Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

The council quickly approved Behan and rejected three of the Republicans, including Lyttleton Price for district attorney. Fremont compromised and replaced a Republican nominee for supervisor with Democrat Milt Joyce, which gave the Democrats control of the county board. He then nominated Al T. Jones, another Democrat, for recorder.74 However, the council adjourned without approving a district attorney, and Fremont arbitrarily appointed Price, a move that could not be countered by the Democrats because the session had ended. This led to months of conflict before Price would officially hold office. A Republican district attorney would be a powerful voice in county politics as well as an important party presence. Price criticized the Democratic legislators for their greed and vested interests. In a letter to the Republican Epitaph, heaccused a few of the Democrats of creating the county with the intention of taking the best jobs for themselves, only to learn that U.S. laws forbade so blatant an abuse of power. "It is no secret that certain of the honorable gentlemen were to share in the emoluments of various offices, neither is it any secret that certain of the honorable gentlemen are now taking their division of the spoils while others are languishing under disappointment. The governor conceded to them most of the appointments, and they maligned and insulted him for not getting the rest."75

  One of the men left yearning for power was Harry M. Woods, who had risked his Tucson friendships to push through the bill forming the new county and undoubtedly expected to profit from his actions. Woods would have been a logical candidate for county treasurer, but federal rules prohibited him from a chance to collect what he and his associates considered their just rewards.

  The council approved Johnny Behan's appointment as sheriff of Cochise County on February 10 to a chorus of support from the press, with the exception of the Epitaph, which had boosted Thomas Sorin for the job. Wyatt Earp never received any serious consideration. The Republican Prescott Miner even supported Behan and wrote: "He has the stamina and courage to execute any order given him, and we predict that the Epitaph staff, now so terribly sorry, will have occasion to change their opinion of the gentleman before the close of his official term of office."76 Many opinions would change indeed by the time Behan would leave office.

  Behan quickly traveled to Prescott after the appointment. Whether he met with Woods then or the decision came later, he would soon agree to give Woods the job of undersheriff, where Woods could help collect taxes until the elections in 1882. Behan's promise to the politically naive Wyatt Earp could be forgotten. This was politics, and politics took priority over promises. Woods needed a government job, and his political friends were the same political friends who made sure Johnny would get the plum post of tax collector and sheriff. Pragmatic politics dictated only one maneuver-give Harry Woods the job of undersheriff and leave Wyatt Earp to fend for himself. Behan already had his profit from the deal-Earp had not actively sought the office to complicate the situation. Now the only problem left was to explain the change to Wyatt Earp. This, according to both Earp and Behan, the new sheriff never did.

  LOVE STRUCK JOHNNY BEHAN. With a lucrative new job as sheriff and tax collector, Johnny bowed to passion. He went to San Francisco to woo the woman who, he said, would become his bride, the lovely daughter of a Jewish family, a young woman blessed and burdened with a spirit of adventure and a lust for excitement. Josephine Sarah Marcus met Johnny on her first trip to the frontier, late in 1879. Light opera had become a favorite in America, and Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, the rousing tale of British seafarers, quickly became the most popular play in the land. Josephine Marcus, called Sadie by family and friends, longed to become an actress.

  Sadie Marcus would often say she ran away from her rich San Francisco family for the excitement of a fling in show business, but the Marcuses were not rich. Hyman "Henry" Marcus worked as a baker, and the family lived in lowermiddle-class neighborhoods while Josephine grew up. Her parents originally came from Germany to New York, then west to California in 1869 by sailing around the Horn, circling the lower tip of South America. No records of Josephine's birth have been discovered, and even her year of birth is uncertain, although it is most generally believed to be 1861 in New York."

  Sadie Marcus, with her friend Dora Hirsch, studied dance in San Francisco when an opportunity arose. George N. Pring and his wife were promoting a Pinafore tour of Arizona and brought a musical company by rail to end of the train line in Casa Grande, about sixty miles north of Tucson. On October 4, the women of the troupe refused to make the stage trip to Tucson, and the Prings found themselves loaded with dates and obligations but no Pinafore singers. Mrs. Pring returned hurriedly to San Francisco to recruit another troupe and struck it lucky: the acclaimed actress Pauline Markham had just finished an engagement at the Bella Union and agreed to join Pring on the Arizona tour. Markham had to quickly find singers to back her act and, apparently, Sadie and Dora were chosen.

