Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp

by Ann Kirschner

  Although Tombstone residents were well aware of where the prostitutes lived and worked, public solicitation was forbidden. Care was taken to protect married women and children through an unwritten law that kept the “soiled doves” away from the main streets. “Where is the mining camp without its gamblers and sharpers, its courtesans and adventurers?” theorized Clara Brown, who shrugged at the presence of saloons and brothels as an inevitable feature of boomtown life, though she did not expect to set a place for any of these men and women at her table.

  Josephine worked tirelessly to obscure this troubled time of her life, and she was mostly successful. She left Johnny, but with the exception of a few money order receipts, Josephine Marcus or Josephine Behan disappeared from the public record for about six months. Her residence was unrecorded. She may have kicked her faithless lover out of the house they shared; it had, after all, been purchased with her parents’ money. Out of affection for young Albert Behan that would last a lifetime, hesitant to leave him with his faithless father, she may have stayed in that house with the child while she took some time to plan. Or she may have moved into one of the local rooming houses or found shelter with Kitty and Harry Jones, or with John and Annie Lewellen, a family who lived nearby.

  To add to the mystery of where and how she lived, Johnny’s favorite prostitute Sadie Mansfield, the particular focus of his wife’s fury in their divorce suit, had followed him from Prescott to Tombstone, where she became known as “Forty-Dollar Sadie.” Decades later, this would lead to speculation that Sadie Mansfield and Josephine “Sadie” Marcus were one and the same. They were not, according to Tombstone old-timers who knew both women. Moreover, given Josephine’s pride and the option of appealing to her parents, it is unlikely that Josephine would have risked even a temporary stint as a prostitute.

  Josephine conserved her meager store of capital and pondered her next step. As one of Clara Brown’s so-called SAH women, she was a prisoner of Tombstone. She could find a job. Or she could find a new lover. There were nine men for every woman in Tombstone.

  JOSEPHINE MET WYATT in the summer of 1881, most likely at Sol Israel’s Union News Depot on Fourth Street.

  They had been circling each other for the better part of a year. Unlike the Earp wives, Josephine did not keep herself hidden at home but was often in town, shopping and picking up her mail at the post office, which meant waiting in a lengthy outdoor queue, while all of Tombstone walked by. Harry Jones, who acted as Wyatt’s lawyer on at least one occasion, may have introduced her to Wyatt. She was publicly seen on Johnny Behan’s arm, and Wyatt would have known that the alluring Josephine was living with his professional rival. But now the enmity between Wyatt and Johnny would become personal. Just because Behan was cheating on Josephine did not mean he was ready for another man to have her, especially Wyatt Earp. As Wyatt’s biographer Stuart Lake put it: “In back of all the fighting, the killing and even Wyatt’s duty as a peace officer, the impelling force of his destiny was the nature and acquisition and association in the case of Johnny Behan’s girl. That relationship is the key to the whole yarn of Tombstone.”

  All signs point to the likelihood that Josephine and Wyatt began an affair in Tombstone. The location of their trysts is unknown, but Josephine was surely angry enough to have enjoyed cuckolding Behan in the house they once shared. Young Albert Behan would have been an important consideration, but if his presence was inconvenient, two passionate, determined lovers could find other places to meet.

  Decades later, Stuart Lake would say privately that “everyone” in town was buzzing about the former Mrs. Behan and faithless Wyatt Earp. However, Josephine and Wyatt were quite discreet. There was no general awareness that they were together, or even that Josephine had broken up with Behan. The local newspapers covered politics rather than scandals, so the tangled love life of Sheriff Johnny Behan and Josephine Marcus remained their own private problem. It would take years before Josephine adopted the name Mrs. Earp—Tombstone already had quite a few of those. Allie Earp was skeptical about whether Josephine had even been in Tombstone, let alone that Josephine and Wyatt were lovers there. Early Tombstone chroniclers such as William Breakenridge and Walter Noble Burns never mentioned Josephine—but then again, with rare exceptions, they mentioned no women at all.

