Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend
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Doc Holliday offered refunds if his dental customers were not satisfied. (William Secrest Collection)
Clay Allison had to recover from a broken leg in about 1870, but he had no trouble walking the streets of Dodge City in his search for Wyatt Earp. (West of the Pecos Museum)
Saloon owner Milt Joyce served on the Tombstone board of supervisors and became an enemy of the Earps after ugly quarrels with Doc Holliday and Virgil Earp. (The Chafin Collection)
Bob Paul won the disputed election for sheriff of Pima County and rode with the Earps in the pursuit of stage robbers. (The Chafin Collection)
Tom McLaury quarreled with Wyatt Earp before he joined his brother Frank and the Clanton brothers at the O.K. Corral. (Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society, New York City)
Robert Findley "Frank" McLaury threatened Virgil Earp after being accused of rustling army mules. (Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society, New York City)
Joseph Isaac "Ike" Clanton talked big and ran fast on October 26, 1881. (Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society, New York City)
Diarist George Parsons left his job as a bank clerk in San Francisco to seek his riches in Tombstone, and found himself in the midst of a crime spree. His diary provides a daily record of incidents and emotions during the dangerous days of Arizona. (The Chahn Collection)
Doc Holliday in Prescott, shortly before he came to Tombstone to join his friend Wyatt Earp. (Craig A. Fouts Collection)
The wanted poster for stage coach robbers Bill Leonard, Harry Head, and Jimmy Crane, who eluded capture by the law only to die violent deaths in other battles.
A sixteen-mule team pulls out of Tombstone in late 1881 or '82. The threestory building at right is the Grand Hotel on Allen Street, where the outlaws placed a lookout to watch the activities of the Earps and their allies. The site of the gunfight was in about the center of the picture, behind the large white building. (Gary S. McLelland Collection)
Schieffelin Hall, in center at top, stands above the other buildings in Tombstone in this picture taken in late 1881 or early 1882. The Grand Hotel is the two-story building at left. (Gary S. McLelland Collection)
Newman H. "Old Man" Clanton (above) was killed by Mexicans after bringing a herd of cattle across the border. The photo was sent to massacre survivor Billy Byers, and on the reverse (below) is written: "Mr. Clanton Killed on Aug. 13-81 by Mexicans with 4 other Americans in Guadalupe Canon New Mexico. Tomb Stone A.T. Sept. 13, 1881. Compliments of Ike and Fin Clanton." (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Billy Byers (above left) played dead and survived the attack by Mexicans at Guadalupe Canyon. Billy Lang (above right) was killed in the first barrage while three of his cohorts were murdered in their sleeping rolls. (Robert J. McCubbin Collection)
Cochise County sheriff John Behan, whose friendly, outgoing personality made him a quick favorite in Tombstone, emerged as the political and romantic rival of Wyatt Earp. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [27243] )
Celia "Mattie" Earp, who lived as Wyatt's wife in Tombstone before Earp made the decision to pursue the affections of Pinafar dancer Josephine "Sadie" Marcus. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [24245])
Hafford's Corner Saloon, located in Brown's Hotel, where the Earps congregated before they began their march to the gunfight against the Clantons and the McLaurys. (The Chafin Collection)
Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton in their caskets after the gunfight. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [17483])
Wells Spicer, justice of the peace in Tombstone, presided over the preliminary hearing to determine whether the Earps and Doc Holliday would go free or face a trial that could result in their executions. (The Chat in Collection)
Thomas Fitch put together the strategy that led to the Earps and Doc Holliday being freed after the Spicer hearing. (Gary L. Roberts Collection)
Epitaph editor and Tombstone mayor John Clum became the stongest voice of support for Wyatt Earp during his adventures in Arizona. (The Chafin Collection)
Richard Rule came to the Nugget as city editor and later became editor. His anti-Earp editorials helped shape public opinion against Wyatt and his brothers. (The Chafin Collection)
