By then, Tombstone was full of buzz about what was happening, and any sense of reality was quickly slipping away. Citizens and groups were approaching the Earps with all sorts of ominous warnings about what the Clantons and McLaurys had said. Rumor had it that Ike had been seen in the telegraph office, which created the fear that he had wired for backup, and, indeed, the Earps believed—in error—that Ike had telegraphed Frank and Billy that morning. Meanwhile, Frank and Billy, who had not seen Ike’s performance before they arrived in town, now believed that the Earps were out to get them. The recipe for tragedy was almost complete.
About the only person in Tombstone who did not seem to know what was going on at that point was Sheriff John H. Behan. He ambled into Barron’s Barber Shop for his daily shave and was soon enveloped by gossip about the situation. Back on the street, Behan ran into Charles Shibell, who had witnessed Virgil surprise Ike earlier, and the two of them went off together to find the marshal. Along the way, they were stopped by R. F. Coleman, who told them that the Clantons and the McLaurys were up to no good. They had crossed over Allen into the O.K. Corral, he said, and he told the sheriff, “You should go and disarm that bunch!”
Coleman got to Virgil before Behan and Shibell did and repeated his report of Cow-Boy mischief. When the sheriff caught up to Virgil in a crowd of bystanders at Hafford’s corner, the marshal was clearly frustrated. When Behan asked Virgil what was going on, Virgil snapped, “Some sons-of-bitches have been looking for a fight and now they can have it!”
“You had better disarm them. It is your duty as an officer,” Behan replied.
“I will not. I will give them their chance to make a fight.”23
Sensing Virgil’s agitated state, Behan eased the marshal into Hafford’s Saloon with an invitation to take a drink. Virgil must have realized how ill advised his public outburst had been, and he joined Behan and Shibell at the bar. Virgil declined a drink, but as the bartender brought the sheriff his drink, William B. Murray, a local stockbroker and a leader of the Citizens Safety Committee, pulled the marshal aside and told him, “I know you are going to have trouble and we have plenty of men and arms to assist you.”24
Calmer now, Virgil told him, “As long as they stay in a corral, the O.K. Corral, I will not go down to disarm them. If they come out on the street I will take their arms and arrest them.”
“You can count on me if there is any danger,” Murray assured him as he left.
Behan questioned Virgil about what “that son-of a bitch Strangler” wanted, but Virgil brushed the question aside and asked Behan to help him arrest the Cow-Boys. Behan refused but offered his own plan: “Don’t undertake to disarm that bunch, or they will kill you. They were just down at my corral [the Dexter] having a gun talk against you and threatening your life. I will go down to where they are. They won’t hurt me. And I will get them to lay off their arms.”25
Virgil agreed. Anything seemed worth a try to avoid a fight. Behan hurried off. As Virgil walked out of the saloon, H. F. Sills, a Santa Fe railroad engineer on furlough and a stranger in town, stopped him and told him that he had seen the Cow-Boys at the O.K. Corral and that he had overheard them threatening Virgil’s life and the lives of his brothers.26 Most likely this was more of Ike’s liquor talk, but each new report made the situation seem more and more ominous. And when Morgan and Doc joined Virgil and Wyatt, West Fuller, the young gambler, decided he should warn his friend, Billy Clanton. He headed for the O.K. Corral, but along the way he was sidetracked when he met Mattie Webb, a young madam, and stopped to talk with her.27
After his late breakfast, Doc had walked to the Alhambra Saloon to check on business. Morgan caught up to him there, filled him in on the situation, and walked with Doc to Hafford’s corner.28 Doc was dressed like a dandy in a gray suit and a pastel shirt with a stiff collar and tie. He wore a slouch hat and a long, gray overcoat and carried a silver-headed cane. As Doc approached Wyatt and Virgil, he asked what the situation was. Exactly what was said between them was not recorded at the time, but Wyatt and others later recalled an exchange that went something like this:
“Where are you going?” said Doc.
“We’re going to make a fight,” replied Wyatt.
“Well, you’re not going to leave me out, are you?”
“This is none of your affair.”
“That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me!”
“It’s going to be a tough one.”
