In fact, on the night of December 9, a fire did break out at the Grand Lodging House on Toughnut Street where R. F. Coleman lived with his son. Crowds of people swarmed into the street, and some of them worked together with the Rescue Hook & Ladder Company to prevent another disaster like the fire of June 22. That night, James Flynn, the town marshal who had replaced Virgil, ordered all the saloons closed at eleven o’clock, which could well have helped to quell any Cow-Boy plans.8
Acting governor John J. Gosper had mixed emotions about the situation in Cochise County. His visit to Tombstone in November had reinforced his belief that the Cow-Boys had to be suppressed, but he also believed that some “officers of the law are often themselves in league with the ‘Cow-Boy’ element to obtain illegal gains.” He also deplored the political situation, particularly the “strife” arising from the rivalry of John H. Behan and Wyatt Earp for the position of sheriff of Cochise County. He was distressed by the partisanship of the local newspapers and the interplay of county and city patronage. He condemned the practice of citizens handling stolen property and profiting from the theft of the Cow-Boys, which meant that a large portion of the population sympathized with them.
He advocated to U.S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake the appointment of “a man of well known courage and character of cool sound judgment, which your good judgment can secure, who with a suitable posse of men, can first fully comprehend the true nature of the situation, and then with proper discretion and courage, go forward with a firm and steady hand bring as rapidly as possible the leading spirits of this lawless class to a severe and speedy punishment.” He also suggested the removal of Sheriff Behan by the appropriate authorities and advocated that Dake employ “[d]eputies to the end that men possessing the confidence of the public” be appointed.9
Dake, however, used Spicer’s decision as a vindication of the Earps and chose to pursue Gosper’s goals using them as the agents of choice. On December 3, he wrote to S.F. Phillips, the acting attorney general:
The Earps have rid Tombstone and neighborhood of the presence of this outlaw element.—They killed several Cow boys in Tombstone recently—and the Sheriff’s faction had my deputies arrested—and after a protracted trial my deputies were vindicated and publicly complimented for their bravery in driving this outlaw element from this part of our Territory. The magistrate discharged my deputies on the grounds that when they killed Clanton and the McLowry’s, they were in the legitimate discharge of their duties as my officer.
Hereafter my deputies will not be interfered with in hunting down Stage Robbers, Mail Robbers, Train Robbers, Cattle thieves and all that class of murdering banditti of the border.
I am proud to report that I have some of the best and bravest men in my employ in this hazardous business—men who are trusty and tried, and who strike fear into the hearts of these outlaws.10
With this overly optimistic endorsement, Dake promised that the war on the Cow-Boys had just begun, and he gave the Earps his firm support as the men who could carry out the mission. If he conveyed these feelings directly to Virgil, and it is probable that he did, he may well have given the Earps renewed confidence, especially when combined with the support of prominent Tombstone citizens—a renewed confidence that may well have affected their behavior in the weeks that followed. If Dake thought that the troubles were over, however, he was badly mistaken, and the Earps knew it. They expected the worst, but they also prepared themselves, confident that they would be supported in what they did.
In any event, enough tension existed in Tombstone that John Henry and the Earps stayed together for protection with their supporters to the point that some who had previously supported them now saw them as bullies. They armed themselves and headquartered at the Oriental. The Cow-Boys reportedly had a room in the Grand Hotel overlooking the street where the Earps and Holliday could be watched in their movements. More ominously, prominent Earp supporters as well as Justice Spicer, Mayor John P. Clum, the Earps, and Holliday received threatening letters. Clum went so far as to telegraph acting governor Gosper, asking that he provide weapons for the Citizens Safety Committee, and on December 9, Gosper urged the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act so that the military could be used to suppress the Cow-Boys.11
On the night of December 14, Clum left Tombstone on the Sandy Bob stage for Benson, planning to visit his brother in Tucson before traveling east. En route, the stage was accosted by holdup men who fired on the stage. Whistling Dick Wright, the driver of a bullion wagon following the stage, was wounded in the leg, but both the stage and the wagon managed to get to safety before one of the horses fell dead from a wound received in the flight. Clum, who was convinced the incident was an assassination attempt, left the stage and walked seven miles before securing a horse and riding on into Benson.12
