Tombstone got its start in 1877 when prospector Ed Schieffelin filed two mining claims in the San Pedro Valley in the southern Arizona hills. He had been told by local soldiers at Fort Huachuca that the place was crawling with Apaches, scorpions, and rattlesnakes and that he’d only find his tombstone there, so he named his claims Graveyard and Tombstone. Schieffelin struck a rich vein of silver. Soon a steady trickle of miners arrived to stake their own claims. As the trickle turned into a flood, saloons, shops, and boarding houses sprang up. The American West had another boomtown. By 1879 the town had a population of 900 and even had a newspaper, the Nugget. The next year former Indian agent John Clum opened the Epitaph and soon the two papers were on opposite sides of pretty much every political issue.
The town was well situated on Goose Flats, an open upland with an elevation of 4,500ft that cut down on the heat somewhat. There was a pleasant vista of hills and mountains all around, the biggest being the rugged Dragoon Mountains eight miles to the east, where Apaches still prowled.
Wyatt arrived with his wife Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock (she used “Earp” as a last name while she was with Wyatt) in December of 1879, along with brothers Virgil and Jim and their families. All three brothers seem to have had common-law marriages; no marriage certificates have ever been discovered. Virgil had been appointed U.S. deputy marshal, his responsibilities including investigating federal offenses and helping local law enforcement with local problems. Wyatt rode shotgun on Wells Fargo stagecoaches, guarding miners’ bankrolls and money transfers. Morgan arrived in July of 1880 and also found work as a shotgun messenger and was at times a special deputy. One-armed Jim tended bar. Warren drifted in and out of Tombstone.
While Wyatt earned a regular income at Wells Fargo, he was also a prominent gambler. His favorite game was faro, and like Doc Holliday he played it with great skill. All of the Earp brothers got together to stake mining claims, which they saw as the real path to riches in this dusty town. Wyatt and his brothers made tidy profits by staking claims and reselling them to investors. Mining was Wyatt’s true passion and the one profession he never entirely gave up.
Photograph/postcard of Ed Schieffelin, founder of Tombstone. The postcard was a promotional piece for the C.S. Fly Studios (a.k.a. Fly’s Photo Gallery) in Tombstone. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)
Tombstone has entered American mythology as the stereotypical shoot-’em-up Western town. This was only half the truth. It was a functioning community with all the regular institutions, one where people worked hard. The reality of Tombstone for most people was a dreary ten-hour day, six-day week working the mines. They lived in wretched shacks as dirty as the mines they worked. A miner’s most prized possession wasn’t a gun but a cat. Cats were essential to good sleep, as they ate the rats that would crawl over the miners at night and disturb their slumber. A miner had to guard his cat, as cat theft was one of the most common crimes.
Although the saloons, whorehouses, and gambling halls get the most attention, Tombstone also had a thriving retail district that grew in size and quality with every year. There was even an ice-cream stand that was a favorite of Wyatt Earp’s. Churches started almost immediately after the town’s founding, usually in structures almost as flimsy as the miners’ shacks. In 1880, diarist George Parsons wrote about attending one service and hardly being able to hear the preacher because of the noise coming from the dance hall next door. Parsons had left a respectable job as a bank clerk in San Francisco to seek his fortune in the mines. His new home put his conservative sensibilities sorely to the test. He noted in his journal, “One must rely entirely upon himself and trust no one else.” His diary is the most complete account of life in Tombstone at that time, and is also an account of how a straitlaced clerk became a rough Indian hunter and loyal partisan of the Earps.
The ladies of the evening who worked next to the church often attended services. On the Frontier, the strict divisions between respectability and sin were blurred. Perhaps the menfolk were a little more accepting because of the severe shortage of other women in the town’s early days. With few respectable women around, miners plunked down their hard-earned cash to have a drink or a dance with girls such as Crazy Horse Lil, Lizette the Flying Nymph or, if they were really desperate, Madam Moustache. There were specialists too, as one business card attests: “Elderly gentlemen would do well to ask for Maxine in the upper parlor. She is especially adept at coping with matters peculiar to advanced age and a general run-down condition.” Locals had to compete for the ladies’ attentions with the soldiers from nearby Fort Huachuca, who came into town every payday to whoop it up.
Tombstone in 1881, when the mining town was at the height of its boom period. It would continue to expand for a few years before the mines started to play out in the late 1880s and the town slipped into decline.
