Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  Public opinion would continue to shift against the Earps. The Star received a letter from Jacob Stilwell of Douglas County, Kansas, mournfully seeking information on his dead nephew, Frank. Jack Stilwell, Frank's brother, who had fought heroically at Beecher's Island, came to Tombstone in mid-April and found enough supporters to convince him that his brother had been shot down by thugs. Arizona learned that even stage robbers like Frank Stilwell have loving families, and the sympathy for Jack, who was grieving for a brother he believed murdered, further added to the public outrage against the Earps.

  By the time Jack Stilwell-along with Ringo, Ike Clanton, Pete Spence, and a posse of about thirty-began scouring the hills for Wyatt Earp, the band had made preparations to leave. With the $2,000 from Gage and Wells, Fargo, Earp and his compatriots rode through Fort Grant, then arrived in Silver City, New Mexico, on April 15. They slept in a private home to avoid registering at a hotel, then took breakfast the next morning at the Broadway restaurant. When they placed their horses in the Elephant corral and the proprietor asked their names, one answered John Smith and another said Bill Snooks. This drew the attention of the stable owner and led to an investigation that confirmed their identity. They sold their horses, then took the stage to Deming, then the train to Albuquerque.53

  The Earp seven, with Dan Tipton joining the original six, arrived in Albuquerque, where Wyatt Earp made a surprising move. He went to the offices of the two local newspapers and offered an interview in exchange for a promise that the papers not report his movements until he secured safe refuge. A month later, the Evening Review wrote:

  He stated that they had come to Albuquerque to escape persecution while awaiting the result of an effort being made by Governor Tritle to secure their pardon from the president; that they were then being sought for by their foes, and that they would not give themselves up to the Arizona officers without resistance.... The party remained in Albuquerque for a week or more, their identity being well known to fifty people or more.... During their stay here, "Doc" Holliday and Wyatt Earp quarreled, and when Albuquerque was left the party disbanded, Holliday going with Tipton.... The party, while in Albuquerque, deported themselves very sensibly, performing no acts of rowdyism, and this way gained not a few friends for their side of the fight.54

  From Albuquerque, the group caught a train that would take them to Colorado. The Vendetta that had enthralled newspaper readers of the West had ended. The flow of blood would quickly be replaced by a flood of ink.

  LAW VERSUS ORDER

  e e EFORE WYATT LEFT FOR COLORADO, the press led a vendetta of its own against him, the deputy U.S. marshal who had become the most controversial figure in the West. Tucson's Star joined the Nugget in outspoken opposition to the Earps and their friends, vilifying Wyatt for his method of enforcement and questioning his motives.

  The Republican papers-the Tucson Citizen and the Epitaph -continued to support Earp and rail against the cowboys. All the papers decried lawlessness; they just couldn't agree on whether the cowboys or the Earps were the more dangerous. Outside Arizona, in the cities of California, the focus became equally obscured as papers bewailed the bands of desperadoes trying to kill one another, with the rich mining prospects of Arizona becoming the ultimate victim. The Los Angeles Herald wrote:

  We know nothing of the inner history of this Earp Vendetta, nor do we care a whit about how the quarrel started. The one patent, glaring fact is that the progress and development of a great territory are being made subordinate to the personal quarrels of a set of people one side or the other of whom must contain a terrible set of blackguards and murderers. The law should be supreme in Arizona as elsewhere. Every man who is going about with arms in his hands, whether he belongs to the Earps or the cowboys, should be made to lay them down, and to submit his case to the arbitrament of a jury of his peers, even if it should require the whole power of the Federal government and the whole force of the people of Arizona! If there is no other way to bring this result about, we commend to the people of that territory the beneficent example of the famous San Francisco Vigilantes. Anything is better than downright anarchy.'

