Upon the sidewalks ran streams of the blood of brave men, and the dead and wounded wrestled with each other like butchered whales on harpooning day. The “finest work” and neatest polishes were said to have been executed by Mr. Wyatt Earp. It was not until towards morning that the smoke cleared away, the din of battle subsided and the bibulous city found a little repose.
—Ford County Globe
It was expected that cowboys would cause trouble but not the soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Dodge. They did their share of off-duty drinking and whoring, but their superiors expected them to return in one piece. Any friction with Marshal Bassett and Sheriff Masterson was best avoided. And the Bluebellies were treated with extra tolerance by the lawmen and the saloon keepers because one never knew when they might be called upon for help with an Indian uprising (as would soon happen) or some other calamity.
This mostly peaceful relationship broke down one night in early August 1878. A group of off-duty soldiers had ventured to one of the saloons south of the Dead Line. The gamblers there were not as respectful of the uniform, and they took the soldiers for just about everything they had. The soldiers in turn expressed doubts about the integrity of the games and the gamblers. When a fight broke out, other occupants of the saloon backed the gamblers. The soldiers were on the losing end of the brawl, and they ended up out on the street.
They could have simply licked their wounds and resumed routine life back at the fort, but this particular outcome to a Dodge City outing rankled. They complained to their commanding officer. Instead of saying, “I told you so,” the officer decided the gamblers and comrades who had sided with them in the fight deserved a lesson.
The next night, the officer marched a contingent of armed men across the Dead Line to the same saloon, which once again was doing a brisk business even without customers wearing uniforms. The soldiers lined up in formation outside one side of the saloon, raised their rifles, and at the officer’s command they fired. They did this twice more, then marched back to Front Street. Wyatt or Bat or maybe both came running when they heard the shots but knew better than to interfere, especially after learning the shots were aimed high enough up the side wall to harm no one inside. The message had been delivered, and when the gamblers picked themselves up off the floor, their feelings toward the residents of Fort Dodge had warmed considerably.
During this time, Wyatt saw little of his brothers other than James. Newton, the oldest of Nicholas’s sons, lived in California. Nicholas and Virginia Ann had lived in Temescal, California, for a time, then pushed on to Colton, also in California. There the Earp patriarch operated the Gem Saloon, advertising in the local newspaper that it offered “Fancy Cocktails, Tom and Jerry, at all times whenever called for. Call on N.P. Earp and test his superb Tom & Jerry. He is always on hand and ready to wait on customers.”
Morgan spent most of his time in Montana and had fallen for a woman he had met. The youngest, Warren, was also out west, wandering in and out of Colton, trying to figure out what to do in life. Virgil was still in Arizona, and it did not seem like he was coming back anytime soon.
Despite the blistering heat and the arid landscape, Virgil and Allie were happy enough in the territory that they had no intention of leaving. Virgil missed his brothers, of course, especially Wyatt, but his idea was not to return east but to get them to come farther west.
He was making a good living. He had a sawmill on his property, and he sold the lumber he produced. People felt safe on the stagecoaches he drove, including John Gosper, who, according to the territorial laws, served as acting governor of Arizona when John Frémont was away. This happened frequently, because the former explorer found his territory and his duties rather dull. On September 3, Virgil’s income ticked up a few notches when he was appointed the night watchman of Prescott. Two months later, Virgil was elected as one of the town’s two constables. In this role he often worked alongside Crawley Dake, who had replaced William Standefer as U.S. marshal the previous June.
For the next year, life continued to go well for Virgil and Allie. Though it would mean more responsibility, in November 1879, he would not be able to resist the offer to become deputy U.S. marshal for the area that included Tombstone. That would mean picking up and moving again, from the middle of Arizona Territory south and east to the booming town of short adobe buildings that was between Tucson and the border with Mexico.
The new job evidently did not mean Virgil had to arrest every person exhibiting bad behavior. One day in December when he was driving his wagon toward Tombstone, a stagecoach rushed past, so close that one of Virgil’s horses was injured. When he arrived at the station the stagecoach was still there. Instead of offering the driver a night in jail, Virgil, as he later reported, “thumped the pudding” out of him. No one messed with Virgil Earp. And he had taught Wyatt well.
Too much alcohol again contributed to an ongoing deadly year in Dodge City. Perhaps the peace officers could not prevent every confrontation, but they could make sure the consequences didn’t become worse.
