That evening, Doc Holliday spotted Ike in the lunchroom of the Alhambra Saloon and approached him as he had promised Wyatt he would. “I understand that you say the Earp brothers have given you away to me, and that you have been talking about me?” he said bluntly. Doc told Ike that Earp had told him nothing and that Ike should stop talking about him. Doc was doubtless less than polite, but Ike was drunk, so drunk that he would later report the conversation as having taken place in three different saloons!92 He likely was so drunk that he would not remember the conversation clearly, but he was surly in response, repeating the accusations and advising Doc in plain terms that he did not believe him.
Doc, in turn, called Ike a liar for telling Wyatt that he had told Ike anything about things of which he had no knowledge. Doubtless, too, now that he knew that Clanton had planned to sell out Leonard, Head, and Crane, he expressed contempt for Clanton and his mercenary character. Holliday lost his temper and told Clanton it was time for him to pull out his gun and go to work. “Doc’s vocabulary of profanity and obscene language was monumental and he worked it proficiently in talking to Ike,” Fred Dodge remembered.93 Ike Clanton later testified:
While sitting down at the table, Doc Holliday came in and commenced cursing me and said I was, “A son-of-a-bitch of a cowboy,” and told me to get my gun out and get to work. I told him I had no gun. He said I was a damned liar and had threatened the Earps. I told him I had not, to bring whoever said so to me and I would convince him that I had not. He told me again to pull out my gun and if there was any grit in me, to go to fighting. All the time he was talking, he had his hand in his bosom and I supposed on his pistol.94
A serious row was in the making. At the time, Wyatt Earp was seated at the lunch counter eating, and Morgan Earp was standing at the Alhambra bar talking with the bartender. Wyatt testified, “I called him over to where I was sitting, knowing that he was an officer and told him that Holliday and Clanton were quarreling in the lunch room and for him to go in and stop it.”95 Morgan climbed over the lunchroom bar and took Doc by the arm and led him out of the saloon, with Ike following close behind. Ike claimed that Doc said as he left, “You son-of-a-bitch, if you ain’t heeled, go and heel yourself,” and testified, for good measure, that Morgan had added, “Yes, you son-of-a-bitch, you can have all the fight you want now.”96 The exchange continued in the street and was still going on when Wyatt walked outside.
The disturbance was loud enough that Virgil Earp, who was next door at the Occidental Saloon, heard it and came out to investigate. He told Doc and Ike in plain terms that if they did not stop quarreling, he would arrest them both. With that threat, the argument broke up, Wyatt led Doc away, and Ike crossed the street to the Grand Hotel. Virgil returned to the Occidental, and Morgan went home. After calming Doc down, Wyatt went to the Eagle Brewery Saloon to check on one of his games, and Doc went to the Oriental. A short time later, Ike Clanton caught up to Wyatt at the Eagle Brewery.97 According to Wyatt, he was now armed. Wyatt recalled, “He told me when Holiday [sic] approached him in the Alhambra that he wasn’t fixed just right. He said that in the morning he would have man-for-man, that this fighting talk had been going on for a long time, and he guessed it was about time to fetch it to a close. I told him I would not fight no one if I could get away from it because there was no money in it. He walked off and left me saying, ‘I will be ready for you in the morning.’”98
Ike still did not let matters go. He followed Earp to the Oriental, where he told him, “You must not think I won’t be after you all in the morning.” He threatened Doc again, whereupon Wyatt told him that “Holliday did not want to fight, but only to satisfy him that this talk had not been made.” After closing his game at the Oriental, Wyatt met Doc on the street between the Oriental and the Alhambra and walked with him down Allen Street until they separated to go to their lodgings.99 After leaving Wyatt, Ike went to the Occidental Saloon, where, curiously, he joined an all-night poker game with Tom McLaury, John Behan, Virgil Earp (of all people), and a fourth unidentified man. Ike lost some money, but continued to drink. He also became irritated because Virgil kept a pistol in his lap as he played. The sun was already coming up when the game ended. Virgil explained what happened next:
On the morning of the 26th, somewhere about six or seven o’clock, I started to go home, and Ike Clanton stopped me and wanted to know if I would carry a message from him to Doc Holliday. I ask [sic] him what it was. He said, “The damned son of a bitch has got to fight.” I said, “Ike, I am an officer and I don’t want to hear you talking that way at all. I am going down home now, to go to bed. I don’t want you to raise any disturbance while I am in bed.”100
Virgil turned to walk away, but Clanton persisted in his demand. “You won’t carry the message?”