  Tombstone had other things on its mind during that endless hot summer, when the temperature often hit 110 degrees in the shade and the wind kicked up an acrid dust that left an unpleasant coating on the tongue. Aside from the weather, the newly formed county was experiencing an unprecedented crime wave that kept the city’s lawmen almost too busy to worry about their love lives.

  Cochise County swiftly became a hotbed of contradictions and jurisdictional challenges. Social, economic, and political rifts opened up, as deep and unstable as the silver mines that yawned below the streets of Tombstone. The wounds of the Civil War remained divisive, with battlefield memories still fresh in the minds of former soldiers. In the Arizona Territory, many cowboys or their families had fought for the Confederacy, and were displaced by carpetbaggers after the war. On the other side were Republican families like the Earps, where three brothers had fought for the Union. There was no middle ground among Tombstone residents: they were committed to one faction or another. The political landscape aligned with economic interests: the Republicans were townspeople who supported law and order to protect investments, and stood in staunch opposition to mostly Democratic rural ranchers and cowboys, who cherished their individual freedoms. The town’s two leading newspapers, the Epitaph (Republican) and the Nugget (Democratic), advocated ceaselessly for their parties. Partisan battles broke out over decisions large and small.

  The town’s peacekeepers proved incapable of setting aside their differences. As representatives of federal and local law, the Earps should have cooperated with county sheriff Johnny Behan. Instead, each side eagerly subverted the other and allowed personal and professional jealousies to compromise their judgment. Behan had the job Wyatt wanted; Wyatt had the girl Behan had brought to Tombstone.

  As a series of serious crimes unfolded in Tombstone, the stalemate between the two sides slowly heated up into an all-out war over a high-stakes prize of money, power, and Josephine Marcus.

  THE ROAD TO the O.K. Corral began with a sequence of thefts and killings that brought the Earp and Behan factions into open opposition. An audacious attack on a Wells Fargo stagecoach going from Benson to Tombstone left the driver and one passenger dead, and a cargo of silver worth $25,000 missing. Stealing the U.S. mail in addition to the silver kicked the crime into the higher category of a federal offense, and brought deputy U.S. marshal Virgil Earp and Pima County deputy sheriff Wyatt Earp into the picture. Suspecting the involvement of the cowboys, the Earps set off on horseback at midnight, with the county forces, led by Johnny Behan, in another posse. The Earps caught one suspect and turned him over—with considerable reluctance—to Sheriff Behan. Their worst suspicions were confirmed when the prisoner casually walked out of jail a few hours later and disappeared into the streets of Tombstone.

  Wyatt dearly wanted to make a couple of spectacular arrests before the next election, when he might wrest the sheriff seat from Behan. His campaign platform was simple: only Earp could end the crime spree. There was also money at stake, since Wells Fargo had posted a handsome reward for the Benson killers. Wyatt offered the Wells Fargo bounty as a bribe to Ike Clanton, a friend of the thieves, if he would lure the robbers, dead or alive, into Wyatt’s trap. If Johnny’s corruption could be exposed at the same time, Wyatt would move ahead on all fronts—with the bonus of clearing the name of his friend Doc Holliday, who had been accused of taking part in the stagecoach robbery by none other than his lover, a very drunk Big Nose Kate.

  The town’s collective nerves were set even more on edge when an outbreak of Indian hostilities was reported. “Our city is in a big excitement at present, the Indians are on the war path all around us and have killed a great many people,” Louisa Earp wrote breathl
essly to her sister. “The people here expect to be attacked any day. Passenger trains in Benson were halted, probably to bring in soldiers.” But then the threat of Apaches on the warpath was eclipsed by yet another spectacular crime.

  In early September a second stagecoach was held up and robbed of its mail and money, this one on its way to Bisbee. Again, federal and county groups competed for the bragging rights of bringing in their prisoners. This time two suspects were arrested: Pete Spence and Frank Stilwell. Both were known associates of Johnny Behan.

