During the next few years, Texas writer Ed Bartholomew presented a twovolume work on Earp revealing many of the flaws the ex-marshal had tried so hard to hide. Bartholomew discovered the horse-stealing, the firing in Wichita, and the dropped gun incident. This became the source of mockery, since Lake had quoted Earp as saying, "I have often been asked why five shots without reloading were all a topnotch gun-fighter ever fired, when his guns were chambered for six cartridges. The answer is, merely, safety. To ensure against accidental discharge of the gun while in the holster.... The number of cartridges a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as one indication of a man's rank with the gun-fighters of the old school. Practiced gun-wielders had too much respect for their weapons to take unnecessary chances with them; it was only with tyros and would-bes that you heard of accidental discharges."36 The quote certainly made Earp appear silly when the debunkers pointed out that he had been guilty of dropping his gun and sending off a wild discharge. It is more than likely that Lake used his own words and attributed them to the one-time marshal.
Since Lake used the device of inserting first-person quotes in many places, critics-and even Allie-assumed Earp had simply lied to embellish his own legend. In the case of the Ben Thompson arrest in Ellsworth, Lake would later write to Robert Mullin that he had taken the story almost entirely from an old notebook belonging to Bat Masterson.37 Earp had certainly mentioned it-he makes an oblique reference to it in a letter. But Masterson and Lake may well have combined to turn a small incident into a lollapalooza, as Lake did with the Clay Allison confrontation in Dodge City.
Lake died in 1964, about the time the debunkers went into full swing. He lived just long enough to see the accuracy of his book undermined and his credibility eroded. Ironically, continued research shows Lake was far more right than wrong, although he was certainly one-sided and given to exaggeration.
The debunkers succeeded in tarnishing the halo Lake had placed over Earp's head, and Hollywood reacted. The luster gradually fell off the Earp legend, and even John Ford ridiculed the old marshal somewhat in his 1964 Cheyenne Autumn. John Sturges's Hour of the Gun in 1967 portrayed a more vengeful and less noble Earp, and the 1971 Doc represents the debunkers' image of Earp and Holliday.
The Earp legend became even stranger as the years passed. In 1971, Wayne Montgomery claimed to have made a major discovery when he found the journals of his grandfather, O.K. Corral owner John Montgomery, and provided remarkable new information on the gunfight. Three years later, he gave the Tomb stone Epitaph a letter he claimed his grandfather had written to the New York Herald in 1902.38 However, researchers discovered that the real John Montgomery had no descendants, and further investigation showed that Wayne Montgomery was not related to the O.K. Corral owner. The indefatigable Montgomery surfaced again in 1984 with the publication of his Forty Years on the Wild Frontier. By now, the author claimed descent from another John Montgomery altogether, a minor politician in Tombstone. This time the hoax received far less attention.
Wayne Montgomery was not the only hoaxer in the horde, and some even carried the surname Earp. In 1958, Virgil Edwin Earp, Newton's son, appeared on $64,000 Question, a popular TV show, and told lurid tales of how he helped Uncle Wyatt in Tombstone. Virgil Edwin claimed to have killed Indian Charlie and to have been sent on a vengeance trip to China to rub out an old enemy. "We Earps never know when someone out of the past will come looking for us. We had to kill a lot of men as lawmen and memories are long in the West," Virgil Edwin told reporters.39 However, Virgil Edwin would have been about four when Indian Charlie died, a little young to be facing down outlaws. Another Earp, George, a distant cousin of Wyatt's, wrote a first-person story for Reader's Digest in 1960 detailing his participation in events that never occurred. With such an abundance of inaccurate sources available, it is no wonder the story fell into such a remarkable historical muddle.
Crime emerged as a social issue again in the America of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with debates focusing on the same issues that had torn Arizona apart a century earlier. America has never resolved one of the most fundamental questions of its legal system: In a nation of laws, should law reign supreme over public safety when the citizenry lives under constant threat? In 1882, Wyatt Earp made his own decision.
