by Clavin, Tom
The stagecoach took Bat to the nearest train station, and counting the hours, he rode the rails north and then east. When he stepped off the train in Dodge City—as it happened, high noon on April 16—he feared that Jim could already be dead. He might not be back to save his brother but to avenge him. As it turned out, though, Bat’s timing was perfect.
The train pulling out of the station revealed two men on the other side of the tracks: Peacock and Updegraph, both armed. Bat faced them, his hands poised beside his ivory-handled pistols. “Hold on,” he called to the two men. “I want to talk to you.” Instead, they fled, instigating what came to be called the Battle of the Plaza.
Peacock and Updegraph at first hid behind one corner of the jail. Undaunted, Bat advanced on them and was about to cross the tracks when they began firing. Pulling out his pistols, Bat crouched, hoping the railroad embankment would provide some cover. The three men fired furiously, their bullets breaking windows and gouging chunks of wood out of buildings. One ricocheting bullet struck an onlooker. The streets cleared, men and women pulling their boots out of the mud created by spring rains, trying to gain traction and run into the closest doorways. Friends of Peacock and Updegraph arrived and joined the fray, the assault on Bat intensifying.
Suddenly, from behind him there were gunshots—friendly ones, possibly Jim Masterson and others. War had broken out in the center of Dodge City, and Bat was caught in the crossfire. He fired a couple of more shots and learned his guns were empty. But one of his main assailants, Updegraph, straightened, staggered out into the open, and fell to the wet ground. Everyone stopped shooting.
Mayor Webster appeared, carrying a shotgun. He walked up to Bat and said he was under arrest. Even without bullets, Bat thought of fighting on, probably wresting the shotgun away from the mayor if he wanted to. But when Webster told Bat that Jim was unharmed, that he had indeed arrived in time to prevent and possibly interrupt an ambush, Bat agreed to be escorted to the jail, where Jim soon joined him. Everyone else either went home or repaired to their favorite saloons to begin telling stories about what may have been the biggest gun battle in Dodge City’s history.
A hearing was held that very afternoon. By then, it was determined that Updegraphs’s wound was a serious but not mortal one. (Six days later, he wrote a letter to the Ford County Globe boasting, “I feel that I will be around again, and will not die as the party wished me to.”) Bat was fined eight dollars for firing a weapon in the city limits, and released. Jim sold his interest in the Lady Gay, and by the next day the Masterson brothers were on a train out of Dodge City.
Unaware that dime-store novelists back east were portraying him as one of the most dangerous gunslingers of the Wild West, Bat resumed his wanderings, gambling his way through Colorado the rest of the year and into 1882; then he escaped a week or so of winter by traveling to New Orleans. There he watched a newcomer named John L. Sullivan dethrone the U.S. heavyweight boxing champion, Paddy Ryan, in what was then a bare-knuckle bout. Also in the crowd were two brothers escaping the winter and the law as well, Frank and Jesse James, and Bat may have renewed his acquaintance with them. Then he headed to Colorado and the gambling charms of Trinidad, where his brother Jim was a deputy sheriff. In April, Jim’s responsibilities included arresting John Allen, who years earlier had worn a badge in Dodge City, for the shooting death of Cockeyed Frank Loving. (It was also in Trinidad that Bat helped Wyatt Earp recuperate from an ordeal related in the next chapter.)
By then, Bat was wearing a badge again. Trinidad had become an incorporated city, and it needed a marshal, and the city council had selected Bat Masterson. The more powerful faction in Trinidad wanted the city to make the sort of progress toward being civilized that Dodge City had done, and how convenient it was that the former sheriff of Ford County was in town. Why did Bat accept the position? It could not have been the money, a mere seventy-five dollars a month. Most likely, it was the challenge. He was restless and not yet thirty years old. It was flattering that word was being bandied about that Bat and Wyatt had tamed the frontier, so why not do it again?