“Tough ones are the kind I like.”29
Wyatt may well have protested, as this dialogue suggests, but Virgil settled the matter when he handed Doc the Wells, Fargo shotgun, telling him to hide it under his overcoat. “I did not want to create any excitement going down the street with a shotgun in my hand,” he explained.30 Doc took the shotgun and handed Virgil his cane. Virgil’s decision to involve Doc would prove costly.
Close to twenty minutes had passed since Behan left to find the Cow-Boys when John L. Fonck, formerly a captain on the Los Angeles police force and another leader of the vigilantes, offered the help of ten men. Virgil told him much the same thing that he had told Murray, that as long as the Cow-Boys were getting their horses to leave town, he would do nothing, but that if they came onto the streets, he would have to arrest them. Fonck responded, “Why, they are all down on Fremont Street now.”31
Fonck was right. What he did not know was that Virgil concluded that the Cow-Boys had had ample time to leave if that was their intent. Their number had already grown from two to five, and he clearly worried that more might be on the way. He had turned down the best offers of help. He did not trust Behan. His regular officers were asleep. And the town’s affairs had been disrupted long enough by the threat of armed men on the streets. It was time. His credibility as chief of police was on the line. Further delay would almost certainly produce criticism for allowing the situation to go on for so long. “Come along,” the marshal said to his brothers and Doc.
Morgan spoke up at that point, “They have horses. Had we not better get some horses ourselves, so that if they make a running fight we can catch them?”
“No. If they try to make a running fight we can kill their horses and then capture them,” Wyatt offered. And the four of them started toward Fremont Street. As they walked, Doc whistled quietly and nodded to the people he passed.32
If the Clantons and the McLaurys did intend to leave town rather than put up a fight, they waited too long. First, the McLaurys had business with James Kehoe at the Union Market, which they stopped to attend to. That was where Sheriff Behan caught up to them. The Clantons and Claiborne had turned down Fremont Street toward the West End Corral and stopped on the eighteen-foot vacant lot between Fly’s Photograph Gallery and boardinghouse and a small house owned by William Harwood to get out of the cold wind until the McLaurys caught up. The coincidence of being so close to Doc’s living quarters would not be missed by the Earps.
At the Union Market, Behan told Frank McLaury he wanted him to give up his arms. Frank replied, “Johnny, as long as the people of Tombstone act so, I will not give up my arms.”33 Behan then threatened to arrest him if he did not, and Frank reconsidered. He would go with the sheriff willingly, he said. They then proceeded down the street to catch up to the rest of the party for the same message to be delivered. At the vacant lot, Behan surveyed the scene and asked how many there were. “Four,” he was told, as Claiborne insisted he was not one of the group. Because he was awaiting grand jury action in the Hickey shooting at Charleston, Claiborne had a reputation that caused concern, but he told Behan that he had deposited his weapons at Kellogg’s Saloon the day before.34
According to Behan’s testimony, both Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury said they were unarmed, and he checked Ike to be sure. Tom McLaury pulled back the lapels of his coat to show that he was unarmed, but Behan confessed that he “might have had a pistol and I not know it.”35 Frank and Billy were both plainly armed, and Frank flatly refused to give up his weapon. He insisted that he did not want a fight, bu
t he said he would not surrender his arms. Ike Clanton later testified, “Then Frank McLowry [sic] said he had business in town that he would like to attend to, but he would not lay aside his arms and attend to his business unless the Earps were disarmed.”36 Behan was in a tough spot. Frank was obstinate, and Behan knew that his demand to disarm sworn peace officers was unreasonable.
These negotiations delayed the Cow-Boys just long enough for the Earps and Doc Holliday to turn off Fourth Street onto Fremont. Someone yelled, “Here they come!”
