What REALLY Happened (Well, Maybe) at the OK Corral

So tell us, already.  What really happened at the OK Corral?  

Actually, no one knows for sure. Not even the guys who were there.  So how can you expect historians, film makers, television producers, and humorous writers to know what happened?

But that's not the point.  What you want to do is to make people THINK you know what happened.  That way you can write articles, books, screenplays, and television scripts about it.  Then you can say you've "reconstructed" history.

So let do a "reconstruction."  This one's probably as good as any and better than some.

First, let's realize some things.  There's no reason to think that as they walked down Fremont Street Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Doc all had the same intentions.  The same can be said for the Clantons and McLaurys.

Despite Virgil's harsh rhetoric to Johnny, all he wanted to do was arrest and disarm the cowboys.  Sure he may have wanted to rough them up a bit and throw in an odd buffaloing or two.  But what he really wanted was to reassert his authority as city marshal.

Morgan and Doc?  They wanted to blow the cowboys away.

Wyatt position is a bit more problematic.  In the years immediately following the fight he always stuck to his law-and-order story.  But one historian has a letter that Wyatt wrote as an old man.  There Wyatt said he was surprised when Virgil told the cowboys to throw up their hands.  And he said that when he began to grapple with Ike, he was really trying to gut-shoot him.  So maybe he was with Doc and Morgan after all.

But for now we'll give Wyatt the benefit of the doubt.  We'll say he was with Virgil on this one. 

Virgil was after all the man in charge.  HE was the city marshal.  HE had the authority to make arrests.  And HE was one that walked up to the Clantons and McLaurys and told them to throw up their hands.

Did they put up their hands?  Addie Bourland said she didn't think so,  and that's what Judge Spicer went by.  But in later years a newspaper in Kansas City interviewed a man who witnessed the fight with his father.  He claimed they saw the cowboys put up hands and they were shot down in cold blood.  Of course, he never testified.  But Addie's unbiased but vague and uncertain vindication is canceled out by an equally unbiased but firm assertion to the contrary.

So we'll "reconstruct" a bit and say maybe one or two of the cowboys raised their hands.  Or started to. The best bet is Billy Clanton.

But remember Virgil then gave another order.  And according to some witnesses he also ordered them to give up their arms.

And THAT's what caused all the problems.

OK, you're a 19 year old teenager and the marshal and his deputies (including a drunken, murderous, former dentist) come up and order to you throw up your hands AND give up your arms.

How do you do that?

Well, you could raise your hands first and let the marshal take the gun. That would be the smartest way to do it.

Or you could raise your hands, do a front forward flip, and let the gun fall out of the holster. Or maybe you just raise your hands and do side cartwheels down Fremont Street which would accomplish the same thing.

Or you might think, "Well, I'll hand my gun to the marshal, THEN I'll raise my hands."  Which is about the LAST option you should try.

But if you were REALLY nervous - as you might be if the drunken, trigger-happy dentist just stuck a gun in your friend's belly - you'd probably - unwisely - do just that.

And that's what Billy did.

Now Virgil realized that Billy was going to surrender.  So he kept his head together and his gun in his belt.  Maybe Wyatt realized that too and kept his gun out of sight.

But Morgan and Doc - that's a different story.

Remember:   Doc Holliday was a gunfighter.  A real gunfighter.  Maybe with an overblown inflated reputation, but a real gunfighter, nonetheless.  And Morgan - affable enough at his best, but hotheaded - didn't think too much different.

Now the hallmark of a western gunfighter was he shot first and used his head later.  If at all.  And forget abut two guys squaring off on Main Street.  If you think that happened - especially where the "good guy" let the "bad guy" draw first - you might want to disconnect your cable TV for about six months and try reading a few books.  Oh, sure, Marshal Dillon would do it.  Pa Cartwright and his brood would do it.  Jim West would do it. 

But let's think about a REAL gunfighter for a minute.  Even one who was (nominally at least) on the side of the law.

As Henny Youngman would have said, take James Butler Hickock.  Please.

By that time Wild Bill was hired as marshal of Abilene, he already had a reputation as a deadly gunman.  This was due to merit.  After all, he WAS a deadly gunman.

But his reputation was also partly due to an newspaper interview with Henry Morton Stanley years earlier.  That was, by the way, the same Henry Morton Stanley who years later presumed he had found Dr. Livingston.

One of the things Wild Bill told Henry that he reckoned he had killed nigh on a hundred men.  And Henry presumed it was true and dutifully wrote it down.  After that not many people cared to mess with Wild Bill.

But that didn't always keep the unruly in line.  In 1871 Marshal Hickock found himself confronting a bunch of rambunctious cowboys on Main Street in Abilene.  Here his interview with Henry didn't help.

