As the last of the gun smoke cleared, people began to arrive from all directions. Some had not been far away but had sought cover when the shooting began. Others had heard the shots or reports of a shoot-out in the vacant lot off Fremont Street and made their way to it. Given how far Tombstone had progressed as a prosperous and growing city in only a few years, such a sudden explosion of deadly violence was indeed a remarkable event. Rather than a stagecoach holdup on a dark, remote road, this had been a bullet-riddled collision between the two forces competing for control of the city.
After some initial hesitation, several men picked up the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton and carried them into a house on Third Street across from the vacant lot. Frank was dead; the head shot had taken care of that. Tom would soon join him thanks to the two barrels of shotgun pellets Doc had fired. Billy, also hit more than once but conscious, claimed he had been murdered and begged to be allowed to die in peace. In less than an hour, and after being quieted with a shot of morphine, his wish was granted.
Moments after the three men had been carried off, the whistles at the Vizina mine began to blow. Someone there had been told the gunfire was caused by an attack of Indians or vengeful cowboys were already riding rampant through the city. Dozens of men, many being members of the Citizens Safety Committee, carrying rifles and pistols, burst out of their homes and offices and shops and saloons and rushed toward Fremont Street.
Allie Earp recalled that she and Louisa, Morgan’s wife, were sitting together sewing “when all of a sudden guns started roaring. The noise was awful it was so close. Lou laid down her hands in her lap and bent her head. I jumped up and ran out the door. I knew it had come at last.”
Mattie was already outside. However, she had curlers in her hair and did not want to be seen, so she ran back into her house instead of joining Allie. As Allie described the next minute, she “flew up the street. People all over were running toward the O.K. Corral. The butcher’s wife as I ran past caught me by the arm and slapped a sunbonnet on my head. One of the McLowery [sic] brothers was lying dead on the corner of Third Street.” Allie was not distracted by the body: “All I had a mind for was Virge.”
She pushed through the crowd of onlookers. “I knelt down beside Virge,” Allie reported. “The doctor was bending over his legs, probing for the bullet. Virge was getting madder and madder from the pain. At last the doctor gave it up.” Apparently, the bullet had gone through a fleshy part of the leg.
The only lawman not wounded was Wyatt. He was checking the conditions of Virgil, Morgan, and Doc when Johnny Behan came up to him. “I have to arrest you, Wyatt,” he said.
The tall and slender man looked down at the sheriff and stated, “I won’t be arrested. You deceived me, Johnny. You told me they were not armed.” Behan may have looked confused, so Wyatt dismissed him: “I won’t be arrested. I am here to answer for what I have done. I am not going to leave town.”
The sheriff walked away. Morgan and Virgil were taken to the latter’s house. No one seemed to notice Doc leaving the lot. He limped the short distance to Fly’s boardinghouse and went to his room. Big Nose Kate was there, relieved he was alive. Doc appeared distraught and said, “This is just awful. Awful.” She asked if he was hurt. He tugged his shirt up to expose on one hip a red streak two inches long. He had been luckier than Virgil and Morgan—and, of course, the three dead men.
Doc did not linger in the room. Possibly fortified by a shot of whiskey, he grabbed his nickel-plated pistol and went out again. He did not know how badly wounded the Earp brothers were. Another reason for returning to the lot was he had left Wyatt on his own and it occurred to Doc that at any moment a group of cowboys could ride into Tombstone seeking retribution.
Ironically, the first man arrested in connection with the gunfight was Ike Clanton, when he was located cowering on Toughnut Street. Ike was actually relieved to be arrested because he feared the Earps would come gunning for him. He would spend that night in jail, surrounded by ten men Behan had deputized to guard him. Phin Clanton would visit him there, after viewing the body of the youngest member of the family.
That evening, Sheriff Behan went to Virgil’s house. When Allie informed him that Behan was walking toward the house, Virgil demanded, “Give me my gun.” He was told that “it was only Johnny Behan,” but he again demanded the Winchester rifle leaning against the wall. Allie gave it to him and also put Morgan’s pistol within reach. For more protection, a mattress was stacked in front of the window. If anyone was going to get to Virgil and Morgan, they would have to enter the bedroom where the brothers lay. James Earp was there, too, and another one of the few times he wore a gun.
Behan was allowed in. The conversation was brief. Virgil, as both a deputy U.S. marshal and city marshal, had done his duty and was not about to submit to Johnny’s authority. Behan said he had to arrest Wyatt and Doc. Virgil accused the sheriff of fixing to hang them instead, aided by a posse of vigilante cowboys. With the atmosphere becoming more hostile, and being outgunned, Behan left.
Wyatt arrived at Virgil’s house later that evening. He told the others that Sheriff Behan indeed intended to arrest Doc and not just him but all three brothers, and Wyatt declared he would not stand for it. After he left, Morgan said to Allie, “If they come, you’ll know they got Wyatt.” She and Louisa locked the doors and stacked more mattresses against the windows, Then, Allie recalled, she “sat there with the six-shooter all night. I would have used it too, if they had come to kill Virge and Morg.”
