Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend

by Casey Tefertiller

  Amazing as it seems, the President of the United States had ordered the cowboys to disperse and quit riding the countryside, staging naked dances, robbing stagecoaches, and pilfering cattle. The cowboys were most surprised by the order to disperse because they had no idea they had ever been organized. This is a crucial point in understanding the cowboy outlaws of Arizona. President Arthur, Wells, Fargo, and the Earps would refer to the cowboys as an organized outlaw group. Cowboy friend Tom Thornton said that they were generally a group of outcasts who had wound up in the territory, committing crimes and causing general chaos. Most of the anti-Earp group tended to believe that there was no real organization, although Curley Bill, Ringo, and Ike Clanton were held in some respect. In likelihood, it was a loose-knit collection of gangs, generally on friendly terms, who could join together to rustle Mexican cattle or attack a smuggling caravan. Individual cowboys often moved from one gang to another. By most modern definitions, this is organized crime. In 1882, the notion seemed outrageous; in addition, many Arizona Democrats did not appreciate Washington's involvement in territorial problems.

  The Star blamed the state of lawlessness on renegade deputy marshals "who used their commission as warrants for rapine and murder. To wait until these criminals had fled and then declare their innocent victims lawless, is an outrage upon the intelligence and an insult to the dignity of the people."9 In Tombstone, Sam Purdy began turning the outrage in a little different direction.

  "Great indignation is felt here regarding the President's proclamation," the Associated Press report from Tombstone said. The new Democratic owners of the Epitaph also controlled AP reports from the city. "A mass meeting will be held here ... to denounce the Presidential interference. The meeting will be addressed by prominent members of all parties. A like meeting will be held in Charleston."

  Sam Purdy's first contribution to the Tombstone scene would be to promote these two meetings, with citizens speaking out against President Arthur's interference in territory business. However, the meetings did not quite draw the support expected. "As announced the cowboys and their political friends held an indignation meeting last night," the Arizona Gazette in Phoenix reported. "The meeting was a complete fizzle and its action in no way represents the sentiments of the respectable portion of this community. Resolutions denouncing the President and Governor were introduced and when the vote was taken the noes had it six to one, but Judge Robinson declared it carried. The meeting then dispersed. It was a complete farce." The Nugget lampooned: "The meeting fell flat as a cold mashed potato, and the Governor still lives and the President is reported well.""

  The Epitaph sent out a report saying, "Cochise County is in as peaceful a state as any other section of the country. There is no outlawry, no outrages, no resistance offered to the exception of the law. Tombstone is as peaceful a city as there is in the Union. It has a perfect police system and efficient officers. Public opinion is unanimous in calling the President's action an outrage." The San Francisco Exchange responded with sarcasm. "It is gratifying to know at last that Cochise county is 'in as peaceful a state as any section of the country.' What have become of all the cowboys there? Are they out chasing the Earps or out fighting Indians? And where are those other gentlemen who shoot holes through people's hats, knock cigars out of their mouths, and cut telegraph wires with bullets? And how about the stables and corrals of the honest yeomanry of Cochise county-are they not still locked at night? And it used to be a pleasing custom in Cochise county to enter a ball room, strip the ladies stark, and with revolvers pointed at their heads, make them dance. It is pleasant to hear that these pastimes no longer exist in Cochise county, but we believe they do all the same."il

  The Republican San Diego Union zealously supported the presidential proclamation and denounced the Democratic press for its defense of outlawry. The Star struck back by calling the paper "a small edition ... published by a small man in a small town on the Pacific coast.... The editor lives in the sagebrush and combs his hair with a splinter." And that was only the beginning. In the course of a long editorial, the Star accused the Earps of being "gamblers, murderers and robbers," and accused the Republicans of fostering lawlessness. The editorial climaxed with: "The outlaws who made Cochise county a hell were not the cowboys, but federal officials supported and maintained in their lawlessness by the Republican party. Peace and order came back to the county when these outlaws, red with murder and dripping with the blood of innocent people, fled the country."12

  It is little wonder the Earp affair became a morass of confusion when it was twisted from a question of public safety to the major political issue in Arizona. Nobody liked killing, and few savored the thought of the police killing anyone they believed a criminal. That notion would change for some when they were personally touched by the deeds of the desperadoes.