Life in Trinidad was not completely quiet—most serious was an incident involving a deputy killing a man—but as in Ford County, Bat was viewed as an effective peace officer. But as in Ford County, in the early spring 1883 voting, when it came time to elect Bat to a full term, voters weren’t completely sold and he was defeated. This time, voters agreed with his opponents that Bat spent too much time gambling. It may have rankled him a bit when the new marshal, Lou Kreeger, persuaded Jim Masterson to join his staff. As a peace officer, Kreeger would serve Trinidad and the county until 1913.
For Bat, it was, unexpectedly, time to figure out what to do next. He decided to do his deciding in Denver. Furthest from his mind was that he would soon be back in Dodge City for one last campaign.
TWENTY-NINE
But for the cornerstone of this episodic narrative, I cannot make a better choice than the bloody feud in Tombstone, Arizona, which cost me a brave brother and cost more than one worthless life among the murderous dogs who pursued me and mine only less bitterly than I pursued them.
—WYATT EARP
The summer of 1881 saw tensions rising in Tombstone. It also saw the death of Billy the Kid. While this would have no direct impact on Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson, the Kid’s death was another indication of the Wild West moving toward becoming less wild, as one by one its most colorful outlaws exited the stage.
Before he had joined forces with Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, Billy had gotten involved in what had become known as the Lincoln County War, and that was why Sheriff Pat Garrett had gone after him.
Billy was working in New Mexico Territory for the rancher John Tunstall. The wealthy Englishman had arrived in Lincoln County in 1876 to go into the cattle business with John Chisum, but their efforts were thwarted by a rival faction that wanted to control the business as well as the federal government contracts that went with it. The friction escalated, and by the time the Lincoln County War was over, fourteen men had been killed. One of them was Tunstall, in February 1878. Billy was a big part of the revenge action that followed; then, as the war drew to a close, he went on the run.
After being arrested by Garrett because of his adventures with Dirty Dave, Billy was put on trial in Mesilla, New Mexico, convicted, and sentenced to be hung. Though often debunked, the reported exchange was between the judge declaring that Billy would hang “until you are dead, dead, dead,” and the Kid responding, “And you can go to hell, hell, hell.” He was restrained by handcuffs and leg irons and locked in a room on the top floor of the courthouse in Lincoln, where he awaited execution, scheduled for May 13, 1881.
But Billy escaped. Early on the evening of April 28, a deputy, James Bell, escorted him downstairs to a privy. As they were going back upstairs, Billy managed to slip one hand out of the metal cuffs and bashed Bell over the head with them, also yanking out the deputy’s pistol. As Bell staggered down the stairs, Billy shot him; the deputy was dead when he hit the street. Another deputy, Bob Olinger, who hated the Kid, and the feeling was mutual, came running. By the time he arrived at the courthouse, Billy had a shotgun pointed out one window. “Hello, Bob,” he taunted, then pulled both triggers, killing him, too. The Kid forced a man bringing them food to help him out of the restraints, then stole a horse and rode out of town. When Garrett returned to Lincoln, instead of supervising the construction of the gallows, he had to put together another posse.
Almost three months later, and many miles of following the outlaw’s trail, Garrett was in a cantina in Fort Sumner when Billy, still two months shy of his twenty-first birthday, entered. Supposedly, he was there to see a girl he claimed he loved. It was dark inside and Billy couldn’t see well, but he sensed danger. “Quién es? Quién es?” he queried. There is some dispute as to whether Billy drew a gun or a knife, but in any case, Garrett fired, hitting Billy in the chest. He fell to the floor, took a couple of last breaths, and died. The following day, July 15, Billy was buried a
t the Fort Sumner cemetery. And only nine months later, Pat Garrett’s book on the outlaw’s life and death was published. (In 1908, Garrett was shot and killed by a ranch worker contending he had been cheated out of his wages.)
In Tombstone, Ben Sippy could see which way the dry desert wind was blowing, and on June 6 he requested a two-week leave of absence as the chief of police. The city council granted it. Members were probably unaware that Sippy, having the good sense to know what could happen in Tombstone between the cowboys, ranchers, and the opposing factions of law enforcement, had his saddlebags packed. The former sheriff and now chief (since the city had been incorporated in February) was getting out while the going was good. The council installed Virgil as the temporary chief of the police department. Three weeks later, when there was no sign of Sippy, Virgil had the job he had been unable to be elected to the previous fall.
