74. Brown to the editor, April 8, 1881, San Diego Union, April 14, 1881. See also Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 4, 1881, for a detailed recounting of the expedition.
75. Prescott (Arizona) Daily Miner, April 6, 1881.
76. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882. For a discussion of the importance of Harry Woods’s appointment as undersheriff and its effect on the relationship between Behan and Earp, see Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 80–82; see also Alexander, Sacrificed Sheriff, 83.
77. Earp to Burns, March 15, 1927, Walter Noble Burns Collection.
78. Territory of Arizona v. J. H. Holliday, April 13, 1881, Docket Book, Justice’s Court, City of Tombstone; Tucson Daily Star, April 28, 1881; Pink Simms to Noah H. Rose, April 4, 1935, quoted in Bartholomew, Man and Myth, 146–147. See also Karen Holliday Tanner, Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 152.
79. Ford County Globe, April 19, 1881. This and other articles related to the fight at Dodge City appear in Nyle H. Miller and Joseph W. Snell, Why the West Was Wild: A Contemporary Look at Some Highly Publicized Kansas Cowtown Personalities (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1963), 410–413. The disposition of Luke Short’s case and his departure from Tombstone is covered most authoritatively in Palmquist, “Short vs. Storms,” 35–36. Most accounts have Rickabaugh offer Earp an interest in the Oriental in February 1881, about the time that Cochise County was created, and, in some, as a result of Earp’s actions in the Johnny-behind-the-Deuce affair. See Jay, “Fact or Artifact?” 31–34, for a thorough review of the literature. The present account takes a different view based largely on the absence of contemporary evidence to support the early association. References do exist for Earp gambling at Danner & Owens Saloon, the Eagle Brewery, and Vogan’s during the time when he is supposed to have been a partner in the Oriental. Furthermore, while Earp claims to have been an eyewitness to the Short-Storms shooting (see Flood, “Wyatt Earp,” 130–133), he does not appear to have played any role until after the fight, at which time he was one of the men who carried Storms to the San Jose House. See Crabtree Testimony, 295. The Oriental appears to have been closed for the month of March, because the Tombstone Daily Epitaph announced on April 1, 1881, that the Oriental had reopened on March 29. Vizina and Cook would add a second story to the Oriental that spring, and Rickabaugh would open lavish rooms on the second floor on June 11, 1881, managed by “Mr. Freeze.” See Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 12, 15, 1881. Plausibly then, the departure of Masterson, Short, and Harris in April and May left Rickabaugh without security and anxious to find someone to fill the job. Turner, Earps Talk, 23, reports that gun expert Don Shumar of Tombstone had an 1881 business card for Rickabaugh & Company, listing as partners “W. Erp,” Clark, and Rickabaugh, which almost certainly was printed after Harris left the partnership and returned to Dodge. From May 1881 forward, Earp is regularly connected to the Oriental in the sources, and, for these reasons, I offer the hypothesis that he became a partner later than generally supposed and at a point after the relationship between him and Milt Joyce had been strained, not only by his association with Holliday but also by his political differences with John Behan.
80. Tucson Weekly Citizen, May 29, 1881. This is potentially important because of Earp’s claim that after his own confrontation with Tyler at the Oriental (an incident usually placed in mid-February), Tyler left town.
81. Territory v. J. H. Holliday, Case No. 23, Minutes of the District Court, Cachise [sic] County, 75, 77, William H. Stilwell Collection, Utah State Department of Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah. Other documents from the Criminal Register of Actions for Cochise County are reproduced in Traywick, John Henry, 109–111.
82. Territory v. Holliday, Minutes, pp. 75, 77, 78, 87; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 5, 1881.
83. Statement of Wyatt Earp, Tombstone Daily Nugget and Tombstone Daily Epitaph, November 17, 1881.
84. The telegram was presented in court by the Earps’ defense attorney during the questioning of Ike Clanton at the Spicer hearing. See also the statement of Wyatt Earp, Tombstone Daily Nugget and Tombstone Daily Epitaph, November 17, 1881.
85. Testimony of Virgil Earp, Tombstone Daily Nugget and Tombstone Daily Epitaph, November 20 and 23, 1881.
86. Statement of Wyatt Earp, Tombstone Daily Nugget and Tombstone Daily Epitaph, November 17, 1881.
87. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 85–86, summarizes the evidence.
88. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 9, 1881. The Tombstone Daily Nugget, June 9, 1881, identifies McCann as “Little Dan Burns.” Burns was associated with the “top and bottom” gang at Benson. However, Fred Dodge wrote that McCann was his partner at Tombstone and said of him, “Dan was a good, and square Gambler and as soon as he got acquainted, he become very popular for he was a Man that you just had to like—Small of Stature, Irish, and witty—and a Game little fellow.” Dodge said that he and McCann jointly ran a faro game. See Dodge, Under Cover, 25, 27–28.
89. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 21, 1881; Mayor and Common Council of the City of Tombstone v. Wyatt Earp, June 19, 1881, Recorder’s Court, City of Tombstone.
90. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 12, 1881; Mayor and Common Council of Tombstone v. M. E. Joyce, June 11, 1881, Recorder’s Court, City of Tombstone. Lake notes; Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 253– 254. What is missing in the Lake notes is any detail about the episode. One frustrating note is the single phrase “month or so,” which seems to imply that the incident took place a month or so before the fire (which would place the incident closer to June 19 than to mid-February where Lake placed it). Philip J. Rasch notes, in reference to the Epitaph article, that the confrontation was between Wyatt and Doc (the two gamblers) and Milt Joyce (the other party), although he does not provide sources for his conclusion. Philip J. Rasch Collection, Box 2, AHS.
91. The details of the fire are covered in Bailey, “Too Tough to Die,” 98–99; Shillingberg, Tombstone, A. T., 213–219; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, June 28, 1881. Joyce’s losses were placed at $10,000, and Rickabaugh’s at $5,000. The new Oriental would be a single story building but expanded to cover the entire lot. Gary L. Roberts, “The Leadville Years,” True West 48 (November–December 2001): 67.
92. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 81–82; Brown to the editor, August 23, 1881, San Diego Union, August 28, 1881. It should be noted that Mayor Clum kept up a steady barrage of attacks on Milt Joyce for his role on the Board of Supervisors and on Harry Woods, undersheriff and editor of the Tombstone Daily Nugget, through the spring and summer of 1881.
93. Bailey, “Too Tough to Die,” 126–127. Virgil Earp’s bond as chief of police is found in MS 180, F.294, F.295, CCR, AHS.
94. Tombstone Daily Nugget, July 6, 1881. Although Kate got dates mixed, she claimed that Behan carried her before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer, who questioned her at length about the Earps, Doc Holliday, and the Benson stage robbery. Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 12.
95. Tombstone Daily Nugget, July 6, 7, 9, 10, 1881; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, July 10, 1881; Territory of Arizona v. J. H. Holliday, Case No. 30, July 4, 1881, Murder, Justice’s Court, Report of Wells Spicer, Justice of the Peace, September 30, 1881, Cochise County Board of Supervisors.
96. Tombstone Daily Nugget, July 7, 1881.
97. Tombstone Daily Nugget, July 9, 1881.
98. Joe Chisholm, “Tombstone’s Tale (The Truth of Helldorado),” 66, unpublished manuscript, Jack Burrows Collection.
99. Ibid., 66–67.
100. Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 11.
101. Ibid., 13. Napa Nick, a well-known gambler in Tombstone, seems an unlikely choice as an assassin.
102. Arthur W. Bork and Glenn G. Boyer, “The O.K. Corral Fight at Tombstone: A Footnote by Kate Elder,” Arizona and the West 19 (Spring 1977): 77–78; Cummings, “Bork Typescript,” 4. The contrast between Kate’s comments to Mazzanovich and her comments to Bork are so different that they are stunning. The Bork notes include the comment, �
��Mrs. Cummings always said, ‘They never did find out who killed Bud Philpot [sic].’” Explaining the differences is difficult, except perhaps to suggest that her exchanges with Mazzanovich came shortly after she had read Lake’s Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, which clearly angered her. Her comments to Bork came later and seem more restrained (and defensive of Doc’s reputation). She does not appear to have mellowed much in her attitude toward the Earps, however, adding the remark, “The cry was all over the camp that the hunters were hunting themselves,” in reference to the posse that pursued the stage robbers. In context, it does not appear that she was accusing the Earps and Doc of stage robbery; she was simply reporting rumors. And that within itself is interesting because the contemporary sources do not appear to point the finger of suspicion at the Earps until after the O.K. Corral fight and the testimony of the Earps’ enemies at the Spicer hearing. The basic—and most perplexing—question is which of her statements were more honest? Were her accounts to Mazzanovich exaggerated by her anger and her hatred for Wyatt, or were her accounts to Bork more of a coverup of her feelings about Doc’s role in the affair? The best that can be said by way of answer is that Kate had no direct knowledge but did have suspicions.