The Nugget belittled Clum as a coward, and the Epitaph chastised the Nugget for making light of an incident that placed lives in jeopardy and resulted in at least one injury.13 Clum later claimed that “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.” Such melodrama did not work well with the community, and he even added, “We did not believe all we heard. Nevertheless, we realized that the situation was extremely serious.”14
On the morning of December 15, Virgil Earp encountered Milton E. Joyce in the Oriental. Joyce could not resist remarking about the attempted stage holdup of the previous evening that “he had been expecting something of the sort ever since they [the Earps and Holliday] had been liberated from jail.”15 Virgil instantly slapped Joyce across the face, and several of Virgil’s friends sprang forward to his side. Joyce wisely let the moment pass, saying as he reached the door, “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.”16 Said the Nugget, “[H]is coolness and good judgment saved Tombstone from disgrace of another bloody tragedy, all who are cognizant of the peculiar characteristics of the Earp party will readily admit.”17
The following day, Joyce returned to the Oriental, found the Earps in the gambling area, and, “with a six-shooter in each hand, asked them if they wanted to fight as bad as they did the night before.” William M. Breakenridge recalled, “Sheriff Behan followed Joice [sic] into the saloon and coming up behind him grasped him around the waist, turned with his back toward the Earps and carried Joice out of doors, and arrested him for carrying weapons. He was fined fifteen dollars for carrying the guns. Up to this time Joice and Behan were close friends, but from this time out Joice was very bitter toward him.”18 The Epitaph reported, “It is understood that a little unpleasantness occurred in the Oriental Saloon yesterday, which under any circumstances is seriously to be regretted. Under the present state of public excitement it becomes all good citizens to avoid provocation for all disturbance.”19
Also on December 15, the Nugget reported that the Citizens Safety Committee had suggested that Sheriff Behan and others unfriendly to the Earps should leave town, but the threats by friends of the Cow-Boys were more plentiful.20 On December 18, the Epitaph published a letter from “A Miner” warning Wells Spicer that he was “liable to get a hole through your coat at any moment.” Spicer responded with a long letter in which he curiously absolved the Clanton brothers from responsibility. He did defend himself from the charge that he acted in a partisan way in writing his decision:
It is but just to myself that I should here assert that neither directly or indirectly was I ever approached in the interest of the defendants, by them or for 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 in any manner improperly influenced is a base and willful liar.21
Spice
r defied the “Miner” to come after him and expressed his contempt for the “low-bred, arrant cowards” who made anonymous threats.
Two days later, the other side was heard, in a letter to the Nugget written by James A. Reilly, the former justice of the peace who had had troubles with Wyatt Earp the previous year. After denouncing threats against Milt Joyce, Buckskin Frank Leslie, and others who had condemned the Fremont Street killings, Reilly declared, “I am convinced that seven out of 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.”22 By innuendo, then, he had cast aspersions on John Clum (as postmaster), Marshall Williams, and the Earps.
He chastised the Citizens Safety Committee as a dangerous and misguided organization. “Is it, or is it not true,” he demanded, “that the Earps and Holliday, while undergoing examination, threatened that when they got out they would make those men who called the killing of the McLaurys a murder, ‘take it 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?” Doc and the Earps were not “good men,” Reilly proclaimed, “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 by good conduct and submission to the laws. They do not by threats, assaults and braggadocio, attempt to bulldoze a whole community into giving countenance to their acts.”23
Reilly’s missive prompted a response in the Epitaph from Ned Boyle, the bartender from the Oriental who had testified for the defense at the Spicer hearing. He began by accusing Reilly of having himself been involved in a stage robbery while he lived at Yuma. He also reminded readers of Reilly’s less than exemplary history in Tombstone, including his record as a lot jumper. With reference to the Earps, he wrote, “I shall speak only of one of them, Wyatt Earp; he is one of the partners in the firm I am working for, and a more liberal and kind-hearted man I have never met.” Boyle denounced Reilly as a “lying mountebank” and challenged him to respond.24
And so the charges and countercharges went. “Tombstone seems to be in a nice condition of disorder,” the San Francisco Daily Exchange declared.25 What was lost in the process was the contrast between the orderly state of affairs in Tombstone before October 26, while Virgil was marshal, and the chaos that reigned in December. The political ramifications were hardly missed by anyone. Virgil’s wounds were far greater than the gunshot wound that caused him to limp, and while Wyatt still hoped to challenge Behan for sheriff in 1882, the politically astute already knew that something dramatic would have to happen to give him a fighting chance.