  As Cochise County sheriff, it was Johnny’s job to keep the cowboys in check. Instead, he always seemed to be looking the other way. Tombstone mayor Clum said that Johnny “winked at crime.” But less partisan observers like Endicott Peabody took a more nuanced view. Peabody blamed Behan for the growing cowboy influence, but suspected that the Earps were more than a little ambivalent about helping him: “The cowboys are a troublesome element and, there is unhappily, a feud between them and the marshal’s party. The misfortune is that the cowboys are countenanced by the sheriff for political reasons and the marshal’s party on the other hand is not quite above suspicion.”

  Acting governor of Arizona John Gosper conducted an independent investigation. While he too found fault with both sides, the “cow-boy element at times fully predominates,” he concluded. With the tacit consent of Sheriff Behan, cowboys were running rampant, stealing cattle, holding up stagecoaches, and attacking federal property. The governor listened to Johnny’s complaints about Virgil, and then heard Virgil leveling the same charges at Behan. His summary: “The very best law-abiding and peace-loving citizens have no confidence in the willingness of the civil officers to pursue and bring to justice that element of out-lawry so largely disturbing the sense of security.” Neither Johnny nor the Earps had shown themselves capable of compromise or coordinated action on behalf of their constituencies.

  “Something must be done, and that right early,” Gosper predicted, “or very grave results will follow.”

  Gosper’s dire warning was the catalyst for the formation of a Tombstone Citizens Safety Committee to work around the town’s peacekeeping paralysis. In case of emergency, an alarm would sound, and the one hundred or so committee members would gather at an appointed place. It was a vigilante solution to a failure of government.

  ON THE MORNING of October 26, 1881, extreme fatigue and painful hangovers befuddled the brains of an unusual gathering of men who had been gambling and drinking all night. The unlikely group around the table included Virgil Earp, Johnny Behan, and his friends and cowboy sympathizers Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury. The game was anything but friendly, as the participants had a long list of reasons why they hated each other. Johnny was the least experienced gambler among them, an easy mark for the professionals. But he had come to the table determined to win, knowing that there was a lot more on the table than cash.

  It was almost daylight when the game broke up. Long after the rest of the poker players staggered off to bed, Ike Clanton continued to roam the streets of Tombstone, waving his gun and complaining loudly about the Earps and Doc Holliday. As chief of police, Virgil showed up and answered Ike by hitting him over the head and arresting him. Ike was not supposed to carry a gun, since Tombstone’s “Ordinance Nine” had been enacted to prevent armed confrontations in town. Although this regulation was, at best, applied inconsistently, Virgil acted swiftly. Ike was dragged into court and walked out with a still more throbbing head and a $25 fine for carrying a weapon.

  Another one of the poker players that night, Ike’s friend Tom McLaury, took up the war of words and was the next one to get whacked over the head, this time by Wyatt Earp.

  Each side gathered reinforcements. Ike kept up his steady stream of schoolyard taunts. He and Tom were joined by their brothers, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury. Virgil huddled with Wyatt and Morgan. Doc Holliday, who had heard enough of Ike’s loud accusations, joined them. The chorus of anger and aggression grew louder, the volatile brew of jealousy and political ambition and greed and historical resentment more toxic. Exhaustion clouded the capacity of both sides for mature judgment. October 26 was a day of sneering, taunting, verbal and physical abuse, dares and double dares, and finally, deadly provocation. The Earps closed ranks and responded with an unprecedented display of police firepower.

  Johnny Behan’s job was to keep the peace, and he failed. He slept late that morning, and then he indulged in a leisurely shave, thus missing most of the day’s provocations. Virgil Earp’s job was to keep the peace, and he also failed. There were hours in which either one of them could have defused the hostilities. Behan was indecisive and flustered in the face of escalating tensions. As Walter Noble Burns put it, Behan was “a man of words rather than action. . . . [He] talked like a big man and acted like a little one.” Instead of recognizing that personal resentments were compromising his judgment, Virgil Earp gathered his deputies—including the most unlikely peacekeeper, Doc Holliday—and confronted his enemies in the middle of Tombstone’s afternoon bustle.

  With the rest of Tombstone going about its business, buying groceries, cashing checks, and sharing the news of the day, Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday confronted Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, and Billy Claiborne in an open lot near the O.K. Corral. The next few minutes were a blur of shouts and shots and flying bodies—a complex tour de force of sheer drama that has fueled more than a century of controversy.