The night passed quietly, but there was much commotion in Tombstone the next day. George Parsons had been at work in the mountains the day before, and when he arrived on Thursday afternoon he noted, “Much excitement in town and people apprehensive and scary.” Having been informed of the gunfight, Parsons commented, “Desperate men and a desperate encounter. Bad blood has been brewing some time and I was not surprised at the outbreak. It is only a wonder it has not happened before. A raid is feared upon the town by the cowboys and measures have been taken to protect life and property.”
In a letter written October 29, Clara Brown told her San Diego readers of “the most tragic and bloody occurrence” of three days earlier. “The inmates of every house in town were greatly startled by the sudden report of fire arms, about 3 p.m., discharged with such lightning-like rapidity that it could be compared only to the explosion of a bunch of fire-crackers.”
Taking a defiant tone was John Clum. The headline in the next day’s Epitaph began, YESTERDAY’S TRAGEDY: THREE MEN HURLED INTO ETERNITY. The article was at first a pretty straightforward piecing together of how “the storm burst in all its fury yesterday.” As it continued, however, Clum staunchly supported the actions of Virgil Earp to try to enforce the law. “Being fired upon they had to defend themselves, which they did most bravely,” he told Epitaph readers. “So long as our peace officers make effort to preserve the peace and put down highway robbery—which the Earp brothers have done—they will have the support of all good citizens.”
As to the rumors that there would be a raid on the town to get even for the deaths of the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton, Clum insisted, “If the present lesson is not sufficient to teach the cow-boy element that they cannot come into the streets of Tombstone, in broad daylight, armed with six-shooters and Henry rifles to hunt down their victims, then the citizens will most assuredly take such steps to preserve the peace.”
Also in his journal entry of October 27, Parsons had fretted, “It has been a bad scare, and worst is not yet over, some think.” There was a clear demonstration that day such a concern was warranted.
After the bodies of the three dead men had been examined by the coroner, Henry Matthews, they were hauled by wagons to Ritter and Ream Undertakers. There, instead of being discreetly prepared for a funeral service, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton in their open coffins were propped up in the firm’s window. “Only twenty-four hours earlier, the faces of the three men had radiated pride, anger, fear, and despair as they had fought for their lives on a Tombstone street,” writes Paula Mitchell Marks in And Die in the West. “Now their features shared the bland relaxation of death.”
A sign above them blared in large capital letters, MURDERED IN THE STREETS OF TOMBSTONE. Should the cowboys gallop into town with guns blazing, they apparently had allies available.
An estimated three hundred people attended the funeral on Friday, October 28. The bodies of the three men were “neatly and tastefully dressed” and in “handsome caskets with heavy silver trimmings,” according to the Tombstone Daily Nugget. A plate on each casket provided the occupant’s name, age, place of birth, and “October 26, 1881.” The McLaurys were in one hearse, Billy Clanton in another one. The wagon immediately behind the hearses contained Phin and Ike Clanton. Behind them were at least two dozen wagons and carriages and a stagecoach, plus individuals on horses or walking.
The two-block-long funeral procession was accompanied by the city’s brass band playing mournful music. “It was a most impressive and saddening sight,” The Tombstone Epitaph observed. Even the fallen marshal Fred White had not attracted so many mourners. It would seem that with this large a crowd for men who were not advocates of law and order in Tombstone, the gunfight two days earlier had not settled matters.
At the cemetery, Tom and Frank McLaury, aged twenty-eight and thirty-two, were buried together, nineteen-year-old Billy Clanton in a grave a few feet away. The crowd slowly dispersed. People returned to their homes and businesses. The saloons saw a surge of customers.
Clara Brown was mystified by the turnout, telling her audience of several days later in San Diego that “such a public manifestation of sympathy from so large a portion of the camp seemed reprehensible when it is remembered that the deceased were nothing more or less than thieves.” She added, “The divided state of society in Tombstone is illustrated by this funeral.”
The Earps and Doc Holliday were about to be arrested on warrants sworn out by Ike Clanton and Johnny Behan. Reluctantly, Mayor Clum agreed with others on the city council and suspended Virgil as chief of police, appointing James Flynn to the position. But the focus was mostly on Wyatt and Doc for having done the most damage and emerging the most intact. As the Epitaph informed readers about the gun battle, “Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit. Doc Holliday was as calm as though at target practice and fired rapidly.”
A court proceeding before Judge Wells Spicer was about to begin, and there was hope that a clear picture would emerge of what happened that Wednesday afternoon in the lot off Fremont Street. Many citizens worried, though, that what would become known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was not a conclusion to the violence but a prelude of more to come.
“One must not judge the whole by a part,” Clara Brown advised, “but it is undeniable that Cochise county started out upon its career hampered by a set of officials which might be improved; and doubtless will be at the next election.”
This was an optimistic view some citizens shared. Perhaps the burst of violence of October 26 had bought time for tempers to cool off and Tombstone could begin its next chapter—a peaceful one with continuing prosperity. But that would not happen. Instead, the next chapter would be written in blood, and it flowed faster when Wyatt Earp was forced to seek vengeance.