Behan looked up and saw the marshal’s party walking briskly toward them along the sidewalk. He said to the Clanton group, “I won’t have no fighting, you must give me your firearms or leave town immediately.”37
“You need not be afraid, Johnny, we are not going to have any trouble,” came the reply. Sheriff Behan accepted that statement, but he left the Cow-Boys still armed when he hurried off to stop the marshal’s party. The townspeople were fully alerted to what was happening, and several were trailing the Earps to see what would occur next. As the Earps passed the Union Market, Martha J. King, a customer annoyed by the distraction of the employees from business that afternoon, looked out in time to see the wind blow Doc’s coat back to reveal the shotgun underneath. She testified later that she overheard one of the men say, “Let them have it,” as they passed, and heard Doc reply, “Alright.” Placing the worst construction on what she saw and heard, she hurried to the back of the store in fright.38
Outside, Sheriff Behan reached the Earp party as it passed the market. With his hands outstretched, he urged, “Hold up boys! Don’t go down there or there will be trouble.”
“Johnny, I am going down to disarm them,” Virgil grimly responded.
“I have been down there to disarm them,” Behan replied. The Earps and Doc Holliday pushed on by him. Clearly, they interpreted what Behan had said to mean that he had already disarmed them. Virgil relaxed. He tucked his pistol into his pants on his left hip and shifted Doc’s cane to his gun hand. Wyatt relaxed also, slipping his own revolver into his overcoat pocket. Behan did not return to the vacant lot with the Earps to complete his mission of preventing a fight. The problem was that the Cow-Boys had not been disarmed. As Sheriff Behan himself put it, “I doubt whether they considered themselves under arrest or not, after I turned to meet the other parties.”39 Ike Clanton later testified that he did not consider himself under arrest since he was leaving town, and Frank McLaury had made his position clear on the matter as well.
As the Earps approached Fly’s, the Cow-Boys stepped back into the vacant lot away from the street. Doc moved out into the street apart from the rest of the Earp party. He understood that his role was that of backup, so he positioned himself to prevent escape from the vacant lot. When Virgil turned in to the lot, he found Ike Clanton standing in the middle of the lot between the buildings. Along the side of the Harwood House stood the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton. Two horses, Frank’s and Billy’s, both of which had Winchester rifles in the saddle boots plainly in view, stood with the Cow-Boys. Apparently, Billy Clanton had walked away from the McLaurys to speak with Claiborne and handed the reins of his horse to Tom McLaury. As the Earps approached, young Clanton stepped back against the wall alongside the McLaury brothers. He was nervous, but he was wearing a gunbelt and a holstered revolver. Frank also had a pistol in plain view. The Earps were caught off guard by the sight of armed men and by the presence of Billy Claiborne and West Fuller, who had finally reached the scene too late to warn his friends. At that point, Wyatt may well have muttered a shocked, “Son-of-a-bitch!” under his breath, accounting for later prosecution claims that Wyatt used the expression in a threatening way.40
Doc watched as Virgil moved into the lot toward Ike, with Wyatt following behind and Morgan lingering on the sidewalk. He himself stayed in the street but moved closer to the center of the lot. Virgil stepped up and raised his right hand—with Doc’s cane still in it—over his head. “Throw up your hands, boys. I intend to disarm you!”
“We will!” Frank McLaury said as he stepped forward and grabbed the revolver on his hip. The inexperienced Billy Clanton also reached for his gun, and Tom McLaury grabbed his coat lapels and threw them back in a movement much like the motion of reaching for a weapon under one’s coat. With Frank and Billy going for their pistols and none of the others obeying Virgil’s order, Wyatt Earp took no chances and pulled his own revolver. With these movements, Doc lifted the shotgun into view from underneath his coat, pulling back the hammers of the sawed-off ten-gauge with an ominous click-click.41
Virgil was losing control. “Hold! I don’t mean that,” he shouted, as he stood exposed with Doc’s cane in his gun hand high above his head.