His first major action was an auspicious one. That month, a fire had begun in Tombstone that ate up sixty of the mostly wooden buildings on the east side. It was reported that Wyatt was in the Oriental (which was to suffer some damage) when the fire broke out and spread, but he did not leave the building for a safer location until he made sure all the money left on the gaming tables by the safety-first gamblers was swept up and secured in the saloon’s safe.
No sooner had the ashes cooled when displaced residents and others looking for quick accommodations pitched tents and began living in the streets. As both the police chief and a deputy U.S. marshal, Virgil deputized Wyatt, Morgan, and twenty-one other men, and they cleared all the squatters away without violence. The Tombstone Epitaph lauded Virgil as “fearless and impartial” and declared that “his force kept perfect order and protected life and property in a manner that deserves the highest praise.”
The hope among many residents was that someone so fearless and impartial as Virgil in charge of the lawing in Tombstone—though at a modest $150 a month—would prevent an outbreak of hostilities. (So impartial was Virgil that he even arrested the city’s mayor and editor of The Tombstone Epitaph, John Clum, for riding his horse too fast.) But there were problems Virgil could not control, one being the rampant rustling throughout Cochise County.
The other was that as Virgil had to pay more attention to policing in Tombstone, Behan was not picking up the slack. That February, Governor Frémont had appointed Behan sheriff of Cochise County, another reason why Wyatt wanted no part of being a deputy. But Behan had continued down the path of being more friend than foe to the lawbreakers, especially the McLaurys and the Clantons and others who could act with impunity. That summer, adding to the dangerous atmosphere was the combination of Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo.
Things got more out of hand in the summer of 1881 when one of the frequent border crossings to steal cattle resulted in fifteen Mexicans left for dead. This was too much. The Mexican Army could disrespect a border, too. On August 13, a contingent of troops did a raid of their own on American soil, looking for outlaws. Old Man Clanton and four others were found with a herd of stolen cattle and were executed on the spot.
On the night of September 8, several masked men held up a stage near Bisbee and took a Wells Fargo box of money and whatever valuables the passengers had. Normally, this would be Behan’s sole jurisdiction, and thus the robbery might well have been ignored, but also stolen was a bag of mail, making the offense federal, too, requiring the intervention of the deputy U.S. marshal. Virgil deputized Wyatt and Morgan and they hit the trail again. This posse was more successful, finding and apprehending Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence. They were brought back to Tombstone, where Stilwell was released on bail. Virgil arrested him a second time. He would be acquitted in October, but he vowed to repay the Earps for what he claimed was harassment. Taking things a step further, Frank McLaury took Morgan Earp aside to warn him that the brothers would be killed if they attempted any more arrests.
Even with the occasional appearance of Mexican troops, by October the cowboys and crooked ranchers had Cochise County to themselves, except for that burr under their saddles—Virgil and his peace officers, who more often than not included his deputized brothers. As Wyatt was to tell the San Francisco Examiner in 1896 about Ike Clanton, now the head of the larcenous clan, “He knew that his only alternative was to kill us or be killed by his own people.”
If the Earps could be swept away as efficiently as those squatters had been after the fire in Tombstone, the only real law would be Behan, and that was pretty much no law at all. To give him some credit, the sheriff knew that he was far outmanned and outgunned and had a widespread county under his jurisdiction. Taking on the cowboys would have been a huge task and most likely suicidal.
It could not have helped Behan’s disposition and lack of desire to side with Virgil Earp that he was losing his woman to the federal officer’s brother. Wyatt’s romance with Josephine was not necessarily motivated by being fed up with Mattie. She was fine with the domesticity of the Earp commune and the company of her sisters-in-law, especially Allie, who shared her fondness for having a drink or two in the afternoon. Mattie was over thirty now, and Tombstone had potential as a place to build a home and maybe a family. Her headaches and her intake of laudanum were manageable.