“No, of course I won’t,” Virgil replied.
“You may have to fight before you know it.”
“I made no reply to him and went home and went to bed,” Virgil testified later.101
Ike Clanton did not follow suit.
Chapter 7
THE FREMONT STREET FIASCO
Damon did no more for Pythias than Holliday did for Wyatt Earp.
—Bat Masterson, Human Life Magazine (1907)
Near eight o’clock on the morning of October 26, 1881, Ike Clanton picked up the pistol and rifle he had left at the West End Corral, “expecting to meet Doc Holliday on the street,” as he later claimed. In fact, he began to roam the streets looking for Doc or for any of the Earps, as he made clear to anyone who would listen. Only a few minutes after leaving the West End Corral, he ran into Ned Boyle, a bartender at the Oriental. “He said that as soon as the Earps and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street, the ball would open, and that they would have to fight,” Boyle recalled later. Boyle saw that Ike had retrieved his weapons and hurried off to Wyatt Earp’s house to warn him. Wyatt listened, then went back to sleep.1
In the meantime, Ike had moved on to Julius A. Kelly’s ornate Wine House, where Kelly overheard him talking to the bartender Joe Stump about the previous night’s difficulties. Kelly asked him what the trouble was, and Clanton told him that the Earps and Holliday had insulted him the night before when he was not armed, but that he was armed now “and that they would have to fight on sight.” Kelly warned him against further talk, because he believed the Earps would fight if pushed.2 Ike continued his tour of the saloons, leaving a flood of rumors in his wake. Eventually, there were enough of them that Officer A.G. Bronk woke up Virgil and told him there was liable to be “hell.” Virgil thanked him, then rolled over and went back to sleep.3
The Earps simply did not take Ike Clanton seriously. He was a blowhard and a braggart, and they fully expected that he would eventually crash, and that on awakening with a hangover the fight talk would wilt. However, Ike was still going at noon when he told R.F. Hafford that the Earps and Holliday would have to fight. Hafford also warned him that he had better go home.4 Instead, he found his way to Fly’s boarding house looking for Doc, who was still asleep. Mollie Fly found Kate in the rear gallery of the photographic studio behind the boardinghouse looking at pictures and told her that Clanton, fully armed, was asking about Doc. Kate went back to Doc’s room and woke him up to tell him. Doc sat up on the side of the bed and responded, “If God lets me live long enough to get my clothes on, he shall see me.”5
At about the same time, Virgil finally got up and started down-town. He was scarcely out of the house when Daniel Lynch, a young housepainter, caught up to him and said, “Look out for Clanton, he’s on the prowl and allows to kill you on sight.” Next, Virgil met his brothers Morgan and James, who asked if he had seen Clanton, explaining, “He has got a Winchester rifle and six-shooter on, and threatens to kill us on sight.”6 These warnings would not be the last threats reported to Virgil, but they were sufficient to give a new seriousness to the situation. In the meantime, Wyatt walked into the Oriental to be told by Harry Jones, an attorney, that Clanton was looking for “you boys.” Wyatt w
earily and nonchalantly said, “I will go down and find him and see what he wants.”7
On his way out of the saloon, Wyatt ran into Virgil and Morgan. They told each other what they had heard, then split up to look for Ike, with Wyatt walking down Allen Street and Morgan and Virgil proceeding up Fremont. In the meantime, Mayor John P. Clum passed Ike on the corner of Fourth and Fremont. “Hello Ike. Any new war?” he asked innocently. A few steps farther on, Clum met Charles Shibell, who was in town from Tucson, and struck up a conversation with him. As they spoke, they saw Virgil and Morgan turn onto Fourth Street, both armed.
“What does that mean?” Shibell asked.