The first cowboys in the Southwest were, of course, the Spanish and later Mexican vaqueros. While this has been forgotten in modern times, back in 1899 they were a star attraction in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, where their tricks with the lariat amazed audiences. The rope tricks had practical applications on the range, but the flashy costumes would have been left in the bunkhouse. (LoC)
Life on the Frontier forts was hard. Even the commanding officers, such as this one c. 1870 at Camp Colorado in the Arizona Territory, lived rough with their families. It was no wonder, then, that soldiers coming into towns like Tombstone went out on sprees. (LoC)
Civilization was beginning to get a foothold despite all this carousing. The first school opened in 1880, a slapdash affair with a flour barrel for a teacher’s desk and seats made of planks set on kegs. By the end of that year Tombstone had an estimated population of up to 7,000. New theaters appeared and competed with the saloons and dance halls for the miners’ money. As was usual with these Frontier boomtowns, most people who got rich did so not by mining but by “mining the miners.” Ed Schieffelin himself got into the act by building Schieffelin Hall, at 130ft long the largest adobe structure in the country at that time. It was two storeys high, could seat 700, and doubled as the Masonic Hall. Class acts from California performed there. The Bird Cage was another popular theater, with less classy acts and a more riotous audience. Today tourists can still see bullet holes in its ceiling. Thus entertainment befitting both the higher and lower brows could be had in Tombstone. As Parsons noted in his diary one day, “Hanging in the A.M. and Dance in the P.M. Good combination.”
Tombstone in the early days is richly described by Clara Spalding Brown. Her husband was a mining engineer and she wrote for the San Diego Union. Big-city papers often covered the boomtowns, which were the dreams of many Americans who never so much as visited one. In one article Brown wrote:
We beheld an embryo city of canvas, frame and adobe, scattered over a slope … It is a place more pretentious than I had imagined, and full of activity, notwithstanding the hundreds of loungers on the streets. The only attractive places visible are the liquor and gambling saloons, which are everywhere present and are carpeted and comfortably furnished … The camp is one of the dirtiest places in the world … and one is never sure of having a clean face, despite repeated ablutions. It is time to talk about dirt. The sod lies loose upon the surface, and is whirled into the air every day by a wind which almost amounts to a gale; it makes the eyes smart like the cinders from an engine; it penetrates into the houses, and covers everything with dust … The mercury gallivants around in the nineties, with altogether too high-minded ideas … we cannot obtain desirable food for hot weather; fresh vegetables are scarce, and the few fruits in the markets require a very large purse … The camp is considered a remarkably quiet one – only one murder since my arrival.
Tombstone may have had a low murder rate at this time, but fights were common and Apaches still roamed the hills, stealing livestock and occasionally attacking lone travelers. Tombstone had several Indian scares and on more than one occasion sent bands of armed men out to head off a feared attack. Diarist George Parsons went along for the fun.
The settlers had more to worry about than Apaches. Out in the desert lurked bandits who made their living rustling cattle in Mexico and selling them in Arizona. Sometimes they even plucked cattle from American herds. They soon earned the title “cowboy.” In most of the West, “cowboy” simply meant a Texan who handled cattle. Now in southern Arizona the name took on a pejorative meaning, distinct from the respectable “rangeman,” “drover,” or “cattleman.”
Frontier conditions gradually improved for the soldiers. These soldiers in 1886 at Fort Verde, Arizona, enjoyed much better conditions than even a commanding officer 15 years earlier. (LoC)
Arizona and New Mexico in 1881–82.
Life on the Frontier wasn’t all hard work and barroom brawls. The Dodge City Cowboy Band posed for this photo c. 1885. Cowboy bands were popular throughout the West, Tombstone included. (LoC)
The cowboys engaged in worse crimes too. They were probably responsible for the area’s first attempted stagecoach robbery in May of 1880, in which two gunmen fired upon a coach. The driver kept his head and managed to avoid the robbers, but not before he was shot in the leg and one of his passengers got killed.
Nobody knows how many cowboys there were. The number probably changed wildly over time. Some estimates run up to a couple of hundred, although they were never a rigid organization, more of a loose-knit group of associates who shared the same lifestyle. They stayed on ranches and in small towns, only coming into Tombstone to whoop it up in the closest thing approaching a big city.
Although the cowboys were hardly model citizens, many people supported or at least tolerated them. Their stolen cattle were sold at cut-rate prices, lowering the price of beef. Also, the cowboys had lots of money to spend. Virgil Earp noted with disgust:
As soon as they are in funds they ride into town, drink, gamble, and fight. They spend their money as free as water in saloons, dancehouses, or faro banks, and this is one reason they have so many friends in town. All that large class of degraded characters who gather the crumbs of such carouses stand ready to assist them out of any trouble or into any paying rascality.
Western Union Telegraph Office and Wells Fargo Express Office in Yuma, Arizona, 1878. These two companies were lifelines for many scattered communities on the Frontier, providing communication and economic links with the outside world. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)
While the cowboys had no real organization, many congregated around two influential ranching families: the Clantons and the McLaurys. Both had large spreads near Tombstone and sizeable herds. Many of the animals were actually stolen south of the border and sold cheap to these two ranching families. Being respected locals, it was easy for them to turn the cattle around and sell them in Tombstone at a good profit. A close look might have revealed that they had been rebranded, and rumors of stolen cattle brought up from the South were rife, but nobody much cared. There were still hard feelings from the Texan War of Independence and the Mexican War.