Outlaw John Ringo faced off against Doc Holliday in the streets of Tombstone. (Courtesy Jack Burrows)
Morgan Earp marched with his brothers and Doc Holliday to the vacant lot on Fremont Street and drew blood. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [496611)
Texas Jack Vermillion, as he appeared during the Civil War, joined Wyatt Earp for his vendetta against the cowboys who threatened Tombstone. (Courtesy John P. Vermillion)
Sam Purdy became editor of the Epitaph shortly after the Earps left the territory, and his writings would long confuse the issues in Tombstone. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [49661])
Bat Masterson in Colorado, about the time he helped Doc Holliday avoid the extradition to Arizona that Doc believed would be his death warrant. (Craig A. Fouts Collection)
The Dodge City Peace Commission, one of the most famous pictures in frontier history. Standing, from left, W. H. Harris, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, and W. F. Petillon. Seated, from left, Charlie Bassett, Wyatt Earp, Frank McLain, and Neal Brown. (Craig A. Fouts Collection)
Wyatt Earp about 1887, while he was running saloons and dealing in real estate in San Diego. (Craig A. Fouts Collection)
Believed to be Doc Holliday's last photo, taken in Glenwood Springs in 1887, shortly before the dentist died of tuberculosis. (Craig A. Fouts Collection)
The San Franclifco Call spoofed Wyatt Earp and San Francli#co Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst in the aftermath of the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons Eight. The booklet dangling from Earp's neck is entitled: "Bloody Wyatt's Adventures/With a thrilling chapter on 10,000 fouls/Published by the Examiner."
The New York Herald produced this demeaning cartoon during the hearing held to determine whether the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons Fight had been fixed.
Wyatt Earp, center, with Ed Englestadt on his right and John Gum at his left on the beach in Nome, Alaska. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [28167] )
An aging Wyatt Earp looks across the Colorado River in 1925. He was by now a Western legend who could never escape his past. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Tucson [76616])
Josephine "Sadie" Earp in about 1921. As a young woman, she was the beauty who was engaged to Johnny Behan. She wound up sharing her life with Wyatt Earp. (Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
VENDETTA
THE NEWS REACHED COLTON in the flash of a telegraph key. Louisa Earp, Morgan's beautiful wife, fell to the floor and sobbed as the family gathered around her. She had returned to the safety of the family home in California, away from the dangers of Tombstone.
The Earps knew there was reason to worry. Those two shots through a poolroom window were a declaration of war between the cowboy criminals and the Earps, and Wyatt and his younger brother Warren were the only Earps left to fight. Ike Clanton had gone free, although it appeared he had been guilty of Virgil's shooting, at least in planning the ambush. Every criminal, it seemed, had pals ready to swear an alibi; conviction could come only if a shooter were found with a smoking gun in his hand standing over a body.
On Sunday, his 34th birthday, Wyatt made arrangements to send Morg's casket home to Colton. The funeral cortege left the Cosmopolitan shortly after noon, with the fire bell solemnly ringing "Earth to earth, dust to dust," the Epitaph reported. The procession moved to the train station in Benson, and left James to escort the coffin. Wyatt returned to Tombstone and went to Virgil's bedside. "Now, Virgil, I want you to go home. I am going to try to get those men who killed Morgan, and I can't look after you and them too. So you go home."1 Wyatt had a bloody agenda ahead, and he could not leave his crippled brother and his wife in town at the mercy of robbers and killers. With an entourage, he took Virgil and Allie to the train station at Contention, where they received a warning.
"We were notified by persons
in Tucson that Ike Clanton, Frank Stilwell, Billy Miller and another cowboy were watching every train coming through to kill me," Virgil told the San Francisco Examiner two months later. "They all had shotguns tied under their overcoats. Wyatt, Warren, Doc Holliday, John Johnson and Sherman McMasters concluded to see me through at Tucson." In the darkness of night, the Earps provided an easy target through the lighted windows of the train as it pulled into the Tucson depot.