  The Vendetta crystallized the doctrines of party politics in Arizona and throughout the West. Earp's supporters, mostly Republicans, placed greatest importance on keeping order and maintaining public safety. Earp's critics, usually Democrats, called for a nation of laws, where all must play by the same rules, and the rights of the accused must be protected from maverick marshals who make their own standards to enforce justice. The debate no longer centered on law and order, but became one of law versus order. The arguments reached extremes in Arizona in 1882, and Wyatt Earp became the center of a debate that would grow to national importance. Law versus order was the issue, and Wyatt Earp became the example. Tucson's Star summarized the Democratic viewpoint by editorializing:

  One of the worst features of the present state of outlawry which is being carried on ... is that they are Deputy United States Marshals sworn to protect and sustain the laws of the country. Instead of this, they have, and are continuing to take the law into their own hands.... What a comment on the United States government, that a band of so-called officials with a high hand rove over the country murdering human beings out of a spirit of revenge. This red-handed assassination will not do. No matter how much the friends of the Earps may sympathize in their loss, there is another side to the question. The community have some rights which must be respected. The world at large are not supposed to stand and behold this high handed violation of the law and not denounce it, for in striking at law, it is an assault upon every citizen in the country. If they can kill one citizen in defiance of the law, they can do so with every citizen. The question is, law or no law: which shall prevail? The people say the former must.2

  The Earps had their defenders, who made equally articulate arguments on the need to preserve order so that laws can thrive. This is one of humankind's oldest questions and has long inspired debate in many civilized societies.

  The saga of Wyatt Earp in Tombstone is engaging on several different levels. First, and most important, is the overriding issue of law versus order, with the Earps defending public safety over legal principle. This is the question of how a just man responds to an unjust society, and it is a question that has continued long after the gunfire ceased in the Arizona backcountry. While vengeance certainly served as a motivation for Wyatt Earp, he believed that he had little choice but to kill, not to capture, the men who maimed one of his brothers and murdered another because the courts could not effectively deal with the outlaws.

  Second is the question of malfeasance of duty on both sides, with Clum and the Earp supporters maintaining that Johnny Behan profited from the cowboys' cattle rustling and siphoned off public funds. Woods and the Nugget tried desperately to link the Earps to the stage robberies.

  Third is the private feud between the Earps and Behan, with its string of broken promises and treachery, and a romantic triangle while both the sheriff and the deputy U.S. marshal were wooing the lovely Sadie Marcus.

  The Behan-Earp feud certainly existed, beginning probably in February of 1881 when Behan reneged on his promise to appoint Wyatt as his undersheriff. It escalated after the Benson stage robbery when Behan refused to pay the Earps for their posse service, then intensified in August or September when Wyatt and Sadie began keeping company. Morgan Earp had verbally sniped at Behan on several occasions, and the two sides developed a strong distaste for each other. The Earps and their supporters would always believe that everyone's pal Johnny Behan was the ultimate political crook.

  The level of Behan's chicanery can never be known with any certainty. It does appear that he avoided pursuing the rustlers who pilfered Mexican beef and sold it to the McLaury brothers and others for resale to Tombstone butchers. Whether he actually received bribes or just tax revenue and promises of political support cannot be known. He may simply have seen the cowboys and their supporters as good taxpayers, or he may have had a more active involvement.
Behan's term as sheriff proved notably unspectacular, with a series of jailbreaks and few convictions, leading to Hume's remarkable statement in the Police Gazette that "even the sheriff of the county is in with the cowboys, and has to be or his life would not be worth a farthing." And Doc Holliday would say in May, "John Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, is one of the gang and a deadly enemy of mine, who would give any money to have me killed. It is almost certain that he instigated the assassination of Morgan Earp."3 A letter-writer to the Citizen said of the sheriff, "There is no hope for any honest man to get justice here against these scoundrels, so long as Behan is in office, for he is in with them and I have no doubt divides the spoils with them. The Earps are the only men these cutthroats are afraid of, hence, their great anxiety to get them out of the way. Behan knows that if they return here and are set at liberty, he and his gang will have to leave here."4

  In 1930, after Clum reminisced in a little magazine story, retired Wells, Fargo secret agent Fred Dodge wrote to his old friend, "I note that you have been quite generous in your reference to Johnny Behan. One knows, who can read between the lines that there has been much left unsaid."5 And much of it must stay unsaid. Behan wisely kept no records of his political indiscretions, although his bankbooks indicate he earned $40,000 for one year in office, an extraordinary amount for public service in those days.6 It does seem most likely that Behan fed generously at the public trough and made his highest priority personal gain rather than civic duty.