  Sadie would later tell writers Mabel Earp Cason and Vinnolia Earp Ackerman that she and Dora were "two giddy, stage-struck girls setting out in the world with very little equipment except their looks." By Sadie's account, the two girls sailed to Santa Barbara to join the troupe and later wound up on a stagecoach in San Bernardino. By her story, the coach rolled across the miles of desert toward Tucson when suddenly a band of riders joined the players, a group of scouts under the command of well-known scout Al Sieber. The performers were told that Apaches had jumped the San Carlos reservation, and the scouts would provide an escort. At one point Apaches were sighted over a distant hill, and Sieber's patrol rode out to drive them off. While Sieber's scouts hunted the Apaches, the coach passengers took refuge at a ranch, sleeping on the floor for about ten nights. "Even to this day the whole experience recurs to my memory as a bad dream and I remember little of its details," Sadie said a half-century later. "I can remember shedding many tears in out-of-the-way corners for I thought constantly of my mother and how great must be her grief and worry over me." Sadie said that one of Sieber's scouts, Johnny Behan, drew particular attention. "He was young and darkly handsome, with merry black eyes and an engaging smile, and my heart was stirred by his attentions as would the heart of any girl have been under such romantic circumstances. The affair was at least a diversion in my homesickness, though I cannot say that I was in love with him. I was in a state of too great confusion to allow of any such deep feeling." Sadie told her biographers that she returned home without ever appearing in a performance.

  The entire story was fanciful, and it could not have happened as she told it. Markham's troupe passed through Los Angeles by train on October 20 with two other women in the cast-May Bell and Belle Howitt, apparently stage names for Sadie and Dora. They arrived in Tucson on October 25 in the early morning hours, about the expected time for such a trek, with no ten-day stop to wait out Apaches. Sadie apparently edited her story in later years to avoid any taint that would be associated with performing on a frontier stage.

  The Prings' Hayne Operatic Company began holding open auditions for local talent to fill the cast in late October, then opened Pinafore shows in early November with May Bell (apparently Sadie) in the role of cousin Hebe and Belle Howitt (apparently Dora) playing Little Buttercup. However, Pring proved far from astute as a financial manager, and the Pinafore ran adrift. With the company in chaos, Markham dumped the Prings and reorganized her own English Opera Company to finish the engagement in Tucson and continue on to other Arizona towns. The troupe proceeded to Tombstone for a one-week run, beginning December 1, 1879, about the same time the Earp families pulled in their wagons. The cast apparently still included Sadie Marcus, and no one could imagine that this performer in an eight-actor cast would emerge as a powerful influence on the future of Tombstone as she flitted between and flirted with two of the village's key political players. That would be months ahead. For now, she was simply a dancer in a performance that charmed Arizona.78

  The troupe continued on through Arizona and broke up early in 1880 when Markham married in Prescott and briefly abandoned the st
age. She would later move to New York and act in major productions. There is no record of Sadie's adventures along the way, but apparently she met a stage-door Johnny named Behan, who became charmed by the young dancer. Sadie said she returned to San Francisco where she contracted St. Vitus' dance, a nerve disease. Shortly after she recovered, Johnny came to call. "He had thought of me ever since we had met, he said, and wanted me to become his wife. I had thought often of him, too, but I was not at all sure that I cared enough for him to marry him and so he returned to Arizona."

  Ida "Kitty" Jones, the wife of Tombstone attorney Harry Jones, visited San Francisco and stopped by to see Sadie. Jones carried a message from Behan, another marriage proposal. "Life was dull for me in San Francisco. In spite of my sad experience a few years ago the call to adventure still stirred my blood," Sadie said. "Kitty was alive with enthusiasm over her new home in the busy town with its color and activity. When Kitty left San Francisco, I was not with her-but I joined her in Los Angeles. I thought I was in love. How can any one love another whom he knew so little as I knew Johnny Behan?"