“Looks like real trouble,” Clum answered.8
They watched as the two Earps approached Ike, who had moved into an alleyway off Fourth. He was watching Wyatt, who was coming down Fourth from the opposite direction off Allen. Virgil recalled what happened next:
I found Ike Clanton on Fourth Street between Fremont and Allen with a Winchester rifle in his hand and a six-shooter stuck down in his breeches. I walked up and grabbed the rifle in my left hand. He let loose and started to draw his six-shooter. I hit him over the head with mine and knocked him to his knees and took his six-shooter from him. I ask [sic] him if he was hunting for me. He said he was, and if he had seen me a second sooner he would have killed me. I arrested Ike for carrying firearms, I believe was the charge, inside the city limits.9
Virgil still was not taking Ike seriously enough. Instead of putting him in jail to sleep off his drunkenness or charging him with some more serious offense, he hauled him off to Judge A. O. Wallace’s court on a simple weapons charge, expecting that a fine and the headache received in the buffaloing would get Ike’s attention sufficiently to sober him up. He miscalculated. Wallace was not at the courtroom, and Virgil went to look for him, leaving Clanton in the charge of Morgan. At that point, Wyatt came in, followed by Rezin J. Campbell, a deputy sheriff and clerk of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors. A crowd of curiosity seekers soon packed the little courtroom; they were not disappointed. Wyatt sat down near Morgan, who still held Clanton’s rifle and pistol.
Clanton’s defiance had not withered. He was soon in a heated exchange with Morgan. “You fellows haven’t given me any show at all today,” he thundered. “You’ve treated me like a dog.” Clanton strutted. “Fight is my racket, and all I want is four feet of ground.” Then, turning on Morgan, he said, “If you fellows had been a second later, I would have furnished a coroner’s inquest for the town.” He threatened, “I will get even with all of you for this. If I had a six-shooter now, I would make a fight with all of you.”10
Morgan reacted by angrily offering Ike his revolver, saying, “Here, take this; you can have all the show you want right now.” At that point the crowd scattered. One eyewitness said, “You should have seen that crowd light out just then. In less than half a minute everybody was about a block away. I ran with the crowd, but as no shooting was heard, in a short time we all went back again, when we found out that Ike had refused to take the gun. But I tell you, pard, that was the worst scared crowd I ever saw.”11 Actually, Ike did jump up, but before he could grab the pistol, Deputy Sheriff Campbell pushed him into a chair. Wyatt had heard and seen enough. He yelled at Clanton, “You have threatened my life two or three times and I have the best evidence to prove it and I want this thing stopped.” Then he thundered, “You cattle thieving son of a bitch, and you know that I know you are a cattle thieving son of a bitch, you’ve threatened my life enough and you’ve got to fight.” He then turned and left the courtroom in a rage.12
As he walked out, Wyatt almost collided with Tom McLaury, who was rushing to see what kind of mess Ike had gotten himself into. Earp snapped at McLaury, and McLaury fired back, “If you want to fight, I will fight you anywhere.”
#x201C;Are you heeled? Right here, right now!” Earp quickly replied. In the same instant, Wyatt slapped him, jerked his own pistol, and knocked Tom to the ground with it. He stormed away muttering, “I could kill the son of a bitch,” while McLaury struggled to regain his feet and fumbled to find his silver hatband, which had been knocked off when Earp struck him. Tom had had enough. Still groggy, he made his way to the Capitol Saloon and deposited his pistol behind the bar.13
Wyatt claimed later, “I was tired of being threatened by Ike Clanton and his gang and believed from their movements that they intended to assassinate me the first chance they had, and I thought that if I had to fight for my life with them I had better make them face me in an open fight.”14 That was postfight rationalization. At the moment, the usually calm Wyatt Earp had lost control in a fit of anger. Still steaming, Wyatt walked to Hafford’s corner at Allen and Fourth streets, bought himself a cigar, and stood there puffing away to regain his composure after a rare display of emotion.
In the meantime, Virgil had returned to the courtroom with Justice Wallace, and the courtroom settled down to business. Wallace fined Ike $25 and court costs for carrying weapons. Afterward, Virgil asked Ike where he wanted to pick up his weapons. The still defiant Clanton said sharply, “Anywhere I can get them, for you hit me over the head with your six-shooter.” Virgil told him he could pick them up at the Grand Hotel.15
At that point, the Earps were sure they had taken care of things.