On September 8, two citizens, Arista Webb and Barney Martin, went from drinking buddies to brawlers. Webb punched the smaller Martin, and the latter, once he picked himself up off the floor, apologized for whatever he had done to rile his friend and left the saloon. When Webb left, he may not have noticed his former friend sitting on a bench in front of his shop (he was a tailor), rubbing his swelling jaw. When Webb got home he still hadn’t sobered up or cooled off. He got on his horse carrying a Winchester and returned to downtown. Martin was still on the bench, and Webb brought the barrel of the rifle down on the top of his skull with such force that Martin was killed.
Maybe he was appalled by what he did, because by the time it occurred to Webb to turn his horse and attempt a getaway, several men who had witnessed the crime had hold of him. In a minute Charlie Bassett was on the scene, and he handcuffed Webb. The crowd around the marshal and his prisoner kept growing, and the angry citizens demanded that Webb be strung up on the nearest lantern pole. The situation could get out of hand quick, so, smartly, Bassett called out to whoever would listen to “get Bat Masterson.”
When the sheriff showed up he shouldered his way through the crowd to put Webb between him and Bassett. There were still only two lawmen in the middle of the angry mob, but they were two of the best. Bat and Bassett each kept a hand on a six-shooter as they led Webb through the crowd and to jail. They had resisted mob rule and saved Webb’s life—though that only postponed the inevitable. Four months later he was convicted of cold-blooded murder and was hauled off to be executed at the Kansas State Penitentiary.
That same September, Clay Allison arrived.
In his book Wild West Characters, Dale Pierce offers a typical appraisal of the man born in 1841 in Wayne County, Tennessee: “Robert ‘Clay’ Allison was no romantic hero of the West, but a strange, unpredictable psychopath who drank heavily and enjoyed the company of ladies of the evening, when he wasn’t shooting people for illogical reasons.” What better man to get rid of the meddlesome assistant marshal and return Dodge City to its rambunctious roots?
Allison had served in the Confederate Army twice. His first hitch began six months after the siege of Fort Sumter in South Carolina started the Civil War, but after only three months he was given a medical discharge. A doctor who examined him reported that because of a blow to the head several years earlier “emotional or physical excitement produces paroxysms of a mixed character, partly epileptic and partly maniacal.” In September 1862, Allison managed to join the 9th Tennessee Cavalry, serving with this unit, at one time under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, until it surrendered in May 1865.
After the war, he was a member of the burgeoning Ku Klux Klan until he made his way to Texas. While crossing the Red River on a ferry, Allison got into a dispute with the man operating the boat. It was settled with knives, and the boatman was left lying in a ditch on the other side of the river. For unknown reasons, but no doubt unsavory ones, while employed as a cowhand in the Panhandle, Allison was referred to as the Wolf of the Washita. Into the early 1870s, he was involved in a string of violent incidents, including shooting himself in the foot while trying to steal army mules. The resulting limp made him more surly and confrontational, if that was possible.
In the fall of 1875, Allison had busied himself terrorizing the area around Cimarron, New Mexico. He and two brothers had established a ranch there. Because of political upheavals throughout the territory, which he believed threatened his ranch, Allison lashed out in every direction, and a number of killings and maulings were attributed to him. People scattered and hid under counters and behind bars when Allison rode into town. One day, rather incautiously, Francisco “Pancho” Griego did not. He and Allison had previously had a couple of standoffs. In early November 1875, Griego accepted an invitation from Allison to have a drink at Lambert’s bar in the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, thinking the gunman wanted to settle their differences.
Poor Francisco was wrong. After the bartender had served them and gone back into the kitchen, Allison’s six-shooter fired three times. The next day, Allison was back at Lambert’s. It was reported that he performed a “war dance” where he had killed Griego. Then he took his clothes off and continued cavorting, with a ribbon tied to his penis. A cowed court ruled on November 10 that the death was justifiable homicide—the justifiable part being if Griego was stupid enough to think Allison would make peace with a handshake, he deserved to die.
