Trouble Right Here in Tombstone City

In every movie and a lot of the books, the Earps are always the "good guys" at the OK Corral.  By default, the Clantons and McLaurys are the "bad guys".  After all, when Burt Lancaster (Wyatt, of course) showed up in Tombstone, he was told by Virgil about the trouble the nasty Clanton Gang was stirring up.  Being a law and order man, this got Burt's- I mean, Wyatt's - dander up and, by golly, he was going to use his authority as US Marshal (!) to stop the Clantons and McLaurys from driving their (stolen) cattle through Tombstone.

This naturally raised the hackles of the cowboys and they swore they'd "git" Wyatt and his brothers.  So the Clanton Gang threw down the gauntlet to the Earps and told them to meet them at the OK Corral.  Being men among men, the Earps showed up on time and with a blaze of gunfire fought a pitched battle against the Clantons and McLaurys with the help of Johnny Ringo.  To make the movie last a full hour and a half, the shootout took up about fifteen minutes.  Of course, the Clantons and McLaurys were worsted.

Among the errors in this scenario, the writers never quite explained why a federal marshal would waste his time with that type of Mickey Mouse warrant or why the Clantons couldn't have simply detoured a hundred yards around the city limits.  Tombstone's a nice town even today, but it ain't really all that big.  But by now, of course, you should know none of it really happen that way, anyway.

If you really dig into the history of the Old West you find that the division between good guys and bad guys was really pretty blurred.  A man might steal horses one year (like Wyatt) and then pin a badge on the next (again like Wyatt).  A guy might pick up a few rustled cattle (like Ike) and then risk his life by serving on a posse chasing down some bona fide armed desperados (also like Ike).  The truth is a lawman who did not have a few crimes under his belt was very much the oddball.  And there were a lot of the famous outlaws (even Billy the Kid) who had officially served as deputies, even if on a temporary and somewhat ill-defined basis.

So it's tempting to pin the good guy/bad guy image on Hollywood.  But that's not entirely true.  Even back in the 1880's, the people who lived in the West thought in terms of good guys and bad guys.  Actually that hasn't changed a whole lot even now.  Just try talking politics to your neighbor.

The immediate problem in Tombstone, though - to use today's high falootin' professorial language - was that Wyatt and his buddies and Ike and his friends came from two "highly polarized and distinct socio-economic subcultures".  Or simply stated (but pretty accurately), Wyatt's crowd were Yankees (Virgil was after all a Union veteran) and newcomers and they were all Republicans.  Ike's friends - even at that time usually dubbed "the cowboys" - were Democrats, generally had lived there longer, and had southern leanings.  So you can imagine that if Yanks and Rebs and Democrats and Republicans don't get along too well now how it was like only fifteen years after Appomattox.

Of course, you always thought of yourself as a good guy.  The bad guys were anyone who was different.  So if you worked on a ranch, you were a hard working stockman who busted your bun while the Yankee carpetbaggers sat on their hunkers and made easy, sleazy, greasy bucks by mine speculation, saloon keeping, and gambling (and don't forget the sporting houses).  On the other hand if you were a speculator or business man (and that included gamblers, saloon keepers, and sporting women), you were convinced that you were promoting law and order by bringing  financial stability and civilization to the wild and wooly.  And one of your concerns would be the rambunctious cowboys who were likely to shoot up the town whenever they came around to drink and gamble at your saloon or visit your sporting house.

The newspapers didn't help too much either.  You'd have one paper (whose editor was a Republican) that would trumpet about the "cowboy threat" and then there would be the other one run by a Democrat who would complain about the unsavory characters that ran the various saloons and sporting houses and made it dangerous to walk the streets.  In fact, the saloon where Wyatt had his faro game, the Oriental, was considered one of the worst.

But despite all this hullabaloo, the Earps, Clantons, and McLaurys actually got on pretty well.  After all, they were adults out to make a living and to some degree could put these largely imaginary differences aside. They saw each other around town a lot and would willingly serve together on the occasional posses that were called up.  The Clantons and McLaurys would visit the Oriental Saloon (though they preferred the Grand Hotel), and they had no objection to sitting down with the Earps for a game or two of faro or poker.

And the Earps and Johnny Behan had been on friendly enough terms as well.  After all, Virgil had known Johnny in Prescott and both men were heard to say they considered themselves friends.  Wyatt and Johnny also maintained an amiable enough front as well.   Both had earlier served as deputy sheriffs under Charlie Shibell, and the two rival newspapers, the Nugget and the Epitaph who rarely agreed on anything, praised both men and even seemed sincere about it.  Later Johnny became sheriff and had considered Wyatt as the number one man for his deputy.  And up until the day he died (literally), Tom McLaury said that Wyatt was a friend of his.

