It happened before Doc ever reached Tombstone. In July 1880, Lieutenant J. H. Hurst led a squad of four soldiers west from Camp Rucker in search of stolen army mules. At Tombstone, Hurst approached Virgil Earp, a deputy U.S. marshal, and requested his assistance. Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Marshall Williams, the Wells, Fargo agent, joined Hurst’s expedition. The McLaurys, Billy Clanton, and Pony Deal were suspects in the case. On July 25, when Hurst’s command and Virgil’s posse reached the Babacomari ranch of the McLaurys, they caught men red-handedly changing brands on the army mules. Frank Patterson, who seemed to be in charge, negotiated an arrangement to return the mules if no arrests were made. Hurst agreed and waited for the return of the mules at Charleston.
The mules were not returned as promised, and Patterson, the McLaurys, and Billy Clanton reportedly rode into Charleston and taunted Hurst for his gullibility. In response, the infuriated Hurst posted notices naming Pony Deal, A. T. Hansbrough, and Mac DeMasters (most likely Sherman McMaster, a former Texas Ranger, who had fallen in with the Cow-Boys) as the thieves and also naming the McLaurys and Patterson as accomplices. Frank McLaury reacted angrily, posting a paid notice in the Tombstone Nugget denying complicity in any theft and claiming that he had actually tried to find the mules for Hurst. He defended his reputation for honesty and accused Hurst of being the real thief.25
McLaury then confronted Virgil Earp and told him in no uncertain terms that if he ever came after them again, he would have to fight. Virgil told McLaury that if warrants were put in his hands, he would have to serve them.26 Later, Wyatt was named deputy sheriff of Pima County, but apart from occasional actions required by their positions, such as the arrest of Curly Bill and associates on the night Fred White was fatally shot, the Earps had no open conflict with the Cow-Boys or those who dealt with them. Curly Bill, John Ringo, William Claiborne, Pony Deal, and others drew attention for their high jinks at Charleston, Contention, Galeyville, and Shakespeare, with the quarrels, pranks, and gunplay that bemused as well as caused concern, but after White’s death, the Cow-Boys generally stayed clear of Tombstone.
In February 1881, the Tucson Citizen reported a series of raids that had occurred along the U.S.-Mexican border between October 5, 1880, and January 30, 1881, concluding that
[t]hese facts show a deplorable state of affairs near the border, where the settlers are completely at the mercy of marauding parties of cowboys destitute of any protection from either the United States or Mexican government. They are liable to lose all their stock at any time, and in fact they consider their present condition as far less secure than in former days when the Indians controlled that part of the county. If the condition of matters continues long, many settlers will be compelled to abandon their homes and seek safety for their lives in the larger settlements.27
The Citizen demanded strong action, “else citizens may be forced to combine and offer a bounty for cowboy scalps as the people of New Mexico do for those of Indians.” The Citizen’s competitor, the Tucson Star, agreed that “the question of how the cow-boys are to be dealt with is assuming greater importance every day” and recommended a striking force of two companies of cavalry to patrol the border.28 Governor Frémont saw the merit of the plan and requested the creation of a state militia to break up the rustlers and to preserve peace along the border. He later explained, “In view of the increasing lawlessness of the frontier and of the representations made to our Government by Mexico, I asked the Legislature at its last sitting for 700 men to enforce the laws. A bill was introduced for this purpose but passed only one house and left me unprovided with any means to maintain order on our boundaries.”29 The attitude of the territorial legislators toward the plan was best explained by L. Wollenberg, who said that “the raids of the cowboys [are] less detrimental to the territory than would be the proposed raid on our treasury.”30 In the absence of governmental action, the situation on the border worsened.