  The Epitaph railed against Arthur's proclamation, with no opposing voice in the press. It was left for the public to respond. The most articulate answer came in another letter to the editor from Bryant L. Peel, whose freshly buried son still burdened his heart. On May 9, two days before the indignation meeting, he wrote to the Nugget:

  The Epitaph has repeatedly assailed the Governor for his proclamation, and threatens to get up an indignation meeting and denounce his acts. I have read these editorials until I am disgusted. I know the object of such articles. It is to cover the deficiencies of a set of county officials in Cochise county. The most outrageous crimes have been committed by the wholesale, and not an arrest made nor an attempt made to arrest. Farmers at their homes, engineers in their offices, teamsters on the road and miners in their camp, had been murdered in cold blood, and our county officials took no pains to ferret out the perpetrators of these crimes. These things caused the best citizens of Tombstone to appeal to the Governor for relief. I was one of that number. The Governor had two classes of advisors when he came here. One advised him to call out 100 militia and head them and take this class of outlaws as a class, and shoot them wherever found, which I think is the only way to deal with fiends. A more conservative class advised him to call on the Government for aid. He took the advice of the latter, and asked the president for $150,000 and permission to remove the inefficient officers.

  The President asked Congress for permission to use the military to aid the civil authorities-a thing that nobody asked for, nor no one wanted. But that was not the fault of Governor Tritle, nor shall he be blamed for it. All that Governor Tritle said is true, and we stand ready to prove it to the world. Let the Epitaph get up its indignation meeting, and give the names of those who are chagrined. We want to know them and we want the world to know them; and when his meeting is over we will have a meeting of the law-abiding citizens to endorse all the Governor said. We were assured that henceforth the Epitaph would be published in the interest of truth and Democracy. We have been deceived. A ring runs and controls the paper. Democracy has nothing to do with it and shall not be contaminated by it. I am a Democrat, and Democracy shall not be responsible for anything a ring or clique does.

  Wyatt Earp and the Citizens Safety Committee still had their friends, Democrat and Republican. Legal principles do little to console a grieving father.

  WYATT EARP'S FAME HAD PRECEDED HIM when the train pulled into Gunnison, Colorado, in late April of 1882. The Earps and their friends were still in the contradictory situation of being both lawmen and fugitives when they made camp outside Trinidad, Colorado, where Wyatt's old friend Bat Masterson had taken over as city marshal.

  Wyatt and Doc had their falling out in Albuquerque, but still remained on fairly good terms. "We had a little misunderstanding, but it didn't amount to much," Holliday told the Denver Republican. The Albuquerque Review reported that while the Earp party stopped in Albuquerque, Holliday "became intoxicated and indiscreet in his remarks, which offended Wyatt and caused the party to break up. Holliday went with Tipton."13

  The little group probably stayed a few days in Trinidad, with McMasters and Turkey Creek Jack taking off in ot
her directions. "Messrs Wyatt and Warren Earp are still with us," the Truudad News reported on May 5. "Their brothers [sic] went south Wednesday morning. Again the News takes great pleasure in saying they are all 'way up' boys-gentlemen of the first water."14

  Doc Holliday left the Earps and went on to Pueblo and then Denver. Wyatt, Warren, and Texas Jack set up camp on the outskirts of Gunnison in early May. They remained quiet at first, rarely coming into town for supplies. Eventually, Wyatt took over a faro game at a local saloon.

  In Pueblo, according to Doc Holliday, a Perry Mallen spoke to him at Tom Kemp's variety theater and played up to the volatile dentist to gain his confidence. Mallen said Doc had once saved his life, and he wanted to return the favor. Stilwell was chasing Doc, trying to kill him, and he wanted to give Doc the warning. A few days later, Doc and a few friends went to Denver for the horse races at the local fairgrounds. While walking down the streets on Monday evening, May 15, Mallen stepped from the darkness and brandished two sixshooters in Holliday's face.