But gradually what can be described as a fairly friendly working relationship began to cool a bit.  Certainly Wyatt taking up with Josie didn't help much.  Neither did both of them wanting the same sheriff's job.

And there was the time time that Wyatt went to get his horse only to find it had unaccountably been misplaced.  As a sometime lawman, Wyatt needed a good horse.  And if this also allowed him to supplement his income by wagering on his mount during the horse races that would be held from time to time, so much the better. So he was a little miffed when someone ripped off what was pretty much a top notch steed.

Happily, the horse was soon found.  Not so happily Billy Clanton was riding it.  Evidently, the incident was written off as a misunderstanding because about all that happened was that Wyatt got his horse back.  No charges were filed against Billy even though horse theft was a pretty serious offense.  But, no, it wasn't so bad that the perpetrator would be the guest of honor at an impromptu neck tie party (like it is in the movies), but it was still grand theft and could get you one to three years up in the territorial prison in Yuma.

Then there was the time several government mules ended up getting stolen.  The Earps were part of the posse that went to look for them.  Find them they did - at the McLaury ranch.  The story was that Frank was even altering the brands.  Again what really happened isn't quite clear, but one of the army lieutenants did publicly accuse Frank of the perfididty.  This in turn riled Frank enough to make him take out a newspaper ad asserting his honesty.  Wyatt probably agreed with the lieutenant, but again no official action was ever taken.

These episodes are used by the Earp Champions to prove the cowboys were heavily into horse thievery, rustling, murder, mayhem, jay-walking, spittin' on the streets, cussin', and other nefarious activities.  But the evidence couldn't have been too strong since nothing was done.  And you have to remember that Wyatt's own gambling and saloon businesses sometimes got him and his brothers lumped in with the "tinhorn" gambling element, which many of the citizens didn't care for too much either.

But even after all this, Wyatt and Ike could still go to pretty elaborate lengths try to help each other out.  Particularly if there was money in it.  This is best illustrated by considering a little incident involving the Tucson to Bisbee stagecoach as it made it's thrice weekly run through Tombstone.  It was also this incident that by its rather strange, circuitous , and contradictory meanderings ultimately led to the Gunfight at the OK Corral.  And of course, the legend of Wyatt Earp.

Today to get to Tombstone you get off the interstate at Benson and drive twenty miles on a well maintained highway.  But in the 1880's Benson was a stop over for the stage that ran from Tucson to Bisbee.  Earlier the trip had taken two days but later when new waystations were put in you could make it in only one.  A long, slow, bone jarring, hot, dusty, and tiring day, yes, but one day nonetheless.  

On the evening of March 15, 1881, the stage was rumbling its way toward Tombstone. And for once what really happened could have come straight out of a Hollywood movie.  Some vague shadowy forms reared up and called for the driver, Bob Paul, to halt.  Since Bob figured about the the only person who would do that would be a road agent (as they were called back then) who was intent on increasing his equity, he kicked up his horses and began to get the heck out of there.  And again just like in the movies, the bandits opened fire.  The stagecoach guard riding shotgun, Bud Philpott (or Philpot) was killed and a passenger was also fatally wounded.  But Bob got the team away and took his stage on into Tombstone.

Now although violence between consenting adults was sometime tolerated if limited to an occasional shootout in a saloon or back alley, out and out murder of respected citizens during a robbery wasn't.  And that WOULD sometimes get the accused an EXTREMELY speedy trial.  Well, maybe a group of twenty citizens storming the jail and dragging the miscreant to the nearest telegraph pole wasn't really a trial.  But it sure was speedy.

But even that was rare.  What usually happened was what happened here.  A posse was formed (and included both Johnny Behan and the Earps) and headed out after the killers.  They traced the trail to a ranch where they found a man who claimed the hold up had been the work of three men:  Billy Leonard, Harry Head, and Jim Crane.

Now HERE's where it gets interesting.  VERY interesting.  These guys were pretty bad dudes, no doubt about it.  And because of their particularly socio-economic class, they were neatly lumped in as part of the "cowboy" faction.  Ha! the Earp Champions say. Proof, if any were needed, that the cowboy faction were in fact the lawless rogues of legend.

Well, maybe.  But to make matters even more interesting (and confusing), it was also well known that Billy Leonard had one good friend who was definitely not lumped in with the cowboy faction.  And that was none other than Dr. John Henry Holliday.