In July of 1880, Wyatt was appointed deputy sheriff for Tombstone and the surrounding area. Wyatt worked under city marshal Fred White and with fellow deputy sheriff Newton Babcock. It was a tough job. The low murder rate that Mrs Brown had mentioned was going up. An entry in Parsons’ diary for April of 1880 reads: “Several more shooting scrapes – but they are of such frequent occurrence that their novelty has ceased.” Drunken brawls were a nightly affair. Wyatt also had to deal with horse thieves and other criminals. He had a lot more than a few cattle rustlers to worry about.
As with his previous law-enforcement jobs, Wyatt proved highly capable. Local lawyer William Hunsaker wrote of Wyatt:
His conduct as a peace officer was above reproach. He was quiet, but absolutely fearless in the discharge of his duties. He usually went about in his shirtsleeves without a coat and with no weapon in sight. He was cool and never excited, but determined and courageous. He never stirred up trouble, but he never ran away from it or shirked responsibility. He was an ideal peace officer and a law-abiding citizen.
Things might have gone on fine for the cowboys if they hadn’t gotten too rowdy and greedy for their own good. They began to whoop it up in the small communities around Tombstone, shooting into houses and bullying passersby. Resentment grew, and then the cowboys seriously blundered. In July of 1880, some cowboys stole half a dozen U.S. Army mules from Camp Rucker, on the White River 75 miles east of Tombstone. Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp, plus Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams, went to find them. Along with some soldiers, they headed out to the McLaury ranch. They had received a tip that the McLaurys, Billy Clanton, and notorious cowboy Charles “Pony” Diehl (sometimes spelled “Deal”) were behind the thefts.
They arrived to find them rebranding the mules. A showdown looked likely but the posse, despite having the weight of the law and the U.S. Army on its side, grew nervous. The men were outgunned and on enemy territory. They finally struck a deal that if the mules were returned the next day, no charges would be brought. The mules were never returned and a war of words began between the local Army lieutenant and Frank McLaury, with both taking out newspaper notices to lambast the other. For good measure, McLaury warned Virgil Earp to mind his own business, or else. Virgil reminded him that keeping the law was very much his business and he’d arrest him if given a warrant. The Earp brothers were now marked men.
Cowboys branding cattle in Dakota Territory, c. 1888. Each rancher had his own distinct brand registered with the government. Rustlers became skilled at changing brands and often registered a brand that appeared similar to that of their favorite victim. (LoC)
It seems remarkable to the modern reader that rustlers could steal U.S. Army property and get away with it. In the days before modern criminal investigation methods, however, proof was hard to come by and Frontier courts were notably biased. Also, the rustlers were a power in the land. Perhaps the lieutenant feared he might be the victim of a nighttime shooting. They were not his mules, after all, so perhaps it would be best to let the whole matter drop. With Apaches, smugglers, and fugitives from the law to deal with, the Army must have decided to write off its losses and focus on more important work.
Doc Holliday arrived in Tombstone in September of 1880 and got into his first gunfight there a month later. His target survived with only a shot through the hand. Holliday was hauled before Judge Reilly, who didn’t like Wyatt Earp because Earp hadn’t taken his side in a petty political fight. The judge found Earp’s friend guilty. The witnesses for the prosecution failed to show up, however, and so the judge could only charge the dentist with assault and battery, giving him a fine.
A more serious shooting came that same month. Curley Bill Brocious and some of his fellow cowboys boozed it up on the night of October 28. Curley Bill was prominent among the rustlers, a 6ft-tall handsome charmer who had thick curly black hair that gave him his nickname. Many reports say he was honest with his friends and generally an affable fellow, but when he drank he turned into a ruthless gunman and bully.
Mrs Ah-Lum, also known as “China Mary,” was one of several hundred Chinese who lived in Tombstone during its heyday. She was one of the Chinese community’s leading figures, acting as a judge and moneylender. The white community knew her as the head of an employment agency that supplied honest Chinese labor, satisfaction guaranteed. She also owned a large general store stocked with Chinese and American products, and perhaps the only gambling hall in town where Chinese and whites mingled. (LoC)
Fueled by whiskey, Curley Bill and his crew staggered out into the street and began to shoot at the moon and stars. City marshal Fred White went to disarm them and chased Curley Bill into a vacant lot. Wyatt Earp was not far behind. White caught up with Curley Bill and demanded his gun, at which point the cowboy drew it. Gamely, the marshal grabbed the barrel and yanked. It went off, the bullet hitting the marshal in the groin. Wyatt buffaloed Curley Bill as others carried the grievously wounded marshal away. Fearing his charge might be lynched, Wyatt took Curley Bill up to Tucson and put him in the jail there to await trial. White died two days later.
There was an outpouring of public grief for the popular marshal and the town council quickly passed an ordinance banning the carrying of guns within city limits. The council appointed Virgil Earp as temporary city marshal but Ben Sippy won the election when it was held shortly thereafter. For Virgil, this was a major economic opportunity lost. Not only did the city marshal’s position pay $100 a month, it also received a percentage of city taxes. For a boomtown like Tombstone, that added up to a significant haul.