One Arizona mining man later explained the difficulty of trying to deal with the Cow-Boys:
The cowboys would be suppressed in short order if they did not have so many friends among people who claim to be respectable and who cannot be reached by the law. Don’t think that this friendship is the result of any maudlin sympathy for the cowboys. Not at all. It is business. Tombstone is in Cachise [sic] County and in Cachise county are not less than 200 cowboys, mostly cattle thieves. Their headquarters are on the Barbocomari [sic] creek and the San Pedro river, where they rendezvous with the stolen cattle which they supply to Tombstone butchers. The cowboys have an alliance with most of the butchers and are also on friendly terms with two or three leading business houses. The butchers like to purchase beef at low rates, and ask no questions, and it is cheaper for some business men to pay the cowboys a tribute than to fight them. This is the situation now because a lot of officials in Cachise county are in with the cattle thieves.31
The Cow-Boys were taken more seriously after the attempt to rob the Benson stage at Drew’s Station. The Star continued its crusade for action on the border. The Cow-Boy problem was underscored again on May 13, 1881, when Juan Vasquez, a Mexican rancher, and his vaqueros caught up to Cow-Boys who had stolen between four and five hundred cattle from him and had killed four men, including George Turner and Alfred McAllister, the Galeyville butcher, who had shot One-Armed Kelly near the Oriental. Vasquez was also killed in what came to be called the Fronteras massacre.32
With rumors rampant of a planned raid to “clean out” Fronteras, these highly visible activities not only increased demands for a solution to the Cow-Boy problem at all levels of government on both sides of the border but also reminded ranchers of the potential costs of being associated with the Cow-Boys. This reality, apart from the hope of financial reward, probably was what tempted Ike Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Joe Hill to consider helping Wyatt Earp when he approached Clanton in June 1881 about William Leonard, Henry Head, and Jim Crane. There was no real love lost between the Clantons and the McLaurys, on the one hand, and the Benson stage robbers, on the other. Still, the Clantons and the McLaurys were in bed with the Cow-Boys, and there was danger in crossing their associates, as Cow-Boy revenge against the Haslett brothers for the killings of Leonard and Head proved. The Clantons and the McLaurys clearly saw the deal struck with Wyatt Earp as a genuine threat to their own safety after that episode.
Doc Holliday had little reason to pay attention to any of it. Except as it may have been the subject of conversation, until the deaths of Leonard and Head and the revenge against the Hasletts, the Cow-Boy problem was at best a curious subject for barroom banter. Even Wyatt’s deal with Ike Clanton was kept from Doc because it involved a betrayal of Doc’s friend, Bill Leonard, if for no other reason. Wyatt could not be sure how John Henry would react. So, Doc concentrated on his own legal troubles and changes that were taking place in Tombstone.
Unwittingly, though, Doc may have contributed to his future difficulties by stepping into a personal conflict with Sheriff John Behan. In the spring and summer of 1881, Behan was involved in an affair with Josephine Sarah “Sadie” Marcus. Marcus was a free-spirited young actress from San Francisco who had moved in with Behan. Later in the summer of 1881, she would meet Wyatt Earp on the streets of Tombstone and ignite the sparks that would eventually lead to a life-long relationship. In the spring and early summer, however, she was still “Johnny’s woman.” Doc would later claim that Behan became “a deadly enemy of mine” because of her. He explained that Behan started a quarrel at his faro bank one night and that he refused to allow the sheriff to play anymore. “We were enemies after that.” Doc explained why: “[I]n the quarrel I told him in the presence of a crowd that he was gambling with money which I had given his woman. This story got out and caused him trouble.”33 Such an incident certainly would have created animosity between them, and if Behan’s “woman” was indeed Sadie Marcus, Doc may well have known her before Wyatt did.
Virgil Earp’s appointment as the chief of police proved to be a good one. As acting ch
ief, during the month of June he and his deputies made forty-eight arrests and collected fines amounting to $323; he also won praise for his handling of the aftermath of the town’s disastrous fire. With an eight-man police force, sixty arrests were made in July, and $384 worth of fines were levied. In August, Virgil reported things quiet and suggested that the police force be reduced to two officers besides himself. Virgil worked days and James Flynn and A. G. Bronk had nights. Virgil had put the lid on Tombstone.34
Doc was hardly visible after Justice Wells Spicer threw out the charges against him in the death of Bud Philpott and the attempted stage robbery. In July, he was party to a suit filed by Marcus Smith on behalf of the Last Decision mine against the Intervenor Mining Company. The suit commenced on August 6, 1881, but Doc was not directly involved.35 In fact, Doc was out of town for at least a part of August, most likely somewhere on the gambling circuit or in Globe with Kate.