  "Doc Holliday, I have you now," Mallen said. Accompanied by Arapahoe County sheriff's deputies Barney Cutler and Charles Linton, Mallen marched Holliday to the sheriff's office, followed shortly by a reporter for the Denver Tribune. Mallen claimed to be a deputy sheriff from Los Angeles and provided telegrams ordering Holliday's arrest on the killings of Stilwell, Billy Clanton, Curley Bill, and an unnamed railroad conductor. When Holliday entered the police station, he demanded to know why he had been arrested. Mallen, a heavy man with a short-cropped reddish mustache, aimed a revolver at Holliday.

  Holliday looked at the gun and said, "Oh, you can drop that. Nobody is going to try to get away from you. I have no weapons."

  Mallen kept his pistol pointed and spoke angrily. Holliday maintained his calm, with "that coolness which knows that it is his only salvation, for he evidently feared that Mallen might kill him at any moment," according to the Tribune report. A rough-looking crowd then filed into the police station, and the reporter expected a lynching. Mallen started a heated exchange as Deputy Linton frantically telephoned for a hack to take Holliday to jail.

  "No, you won't get away from me again," Mallen said, still holding the pistol. "You killed my partner, you blood-thirsty coward, and I would have taken you in Pueblo if the men I had with me had stood by me."

  "I did not come here to be abused," Holliday said.

  The toughs spilled into the sheriff's office, and Holliday asked to make a statement.

  "This is not a court or jury," Linton said.

  "But I want to set myself right," Holliday responded. "Is it customary in this country to deny a citizen the right of speech? Is it right? Is it justice?"

  With no answer from the deputies, Holliday turned to speak to the little group that had streamed into the office. "I can show who that man is. I can prove that he is not the sheriff, and, in fact, no officer of Cochise County. I can show you his reason for bringing me here. I can show . . ." Mallen and the officers cut him off. The hack arrived to take him to jail, and the Tribune reporter rode along.

  Mallen claimed that seven years earlier Holliday had killed Harry White, Mallen's partner, and that Mallen had been following him at his own expense for revenge. Mallen said Holliday had also been involved in numerous other crimes.

  Bat Masterson showed up at the jail and vouched for Holliday, telling the Tribune reporter that Doc was a responsible man and a deputy United States marshal. The Tribune speculated that Mallen was "a cowboy playing detective," perhaps none other than "Sim"-actually Fin-Clanton. The court ordered Holliday held in jail to await what would be yet another judicial and journalistic battle surrounding the Earps and their affairs.15

  Bat Masterson acted quickly, wiring the city marshal in Pueblo for a warrant to arrest Holliday, which would change the jurisdiction. Masterson had the Pueblo authorities swear out a complaint. In 1907 Bat wrote: "The charge ... made against Holliday at this time was nothing more than a subterfuge on my part to prevent him from being taken out of the state by the Arizona authorities."

  The warrant charged Holliday with running a confidence game in which a victim was relieved of $150. Pueblo marshal Henry Jameson presented the warrant and asked to immediately take the prisoner. Arapahoe County sheriff Michael Spangler did not bite, saying he would hold the prisoner until officers arrived from Arizona.16 At that point again a crowd identified as "gamblers, bunko, and confidence men" gathered outside the office, and Spangler took Jameson by the arm and ushered him out the door and into the crowd.

  "Here, you get out of here-and damned quick, too," Spangler said, then turned to the crowd. "I don't want any monkey acting, and all of you men who have no business here will get out in quick order."

  Excitement swirled in Denver as the city tried to grasp the role Holliday had played in the wild doings in Arizona. In the wake of the arrest, the Denver Republican wrote, "Doc Holliday, the prisoner, is one of the most noted desperadoes of the West. In comparison, Billy the Kid or any other of the many Western desperadoes who have recently met their fate, fade into insignificance. The murders committed by him are counted by the scores and his other crimes are legion. For years he has roamed the West, gaining his living by gambling, robbery and murder. In the Southwest, his name is a terror."