Wearing a badge did not impress Allison. Late in 1876, he and a brother, John, were drinking at the Olympic Dance Hall in Las Animas, Colorado. Their behavior went from bad to worse, and close to midnight Constable Charles Faber and two deputies entered to arrest the Allison brothers. When John turned to the lawmen, Faber did not hesitate: he pulled the trigger of his 10-gauge shotgun, hitting John in the chest. Clay jerked his pistol and killed the constable. He then dragged the body over to his brother, bleeding on the floor, and witnesses reported he shouted, “Here’s the man who shot you, John, and I killed the son of a bitch!” John Allison survived, and a grand jury refused to indict Clay.
Allison spent much of the next two years ranching and terrorizing; then during the last week of the summer of 1878 he rode into Dodge City. Several accounts contend that he was looking specifically for Wyatt Earp because he meant to collect the rumored bounty, or because George Hoy had been a friend of his and he wanted to avenge his death. If anyone could put the town back on the road to lawless perdition, Clay Allison could. Often described as a “shootist,” when he arrived it did seem too much of a coincidence that the notorious gunman happened upon Dodge City.
The day after Allison rode in, it was reported to Wyatt that the shootist was walking the streets wearing a pair of pistols and uttering “a mouth full of threats.” The assistant marshal strapped his own guns on and sent someone to find Bat. It made sense that with trouble brewing, Wyatt would call upon a friend known for a cool head under pressure—and one wearing a badge.
More than a few citizens of the city had heard that Allison was in town, so a crowd had gathered to witness the expected gunplay. Wyatt approached the dangerous visitor, who was standing on a sidewalk on Front Street, outside the Long Branch Saloon. Meanwhile, Bat, carrying a shotgun, made a more discreet approach. He would be next up if Allison got to Wyatt, and word was that a band of cowboys from Texas had quietly entered the city to support Allison’s play.
Some members of the crowd had to be holding their breath as Wyatt drew close and a conversation began. The only account of that discussion was the one Wyatt gave the San Francisco Examiner eighteen years later: “His right hand was stealing round to his pistol pocket, but I made no move. Only I watched him narrowly. With my own right hand I had a firm grip on my six-shooter, and with my left I was ready to grab Allison’s gun the moment he jerked it out. He studied the situation in all its bearings for the space of a second or two.”
What Allison saw he didn’t like. Wyatt might be faster on the draw, and there had to be other lawmen nearby. “I guess I’ll go round the corner,” he said, and Wyatt agreed.
But the assistant marshal was not out of danger. That band of men with a grudge against Wyatt—he referred to them as “ten or a dozen of the worst Texans in town”—was hiding in a store owned by Bob Wright. In their hands were Winchester rifles, and their intention was to help Allison escape after he killed Wyatt or, if he failed, to kill Wyatt themselves. As Wyatt walked down the street he was about to walk past Wright’s store when he saw a signal from Bat, who had spotted the men. As Wyatt backed away, Allison reappeared, this time on his horse. He beckoned to Wyatt, who responded, “I can hear you all right here. I think you came here to fight me, and if you did you can have it right now.”
But before they could go for their guns, Wright ran up between them. Bat believed that Wright was part of the plot to kill Wyatt, so Bat had quickly found him, and with the shotgun aimed at him Bat warned, “If this fight comes up, Wright, you’re the first man I’m going to kill.” With this as motivation, Wright pleaded with Allison to leave town and not provoke a battle.
After considering, Allison said, “Earp, I believe you’re a pretty good man from what I’ve seen of you. Do you know that these coyotes sent for me to make a fight with you and kill you? Well, I’m going to ride out of town, and I wish you good luck.” And ride out of Dodge City he did.
A few days after the confrontation, Bat retrieved the same shotgun he had carried to back up Wyatt and went to the outskirts of town, after telling a deputy he was going to do some target practice. There, he discovered that the shotgun was loaded not with buckshot but with birdshot—ammunition very unlikely to have done much to deter attacking cowboys or a psychopathic shootist.
For the next several years, Allison was involved in more violent incidents, including men getting killed, but he always escaped punishment. And then he changed. In 1881, soon before turning forty, Allison married Dora McCulloch, the sister of a sister-in-law. Their first daughter was born in 1885. Two years later Dora was pregnant with their second daughter and the ranching and farming family was living peacefully in Pecos, Texas. Driving a wagon on July 3, Allison was going too fast approaching a draw, and while trying to halt his horses he was flung from the wagon and died of a broken neck—the same neck that many a time had escaped the hangman’s noose.