"Almost the first men we met on the platform there were Stilwell and his friends, all armed to the teeth," Virgil continued. "They fell back into the crowd as soon as they saw I had an escort, and the boys took me to the hotel to supper. They put me on the train and I have not seen any of them since. While waiting for the train to move out a passenger notified me that some men were lying on a flat car near the engine. Just then the train moved out and immediately the firing commenced."
Apparently Wyatt saw Frank Stilwell and another man he believed to be Ike Clanton lying prone on a flatcar, shotguns in hand. Wyatt left the train from the opposite side and slipped around to the platform, where in the dim glimmer of gaslights he saw the reflections of two gun barrels aimed toward the lighted window with Virgil and Allie clearly visible inside. As Wyatt approached, the two men turned and ran, with Wyatt chasing after. One of the sprinters fell behind, allowing the marshal to catch up.2
"I ran straight for Stilwell. It was he who killed my brother," Wyatt Earp said. "What a coward he was. He couldn't shoot when I came near him. He stood there helpless and trembling for his life. As I rushed upon him he put out his hands and clutched at my shotgun. I let go both barrels, and he tumbled down dead and mangled at my feet. I started for Clanton then, but he escaped behind a moving train of cars. When the train had passed I could not find him. "3
With one shotgun blast in a train yard, the once judicious and temperate lawman had turned killer. By Wyatt Earp's own admission, he shot a man begging for his life. The cowtown marshal who took pride in avoiding bloodshed had become what he once despised: a life-taker. He had crossed his own boundaries of decency, and he seemed to do so with a sense of pride.
Ike, again, made a running exit instead of facing the vengeance of a gun barrel. Wyatt would believe that Hank Swilling had also been at the scene, somewhere in the shadows. Earp's band rode off for Tombstone while Virgil and Allie made their lonely train ride to California. As the train pulled from the station, Wyatt apparently ran up and signaled to Virgil through the window, mouthing the words, "One for Morgan." Tiny Allie Earp strapped Virgil's big six-shooter around her waist and stayed within easy reach of Virgil's right arm so he could draw the gun if another attacker approached. The former marshal was too badly injured to wear his own gun.4
The next morning, workers found Stilwell's body filled with bullets and shotgun wounds. One ball passed from one armpit to another, piercing the lungs. Another penetrated the upper left arm, and another hit the right leg. A close-range shotgun blast went through the abdomen, liver, and stomach, and another chewed into the left leg.
"The expression of pain or fear on the face would seem to indicate that the man was aware of his danger, which he sought to avert with his left hand, as it was burnt and blackened with powder," the Tucson Citizen wrote.
Saloonkeeper George Hand got a glimpse of the body. "Frank Stillwell was shot all over, the worst shot-up man that I ever saw," he wrote in his diary.'
The brutal killing did not sit well with most Tucson residents. The Democratic Arizona Daily Star headlined, "A DARK DEED, Murder in Cold Blood of a Supposed Innocent Man-The Shadow of Tombstone's Bloody Feud Reaches Tucson." The Nugget's headline was even more provocative: "Cowardly and Brutal Assassination of Frank Stilwell-His body filled with Bullets and Buckshot."
Ike Clanton sat down for a rare interview with the Star and said that Stilwell had been subpoenaed to appear before the district court and had arrived in Tucson on Sunday. Federal charges were still pending against Stilwell for stage robbery. Ike said he had been seated under the verandah of the hotel when Stilwell approached and asked him to join him on a trip downtown, because the Earps intended to kill him. Clanton said he first refused to go, then joined Frank on a short walk around the hotel. Then they separated, and Ike returned to the hotel. According to the Star report, the Earps and their friends emerged from the train, and soon several shots were fired in rapid succession, with a loud scream following the first shot. The engineer sat in his engine about two hundred yards from the incident, but the lights of the locomotive prevented him from seeing the killing. Several railroad hands approached the scene but were warned back by the shooters. The Star further said that Stilwell had an alibi for the time when Morgan was shot, a little detail that would later prove false. But the idea that Stilwell had an alibi had been planted in the public's mind.