  Who shot first?

  Were the cowboys armed?

  Did the Earps act in self-defense, or with homicidal intent?

  These and a hundred other questions have been asked and answered, and then asked again. Instead of answers, there is only the terrible beauty of the three handsome Earp brothers and crazy Doc Holliday stalking the dusty streets of Tombstone in their long black coats, approaching their enemies with guns loaded and a grim determination to finish a bad day’s work.

  “YOU ALREADY HEARD about these events by telegraphic, so I won’t repeat but will add extra details,” Clara Spalding Brown informed her readers in San Diego a few days later, and then went on to describe the scene:

  Following the Indian scare, stage robbery, and important mining suits, we have been shocked by the most tragic and bloody occurrence which has transpired in the history of the camp. . . . The inmates of every house in town were greatly startled by the sudden report of firearms, about 3 p.m. There were so many shots that it sounded like fire-crackers, followed by a shrill whistle coming from the mines. “The cowboys!” cried some, thinking that a part of those desperadoes were “taking the town.” “The Indians!” cried a few of the most excitable. Then the whistle sounded again and well-armed citizens appeared from all quarters, prepared for any emergency.

  Josephine heard the thunder of the gunshots and the piercing shriek of the whistle summoning the Citizens Safety Committee. Without stopping to put on her bonnet, she ran toward the scene as fast as she could, expecting to find Wyatt there. With the uproar in the streets, she would have been able to slip unnoticed into the first ring of men and women gathered there. Once she saw that Wyatt was alive, she melted back into the crowd and retreated.

  Wyatt was the only man left standing. Bodies were removed in a chaotic scene of gore and confusion. A bullet had grazed Doc Holliday. Morgan and Virgil were injured more seriously. On the cowboy side, no medical attention was necessary, other than morphine to ease the last moments of Billy Clanton. Frank and Tom McLaury were already dead. Ike Clanton had escaped harm when Wyatt, who could have shot Ike in an instant, shoved him to safety. As many would note afterward, Wyatt’s remarkable restraint was the strongest evidence that he did not set out to murder unarmed men.

  Johnny Behan rushed to the scene and took charge. The bodies of the McLaurys and Billy Clanton were carried to a nearby funeral home, where autopsies were performed.

  Virgil and Morgan were put to bed together, attended by the “misses Earp”: Allie, Louisa, and Mattie. Like everyone else in Tom
bstone, the women had heard the alarm but knew little of its significance. “We never realized what things were comin’ to,” Allie said. “The men didn’t talk much about it at home for fear of scarin’ us I guess.” They had no reason to suspect that Wyatt, although unharmed physically, was already dead to Mattie.

  The cowboys’ funeral was the most elaborate ever seen in Tombstone. Led by the Tombstone Brass Band, hearses and wagons followed with the rest of the Clanton family, and a long trail of carriages and horsemen brought up the rear. “Almost like a fourth of July celebration,” Allie Earp sniffed in disgust. Hundreds of cowboy sympathizers walked behind the procession, with another thousand people lining the streets. Clara Brown noted the careful formality of the occasion, the bodies “handsomely laid out” in a manner that she considered incongruous to the circumstances. “A stranger viewing the funeral cortege . . . would have thought that some person esteemed by the entire camp was being conveyed to his final resting place,” she observed. “Such a public manifestation of sympathy . . . seemed reprehensible when it is remembered that the deceased were nothing more or less than thieves.”

  Clara Brown voiced a point of view initially held by many in Tombstone’s business establishment who stood firmly behind the Earps and pointed a harsh finger at Behan, accusing him of acting in collusion with the cowboys, even to the point of accepting bribes. But she was troubled when reports surfaced that at least two of the cowboys may not have been armed. At the very least, she acknowledged two sides to the controversy. “Opinion is pretty fairly divided as to the justification of the killing,” she considered. “You may meet one man who will support the Earps, and declare that no other course was possible to save their own lives, and the next man is just as likely to assert that there was no occasion whatever for bloodshed.”