Tombstone Sheriff John Behan, probably taken at C.S. Fly Studios (a.k.a. Fly’s Photo Gallery) c. 1885 when he was in his early forties. The dapper Behan charmed Tombstone when he first arrived, but many residents soon soured in their response to him over his ties to the cowboys. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)
Elections in the decades right after the Civil War highlighted enduring national divisions, and Tombstone was no exception. Most businessmen and other townsfolk were Republican, being of Northern birth or persuasion. The Republicans read the Epitaph to find stories and editorials supporting their views. On the other hand, most ranchers, rangemen, and cowboys came from the South, especially Texas, and supported the Democratic Party. They went to the Nugget for sympathetic reading. The Republicans wanted a quiet town in order to attract investment, while the Democrats generally winked at the exploits of the cowboys and enjoyed the cheap meat and Mexican gold and silver that the rustlers brought into the region.
This election year also saw a contest between incumbent Pima County sheriff Charlie Shibell, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent Bob Paul. Shibell barely won and many said the election was rife with fraud. Johnny Ringo served as one of the precinct judges and Ike Clanton appears to have served as a voting inspector – both men were cowboys. Curley Bill went around San Simon Valley rounding up men, women, and children to vote for Shibell. Early pioneer James Hancock later recalled that the cowboys “voted all their horses and a dog or two and a stray cat, and finally to make sure no one had been neglected and not been given a chance to cast his ballot, they voted everyone again.”
While this seems a case of an old-timer spinning a tale, the Epitaph did report that the San Simon tally was 103 to 1. The newspaper added that the lone vote for Paul was cast by a Texas cowboy who wanted to prove that the voting had been honest.
Wyatt Earp didn’t approve of such shenanigans and resigned as deputy in order to help with Paul’s appeal. The case went through the courts and after much legal wrangling Paul was declared the winner on April 12, 1881. Stepping into Wyatt’s shoes as deputy came Johnny Behan, a former territorial representative and sheriff of Yavapai County who had come to Tombstone seeking political advancement. He was popular thanks to his good looks and hail-fellow-well-met style. At first he tried to befriend the Earps, but that friendship was not to last.
The stagecoach routes provided a lifeline for small towns before the arrival of the railroad. This stagecoach, photographed in the late 19th century in Dodge City, Kansas, ran a route from western Kansas to the Oklahoma Territory. (LoC)
Although Wyatt lost the income of his law-enforcement job, he made good money as a faro dealer and enforcer at the Oriental Saloon, the most luxurious drinking and gambling establishment in town and one in which he had purchased a quarter partnership in August of 1880. In the meantime he and his brothers were finding success in buying and selling real estate, and getting into more trouble with the cowboys. Wyatt had a horse stolen from him and got a tipoff from an informer among the cowboys that Ike Clanton had it. Wyatt went after the horse and faced off against Ike. With Wyatt bluffing that a posse was on its way, Ike backed down and returned the horse.
The end of 1880 found Curley Bill out of jail. The Tucson judge ruled the killing had been accidental when the gun went off half-cocked. Both Wyatt and the dying Fred White had believed this to be the case. It did appear that Curley Bill felt real grief over White’s death – not that it deterred him from his life of crime. While Wyatt would have liked nothing better than to see Curley Bill and his cowboy friends behind bars, he always told the truth in court.
Wyatt probably regretted his honesty. Once out of jail, Curley Bill promptly went on the mother of all sprees. After boozing it up with a friend, the two held up a dance hall and forced everyone to dance in the nude. When the law came, they shot their way out. Several horses got hit but the humans on both sides emerged unscathed. The next day, still drunk, Curley Bill stumbled into a church, ordered the preacher to stand perfectly still, and shot holes in the wall all around him. Then he forced him to dance. The day after that, he and his friends raced through Tombstone firing their pistols into the air, rode off to nearby Contention to rob a man of $50, and fired at the posse that came after him. Curley Bill then settled down to his usual activities of cattle rustling and robbing Mexican pack trains coming across the border. There was little the Mexicans could do, as the cowboys often picked on smugglers who couldn’t go to the law.
On January 4, 1881, another election was held, this time for mayor. John Clum, editor of the Epitaph, won. This gave the Earps a powerful ally that they would rely on in the months to come.
In February of 1881, Tombstone increased in importance when it became the capital of the newly formed Cochise County. The territorial governor appointed Johnny Behan sheriff. Wyatt Earp expected Behan to appoint him undersheriff, which would have given him a good salary and a cut of the taxes. Behan had promised him the job, but picked Tombstone Nugget editor Harry Woods instead and never explained why. The Earps had lost out on yet another profitable position to a Democrat.
Not all of Arizona was barren desert. Mountain streams created hidden paradises for those lucky enough to know where they were. Here some soldiers and their female companions enjoy an outing sometime between 1884 and 1887. (LoC)
The bar at the Crystal Palace Saloon in Tombstone as it appeared c. 1885. It started in 1879 as the Golden Eagle Brewery saloon before changing its name. It was one of the more elegant drinking dens in the city and had a dining room serving delicacies such as oysters. The building still stands, and, after serving as a movie theater and later a ticket office for the town’s Greyhound bus station, it is once again open as a bar and restaurant. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)
Behan proved quite effective at collecting taxes; he was even able to gather them from the rustlers by hiring Curley Bill to help. Behan’s live-in girlfriend Josephine “Sadie” Marcus later wrote that the sheriff often invited Curley Bill along with Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Johnny Ringo over for cards and private conversations.