Doc probably first met Billy in the saloons and at the gambling tables when both men were living in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Billy, like Doc, was a rather strange character.  Supposedly he was quite literate and skilled at various trades (including watch making and repair), but he apparently was also had a rather unsavory character.  But then Doc wasn't really such a sweetheart himself.  Both men liked to drink and gamble so they got along pretty well.  And now the two friends were both in Tombstone and everyone knew it.

Maybe it was just guilt by association, or maybe Doc really was involved.  In any case, Doc 's name was soon being mentioned as a member of the holdup gang.  Some said he actually fired the fatal shots.  Johnny Behan, who was now sheriff of Cochise County, listened to this talk and decided to do a little investigating.

Johnny figured the person to know most about this - other than Doc himself - was Doc's girlfriend, Kate Elder (or Kate Fisher or John Smith or whatever the heck she was calling herself then).  Rumor was that Doc thumped her when he got mad (which was pretty much always), and Johnny figured that she'd probably be ticked off enough to rat on Doc.  The story goes that Johnny also got her plastered, but however he did it, he ended up with a sworn statement from Kate that Doc was one of the holdup men.  So Doc was arrested.

As you might expect of a case where the only evidence was an affidavit from a drunken ticked-off former sporting lady, the whole thing was immediately thrown out of court.  In Johnny's favor, though, at that time and place confessions given while under the influence were sometimes admissible in court.  But it was still kind of a dumb thing to do, because, boy, was Doc ever irritated at Johnny.

And Wyatt was still wanting to get the sheriff's job.  He somehow got the idea that Ike Clanton (he was a cowboy after all) knew Leonard, Crane, and Head (sounds kind of like a law firm, doesn't it), and by some suitable skullduggery Ike could help lure them into a trap.

So Wyatt approached Ike and offered him a deal.  If Ike would somehow get the three holdup men into Tombstone or thereabouts, Wyatt could nab 'em.  He'd give Ike the reward money and a bit of extra out of his own pocket.  Ike could also take over some choice land that Billy Leonard had claimed and Wyatt would use the prestige of the capture to help him get elected sheriff.

Wyatt later swore Ike agreed.  Ike on the other hand claimed he refused to have anything to do with it.

Now here's where things get REALLY complicated.  Somehow and from somewhere a rumor sprang up (possibly because Doc was a friend of Wyatt's) that the stage holdup had actually been engineered by EARPS, for crying out loud.  According to this story the whole shebang had been a sham to hide the fact the Earps (tin horn gamblers, remember) had skimmed off a thousand or so dollars out of the stage's strong box.  So Wyatt was a really going after Leonard & Co. to bump them off so they wouldn't squeal.

It's hard to tell where this story came from or how contemporary it was.  But by the end of the year Ike was swearing under oath that Wyatt had confessed the whole thing to him, and some old timers from Tombstone for years after remained convinced it was true.

Really, though, the best bet is that Wyatt's version is pretty much what happened.  He probably did try to cut a deal with Ike to nab he bandits and Ike may have agreed albeit with some trepidation.  After all, he could stand to make a bundle, but if word got out that he had joined up with Wyatt to go after the Leonard et. al., he could be in a heap of trouble with some really bad dudes.  But it all became a moot point when Leonard and Head were killed in a separate gun fight a little while later.

Almost a moot point that is.  Somehow the story got out about the deal.  Leonard and Head were dead but Crane was still around as were some of their other buddies.  So now Ike had to go around telling everyone who wanted to listen (and many who didn't) that the story wasn't true.  Ike?  In cahoots with Wyatt? Never!

Naturally Ike telling everyone and his mother that these stories were bunk also made it look like Ike was implying that Wyatt was (to borrow a polite but hackneyed phrase) a low down Yankee liar.  And Doc, who always seemed ready to jump to quick (and wrong) conclusions, got the idea that Ike was going around "threatening" his friend Wyatt Earp.

Here's what you've got by the fall of 1881.  A stagecoach robbery that many believed Doc Holliday had a hand in (and some still do), but at the same time there was Doc's best (sc. "only") friend, Wyatt, trying to get Ike to help him nab the bandits.  On top of this there were the Earp Detractors who said the whole thing was a cover used by the Earps to rip off Wells Fargo.  And when everything fell through, Ike took to going around town swearing on a stack of Bibles that whatever Wyatt said about him wasn't true while the ever irascible Doc was convinced that Ike was making threats against the Earps.

So that's the way it was, October 25, 1881 (sorry, Walter), when Ike Clanton was sitting at the counter in the Oriental Saloon and Doc Holliday happened to walk in.