Wyatt’s habits did not change. Between his peace officer duties and gambling and other business interests, he was gone from home most of the day and well into the night. Even surrounded by Earps, Mattie increasingly felt neglected and alone. The headaches became more frequent and severe, and gum disease added to her woes. Higher amounts of whiskey helped, but when Mattie woke up, the pains returned, and drinking in the morning was not abided even by Earp women. Laudanum was appealing because of its potent mix of opium and alcohol, and it was more discreetly consumed. Frontier doctors were free to dispense gallons of the liquid painkiller for a wide variety of ailments, and overdoses were either overlooked, misdiagnosed, or considered a blessing.
As the distance between Wyatt and Mattie grew, he and Josie grew closer. An especially colorful assessment can be found in E. C. Meyers’s biography of Mattie: “From the moment Josephine decided Wyatt was the man most likely to rescue her from Behan the sparks of passion flew, but it was Mattie who was burned. Wyatt took up with the sagebrush seductress, secretly at first, but later quite openly.”
Virgil tried not to involve himself in Wyatt’s dizzying domestic issues, instead devoting himself to his own as well as lawing. Allie was not pleased to be constantly surrounded by Earps, with that circle widening when Warren arrived and stayed at her house. He told her that he wanted to learn how to deal faro like Morgan and Wyatt did and be a marshal and wear a gun like Virgil did. (Apparently, James’s job as a bartender did not entice him.) To put some cash in the young man’s pocket, Virgil deputized Warren from time to time, as long as the job was not dangerous. Sometimes the cash did not stay long in his pocket, such as when Warren was arrested and fined twenty-five dollars for discharging firearms within the city limits. Again impartial, Virgil did not interfere with compliance with the law.
That autumn, as cooler breezes began to replace the hot desert zephyrs, Tombstone itself, under Virgil’s watch, was quiet. Arrests were for only petty theft, drunkenness, and the like. Cochise County, however, under Behan’s benevolent neglect, was descending into chaos. The cowboys were stealing everything in sight and continuing to raid across the border. This was not the place the Earps wanted to live in, but they were not about to pick up stakes and leave, either. Virgil was not one to shirk responsibilities, and his brothers were not going to leave him to fend for himself.
There have been many accounts of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, ranging from as close to authentic as the facts and differing reminiscences will allow to deliberate and often mystifying flights of fancy. Many authors and filmmakers have treated the more reliable accounts as obstacles to be overcome. For the sake of brevity, the following account is what Virgil and Wyatt contend happened. There are inaccuracies, but we may wind up unearthing the true origins of Stonehenge befor
e knowing what exactly happened on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone.
Early that morning, brothers Virgil and Wyatt were told that an angry and probably drunk Ike Clanton was looking for them. He had already stopped at the boardinghouse where Doc Holliday had rooms, but he had not lingered there long enough for Doc to get dressed and come out to fight. Virgil would later testify that he encountered Ike Clanton on Fourth Street between Fremont and Allen. He was toting a Winchester rifle and had a six-shooter tucked into his pants belt. After Virgil went up to him and grabbed the rifle, Clanton “let loose and started to draw his six-shooter. I hit him over the head with mine and knocked him to his knees and took his six-shooter from him.” It was fortuitous that Virgil had acted quickly, because Clanton said, “If I’d seen you a second sooner I would’ve killed you.”
Arrested for disturbing the peace, Ike paid a twenty-five-dollar fine and was released. He then sent word for his brother Billy and the McLaurys, telling them to come armed because it was time to get rid of that cursed Virgil Earp and his brothers.
That afternoon, word reached Virgil that cowboys were gathering off Fremont Street and that they carried guns. The marshal believed it was his duty to disarm them. To help him, he deputized Wyatt, Morgan, and Doc. They walked to a narrow vacant lot between the Harwood House and Fly’s Boarding House and Photography Gallery and the rear entrance of the O.K. Corral. There they found Frank and Tom McLaury, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Billy Claiborne.
Virgil said evenly, “Boys, throw up your hands. I want your guns.”
They stared back defiantly. “I’ve got you now!” Frank McLaury shouted, and Doc responded, “Blaze away. You’re a daisy if you do!”