In some ways it wasn't really that smart to have former Union soldiers as cowtown marshals.  No Texan wanted it known that he let a northern carpetbagger take his gun.  As one old time cowpuncher said "Back home, one Texas ranger could arrest the lot of them.  But up north you'd have to kill them."

So a bunch of cowboys just off from a trail drive wouldn't have cared less what a [darn] Yankee told them to do.  And a reputation built on what he told an Englishman whose idea of a good time was hunting missionaries would count for even less.  So Wild Bill or no, the drovers decided they would parade around town with their pistols, brandished and prominent.  And just as naturally Wild Bill told them to put them up while they were in town.

So with a long haired perfumed former scout for the Union Army with a high pitched voice telling them to simmer down, the Texans were equally determined to rowdy it up.  The odd were stacked against Wild Bill and he knew it.

As things began to look really nasty, Wild Bill heard foot steps approaching from behind.  So he whirled and fired.  And killed his own deputy who was running up to help.

That's the way the real western gunfighters acted.  Or they did if they wanted to stay alive.

So back at Tombstone, Doc and Morgan didn't stop to think.  Their instincts said Billy was going for his gun.  So they cocked their single action revolvers and began to draw.

Virgil heard the clicks and saw what was happening.  So he called out - not to Billy and Frank - but to Doc and Morgan.

"Hold on!  I don't want that!"

Too late.   Doc and Morgan fired almost together.  Morgan at Billy and Doc at Frank.

Frank MAY have been surrendering too.  Or he may really have made a move for his gun.  After all, there's no reason to believe that all the Clantons and McLaurys acted the same way to Virgil's order.  Frank was clearly the one more likely to resist so it's about fifty-fifty that he was going for his gun.

But going back to Billy.  Although he had been willing to give up his gun and was doing just that, Morgan's bullet in his guts probably changed his mind.  Instead of handing over the weapon, Billy now changed his action from giving up his gun to drawing his gun.  And he began to shoot.

Now if you were a bystander, like H. F. Sills, what would you think? You heard Virgil order "Throw up your hands" and saw Billy draw his his gun and begin to shoot.  You could easily have thought that Billy had  intended to fight from the first.

But wait a minute, you might say. Mr. Sills said Wyatt and Billy shot first. Not Morgan and Doc.  How about that?

Well, for one thing, Mr. Sills had never seen either Morgan or Wyatt before the gunfight.  So there's no way at the time he could have known who was who once the bullets began to fly.

Next, Mr. Sills was standing 200 feet away.  And the Earps were facing AWAY from him.

And the Earp brothers looked a lot alike anyway.  So much that even people who knew them would sometimes confuse them.  One night (and admittedly it was dark) Johnny Behan spent a few minutes talking to one of the Earps.  He thought it was Virgil and only later did he find out it was Wyatt.

But here's the real kicker.  Mr. Sills could not even have SEEN Wyatt.

Historians usually have Wyatt standing inside the lot with his back to Fly's boarding house.  With Mr. Sills standing down at the corner of Fremont and Fourth, he would have seen Morgan, Doc and (maybe) Virgil.  But not Wyatt.

Now if you take Mr. Sills vantage point, you'll see that the smoke from Doc's gun would have billowed out right in front of Billy.  So with Billy drawing his gun (so Mr. Sills thought) and the smoke from Doc's (and Morgan's) gun puffing out at about the same time, Mr. Sills thought the first shots were from Wyatt (really Morgan) and Billy (really Doc).

And after the gunfight who would he have seen?  Wyatt, of course, since he was the only one left on his feet. A bystander would have identified him and, lo and behold, you have Mr. Sills ready to swear Wyatt Earp and Billy Clanton fired the first shots.

But hold on one more time there, you say.  Wyatt ALSO said he and Billy shot first.  And since he testified before Mr. Sills, so how could Wyatt have known what Mr. Sills was going to say?

Easy.

His brother, Jim, told him.

Remember the one cryptic comment that Mr. Sills made at the hearing?  When he said he had not talked to anyone "direct?"   But he did speak to Jim Earp?

And no one asked him what he said to Jim?

Well, what WOULD you have said to Jim if you had been Mr. Sills?

For one thing you would have told him what happened.

"You know, Mr. Earp," Mr. Sills would have said, speaking indirect.  "I saw it all. Wyatt and Billy drew their guns at the same time and fired the first shots.  I'd swear to it."

So off Jim skedaddled to Wyatt and spilled the whole story.  There would be one completely unbiased witness who was prepared to swear he and Billy fired the first shots.

If you didn't mind a little perjury (and that was the least of Wyatt's worries), you could now testify that you, Wyatt, - an honorable faro dealer and saloon keeper at present - shot at Frank and Billy shot at you.  AND best of all, you could say Billy was drawing his gun from the first.

And have everything backed up by an unbiased and impartial witness.

Beautiful.  So the cowboys were resisting arrest and Doc and Morgan were off the hook.