Shortly after noon, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton arrived in town from Antelope Springs, in company with J. R. Frink, a cattle dealer known locally as “Major,” to meet their brothers. Frink was arranging to provide a herd of six hundred cattle to supply beef for the Union Meat & Poultry Market, and he was working with the McLaurys on the deal. They reined up in front of the Grand Hotel without any knowledge of what had happened so far. They met Doc Holliday as they started toward the hotel; he pleasantly stuck out his hand to Billy Clanton and asked, “How are you?” Despite later efforts to give the gesture some sinister meaning, it was likely nothing more than common Southern courtesy.16
Tom and Frank McLaury. Both brothers were killed in the street fight with the Earps and Doc Holliday on October 26, 1881, Tom shotgunned by Doc and Frank killed after exchanging words with Doc during the fight.
Doc walked on to find breakfast, and the new arrivals were moving toward the hotel when a local named William Allen, who had connections with some of the Cow-Boys, joined them and asked if they knew what was going on. At the Grand Hotel bar, he quickly filled them in as Frank ordered drinks. Frank asked why Wyatt had hit Tom. When Allen said he did not know, Frank grew somber and said, “We won’t drink.” Outside, he and Billy unhitched their horses and as they led them away, McLaury said to Allen, “I will get the boys out of town.”17
As they headed off in the general direction of the O.K. Corral, they encountered William Claiborne, the youngster who was making a reputation for himself as the “second Billy the Kid” because of his Cow-Boy high jinks. He was even then awaiting the disposition of a case in which he had killed a man in Charleston. Claiborne told them that he had taken Ike to Dr. Charles Gillingham’s office to have his head wound treated. Together, they walked to find Ike, with Billy Clanton saying, “I want to get him to go out home.” They found Ike shortly, and he promised Billy he would leave “directly.” In fact, Ike claimed that he saw the stableman from the West End Corral at that point and asked him to hitch up his team for him. Then they all walked together to Spangenberg’s Gun Shop behind Brown’s Hotel.18 On another day, it would have gone unnoticed, but in a situation already taut with rumors and suspicion, the visit to a gun shop seemed deliberately provocative.
Moments later, a group of miners stopped Virgil and asked, “Ain’t you liable to have some trouble?” Then one of them told the marshal, “I seen two more of them just rode in. Ike walked up to them and was telling them about your hitting him over the head with a six-shooter. One Cowboy said, ‘Now is our time to make a fight.’” At that point, Virgil concluded that the situation was more serious than he had believed. He walked to the Wells, Fargo office and borrowed a ten-gauge shotgun. By t
hen, there were small knots of men gathering on the streets to talk about the situation.19
From his vantage point at Hafford’s corner, Wyatt watched as the Clanton crowd passed by on Fourth Street and disappeared into the gun shop. Having regained his composure, he decided to investigate. As he approached the gun shop, Frank’s horse stepped onto the sidewalk and stuck its head into Spangenberg’s. This violated a city ordinance, so Wyatt grasped the bridle to move the horse off the sidewalk. This movement brought Billy Clanton to the door with his hand on his gun butt. Frank followed and took his horse from Wyatt by the bridle. Earp told him he had to get the horse off the sidewalk and gave him chapter and verse on the law. Frank coolly backed his mount into the street, then, without a word, went back into the shop. Wyatt said that afterward, “I saw them in the gun-shop changing cartridges into their belts.” In fact, George Spangenberg refused to sell Ike Clanton a pistol because he “had been in trouble.”20
Virgil was still at the Wells, Fargo office when Bob Hatch rushed in and said, “For God’s sake get down there to the gun shop, for they are all down there and Wyatt is all alone. They are liable to kill him before you get there!” Virgil ran to the scene, arriving just as Frank reentered the shop. He watched, too, as Billy Clanton filled his belt with cartridges. Wyatt and Virgil then walked back to Hafford’s corner. They watched the Cow-Boys pass by and eventually turn in to the Dexter Corral.21 Tom McLaury, after having his head treated, stopped off at Everhardy’s Eagle Market to take care of some business before catching up to the others at Dexter’s Corral. As he came out of Everhardy’s, “his pants protruded as if there was a revolver,” and J.B.W. Gardiner observed that he was sorry to see that Tom was now armed.22
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