By late 1880 and early 1881, law-abiding citizens were sick of the cowboys. The term had now become a universally derogatory one, and to call an honest drover a cowboy would invite a fight. Crime was on the rise, with the cowboys even murdering some of their victims. The last straw came on the night of March 15, 1881, when a stagecoach passed through Contention, a little mining settlement eight miles northwest of Tombstone that served as a base for the cowboys. Several men stepped out of the shadows and called for the stagecoach to stop. The guard, aspiring sheriff Bob Paul, pulled up his shotgun and shots were fired on both sides. The driver, a well-liked man named Bud Philpot, got hit and fell off dead. Another bullet crashed through the stagecoach to wound one of the passengers mortally. Paul grabbed the reins and whipped the horses down the road and to safety.
Sheriff Behan led a posse of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, and Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams after the bandits. At the robbery site they found three masks made of twisted rope and a rope beard. The trail led to a ranch where they caught Luther King, who quickly admitted to having acted as horse holder for the bandits. He named his accomplices as Billy Leonard, Harry Head, and Jim Crane. No other evidence was found except a pair of fagged-out horses and a few dime novels. Wyatt Earp noticed one book was missing its back pages and carried it along. The trail continued to a recently vacated campsite where Wyatt found the rest of the book.
King was taken in but subsequently escaped by the ingenious method of walking out of the back door of the sheriff’s office. This caused an outcry in the press and wide suspicion of collusion with the cowboys. Meanwhile Earp and the rest of the party searched for more than two weeks in the wilderness, while Behan did not send them supplies or fresh horses. He also failed to pay them, keeping the expenses billed to the county for himself.
People began to whisper that Doc Holliday had been one of the robbers. Billy Leonard was a gambling friend of Doc’s and the dentist had hired a horse and ridden out of town a few hours before the robbery, only to come back at night with the horse completely worn out. Doc asserted that he returned by 6:30pm, well before the robbery, but witnesses claimed to have seen him galloping towards Tombstone right after the robbery. While the McLaury brothers and Ike Clanton were among their number – a fact that certainly didn’t endear them to Doc – more neutral observers said the same thing.
Wyatt bristled under the implication of his friend’s guilt, as it also brought suspicion upon himself and his brothers. He approached Ike Clanton and suggested the cowboy lure the robbers, who were friends of his, back to Tombstone so that he (Wyatt) could catch them. He would give Ike the reward and use the capture to help him win the sheriff position at the next election. Both Wyatt and Virgil later recounted that Ike agreed to the plan because he wanted Leonard’s ranch. Ike, of course, denied all this, saying Wyatt and his friends were party to the robbery and wanted to bump off the bandits so they couldn’t talk.
Another factor in the tangled web of Tombstone politics was a beautiful and mysterious actress, Josephine “Sadie” Marcus (1861–December 20, 1944), who arrived in Arizona from San Francisco as part of an acting troupe. She had run away from her working-class home to find excitement in the Wild West. After engagements in Tucson, the troupe arrived in Tombstone on December 1, 1879, almost the exact time the Earps showed up.
Johnny Behan became enamored of her and, after a long suit, convinced Sadie to live with him as a common-law wife. Behan could not keep his attractions to one woman, however, and was soon running around with someone else. By the summer of 1881 Sadie was living on her own in Tombstone. Some old-timers recalled that she worked as a prostitute.
Soon Wyatt Earp became attracted to her. Wyatt was in an unhappy common-law marriage with former prostitute Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock. Mattie was addicted to laudanum and was becoming increasingly erratic. Sadie and Wyatt began to be seen together in public and this friendship blossomed into a romance that humiliated Behan and further widened the rift between him and the Earps.
Sadie stayed with Wyatt for the rest of his life, although times were hard. She became addicted to gambling, further exacerbating the couple’s money issues. After Wyatt’s death in 1929, Sadie devoted herself to protecting his memory. Mattie was written out of the story, as was most of Sadie’s early life.