Ike told the Star he heard the shooting, then armed himself and started back for the depot. He ran into several people and asked them the cause of the shooting. He was told they were celebrating the illumination of the city by new gaslights. Ike then went to bed, despite Stilwell's disappearance, audible gunshots, and the knowledge that the Earps had been on the train.6 As with the Spicer hearing, Ike's story seemed implausible.
The inevitable coroner's inquest provided little detail on the shooting. A baggage checker named David Gibson testified that a newsboy had told him, "I guess there will be hell here tonight. The Earps and Holliday were aboard and were going to stop here as they had told him that the man who killed Morgan Earp was in Tucson."
Deputy U.S. Marshal J. W. Evans saw Doc step off the train with two shotguns, check them at the railroad office, then instruct a shorter man-probably McMasters -to reclaim the guns shortly before the shooting. Witnesses testified as to who they thought had guns and who did not; several saw muzzle flashes at a distance. James Miller, the fireman on the departing locomotive, provided the only important detail, saying he noticed a man running along the track, followed by four armed men. Miller heard "five or six shots fired in rapid succession" and saw one man in the act of shooting. As the train pulled out, he could see the other three men as well, all with guns in their hands.
W. J. Dougherty, who resided near the tracks, recalled the shooting differently. "I heard one shot and saw a flash, then in about half a minute heard another followed in quick succession by two more." 7 As the closest ear-witness, Dougherty's story makes it likely that Wyatt shot first before other members of the band fired more slugs into Stilwell's body.
The inquest resulted in a warrant against Wyatt and Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMasters, and Jack Johnson for the murder of Frank Stilwell. Fueled by the coverage in the Star and the Nugget, many in southern Arizona were repelled by what appeared to be cold-blooded murder; the Earps and their supporters would stand by their conviction that Stilwell's attempt to assassinate Virgil and the killing of Morgan justified their action.
"One thing is certain," Virgil Earp said, "if I had been without an escort they would have killed me. I had to be lifted in and out of the car. I had not been out of bed before for nearly three months."8
The issue that had divided Tombstone would now divide all of Arizona and become a prime topic throughout the West. The proponents of due process would decry these U.S. marshals taking the law into their own hands, serving as juries and executioners without benefit of trial. The advocates of order at any cost would delight in the demise of another villain.
"A quick vengeance and a bad character sent to Hell where he will be the chief attraction until a few more accompany him," Parsons wrote in his journal.
The Arizona Star eloquently expounded the other view:
The sad condition of affairs which has existed in Tombstone during the last six months, in which several human beings have been hurried into eternity, is assuming a magnitude which calls upon all good citizens to stand abreast and put it down at any cost.
The assassination of Morgan Earp last Saturday night at Tombstone was a foul crime ... but was the natural outgrowth
of the cowardly assassination of William Clanton and the McLowery [sic] brothers by the Earps and Holliday, under the guise of official authority. Both crimes were equally heinous and the perpetrators should have been made to pay the severest penalty of the law.
But worse than all this was the deep-dyed assassination of Frank Stillwell [sic] at the depot last Monday night, when without any provocation a band of four or five slayers pursued a lonely man in the dark and without a word of warning murdered him in cold blood and then hied to their stamping grounds as unconcerned as though they had been out on a hunting expedition, or like so many blood thirsty Apaches rejoice over their crime.
The Star stood firm in its belief that in a nation of laws, due process must be followed; that Stilwell deserved his day in court. The paper noted that Stilwell had never been convicted of a crime, that murder and stage-robbing charges had been dropped against him; it failed to mention that a charge remained against him. The editorial then lashed against the Earps: "They are a roving band; their path is strewn with blood ... wherever they halt in a settlement stage robberies follow and human life ceases to be sacred."9
While this inquest captured the attention of Tucson, another stunned Tombstone. On Tuesday, Marietta Spence, Pete Spence's wife of eight months, faced the coroner's inquest on the killing of Morgan Earp with a remarkable story to tell. The Spences lived across the street from Wyatt and Mattie, and Marietta Spence certainly had some knowledge of the Earps. She said Spence met with Stilwell, Indian Charlie, and a German named Freeze.