Doc had become a close friend of Morgan Earp’s and probably spent some time in Benson, where Morgan gambled and hung out so much that some mistakenly associated him with Big Ed Byrnes and the “top and bottom” crowd that controlled the place. Doc was certainly savvy enough to appreciate the humor when Sheriff Behan appointed Morgan a special deputy at the request of Deputy Sheriff Charley McComas to help control some of the more notorious citizens of Benson. Morgan proved valuable though, when he arrested J. J. “Off Wheeler” Harlan, a refugee from Las Vegas, who started a quarrel with an Indian that led to gunplay.36
While Doc was conspicuous only by his absence, the Cow-Boy scourge was increasingly the subject of press attention as the bandits grew bolder and Mexican protests stronger. The reason was underscored by George Holt, the foreman of the Grant County, New Mexico, grand jury, at the end of July:
There seems to be a very bad state of affairs existing in the southern part of this country near the border of Old Mexico. It almost seems that a law abidindg [sic] citizen can hardly live there with any safety to himself or property. There seems to be a band of men living in that section of the county who live by robbing and stealing, and defy the authority. We ask that our Sheriff and law abiding citizens use every effort to suppress this lawlessness, and if it cannot be done otherwise, to call on higher and more powerful authority to assist in so doing, as such a state of affairs seriously effects the prosperity of our county.37
On July 26, a running fight occurred between Cow-Boys and Mexican vaqueros over a herd of cattle on the plains near Guadalupe Pass in New Mexico that resulted in the rout of the Mexicans.38 On July 27, at Cajon de Sarampion, Cow-Boys attacked a party of sixteen Mexicans moving into the United States, killing four, although initially as many as nine were thought to have been killed.39 On August 11, Cow-Boys attacked Ochoaville, killed a horse, wounded a Mexican, and took what they could.40 Also during August, the papers reported an effort to steal cattle near Charleston and an attempt to steal gold and silver from three Mexican soldiers. The editor John P. Clum went so far as to say that without effective law enforcement “the people are justified in taking the law into their own hands and ridding themselves of the dangerous characters who make murder and robbery their business.”41
This flurry of seemingly uncontrolled criminal activity aroused more than editorial ire and official correspondence. On the morning of August 13, 1881, the Mexicans took a measure of revenge when they attacked a party of men encamped in Guadalupe Canyon near the Mexican border with a herd of Mexican cattle purchased from rustlers.42 The leaders of the Americans were William Lang, a recent arrival in the region, who, along with his father, had purchased lands from John Slaughter and John W. Roberts, and Old Man Clanton. With them were Dixie Lee Gray, the son of Judge Mike Gray, Jim Crane, the last of the Benson stage robbers, Billy Byers, Harry Earnshaw, and Charles Snow.43
The attack commenced about dawn, when Snow rode out of the camp to investigate a disturbance of the herd. Lang believed a bear was threatening the cattle. Snow rode directly into the concealed Mexicans, who were waiting for first light to attack. They killed Snow with the first volley, then opened fire on the camp. Clanton, Gray, Lang, and Crane were also killed. Byers was seriously wounded, but survived by stripping off his clothes and playing dead to make the Mexicans believe that he already had been killed and stripped by others in their party. Earnshaw hid in the brush. Hours later, he stumbled onto the ranch of John Plesant Gray with the news that Mexican soldiers had attacked them and killed his companions.44
The Guadalupe Canyon affair stunned the citizens of southeastern Arizona. Rumors flashed across the area of planned retaliatory raids against Fronteras by as many as four hundred Cow-Boys, one organized by the fathers of Gray and Lang, and another put together by the Clantons. The threat seemed real enough that federal troops were ordered “to intercept all armed parties raiding into Mexico with hostile intent and disarm them, or if found returning, to aid the civil authorities to arrest them.”45 The Tombstone Nugget went so far as to suggest that war with Mexico would be fully justified.46 A few days after the killings, Buckskin Frank Leslie came across the bodies of three Mexicans at Blackwater near Guadalupe Canyon, and the Nugget suggested “that the work of retribution has already commenced.”47 As events unfolded, however, the Gray-Lang group turned out to be a burial party, and the Clanton group never materialized.