In the 1990s of drive-by shootings and gang warfare, the streets of some major cities became more dangerous than Tombstone ever was in the 1880s. Americans brought up the same old questions, trying to find solutions without compromising precious legal standards. With this backdrop, two box office movies and a TV project arrived on the market, retelling the tale of the marshal who made his own justice. It is inevitable that America rediscovers Wyatt Earp whenever lawlessness reigns.
Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, showed up on Christmas Day of 1993. The original script by Kevin Jarre gave an authentic portrait of the West and told much of the Earp story as it had actually occurred. After a change of directors, the finished movie emerged as a jumble of authenticity and overdone violence; an interesting combination of facts and flaws. President Bill Clinton took a copy of the film with him to Russia to show as a symbol of American culture.
Six months later, Kevin Costner played the lead role in the Lawrence Kasdan production of Wyatt Earp, a film that seemed based more on past Earp movies than the story of Earp himself. Also in June of 1994, Hugh O'Brian reprised the role in a TV special, "Return to Tombstone," where clips from the old show were used to tell the story.
Probably no movie would have entirely satisfied the old-timers. They had lived the life, and cinema could never capture the intensity of reality. In 1930, Fred Dodge wrote, "We old timers know that the battles fought for law and order in Tombstone were no moving picture affairs. Good men, who were our friends, met wounds and death there. It is an offense to us and to them to reproduce these things as an entertaining spectacle, and incident, for it is not possible to show what necessity lay back of them and made them inevitable."40 Dodge may not have liked it, but motion pictures have kept Tombstone alive and part of American popular culture for more than a century.
After the movies returned Earp's name to prominence once again, a plaque was placed at the site of Earp's former residence in Los Angeles in 1994, and city councilman Nate Holden served as the main speaker. "Frankly, we could use Wyatt Earp in America today. He was an incredible tall-in-the-saddle hero, a mixture of great myth and fact, who should never be forgotten," Holden told the crowd.
John Clum, George Parsons, Clara Brown, Bat Masterson, and Florence Finch Kelly might all say the same thing. In fact, they did.
NOTES AND SOURCES
A note on spelling: Such names as McLaury, Philpott, and Borland were consistently misspelled in period sources. To avoid confusion, the spelling has been corrected in statements that would have been given orally and quoted directly from written sources. For example, information given during the Spicer hearing was presented orally, so the spelling of names has been corrected. Nicknames, such as Curley Bill, were spelled variously and have been made consistent except in direct written quotations. Aliases have generally been made consistent since the names cannot be confirmed. For example, Eliot Larkin Ferguson assumed the name of Pete Spence but it appears variously as Spence and Spencer on public records. Since this is not his real name, there is no accurate spelling.
S HAPTER 1. COWTOWN JUSTICE
1. Mrs. J. A. Rousseau, "Rousseau Diary: Across the Desert to California from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino in 1864," San Bernardino County Museum Association Quarterly, Winter 1958.
2. Stuart Lake's notes, 1928-1931, box 16, folders 5-8, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. Pages not numbered. Referred to in later references as Lake's notes.
3. Gary L. Roberts, "Wyatt Earp in Kansas," Gary L. Roberts Collection, 1989, p. 18.
4. Roberts, "Wyatt Earp in Kansas," p. 18 (quotes June 16, 1870, Southwest Missourian).
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Richard Erwin, The Truth ab
out Wyatt Earp (Carpenteria, Calif.: The O.K. Press, 1992), pp. 24-26.
8. Frank Murphy, "Why Cemeteries Became Boot Hills," Los Angeles Tunes Sunday Magazine, Oct. 23, 1932, p. 12.
9. Nyle Miller and Joseph Snell, Why the West Was Wild (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1968), p. 509.
10. Ellsworth Reporter, Aug. 8 and 15, 1957; Robert Dykstra, The Cattle Towns (New York: Knopf, 1968), pp. 136-41.
11. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was Wild, pp. 635-40.
12. Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), pp. 91-92.
13. Floyd B. Streeter to W. S. Campbell, Oct. 14, 1950. W. S. Campbell Collection, box 91, folder 2, University of Oklahoma Western History Collection.