The first shot came from Wyatt Earp’s revolver, and it tore into Frank McLaury’s belly left of the navel, while Billy Clanton fired wide of Wyatt. There was a pause as Virgil tried to shift the cane to his other hand and awkwardly fumbled for the pistol out of place on his hip, and the Cow-Boys stood frozen as Frank stumbled from the impact of Wyatt’s shot and Doc moved a step closer to Tom McLaury, who was moving behind one of the horses. Ike broke the indecision, charging up to Wyatt, grabbing him, and wrestling with him for a moment before Wyatt shoved him away and said, “The fight’s commenced. Go to fighting or get away!” Clanton “broke and ran.” He stumbled through the door of Fly’s and into another vacant lot, then through Kellogg’s Saloon and into Toughnut Street before he stopped. In the flurry of gunfire, both Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne would later claim that the Earps shot at them, and the Earps believed that someone fired at them from just east of Fly’s. In all probability, in both cases, they were simply shots that went wild in the confusion.42
The mortally wounded Frank McLaury and young Billy Clanton put up a fight, both firing rapidly. Virgil went down with a bullet in his calf, most likely fired by Frank. Another bullet tore across the back of Morgan Earp, chipping a vertebra as it did so and causing him to shout as he fell, “I am hit!” As he scrambled to get to his feet again, he stumbled over a mound of dirt beside a ditch dug for new water pipes.
Once the fight began, Doc, as containment man, closed in on Tom McLaury, who had taken refuge behind one of the horses. He was reaching across the mount either to fire a pistol or to get the Winchester in the saddle boot. The horse was plunging in the chaos, and when for a split second Tom’s body was exposed, Doc squeezed the triggers on the shotgun. Tom staggered away with twelve buckshot in his right arm and side and crumpled by the telegraph pole at the corner of Third and Fremont while the horse ran off down Fremont Street. Doc threw the empty shotgun to the ground and drew his nickel-plated revolver.
By then, Billy Clanton had been hit twice, once in the chest and once in the wrist. Falling back against the wall of the Harwood House and sliding to the ground, Clanton gamely shifted his pistol to the other hand. He continued to fire with his pistol propped on his knee.
Frank McLaury, still holding on to the reins of his horse, now began to move into the street, trying to use the horse as a shield. He fired once at Morgan before his horse broke loose and ran away. Frank squatted in the street from exhaustion, but as Doc followed him, he regained his feet, and, lifting his pistol, said to Doc, “I’ve got you now.”
“Blaze away!” Doc said calmly. “You’re a daisy if you have.”
They fired together. Doc’s shot struck Frank in the chest at the same instant that Morgan shot him in the side of the head. McLaury’s shot tore into Doc’s coat and grazed his hip. “I’m shot right through,” Holliday yelled. Frank went down hard, but when he seemed to still be moving, Doc ran toward him shouting, “The son-of-a-bitch has shot me, and I mean to kill him.”43
By then the fight was over, except for young Clanton gamely trying to reload his pistol as Bob Hatch and C.S. Fly, two of the witnesses, approached him. “Give me some cartridges,” Billy demanded. Without a word, Fly took the pistol from his hand.
The fight was over, but the confusion was not. The wi
tnesses who had scrambled for cover when the shooting began now came out of hiding and milled about with other citizens crowding onto the scene. The two McLaurys and Billy Clanton were carried into the house on the corner of Third and Fremont, just beyond the Harwood House. Young Clanton said that he had been murdered and told people to go away and let him die. Frank was already dead, and Tom died without ever speaking. The confusion on the vacant lot was such that there was certainly no securing the scene, which meant that pieces of evidence could have been picked up by gawkers. The Earps were convinced that Tom fired the shot that wounded Morgan, and Wyatt would claim that Old Man Fuller later told him that West Fuller had picked up Tom’s pistol in the postfight confusion.44 Much of the town did not know what had just happened, and some panicky citizens thought that either the Cow-Boys or Indians were attacking the town. Within minutes the Vizina mill whistles brought dozens of armed men into the streets, as the vigilantes turned out for action.
Wyatt, the only one of the marshal’s party not hit, was busily seeing to his brothers, when Sheriff Behan reappeared. “I have to arrest you, Wyatt,” Behan said.
“I won’t be arrested,” Wyatt said. “You deceived me Johnny, you told me they were not armed. I won’t be arrested. I am here to answer for what I’ve done. I am not going to leave town.”
There was a tense moment before Sylvester Comstock, a local attorney and leader of Tombstone’s Democratic Party, interceded. “There is no hurry in arresting this man,” he said. “He done just right in killing them, and the people will uphold them.”
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