103. Tombstone Daily Nugget, July 10, 1881.
104. Sacramento Daily Union, March 22, 1881; Wyatt Earp, Crabtree trial, 317.
105. Earp to Burns, March 15, 1927, Walter Noble Burns Collection.
106. Bechdolt to Breakenridge, December 23, 1927, Breakenridge Letters.
107. Writing to Mazzanovich, Kate made it plain that “[a]fter the stage hold-up Doc turned against me. I found out it was he who got Virgil Earp to lock me up in the hotel room. Wyatt and Virgil were doing all they could to get Doc to send me away, and no doubt would have carried their point if I had let them.” Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 13. This, she claimed, was why she swore out a warrant against Doc. “In doing as I did I was taking a desperate chance, but I lost out.” After that, she said, she went back to Globe. What is most striking about the situation, though, is that the contemporary accounts do not support the idea that the Earps were involved in the robbery. In July 1881, the Earps’ reputation was generally good. Virgil had done an exceptional job as chief of police, and Wyatt was respected as well. The seed of their later troubles may well have been planted in their relationships with Joyce, Behan, and Ike Clanton, but the first public accusation of the Earps’ complicity in the Benson stage robbery did not come until Ike Clanton’s testimony at the Spicer hearing, following the street fight in October 1881. See Ike Clanton’s testimony, quoted in Turner, O.K. Corral Inquest, especially 114– 117. Almost all suspicion of the Earps was derivative of the accusations made in Clanton’s testimony and related events, including press criticism in the early months of 1882 after Sam Purdy assumed editorship of the Tombstone Daily Epitaph and in old-timer reminiscences written years later by men like John Plesant Gray, J. C. Hancock, Joe Chisholm, and William M. Breakenridge. The theme was enlarged by the writers Frederic Bechdolt, Eugene Cunningham, William MacLeod Raine, Ed Bartholomew, and Frank Waters until it appeared that the stories were widely known and believed at the time of the robbery, which is simply not true. It is fair to say that in the emotion-charged atmosphere following the street fight in October 1881 many were prepared to believe the worst and did.
6. Friends and Enemies
1. Dodge claimed that he learned of Doc’s role in the robbery from Johnny Barnes, who he claimed was also involved in the robbery attempt. Dodge said flatly, “Doc was a full fledged member of the holdup at the time Bud Philpot [sic] was killed and I know who killed him.” Fred Dodge, Under Cover for Wells Fargo: The Unvarnished Recollections of Fred Dodge. Edited by Carolyn Lake (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 24, 246. John Clum despised Doc without specifically naming him a culprit in the robbery. Bob Paul is said to have believed him guilty as well, based on the Phoenix Republican article of June 26, 1892, which states that “[t]he fourth and most notorious of these highwaymen was ‘Doc Holliday.’” However, the article does not make it clear whether the third-person narrative accusing Doc of being one of the four robbers was the voice of Paul or of the reporter. See John Boessenecker, “Lawman Bob Paul’s Doc and Wyatt Connection,” Wild West (August 2003): 38-45, which reviews the Paul-Holliday connection and shows some ambivalence in attitude on the part of Paul toward Holliday, but presents no direct evidence that Paul believed Holliday to be a party to the Benson robbery attempt.
2. Fannie Kemble Wister, ed., Owen Wister Out West: His Journals and Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 220.
3. William B. Shillingberg, “The John D. Gilchriese Collection,” Wyatt Earp, Tombstone and the West from the Collection of John D. Gilchriese, part 1 (San Francisco: Johns’ Western Gallery, 2005), 5. See also Joe Chisholm, Brewery Gulch: Frontier Days of Old Arizona, Last Outpost of the Great Southwest (San Antonio: Naylor, 1949), 128–130, for a more melodramatic account in which young Billy was sent by Doc to Kate Elder with a message and was promised that if he would bring back an answer, Doc would give him a dollar. Instead of giving Billy a message, Kate said in no uncertain terms that she wanted nothing to do with Doc. Billy supposedly pleaded, “Just send him a piece of paper, Miss, if you only put your name on it … so’s I kin get that dollar.” Kate broke into laughter at that and sent Doc an “insulting answer to his note.” Nona Neff Hixenbaugh, the daughter of Andrew S. Neff, a business partner and friend of Wyatt Earp, also remembered Doc’s kindness to children, saying he “often patted her on the head.” Tombstone Daily Epitaph, May 11, 1944.
4. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.
5. San Francisco Examiner, October 3, 1881.
6. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.
7. The best general discussions of the Cow-Boy problem are found in Larry D. Ball, The United States Marshals of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846–1912 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978), 107–133, and Stephen Cresswell, Mormons, Cowboys, Moonshiners, and Klansmen: Federal Law Enforcement in the South and West, 1870–1893 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991), 181–239, 290–298n.
8. Report of Special Agent R. M. Moore, January 31, 1880, p. 24, Special Agents Reports, U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
9. Ben T. Traywick, The Clantons of Tombstone (Tombstone, AZ: Red Marie’s Bookstore, 1997), provides a convenient summary of most of the available documents on the Clantons.
10. Paul Johnson, “Were the McLaurys Leaving Tombstone,” WOLA Journal 7 (Autumn 1998): 2–6; Allen A. Erwin to the author, March 21, 1961; Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life behind the Legend (New York: Wiley, 1997), 42–45.
11. William M. Breakenridge, Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 105.
12. Phoenix (Arizona) Gazette, November 28, 1897, reprinting the article from the Washington Post..
13. H. L. Williams, Special Agent, to William Windom, Secretary of the Treasury, June 27, 1881, W-93-1881, SAP, USCS, RG 36, NARA.
14. San Francisco Examiner, October 1, 1881.
15. Ibid.
16. Ringo has fascinated writers over time. Jack Burrows, John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), argues that the Ringo story is largely a myth. Steve Gatto, in two works, John Ringo: The Reputation of a Deadly Gunman (Tucson, AZ: San Simon, 1995), and Johnny Ringo (Lansing, MI: Protar House, 2002), presents a summary of most of the known documents in a pro–Cow-Boy venue. David Johnson, John Ringo (Stillwater, OK: Barbed Wire, 1996), is a more traditional biography sympathetic to Ringo.
17. San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1882.
18. Tucson (Arizona) Daily Star, February 17, April 16, 1881: Prescott (Arizona) Daily Miner, March 17, 1881, quoting the Tombstone Gossip. Moore to John Sherman, March 30, April 21, 30, May 1, December 1, 1880; Moore to A. K. Tingle, April 5, 1881, SAP, USCS, RG 36, NARA; Robert T. Lincoln to Attorney Gene
ral, April 4, 1881; Attorney General to E. M. Pomroy, U.S. Attorney for Arizona, April 15, 29, 1881; Chief Clerk, Department of Justice, to Pomroy, April 15, 1881; Pomroy to Attorney General, April 21, 26, 1881; Crawley P. Dake to Attorney General, May 30, 1881; Attorney General to Dake, June 15, 1881, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60, NARA.
19. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, March 18, 1881.
20. Jerome B. Collins to B. M. Jacobs, July 17, 1880, B. M. Jacobs File, Special Collections, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. See also William A. Duffen, “‘Jollification’—Arizona Style: A Description of Gunplay in 1880,” Arizona and the West 1 (Spring 1959): 281–284.
21. Silver City (New Mexico) Herald, May 29, 1880.
22. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, August 8, 1880.
23. San Francisco Daily Report, November 2, 1881.
24. Moore to Windom, March 21, 1881; Moore to Tingle, April 6, 1881, M-69-1881, SAP, USCS, RG 36, NARA. In his April 6 report, Moore defined one area of concern: “There is a series of double ranches located along the Southern border of Arizona, as follows: Aquirre’s one near Arivaca 65 miles S. W. of Tucson, and another 8 miles south of it, near Oro Blanco. Marsh and Driscoll’s 30 or 40 miles below or south nearer Tucson; Then 50 miles East of M & D’s come Vale Harvey & Co. and the Sanford Bros’ each Co. having 2 ranches, one on Sonoita Crk. And the other on the Cienega; 50 or 60 miles East of these again on the San Pedro are the ranches of Land formerly the Slaughter and the Roberts ranches and finally 60 or 70 miles East of these in the Sulphur Springs valley are several other ranches. On these double ranches there are now from 1,000 to 6,000 head of cattle. It is easy to see how cattle could have been driven out of Mexico on to the border ranches, all distant from Tucson from 70 to 120 miles, there kept and rebranded, and thence driven north on to their fellow ranches where there were or would be called Arizona cattle.”.
25. For a review of the evidence, see Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 43–44; Steve Gatto, The Real Earp: A Documentary Biography (Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome, 2000), 33–35; Johnson, “McLaurys,” 4–5.
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