14. Bertha Hancock, "William Box Hancock Ms.," University of Oklahoma Western History Collection, 1934. The Hancock MS was written by Bertha Hancock, William's wife, in 1934; however, the material seems uncorrupted by Lake's Frontier Marshal. Because it was written after Lake's book appeared, it cannot be considered absolute substantiation.
15. Mabel Earp Cason and Vinnolia Earp Ackerman, "She Married Wyatt Earp," C. Lee Simmons Collection, Sonoita, Ariz., undated but prepared in the late 1930s. Pages not consecutively numbered. It should be noted that material in the manuscript differs from that in a later treatment by writer Glenn G. Boyer. All references in this book are to the original manuscript.
16. Craig Minor, Wichita, The Early Years (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison, 1982), p. 110. West Wichita emerged as the gaming and brothel center in August of 1873 when Wichita's gamblers responded to a raid on a gambling house by moving most activities across the river, beyond the control of town officials.
17. Maurice Benfer, "Early Day Law Enforcement Problems in Wichita," Wichita Eagle Sunday Magazine, Jan. 21, 1929, p. 4, Gary L. Roberts Collection. Other quotes from Jimmy Cairns in this section also come from the interview.
18. Details on Earp's role in the Sanders affair are sketchy and somewhat contradictory. Snell and Miller, Why the West Was Wig pp. 585-86, tells the story of the incident; the John Flood Manuscript (John Henry Flood Jr., "Wyatt Earp," Chafin Collection, Culver City, Calif., 1926) gives almost the same account and states that Earp became disturbed with Smith over his failure to act. Cairns's account says that he and Earp rounded up some of the troublemakers, a detail that is not included in other accounts. Lake, in Frontier Marshal, says Earp was not involved in the incident itself, and that the inefficiency of the police led to his being placed on the department.
19. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Mardha/i pp. 118-21. The incident cannot be verified by outside sources. Lake says he was told the details by former Dodge City attorney Charles Hatton.
20. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was Wild, p. 147.
21. Virgil Earp dictation, Apr. 11, 1886, Bancroft California Dictations, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.
22. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was WPdd pp. 146-48.
23. Ibid., p. 491.
24. Ibid., p. 148.
25. Ibid., p. 150.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., pp. 151-52.
28. Lod Angeles Timed, Dec. 4, 1896.
29. Atchison Daily Champion, Apr. 6, 1876.
30. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 16, 1896.
31. Robert K. DeArment, Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), p. 9.
32. Stuart Lake's notes in the Huntington Library provide a chronology of this period. In letters, Lake said he took the chronology directly from Earp. However, Earp clearly gets confused on dates and is occasionally off by a year or two in his recollections.
33.-While Earp's duties as a shotgun messenger on the shipment returning from the Black Hills have not been confirmed, the incident is noted in Lake's notes. However, express records indicate the route had been troubled by bandits, and such service would be fitting for a man with Earp's record (Erwin, The Truth about Wyatt Earp, pp. 85-86).
34. Snell and Miller, Why the West Was Wild, p. 153.
35. Dodge City Time,,, July 21, 1877.
36. Earp's real reason for traveling through Texas is the subject of some dispute. Big-Nose Kate said Earp and second wife Mattie passed through Fort Griffin while Earp searched for a job; the 1896 Examiner stories identify the reason for the trip as chasing rustlers; some secondary sources say Earp traveled a gambling circuit. Stuart Lake's notes in the Huntington Library indicate that Earp told Lake the trip was indeed to pursue Roarke and Rudabaugh. Bat Masterson captured Rudabaugh on March 15, 1878, in Dodge City, before Earp received the wire in Joplin to return for the deputy job; he may have been pursuing Roarke or had other reasons for the trip. Adding to the puzzle, the Ford County Globe reported that Earp had "just returned from Fort Worth" when he took the assistant marshal post.
37. Bat Masterson and Jack DeMattos, Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier (Monroe, Wash.: Weatherford, 1982), p. 76. This book reprints a 1907 series in Human Life magazine.
38. San Francisco Examiner, May 11, 1882.
39. Gunnison News-Democrat, June 18, 1882.
40. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 2, 1896. It should be noted that the Examiner series was written to glorify the events and that some quotes may have been enhanced or rephrased by the writer.