Other observers saw things differently. Clara Brown reported that “the Mexicans were not the first to inaugurate the present unhappy state of affairs along the border. They have suffered greatly from the depredations of those outlaws who, under the guise of ‘cowboys’ infest this country and pursue the evil tenor of their ways with no attempt at interference on the part of those whose duty it is to suppress crime.”48 George W. Parsons observed, “This killing business by the Mexicans, in my mind, was perfectly justifiable as it was in retaliation for killing of several of them and their robbery by cowboys recently.”49 The San Francisco Daily Report expressed the view that the Cow-Boys posed a greater problem than the Apaches and urged that “the cowboy element [be] wiped out hip and thigh by any rightful means.”50 And General Adolpho Dominguez, the adjutant to General Jose Otero in Sonora, made clear the Mexican government’s intent to take “active steps to protect our citizens and repel raiders.”51
The Guadalupe Canyon affair changed the balance in the region. The Cow-Boy problem could no longer be ignored. Federal and local authorities had to respond. The incident helped to finally unseat John Charles Frémont, Arizona’s governor in absentia, even though, ironically, Frémont had been one of the first to demand action against the Cow-Boys. It was also at this point that John Clum took dead aim at John Behan and Harry M. Woods, declaring that “[t]here is altogether too much good feeling between the Sheriff’s office and the outlaws infesting this county.”52
U.S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake and his one-armed chief deputy, J. W. Evans, already understood the importance of addressing the border situation. On August 11, two days before the Guadalupe Canyon affair, Evans advised Dake that the Mexican government had expressed “great dissatisfaction at the seeming neglect of our Gov’t and threaten to take vengeance on all Americans in Sonora.”53 Scarcely a month later, Deputy Sheriff William Bell reported that “a few days ago he had occasion to cross the line and go into Sonora, and says that no one is allowed in that state without a pass from the governor or military commander.”54 The border situation had reached a dangerous state.
The killings also fed the rumor mill to the point of hysteria. Early in September, the New Southwest and Grant County Herald reported a second massacre south of George W. Lang’s ranch near the site of the Guadalupe Canyon killings, listing the deaths of five men, including John Gray, Billy Clanton, and Charlie Snow (whom the paper erroneously reported had “escaped from the other killing”). The paper reported that “both these massacres were perpetrated by parties of Mexican regular troops, who were identified by their uniforms.”55 By the end of September, the U.S. Customs officer at Arivaca reported “roving bands of ‘Cow Boys’ have been
seen in the vicinity several times in the last week or ten days” and expressed concern about a raid on the town.56 Both reports proved to be false, but they underscored the state of the public mind.
The presence of Jim Crane at Guadalupe Canyon also excited controversy, linking Old Man Clanton and the others to the known stage robbers. “Am glad they killed him,” Parsons opined about Crane. “As for the others—if not guilty of cattle stealing, they had no business to be found in such company.”57 John Plesant Gray would later claim that Crane had joined the party the night before the attack with the intent of accompanying it to Tombstone, where he planned to surrender to the sheriff, “as we had talked him into doing.”58 Later, Milt Joyce would try to link the Earps to the Guadalupe Canyon affair, but both surviving eyewitnesses, Billy Byers and Harry Earnshaw, insisted that the attackers were Mexicans.59 Nevertheless, the affair did bring the Cow-Boy problem directly to the doorsteps of the Earps and John Henry.
Jim Crane was the last link to solving the Benson stage robbery. Crane was the one man who could exonerate Doc beyond all doubt. His death made it impossible for Doc to satisfy those predisposed to believe the worst about him, and it gave Joyce and others the basis for linking Doc and the Earps not only to the Guadalupe Canyon killings but also to stage robberies in the area, by claiming that the primary purpose of the attack was to kill Crane. In this way, the enemies of the Earps created the appearance of impropriety, really for the first time since the Earps had arrived in Tombstone. This was doubtless in response to Clum’s revival of charges against the sheriff’s office for the escape of Luther King.60
John Clum might be able to editorialize that Crane was “a fugitive from justice and an outlaw, and the six bullets that struck him were certainly well expended,” but his death also heightened Ike Clanton’s apprehensions about the secret between himself and the Earps at precisely the point in time where his father’s restraining hand was removed in the same bloody encounter at Guadalupe Canyon.61 Old Man Clanton had always managed to maintain some sense of propriety and respectability and had even gotten along reasonably well with the Earps. Now Ike’s insecurity, bravado, and temper had no effective check.
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