Oddly, the Earps made no public effort to defend themselves. They made no public statements, and while they kept many of their warmest and most respectable supporters close by, they appeared confused and dazed. They seemed unwilling to believe that public opinion had turned against them. They assumed they were right, and they could not believe that people would fail to see it. Always politically naive, Wyatt was surprisingly off balance, even bewildered, by the public reaction. Virgil might have been more politically aware, but he kept a studied silence as if waiting and watching to see what would come. Clara Brown summed up their situation: “If the Earps were not men of great courage, they would hardly dare remain in Tombstone.”26
City elections were scheduled for January 3. Clum had decided not to run for reelection, and Virgil could not afford to risk total repudiation. On December 13, a petition signed by 170 men, including several of the friends of the Earps, called on Lewis W. Blinn, a lumberman, to run for mayor, and four days later he agreed. James Flynn announced his bid for chief of police. On December 24, a group calling itself the People’s Independent Ticket nominated John Carr for mayor and David Neagle, Behan’s feisty enforcer, for chief of police. Interestingly, the situation broke both Republican and Democratic solidarity. Locally, at least, the Earps had friends and enemies in both parties. A nasty campaign, with the Earps’ reputation at the center of it, followed, as the Nugget and Epitaph harangued local citizens.27
On December 21, the Bird Cage Theater opened. A few nights later, Deputy Breakenridge was walking along the street opposite the theater hugging the walls against the rain when “I ran up against a gun-barrel which was placed against my breast. Looking up, I saw it was Frank Stilwell.” Breakenridge remembered:
I asked him what he was trying to do, and he said that a certain party had boasted that he was going to get him that night, and that he would not do it if he saw him first. I told him that it was too late for him to kill any one that night, that he was in enough trouble already, and to put up his gun and go home. He did as I told him, and went down the side street, and I turned back wondering whom he was after, but about the middle of the block I met Doc Holliday, who roomed a short distance up the street, on his way home. It flashed through my mind that I had inadvertently saved Holliday’s life that night.28
If Stilwell was gunning for Doc, it was a forecast of things to come. The Cow-Boys stood watch in their room in the Grand Hotel facing the Cosmopolitan Hotel. They kept the shutters closed, except for a single slat that had been removed to enable them to watch the Earps’ rooms. Early in December, one of them was at the window with a Winchester, waiting to shoot Lou Rickabaugh, who was walking down the street. Another Cow-Boy arrived and stopped his friend by reasoning that Rickabaugh had done nothing more than “spend his money for his friends, the Earps,” something he could not be faulted for.29 Later, a clerk at the Grand, Jack Altman, warned the Earps that Curly Bill Brocius, John Ringo, Pony Deal, Ike Clanton, and others frequented the room, watching their movements and waiting for opportunities to shoot them.30
The Christmas season, then, was hardly a time of good cheer or peace on earth in Tombstone that December. It was hard to be grateful for the freedom won with things so bitter for John Henry and, especially, for his friends the Earps. He, at least, had lost no post, nor any hope of one; they stood to lose everything they had built in Tombstone, not the least of which was their reputation as responsible men and capable peace officers. And already they saw some of those who had called them friends turning away as they passed by or criticizing them for what was done and denying them support in their crisis.
John Henry stood by them because, in truth, his future as well as his past was linked to theirs. The rancor was bitter for them all as the Earp wives set the Christmas table. There was no pride in the moment, but no shame either. What was done was what had to be done, and not to good men. And the worst of it was that the cause of it all—Ike Clanton—walked free and slandered the names of better men to take his revenge and cover his own record of treachery and betrayal.
It could be argued that Doc alone profited from what happened, if “profit” is the proper word. Doc achieved something in the street fight, but it was not something he sought or even wanted. If the reputations of the Earps were sullied in the street fight, the reputation of Doc Holliday grew as a man to be feared—and respected—for his courage if not for his character. Men gave him room after that. But what he gained was as much a burden as a boon, a burden that intruded on the private man that Doc really was. Notoriety was not something he reveled in, but it had its use in making men think twice about bracing him. Most important, though, Doc had found a cause, a reason that gave his life a sense of purpose it had not had for a very long time. He was fighting for something that mattered. Life now had meaning.
In the rhetorical battles of the Epitaph and the Nugget, Doc was unseen for the most part. There was little to be gained from celebrating or denigrating him. The Earps were the point of controversy, and, in truth, both newspapers missed the mark. The Epitaph, with its excesses, hardly served the Earps well, and the Nugget had to ignore much to make the case they tried so desperately to make. Ironically, as the Nu
gget—and the Tucson Star—reversed field to minimize the Cow-Boy threat, men in the areas frequented by the Cow-Boys finally began to grow tired of their antics. While the Spicer hearing plodded on through the month of November, Curly Bill was in jail in Lordsburg, New Mexico. On November 9, 1881, citizens of Shakespeare lynched Sandy King and William “Russian Bill” Tettenborn.31
While Tombstone residents hurled barbs at one another over the Earps, federal and territorial officials kept their focus on the Cow-Boy problem. Following Mayor Clum’s request for guns to arm the Citizens Safety Committee, Dake forwarded the message to President Chester A. Arthur with the admonition, “Give us the use of the military and we will give you peace on the border.”32 President Arthur did ask Congress to rescind or alter the Posse Comitatus Act to allow the use of the army in pursuit of outlaws whose acts threatened to disrupt relations with other countries, but Congress did not respond at first.33
However, that was all far away from Tombstone on the night of December 28, 1881, when Virgil Earp left the Oriental Saloon to return to his rooms at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. From the darkness of a construction site on the southeast corner of Fifth Street came the roar of shotguns. Virgil was knocked to the ground by the force of the blasts. George Parsons noted in his diary, “Doc G[oodfellow] had just left and I tho’t couldn’t have crossed the street—when four shots were fired in quick succession from very heavily charged guns, making a terrible noise and I tho’t were fired under my window under which I quickly dropped, keeping the dobe wall between me and the outside until the fusillade was over.”34
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