  As to the Earps' involvement in stage robberies, it seems impossible. For Wells, Fargo to make a stunning defense of Wyatt Earp virtually ends any question of his involvement in robbing their stages. It seems far more likely that some clever rustler or associate-perhaps Ringo, perhaps Behan-understood the value of gossip and planted stories that would muddy the reputations of the Earps.

  There are no easy answers to century-old questions, but if Hume, Clum, Dodge, George Parsons, Clara Brown, and others of stature are to be believed, the Earps earnestly attempted to keep the peace, with a style many others found too brutal to accept. Frontier towns were tough and demanded tough marshals, Earp and his supporters believed. Wyatt Earp and his ride against the cowboys had brought into question a cherished American principle by asking: How can a nation of laws survive when the laws fail to work?

  The issue reappears every time rampant lawlessness makes the streets unsafe and interferes with business. It is a question that is central to the democratic experience. History has generally shown that when law supersedes order, crime and violence become epidemic; when order supersedes law, the enforcers overstep the boundaries of their duties. Tombstone provides a remarkable microcosm of an issue that is at the heart of social thought.

  Earp became a vigilante, a marshal, and an outlaw all at the same time. He enforced beyond his authority; he punished without due process. The oddity of the Earp story is that he had always spurned vigilante methods until forced into a situation where he believed he had no other choice. After the killing of Fred White, and again in the Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce affair, he had turned back vigilantes. When he perceived the courts as impotent, the anti-vigilante became the ultimate vigilante justice. As such, the Earp saga is not a defense of vigilantism; it is an acceptance of such actions only under the most dire necessity. Wyatt Earp cannot be defended, but he can be understood.

  IN HIGHLY CHARGED SOUTHERN ARIZONA, the Earps became hot politics. The Democratic Star and Republican Citizen in Tucson made the Earps' activities into top-drawer political controversy. More at issue, however, was the bill Behan submitted to Pima County, a whopping $2,593.65, to pay for Ringo and the cowboys to ramble around the Arizona backcountry avoiding the Earps.'

  The newspaper bickering went on continuously for two months as the Democratic press stood stoutly for law, and the Republicans advocated order. The very life of Wyatt Earp became a political issue to be used in the next territorial election. "The rope that hangs the Earps will strangle the Republican party," the Star dropped into a column on May 21. On May 25, the Star further said, "The Republican issue in Arizona is the vindication of the Earps. They are the father, son and holy ghost of the Republican party in the Territory."

  When the Citizen wrote, "The cowboys used to make quiet, law-abiding people get up and dance under the gentle pressure of drawn revolvers," the Star answered, "In this, however, they differed from the Earp crowd, who killed law abiding people, instead of making them dance. As between dancing and death, public sentiment will rather incline to the method of the cowboy."

  False Wyatt sightings came regularly in Arizona. He was ubiquitous in his absence. Further rumors of his death appeared in print several times. Wyatt far outlived the rumors.

  The Nugget and the Epitaph kept up their usual hectoring through most of April, until a little notice showed up in the April 24 Nugget announcing that it had purchased the Epitaph. It also took over the Epitaph's rights to provide Associated Press dispatches. Richard Rule had railed at length about Clum's proEarp dispatches affecting the national perspective on both Tombstone and the Earp issue. Now the Democrats had control, but it was too late to change the pro-Earp stories that had filled the nation's papers.