  The Rocky Mountain News ran an interview with a former Arizona resident stating the conflict had been a battle between the bunco-steerers and the cowboys, and that Virgil Earp had been shot for participating in a bunco scheme. "The better class of citizens, including the business men and the moneyed men have preferred the 'bunko' men to the cowboys, because the latter have been accustomed to come into the cities, get drunk, get into fights and inaugurate hades generally. The bunko-steerers are there as everywhere, a peaceable, quiet class of people who outside of the bad habits of lying and stealing, would make quite respectable Sunday-school superintendents ."17 There was never a shortage of wild stories surrounding Arizona affairs.

  Masterson wisely responded with a public relations campaign, polishing Doc's image and smearing Mallen's. Masterson told the Republican, "I tell you that all this talk is wrong about Holliday. I know him well. He is a dentist and a good one. He ... was with me in Dodge, where he was known as an enemy of the lawless element."18 The press battle lines were quickly drawn. The very Democratic Rocky Mountain News, building on past reports from Tucson's Arizona Star, vilified Holliday. The Denver Republican, as Republican as its name, sided with Holliday. The Tribune and the Pueblo Chieftain also championed the dentist. It was the same old press-political war, moved from the desert to the mountains.

  The News glorified Mallen for his heroic capture of Holliday, but Masterson cleverly chose to defame the defective detective. The Republican wrote, "Masterson . . . claims that Mallen is a fraud and a friend of the cowboys, whose only object is to get Holladay [sic] back in order that he might be killed." Masterson confronted Mallen at the sheriff's office and told him that Holliday could not have killed a man in Park City, Utah, because Doc had never even visited Utah. Mallen finally admitted that he could be mistaken.

  Mallen responded to Bat's press campaign by writing a letter to the News, saying that Behan had offered a $500 reward to anyone who captured Holliday, and that the Cochise sheriff had given him the authority. Mallen also denied reports of his previous involvement in a swindle.19

  While Masterson was trying to keep Holliday in Colorado, another battle began back in Arizona. Both Behan and Pima County sheriff Bob Paul, the longtime friend of the Earps, sought the right to deliver Holliday's extradition papers to Denver, with more at stake than a good time in the big city. The Earps and their friends sincerely believed that they would have no chance of surviving in Behan's custody.

  ARepublican reporter asked Holliday if he expected trouble back in Arizona. The doctor paused for a moment and gazed earnestly out of the window, into the rain. "If I am taken back to Arizona, that is the last of Holliday. We hunted the rustlers, and they all hate us. John Behan, Sheriff of Cochise Co
unty, is one of the gang and a deadly enemy of mine who would give any amount of money to have me killed.... Should he get me in his power, my life would not be worth much. 1120

  The New also visited Holliday in jail and described him as "a delicate, gentlemanly-looking man, slightly built and with prematurely gray hair. He wears a heavy sandy moustache. He seems to have at all times a nervous frightened manner, as if he felt some one was pursuing him.""

  Behan received a telegram from Denver saying that not only Holliday but Wyatt and Warren Earp were also in custody. Behan sought a requisition to make the trip to Colorado and applied to Governor Tritle for the proper papers. Before completing the procedure, two Pima County supervisors interceded with the acting Pima County district attorney, who expressed outrage that Behan would seek the right to chase men wanted in their county. Behan had already billed Pima almost $2,600 for his cowboy posse, and the supervisors did not want to give him another crack at their treasury. According to Tritle, when he finally received the papers they were made out for Bob Paul, not Behan. The papers did not have the proper seal, however, so Sheriff Paul was to make the trip with the corrected papers to be forwarded later. To further confuse the situation, Paul received a telegram from Gunnison telling him that the Earps were there, not in Denver.

  The Epitaph called it an outrage that Behan would not be sent to Colorado after preparing the case and offering a reward from his own pocket for the capture of the Earps and Holliday. Again the Star spoke out:

  The impression shared by many that Sheriff Paul will not bring the Earps to Tucson but will permit them to escape in transit, the Star considers an injurious suspicion which is not justified by the high reputation of the officer. Neither does it believe that the requisition was entrusted to him by the Governor for that purpose. Sheriff Paul will undoubtedly bring the Earps back to Tucson and they will receive here a fair and impartial trial. Hence there is every prospect of these notorious criminals soon being lodged within the walls of the Pima county jail, notwithstanding the efforts of Sheriff Behan, of Cochise county, to get his hands upon them-22