41. Joe Chisholm, "Tombstone's Tale," Jack Burrows Collection, San Jose, Calif., p. 113. Chisholm quotes a letter from Kate to writer Anton Mazzanovich. The story of Holliday's killing of Bailey appears in Lake's notes, but Kate's remarkable rescue does not appear. It should be noted that Lake quoted Earp as saying the Examiner writer had taken great liberties with the information on Holliday.
42. Eddie Foy, Clowning through Life (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1928), pp. 113-14.
43. Hancock, "William Box Hancock Ms."
44. Snell and Miller, Why the West Was Wild, p. 298.
45. Bob Palmquist, "Who Killed Jack Wagner?" True West (October 1993), p. 14. Palmquist located the files of the Sughrue-Tarbox election fraud case in which Bat Masterson's reputation was questioned. Masterson testified he had indeed shot the men who killed his brother. This detail had eluded researchers who accepted the erroneous newspaper reports.
46. Roberts, "Wyatt Earp in Kansas," pp. 14-15. In addition to serving as deputy marshal, court records show that Earp served as a deputy sheriff at various times. It was not unusual for law officers to hold both commissions so their authority would be valid beyond their immediate jurisdictions.
47. Andy Adams, Log of a Cowboy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), p. 191.
48. Snell and Miller, Why the West Was Wild, pp. 154-55; San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 2, 1896.
49. Foy, Clowning through Life, pp. 113-14. The National Police Gazette, Aug. 10, 1878, describes the source of the trouble as coming after Earp and one of the "cow-boys" had an altercation. Jeff Morey Collection.
50. Snell and Miller, Why the West Was Wild, p. 155.
51. National Police Gazette, Aug. 10, 1878.
52. Bat Masterson told a strikingly similar story in his 1907 Human Life magazine series (Masterson and DeMattos, Famous Gunfighters, pp. 30-31). Masterson said Earp arrested an unnamed alderman and kept him in jail overnight despite several protests.
53. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was Wild, pp. 25-27. Newspaper records indicate that Allison visited Dodge on both Aug. 6, 1878, and Sept. 5, 1878.
54. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 16, 1896. Years later, cowboy Charlie Siringo, who had many frontier adventures real and imagined, would tell that he had innocently ridden into Dodge and been recruited into a group of Texans providing a guard for the lawmanhunting Allison. Siringo said he sat with the other Texans and waited, but Allison could find no badges to puncture. The Texas guard may never have seen what happened quietly between Earp and Allison, or this could have been an incident on Allison's second visit when Earp was out chasing Indians. It could also have been the tactic often used by truelife Western writers of picking up a story and projecting themselves in the middle.
55. A typographical error in the Examiner story says "the same" instead of "a shame." When Lake told the story it emerged as one of the great encounters of the age. Earp's own description is far more believable. It should also be noted that Earp made the claims of Wright's plan in 1896 while Wright was still alive. Wright did not comment on Allison or any assassination attempt in his autobiography.
56. Isom Prentice "Print" Olive was a tough character indeed. His chase after the killers of his brothers inspired the character of Dan Suggs in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.
57. DeArment, Bat Masterson, p. 117.
58. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 16, 1896; DeArment, Bat Masterson, pp. 116-24; Dallas Morning News, Apr. 25, 1926. Lake's version of events is quite different from the account Earp gave to the Examiner, with Lake avoiding the story of how Earp allowed Kenedy to escape from the saloon.
59. Robert Wright, Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital (Wichita: Wichita Eagle Press, 1913), p. 175.
60. Dodge City Tunes, Oct. 26, 1878; Ford County Globe, Oct. 29, 1878.
61. DeArment, Bat Masterson, p. 124.
62. Dodge City Tunes, Dec. 7, 1878.
63. Medicine Lodge Cresset, June 5, 1879, exchange from Ford County Globe.
64. Miller and Snell, Why the West Was WLd p. 157.
65. O. H. Marquis to Mabel Earp Cason, July 31, 1956, photocopy in C. Lee Simmons Collection, Sonoita, Ariz. Marquis was Blaylock's nephew and recalled family stories of his aunt.
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend Page 56