  The sale of the Epitaph by co-owners Clum and Reppy left Tombstone without a Republican voice in the aftermath of the town's greatest controversy. Before he left, Clum zealously attacked Sam Purdy, the ardent Democrat who would come from Yuma to edit the Epitaph. In his Yuma writings, Purdy denigrated the Earps with relish, picking up the Democratic stories and editorializing with glee against the marshals' defiance of the law. Purdy took control on May 1, promising balanced and fair coverage without loyalty to political cliques. What followed was most unusual. From the outset, Purdy railed passionately against the Earps. All this came under the same Epitaph banner that had served as the Earps' primary voice of support, and it totally confused much of the citizenry. Purdy, who had not been near Tombstone during the controversial period, became the great anti-Earp voice in the aftermath of the Arizona War, writing editorials against the Earps in the same paper that had defended them.

  It is not hard to see from whence Purdy drew his information. Four years earlier he had been a partner in the Yuma Exponiter with James Reilly-the same Judge Reilly who feuded with Wyatt Earp for years. Reilly almost certainly provided Sam Purdy with the anti-Earp view of stage robberies and thuggery. Purdy ate it up and spit it out in ink. He forever confused the Earp story. Many new arrivals in Tombstone would receive the gospel according to Sam Purdy, which regurgitated the Clanton-cowboy line about the Earps' involvement in crime. Purdy made the Earps appear as crime bosses and the cowboys as victims. The new editor came in with the avowed purpose of promoting business in Cochise County, and of playing down the dangerous reputation of Tombstone. The Epitaph had become more a public relations sheet than a newspaper.

  The Tucson Citizen stood alone as Arizona's only major supporter of the Earps when the war of words reached a crescendo. The Nugget would continue to publish for another month, with Richard Rule uncharacteristically becoming something of a spokesman for moderation. But only one real voice remained in Tombstone, and that was distinctly Democratic with no sympathy for Wyatt Earp.

  After Wyatt's departure for Colorado, the situation in Arizona gradually calmed. By the end of April, Star columnist O'Brien Moore visited Tombstone and dispatched a report beginning, "I am now more than a week in Tombstone and haven't, so far, seen a single killing. If I should make this statement in an Eastern newspaper I would immediately be dubbed a liar of a high order of genius. But such is the real state of affairs, without gloss or glamor. There hasn't even been a street fight, a knock down or a game of fists." Moore used his pen to lash out at the Earps. "The Republicans are in a terrible state of demoralization owing to the Earp imbroglio, a good portion of the party being still firm adherents of the outlaws. These may be called the 'swallow tails.' ... There is hardly a doubt that the best feelings of the people are in unison with the county government regarding
the Earps."

  Outside Arizona, the situation remained a focus of national attention. The raids against Mexico had nearly set off an international incident, and the outlawry outraged the wealthy mining operators, who counted on southern Arizona to create the next boom that would boost the economy. President Chester A. Arthur responded by formally denouncing the lawless elements of the territory. In response to a request from Governor Tritle, Arthur ordered the military to intercede in enforcing the laws of the United States against the cowboys of Cochise County:

  It has been made to appear satisfactorily to me ... that, in consequence of the lawful combination of evil-disposed persons who are banded together to oppose and obstruct the execution of the laws, it has become impracticable to enforce, by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, the laws of the United States within that Territory, and that the laws of the United States therein have been forcibly opposed, and the execution thereof forcibly resisted; and whereas the laws of the United States require whenever it may be necessary in the judgment of the President, to use military forces for the purpose of enforcing the faithful execution of the laws of the United States, he shall forthwith by proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within a limited time. Now, therefore, I, Chester A. Arthur, President of the United States, do hereby admonish all good citizens of the United States and especially of the Territory of Arizona against siding, countenancing, abetting or taking part in any such unlawful proceedings; and I do hereby warn all persons engaged in or connection with said obstruction of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes on or before noon of the 5th day of May.8