Cowboys from the Hash Knife ranch in Holbrook, Arizona Territory, c. 1890. This remarkable photograph shows the dress of the average rangemen of the time, the same as that of the rustlers who temporarily gave the term “cowboy” a bad name. Coats were generally not worn while working, the preference being for vests or sweaters depending on the weather. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)
A cowboy photographed c. 1888 near Sturgis, Dakota Territory. While a long way from Arizona, cowboys up north needed the same equipment. Note the pistol at the belt, holstered with the butt facing the front for a crossdraw. This was the typical way to wear a pistol while riding. Note also the rifle in a scabbard, lariat, and chaps. A lariat was a length of rope used to lasso, hobble, and tie animals. Cowboys prided themselves on the skill with which they handled a rope and developed many tricks to show off at rodeos. Chaps were thick leather leggings that were essential for riding through underbrush, especially in the desert of the Southwest with its many cacti. (LoC)
Justice was served in a different way. Billy Leonard and Harry Head were killed by the brothers Ike and Bill Haslett for the reward money. The third stagecoach robber, Jim Crane, brought more than a dozen cowboys to hunt the Hasletts down. They found them along with another man, Sigman “Joe” Biertzhoff, in a New Mexico saloon. Nellie Pender was sitting on her porch nearby and heard the shots:
I counted eight, but they say there were more. My husband started to run, but I caught hold of him and held him back until I heard them mount their horses and ride away like the wind. I ran and put out the light, and we started down … The place was just running with blood. Bill Haslett was shot six times in his bowels, and Ike was shot through his head and his left hand was shot to pieces. The boy Joe was shot six times through his stomach and once through his ankle. He suffered the worst of any of them. They were all conscious to the last. The Haslett boys made out a will leaving everything to their father and sister in Kansas. The German boy’s people live in California – he had nothing, not even enough to pay his debts in camp, but the company gave them all as good a funeral as could be had in this country. It was a sorrowful sight to see those three coffins followed by all the men moving slowly though camp.
The cowboys had become a force to be reckoned with.
The law was becoming a force to be reckoned with, too. In June of 1881, Virgil Earp was named city marshal to replace Ben Sippy, who had disappeared with many debts left unpaid. The cowboys now had a powerful enemy.
Gunfighters in the Old West were a varied lot. Some were simply bullies who had more aggressiveness than talent, while others truly studied their art. The more serious gunfighters had a variety of techniques and accessories to give them an edge in combat. It must be remembered that gunfights were fairly rare – even the famed Doc Holliday was only in one confirmed fight – but an edge could mean the difference between life and death.
(1) The Spin
This technique, also called the “road-agent’s spin” or “Border roll,” was a way for someone to appear to be surrendering while actually preparing to fire. Some scholars believe that Curley Bill Brocious used this on Sheriff Fred White in Tombstone on October 28, 1880.
The spin is performed in the following manner. The gunfighter offers his gun butt first to his opponent. The trigger finger is hooked inside the trigger guard and is not visible from straight ahead. The rest of the fingers cradle the gun’s side and barrel. The gunfighter then jerks his hand upward. A well-balanced revolver will then spin around with the trigger finger as its axis and the butt of the revolver lands in the palm. The gun is now ready to fire.
It is unclear who invented the spin. John Wesley Hardin claimed to have used it on Abilene Marshal “Wild Bill” Hickock in 1871. This story appears in Hardin’s self-serving 1895 autobiography and is open to question. Some sources claim the Innocents gang of Montana invented it as early as 1863.
(2) Fanning
Owners of a single-action revolver can get increased speed by using a method called “fanning.” The gun is held in the dominant hand, usually at hip level where the forearm can be braced against the hip. The trigger is held in the firing position while the other hand repeatedly slaps the hammer, thus turning the cylinder and firing the bullets at a rapid rate.
This technique will not work on a double-action revolver because such a weapon requires the trigger to be pulled to turn the cylinder and fire a shot. Gunfighters preferred single-action revolvers even for regular shooting, because the extra effort required to pull the trigger of a double-action revolver could affect aim. Jesse James liked to use the Smith & Wesson Schofield .45. Like other gunfighters, he preferred single-action revolvers because with the hammer cocked, it only took a light pull on the trigger to fire.
Fanning was rarely used in actual fights. It was more often used as a way of showing off. It also features in modern-day fast-draw competitions. Fanning did have some advantages in a fight situation, however. The sound and smoke lent a serious intimidation factor. If used against a cluster of opponents at close range, the gunman was likely to hit one or more of them and could get enough of a psychological drop on them to draw a second revolver and pick the survivors off more artfully.
At close range the black-powder revolver had another advantage. The blast itself lent an impact even if the bullet missed. The flare from the gun could even set a person’s clothes or hair on fire. Five shots in rapid succession (no sane man carried six bullets in a single-action revolver) could easily send a small group of men into a stumbling panic.
(3) Spring shoulder holster
Whether they were using a shoulder holster or the more common belt holster, gunfighters generally cocked the revolver as they drew it, instead of waiting until they had the gun level. While waiting is the safer and more common practice, an experienced gunman wanted that extra split second.
Another way to shave off a tenth of a second or so was to have a spring shoulder holster. Instead of drawing the pistol, the gunman snapped it out of the holster. It looked like a regular holster with most of the front missing. The barrel rested in a leather toe while the cylinder was held lightly and firmly by a riveted cowhide spring clip. The gunman would cross draw. The forefinger would go into the trigger guard while the thumb pulled back the hammer and the other three fingers grabbed the butt and pulled the gun sideways. This made for a very fast draw.
Some gunmen preferred to protect their guns with a half-breed spring holster, which included the front flap. The side remained open but there was always the chance of catching the hand or the gun on that front flap.
(4) Bridgeport rig
The Bridgeport rig, sometimes called a “Gillett belt” after James Gillett, who wore one when he was marshal of El Paso in the 1880s, was a simple device that allowed a revolver to be fired without even being drawn.