  Again young Sadie left without her parents' knowledge, this time expecting the journey to end with a ring on her finger. By her account, she settled in with Harry and Kitty Jones and kept house for Behan and Albert, his ten-year-old son from a prior marriage, while awaiting the wedding. It is more likely she shared a residence with Johnny and functioned in town as Mrs. Behan. Stage records show a Mrs. Behan leaving town, and postal records show a money order sent by Josephine Behan.

  Sadie said that she became depressed by Johnny's wandering ways and wrote home to explain the situation. Her father responded immediately, urging her to return home and enclosing $300 for her passage. Sadie stayed true to Johnny, however. When Behan found out about the money, she said, he talked her into using it to build a house, which would hasten their marriage. Sadie said she also sold a diamond ring she owned to help finance the little cabin on Safford and Sixth Streets she was to share with Johnny. The house actually was listed in Behan's name. The engagement broke off when Behan began running around with a married woman, and Sadie angrily had to find other pursuits.

  Sadie Marcus was the type of woman who could draw men's attention. With ample breasts and a slender body, dark hair, an attractive face, and a laugh that sounded like the tinkling of champagne glasses, Behan's love interest certainly must have attracted notice around the male-dominated, female-hungry mining town. But Stuart Lake and Tombstone old-timers would recall another detail of Josephine Marcus's early residence in Arizona. According to the old tales, the lovely Sadie did a turn as a prostitute.

  Lake would repeat the story as fact, though he left little written record. He did write to an editor at Houghton Mifflin referring to Sadie as "the belle of the honky tonks, the prettiest dame in three hundred or so of her kind."79 Old Tombstone residents would accept as gospel that she had whored in Tombstone. No real proof remains to establish whether Sadie Marcus entered the world of prostitution, though it would not be hard to imagine the destitute young woman being forced into the trade after the breakup with her fiance. If indeed she did take a whirl at prostitution, it is doubtful she worked the brothels or cribs. More likely, she served as the frontier equivalent of a high-priced call girl, entertaining a very select clientele without offering her special services to the rougher elements. She would spend the rest of her days trying to cover the truth of her life in Tombstone, telling vague, inaccurate stories that leave her real activities open to question.

  All that can be known with certainty is that by April she was signing herself as Josephine Behan, and several months later, probably in July, she separated from Behan and maintained a separate residence in town. As that summer of 1881 progressed, she would make the acquaintance of another ambitious young man, and the young woman with the adventurous spirit would find herself in the middle of a conflict that was about to spin out of control.

  CURLEY BILL'S PERSONAL RIOT through Tombstone territory awakened the boomers to a new and very real threat. Robberies and murders had become commonplace in the more remote areas. Lone travelers were in constant danger, and livestock was being stolen. By late 1880, the character of the area was changing. With much of the nation in a financial downslide, the thought of escaping to the frontier became appealing to more and more of the greenhorn city types. They came knowing of the dangers of the Apaches and snakes; they did not expect or easily accept the presence of a group of backcountry toughs endangering travel and even their very lives. The early boomers had more or less accepted the cowboys. The cowboys did make excellent Indian fighters, and their presence helped dissuade Apache bands from raiding towns and ranches. They also spent their money freely and provided a supply of cheap beef. But tolerance began running thin with more and more robberies, and gradually even the term cowboy became a slur. "The cowboy is a name which has ceased in this Territory to be a term applied to cattle herders," the Tucson Citizen wrote. "The term is applied to thieves, robbers, cut-throats and the lawless class of the community generally. Anyone who attempts to defend Arizona cowboys by restricting the term to its literal meaning of herder simply makes an ass of himself. When a man follows as a legitimate occupation the tending of cattle or other stock he is called a herder and not a cowboy."80

  Curley Bill's binge led to calls for cowboy blood, as did a murder in November of 1880 when Tombstone businessman Jerry Ackerson, a friend of the cowboys, was found dead in the backcountry. On February 25, 1881, the situation became increasingly serious with the first stage holdup in newly formed Cochise County. Bandits stopped the coach about five miles out of town and stripped passengers of $135 before letting it continue. The holdup men were never caught nor identified.81 Off to the south, Mexican ranchers began protesting strongly against the gringo rustlers coming down to steal their cows and raid their towns.