From then on the fight played itself out.

You might think that most Earp Champions would believe Wyatt's story about him and Billy shooting first.  That's not the case.  Sure, some do, but not all that many.  Most seem to think that Doc and Morgan really fired first, and a majority actually put Doc as the real culprit. Even Josie believed Doc fired first.

But the first two shots were fired almost at the same time and no by-stander could really tell which was first.  So all in all, this "reconstruction" (sc. guess) of what happened seems pretty good.

And after all this, who do the Earp Champions blame for the fight?  Even those who think Doc and Morgan fired first?

You guessed it.  Joseph Ike Clanton.

I mean, they say, Ike - that big, fat, slob of a blowhard - had wandered around town for five or six hours trying to start a gunfight.  And when it finally happens, what does he do?  He runs away and leaves his younger brother to die on the field of battle.  Yep, it's all Ike's fault.

But let's be honest.  It was DOC who started the fight for crying out loud.  Doc.  John Henry Holliday, DDS, 1872, Philadelphia College of Dental Surgery.  It was DOC who threatened Ike the night before and it was DOC (with Morgan) that fired the first shots.  Saying Ike started the fight is stretching it.  REALLY stretching it.

But what about Virgil?  HE was the man in charge.  HE deputized Doc.  So, despite Spicer's waffling on the subject, was Virgil really to blame?  That's a subjective judgment, but you can ask another, better question.  Should Virgil have been held criminally liable?  Maybe even as an accessory to murder?

To answer this question, a legal opinion was sought from a licensed practicing attorney.  Since it was provided free of charge, the counsel wishes to remain anonymous, lest he be ostracized from the ranks of reputable members of the bar.

All right, then.  Was Virgil guilty?

Even by today's standards, probably not.  Virgil's intents were, after all, within the scope of his authority.  He DID have authority to appoint deputies.  And he WAS charged with disarming men who were carrying firearms within the city.  If that's all he intended and he acted in good faith, then even if things went haywire, he had (or could claim) what is known as "sovereign immunity."  That would probably hold today, and it certainly would have held in the nineteenth century west.

Finally, what about the biggest mystery in the universe?  WAS Tom McLaury armed?

This is split down party lines: the Earp/Doc Party and the Clanton/McLaury Party.  Based on the evidence alone, you can take your pick.

And what's really strange here is that both sides are willing to give in a bit to the other.  Some Earp Champions concede the possibility that Tom wasn't armed.  Even Wyatt seemed to hedge a bit on this.  And there are some Earp Detractors admit he possibly was.   After all Johnny Behan himself conceded he hadn't searched Tom all that thoroughly, leaving open the possibility that Tom had a gun.

There WERE some impartial witnesses who that said they saw Tom fire a pistol.  Of course, they didn't testify at the inquest, but they did speak about it later  Doesn't this mean Tom had a gun?

Not really.  With the bullets flying, black-powder smoke billowing, horses panicking, and by-standers scrambling , it would be easy - all too easy - for anyone to confuse Frank (who everyone agree did fire) with Tom.  So eyewitness testimony here really doesn't mean that much.

And more to the point, the Earp Detractors say, Tom had actually checked his gun before the fight.  The saloon keeper swore to that and the gun was picked up at his bar after the fight.

Of course, Earp Champions say this was a ruse and that Tom got another gun.

To bolster their claim, they cite one witness who said he saw Tom go into a butcher shop and come out with a bulge in his pocket "like he had a gun." Actually a butcher shop is a funny place to buy a gun.  And for some reasons the Earp Champions don't want to accept the obvious interpretation that Tom bought a steak.

But for Tom to have checked his gun and then picked up another one would mean that Tom would have to have an incredible amount of telepathic prescience.  He would have to know there was going to be a gunfight and it would later be debated by historians if he was armed or not.  This would also suggest he knew he was going to get killed.

Anyway, if he had a gun, the Earp Detractors say, where did it go?  How can you answer that?

Easy, say the Champions, Johnny Behan snuck it out. He picked it up after the fight and hid it knowing this would make the Earps look like cold blooded murderers.

But there's a few things wrong with this picture, too.

First hiding a gun was risky.  Johnny had no idea who had seen the fight or what they would testify to.  At the time he had no idea if one or a hundred people would swear they had seen Tom shoot a gun.

And remember there were scads of people around.  Although most had ducked for cover, others had come running down the street once they heard the shots.  If you time the 50 yard Fremont Street Dash, you have a some fellows arriving about the time Tom went down for the count. Would Johnny Behan have had the presence of mind (not to mention quickness of hand and sheer guts) to conceal an Army Colt revolver as everyone and his brother ran up?

Not the Johnny Behan we've come to know and love.

So you can take your pick here.  But there's less problems with thinking Tom wasn't armed.

So that's the story (maybe) of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

So now we can begin.  Yes?