A metal plate was riveted onto the belt; this plate had a slot open on the front end and with a depression at the back end. A special pin-headed screw was attached to the revolver, often replacing the regular hammer screw of a single-action Colt. This attachment was then inserted into the slot and pulled back until it fell into the depression at the back. The gun could be pivoted within the depression and fired from the hip.
The Bridgeport rig had the advantage that the gun could be fired while the gunman was sitting down, perhaps from under a table at someone who was cheating at cards.
Cowboys not only had to know how to handle a rope, a gun, and cattle, but also had to be experts on horses. A good steed was essential and it was equally important not to tire them out. Any good outfit kept plenty of spare horses, and on a cattle drive each cowboy rotated among six to ten horses. These cowboys at the Cheyenne River sometime between 1887 and 1892 are busy roping fresh horses to outfit them for the next shift. (LoC)
While Behan on one side and the Earps on the other represented leading figures in two opposing factions, neither was terribly popular. Many townsfolk mistrusted Behan for his suspected allegiance to the cowboys. The Earps were considered too dour by the fun-loving locals and many ranchers felt them to be too hard on the cowboys. A new breed of townspeople was making itself known as well. More and more cultured professionals from the East were arriving in Tombstone in search of new opportunities as the country struggled with a bad recession. They demanded law and order. They did not like Behan’s dealings with desperadoes, nor the Earps dealing cards and living with former prostitutes. The Earps and Behan represented a divided region, where each side hated the other and was not terribly entranced with its own.
Just when the case of the stagecoach killings seemed to have run its course, with two suspects dead and the other gone to ground, it took a strange new twist. Doc Holliday’s girlfriend, Big-Nose Kate, got angry with him and in a drunken rage accused him of being party to the holdup and murders. Behan gleefully arrested Holliday. The court found no evidence to support Kate’s claims, nor could she provide any, so it threw out the case. That did not stop tongues from wagging. The story grew to encompass the Earp brothers as suspects too. In her memoirs, even Virgil’s wife Allie said she felt certain the Earps and Holliday were in on the stagecoach robberies.
Meanwhile the exploits of the cowboys escalated, turning what was once a county problem into an international incident. The cowboys’ robberies south of the border became more violent and the Mexicans began to strike back. When a group of cowboys stole several hundred head of cattle from the Vasquez ranch, the rancher and his men went after them and gunned them down. Vasquez was also killed in the gunfight. Sonora governor Luis Torres sent 200 soldiers to the border south of Cochise County in order to catch the next group of cowboys that came across.
An even bloodier incident occurred at about the same time, when a group of Mexicans was robbed and slaughtered in Skeleton Canyon, a popular smuggling route. The cowboys even killed a couple of Mexican soldiers riding back from Tombstone after buying supplies. Another cowboy raid into Mexico led to more stolen cattle. Some Mexican ranchers went after them and got the worst end of the fight, with eight killed.
Soon afterwards, at Guadalupe Canyon, another smuggling route across the border, a band of seven Americans was attacked as they slept on the American side of the line. Among the five dead were Jim Crane, the last stagecoach holdup suspect, and Old Man Clanton, head of the Clanton family. Crane had not even made it out of his sleeping roll. They had with them 100 head of cattle, although accounts vary as to whether they were stolen or legitimate. A survivor, who seems to have been an innocent ranch hand in the wrong place with the wrong people, testified they had been attacked by Mexican troops. Some suspected that the soldiers, tired of being limited to the south of the border, had slipped across the line to take care of what the gringos would not. Rumors spread that the cowboys had gathered a group of 200 desperadoes to attack Mexico, and that the Mexican army was gearing up to repel the invasion. The national press in the U.S.A. began to take serious notice of events in southern Arizona.
Many felt the cowboys had gotten what they deserved. George Parsons wrote in his diary:
This killing business by the Mexicans, in my mind, was perfectly justifiable as it was in retaliation for killing of several of them and their robbery by cow-boys recently this same Crane being one of the number. Am glad they killed him, as for the others – if not guilty of cattle stealing – they had no business to be found in such bad company.
There were rumors that there had been other gunfights. The English newspaper Graphic Illustrated reported in its November 26, 1881 issue that Curley Bill
… and another named M’Allister went into Mexico, and actually drove out three hundred head of cattle. They were pursued by a body of Mexicans, and overtaken in Arizona about thirty miles from Galeyville, at a place where stood an old abandoned house. The pursuers having secured their cattle, “went for” the cow-boys. Curley Bill and his companion had taken possession of the deserted house, and they held it against the Mexicans. The siege was maintained for three days, and the two men had neither food nor water all that time. Their plight was very desperate, when some of their comrades came by chance that way. The Mexicans then deemed it the better part of valor to retire, but they left twelve dead bodies behind them. During the hostilities Curley Bill was shot in the head in three places, but M’Allister’s damage consisted only of a flesh-wound in the neck. Curley Bill recovered, but after that it was noticed that when the worse of liquor he seemed a bit crazy, and people kept out of his way. When sober, however, he was considered all right. Some little time after his accident he was in Tombstone, a mining town, and got drunk. The “Marshal,” anglicé policeman, thought then to arrest him, but Curly Bill shot him dead on the spot.