  Apart from the real danger that cowboys presented, they were becoming just plain irritating. In Willcox, cowboys congregated to show off their marksmanship by shooting the heels off boots as people passed by or shooting to snuff out candles or cut the ashes from cigars.82 A visitor from Washington showed up in the little town of San Simon and encountered a few cowboys in the saloon. One cowboy, probably Jim Wallace, pulled his gun and ordered the mining investor to dance. The investor responded with a show worthy of Eddie Foy. After finishing his steps, he invited his admirers for a drink, then slipped away to borrow a six-shooter. He turned to the dance-master and said, "Now you dance a while, damn you." The cowboy gracefully complied, according to a Citizen story.83 Another cowboy wanted a serenade on a train and forced passenger George L. Upshur into full voice. Upshur sang as the cowboys chanted, "Open your mouth wider when you sing." Then Upshur went to the sleeping car and remained out of sight for the rest of the trip.84 The Arizona Star, Tucson's Democratic paper, led the outcry against this new breed of banditti with a bold editorial in February:

  The depredations of the cow-boys are becoming so frequent and of such magnitude that no time should be lost in adopting measures which will insure either their total extermination or their departure from the Territory. Not less than two hundred of these marauding thieves infest the southeast section of Arizona. The stock industry is to-day paralyzed all through the section they roam. Not hundreds but thousands of cattle have been made away with by them during the last eight months. These bands of thieves go armed to the teeth and show up in all directions, take in small settlements, and cause terror wherever they make their appearance. They are worse than the Apache and should be treated as such. They are law-breakers of the most flagrant character. If they are allowed to carry on their trade of robbery they will become so strong that it will require a large force and much treasure to suppress a gang of outlaws who are depopulating the rich grazing lands of Arizona. Let prompt action be taken. Let the public consider them outlaws, depredating upon the rights and properties of the people, and wherever found let them be shot down like the Apache. Let our Mexican neighbors understand that our peopl
e are determined to rid them and Arizona of these outlaws and that they will be protected in following them across the line into our borders, and treating them in a summary manner, and thus we will save a repetition of the Rio Grande trouble. The cow-boys are outlaws, their hand is against the law-abiding people of the Territory; let them be dealt with ac- cordingly.85

  Many of the raids north of the border came against an Arizonan of Mexican ancestry named Jose M. Elias, who owned a large ranch on the San Pedro River near the border. Thieves stole eight valuable horses from Elias in October of 1880, then returned in January to steal nine more horses and four mules. Elias dispatched four men to chase the cowboys, and after a shooting skirmish recovered part of the herd. The thieves returned on January 30 to steal thirty cows, then again in April for another theft. While Elias became the prime target of the raiders, cowboys also struck against Anglo ranchers in the area.86

  By early 1881, the border raids began to threaten relations with Mexico as robberies on the roads threatened commerce. Governor Fremont wanted action, immediate action, before the situation escalated and the growing bands of thugs took power over the county. In late February, Fremont sent a special message to the territorial legislature deploring cowboy actions and requesting a state militia to ride the backcountry, "looking to breaking up these bands, and the preservation and maintenance of peace along the frontier between the two countries."87 The Star pushed for even stronger action:

  The question of how the cow-boys are to be dealt with is assuming more importance every day. The organization of a volunteer company of one hundred men to hunt them down or drive them out of the Territory, must evidently end with failures, from the fact that the outlaws are too strong for such a small force, and in a pitched fight would undoubtedly come out victorious, which would result in making matters tenfold worse than at present. We must either have a strong force for the work or not attempt it [at] all. It has been suggested that two companies of United States cavalry be sent out in the section where the outlaws camp, and stay with them, and whenever the cow-boys move to move with them; or in frontier language, "stay with them," until they will be forced to leave the Territory or fight for their ground. The business could thus be brought to an issue, or at least they could be prevented from committing their depredations. This plan, taken in conjunction with the establishment of a military camp in the scourged section, would undoubtedly meet the exigency, while the scheme of sending out volunteers would most probably prove fruit- less.88