or driving away all who refuse to surrender their convictions, their liberties and their manhood at their dictation. For proof, is it, or is it not true, that the Earps and Holliday, while undergoing examination, threatened that when they get out they would make those men who called the killing of the McLowrys a murder, "take it all back," and that since they got out they have gone around town armed, abusing and picking quarrels with men of that opinion and have threatened many persons, telling them they had better leave.

  If this be true, it clearly demonstrates the following propositions:

  First, that the Earps and Holliday are not good men, and do not themselves believe that they were justified in that homicide, for if good men are unfortunate enough to be compelled to kill, they regret it; they are sorrowful, modest, and ask only to be allowed to live down the prejudice excited against them, but good conduct and submission to the laws. They do not, but by threats, assaults and braggadocio, attempt to bulldoze a whole community into giving countenance to their acts.

  Second, that these men place no value on their own lives, have no conscience or respect for law or public opinion, and are therefore, reckless of and dangerous to the lives of others.

  Third, that their supporters are foolish enough in their eagerness to suppress imaginary assassins and to correct evils at most, only temporary, and incident to all countries alike, and capable of redress by the ordinary methods -ballot box and jury box-to incur the danger of encouraging and assisting real assassinations."

  Reilly said the attempt on Clum's life probably originated in "that thug's den, where they keep their implements of terrors," apparently a reference to the Oriental Saloon. He went on to intimate the Earps were somehow connected in the holdups. "I purposely avoid all comment on stage robberies, because my convictions on that subject ... are a result of large frontier experience.... I am convinced that seven of every ten of the stage robberies committed in Arizona for the last fifteen years have been put up and engineered by the trusted agents of the post-office, of Wells, Fargo & Co.'s agents and agents of the stage companies. And Tombstone has been no exception to the rule.... And no men, or body of men, shall by force or threats, prevent me from expressing my convictions on this or other public subjects when or where I think proper.""

  Such a passionate call from a former judge could not be easily dismissed in a terrorized town trying to understand its problems. Reilly was no Ike Clanton making a feeble defense of his misdeeds; this call came from a lawyer wearing the mantle of authority, even if Wyatt Earp had arrested him months earlier and publicly embarrassed him with a petition calling for his resignation.

  Ned Boyle, the bartender at the Oriental who helped contradict Ike Clanton's testimony, responded to Reilly with equal passion:

  The people of Tombstone have had the pleasure of reading another essay from the pen of that philanthropic expounder of justice, James Reilly; and as the old saying is, a burnt child dreads the fire, he takes the occasion to attack men that he never spoke to, and don't know this day when he meets them in the streets, but calling their place of business a den of thugs. These gentlemen happened to be associated in business with one
of the Earp brothers and old Vox Populi Vox Dei Reilly takes occasion, for the benefit of a lot of office seekers and bunko sharps, to champion their cause, and throws his billingsgate on the Earp brothers and Holliday. But, considering the source it comes from, they treat it with contempt.... Reilly was charged when he lived in Yuma with being connected in a stage robbery and the taking of Wells-Fargo's box, he likely knows what he is talking about when he says, "Mr. Editor, I purposely avoid all comments on stage robberies." You old fox! Well you may avoid blowing that good Samaritan breath of yours on a spark, as it may kindle into a blaze to your detriment, but the tax-paying citizens of this town and county will remember your assault on Mayor Clum for trying to save his life from a band of murdering cow-boys. You speak like a hired blackmailer who is paid to assail any and everybody who is opposed to that class of outlaws. As to the Earps you have so much to say about, I shall speak only of one of them, Wyatt Earp; he is one of the partners of the firm I am working for, and a more liberal and kind-hearted man I never met. As to my working in a dive, or in your language a thug's den, let me say you have not the manliness about you to meet one of the Earps face to face and speak your piece like a man, but you are like many others in this camp who talk behind their backs; but, as they don't want to get into any newspaper talks with the likes of you, and as the case suits me, I denounce you as a lying mountebank when you call the place I work in a thug's den. I throw down the gauntlet to you, and then I will show you who James Reilly is.18

  With Reilly's help, the Nugget succeeded in making the Earps seem a liability to Tombstone, and the repeated attacks were unnerving to the family. "We have two weekly and two daily papers," Louisa Houston Earp, Morgan's commonlaw wife, wrote to her sister. "The Epitaph is our friend and the Nugget our bitterest enemy. As you will see by the Epitaph. I would not send the Nugget, it has so many falsehoods in it, you would almost feel like doubting the other paper.""