While this article was probably as much journalistic imagination as true reportage, Curley Bill was certainly making a reputation for himself. He, Ike Clanton, and Johnny Ringo began to be noted as the ringleaders of an organized gang. Exactly how much of a real gang it was remains a matter of debate. Many historians believe the organization and unity of the cowboys to have been exaggerated in the contemporary press and later histories.
The exploits of its leaders were certainly exaggerated. Ringo, for instance, has been portrayed as an educated gentleman gunfighter fond of speaking in Latin. Some writers even claimed he was a university professor turned bad. In fact Ringo had only a basic education, having grown up in poverty in California. When he was 14, he and his family set out in a wagon train from Missouri to the coast. He witnessed his father’s accidental death one morning when the man stepped out of the wagon with a shotgun in hand and it went off. One eyewitness said, “At the report of his gun I saw his hat blown up 20 feet in the air and his brains were scattered in all directions. I never saw a more heartrending sight, and to see the distress and agony of his wife and children was painful in the extreme.”
This childhood trauma may have led to his alcoholism and mean streak. He stood a hefty 6ft 3in. and people noted that he had a certain charisma and force of will. Everyone considered him dangerous, and he was. He was a veteran of the Mason County Range Wars in Texas, where he killed at least two men. Like many of the unusual figures on the Frontier, he also acted on the right side of the law, briefly serving as constable in Loyal Valley, Mason County, in 1878. Roles were rarely clear-cut on the edge of civilization. A year later he moved to Arizona. One of his first acts was to shoot a man in the head for refusing to drink whiskey with him. The fellow said he preferred beer and Ringo apparently found that insulting.
Origen “Charlie” Smith (1849/50–1907), a native of Indiana, was, like the Earps, both a gambler and a lawman. He had the cruel nickname of “Harelip Charlie” due to a birth defect that, unlike Doc Holliday, he never had fixed.
It is unclear when or why Smith headed West. He tended bar and got into shootouts for a while in Fort Worth, Texas, and proved himself more hot-headed than accurate; there is no record that he ever killed anyone. When reform fever hit the town in late 1878, causing a number of saloon closures, Smith headed to the more permissive climate of Arizona. He was soon filing mining claims in Tombstone. Smith already knew Jim Earp and became good friends with Wyatt, who backed him on a number of ventures. He had little luck with mining, however, and had to make ends meet as a gambler.
Smith was good friends with Fred Dodge, whom he had known in his Texas days, and rode with the Earps on several of their posses. Smith also contributed to Wyatt’s and Doc’s bail money after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He was one of the Earp supporters who rushed to the scene when Morgan was fatally shot. Smith joined the Vendetta Ride and left with them for Colorado after it was finished.
Smith later returned to Tombstone and became a deputy sheriff under two of Behan’s successors. Dodge was also a lawman at this time and together they rode after rustlers and train robbers. Smith’s luck ran out when he tried to stop a fight at the Bank Exchange Saloon in Tombstone on November 25, 1885. A drunken onlooker, Charles Cunningham, butted in and called Smith a “damned harelip son of a bitch.” Taking exception to that, Smith shot him in the leg. Cunningham never forgot this and the two got into it again on September 22, 1888. First they tussled at the French Wine House, and later Cunningham got a pistol and hunted Smith down in the street. His shot shattered Smith’s hip-bone. Recovery was slow and painful, but Smith served in various law-enforcement roles in Tempe and Maricopa, Arizona, until his death in 1907.
During the fall and winter of 1881 the stagecoach robberies continued. The Earps arrested Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence, two cowboys, for one of the jobs, and some other cowboys, including Ike Clanton, cornered Morgan Earp in the street and threatened his life.
The cowboys were not only robbing stagecoaches, but also rustling from big American ranches. The Mexican army was guarding the border more vigilantly and so opportunities had dried up south of the line. The Cattlegrowers Association put a $1,000 bounty on Curley Bill’s head and a vigilance committee formed in town. With Tombstone’s lawmen spending as much time sparring with each other as they did fighting criminals, ordinary citizens got ready to take the law into their own hands.
Meanwhile, Ike Clanton was still worried that his secret dealings with the Earps to capture the stagecoach robbers would be revealed. A cowboy ratting out his fellow cowboys would not have long to live. Ike got it into his head that Wyatt had told Doc Holliday. The dentist was such a busy gambler that he was acquainted with many of the cowboys. In Ike’s mind he was the worst person who could know. Ike pestered Wyatt so much about the matter that Wyatt sent Morgan up to Tucson to fetch Holliday. They returned October 22, 1881. The stage was set and all the actors were upon it.
Ike Clanton, c. 1880, when he was about 33 years old. Far from being a grizzled, dirty cowboy as he has been represented in some movies, Ike was a prosperous rancher and could afford to dress well, although his income came from less-than-honest sources. (Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records: History and Archives Division)