Four gunslingers march down the dusty saloon-lined streets of Tombstone, Arizona. Doors close and lock, and people scurry to get somewhere else. The men’s hands lay restlessly on their guns.
Three of them are brothers from a family a lawmen, the Earps. The eldest, Virgil, a tough-as-leather civil war veteran, is simultaneously the Town Marshal and a Deputy U.S. Marshal. He’s deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday to help rein in a gang of outlaws known as the Cowboys. Holliday, an alcoholic womanizing gambler dying of tuberculosis, is an unlikely lawman. Yet he seems the most relaxed of the four, a smirk never far from his lips. The youngest Earp, Morgan, has never been in a gunfight, but gamely copies his elders’ resolution.
Wyatt Earp, for his part, tall, broad shouldered and mustachioed, squints angrily down the street with icy-blue gunfighter eyes. His anger is directed at the Cowboys who’ve threatened his life and the life of this family and friends. It was Virgil’s call to go confront the men after hearing that they’d gathered near the O.K. Corral, armed in defiance of town ordinance, after their leader Ike Clanton had gone around town telling people that when Wyatt, his brothers, and Doc Holliday showed themselves on the street “the ball would open – and they would have to fight.”
The four men nearly arrive at the vacant lot, not actually in the O.K. Corral but down the street between a boarding house and a photography studio, where six Cowboys have gathered. They’re interrupted by the County Sherriff, a man named Johnny Behan who, despite being a follow lawman, is no friend of the Earps and known to have business dealings with the Cowboys.
The nervous balding man says “for God’s sake don’t go down there or you will get murdered,”
“I am going to disarm them,” Virgil replies.
“I have disarmed them,” Behan says, contradicting himself.
Wyatt squints contemptuously at the Sheriff. The Earps and Holliday brush past him.
The Cowboys have noticed the lawmen’s approach and turn to face them, standing dismounted next to a couple horses. The two groups come to within six feet of each other, facing off.
“Throw up your hands,” Virgil commands, “I have come to disarm you!”
Instead of disarming, two of the Cowboys draw six-shooters and cock them.
“Hold on,” Virgil says, “I don’t want that!”
One of the Cowboys, Billy Clanton, locks eyes with Wyatt. The two men stare at each other. An eternity passes in that instant. Both men raise their guns and fire. Everything happens at once. Wyatt focuses his fire not on Billy, but on the more dangerous shootest Frank McLaury, catching him in the belly as the man tries to draw a rifle from his horse scabbard. The horses panic.
Cowboy Tom McLaury moves with his horse at it jumps to the side, using it for cover and firing over the animal’s back. Doc Holliday follows Tom around the horse and unloads both barrels of a shotgun into the man’s chest before drawing a nickel-plated revolver and firing at the remaining Cowboys.
Ike Clanton, the blustering leader who swore to give the Earps a fight, screams out that he’s not armed and clutches at Wyatt, begging for his life.
“Go to fighting or get away!” Wyatt responds.
The man sprints away down the street and doesn’t look back. Two other cowboys also run. The Earps and Holliday leave them alone, focused on the two Cowboys still shooting.
Morgan Earp trips after shooting Billy Clanton in the hand. Then, thinking Billy is out of the fight, picks himself up and fires at Frank, turning away from Billy. This is a mistake. Billy transfers his pistol to his left hand and shoots Earp across the back, striking both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Morgan drops again.
Frank McLaury, despite his gut wound, keeps fighting. He pulls a revolver, and starts moving across the street, holding his horse by the reins for cover, and exchanges fire with Doc Holiday. A round strikes Holiday in his pistol pocket, grazing him.
“That son of a bitch shot me and I am going to kill him,” Holiday declares. He follows words with action, shooting McLaury in the head.
Meanwhile Billy shoots Virgil through the leg as Virgil and Wyatt return fire, blowing holes in his chest and abdomen until he slumps down against the wall, his revolver empty.
The most famous gunfight in history, forever known, inaccurately, as the “shootout at the O.K. Corral,” is over. Three Cowboys are dead. Three have fled, and three of the four lawmen are wounded. The only exception, standing cool and unscathed, is Wyatt Earp.
This is his story.
It’s a story that began March 19, 1848 in Monmouth, Illinois. Like a lot of young American families at the time, the Earps soon packed up to seek their fortune out west. Unfortunately, due to the illness and ultimate death of one of their daughters, they didn’t get far, settling in Pella, Iowa, where Wyatt spent most of his childhood.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Wyatt’s three older brothers, Newton, James and Virgil, enlisted in the Union Army. Wyatt, age 13, ran away from home and tried to enlist himself. His father Nicholas, however, caught up to him, and dragged him back home over Wyatt’s angry protests.
Instead of fighting in the Civil War, the 13-year-old was placed in charge of his two younger brothers and the family farm while his father recruited and drilled local companies for the war effort. Wyatt tried at least twice more to run away and enlist, but his father caught him each time.
In 1864, perhaps in part to get Wyatt as far away from the war as possible, the family moved all the way out to San Bernardino, California. By the time Wyatt reached adulthood the war was over and he took a job working on the Union pacific railroad. There, he learned to gamble and box from the rough-and-tumble railroad workers. In the meantime, his father moved the family back east to Lamar, Missouri in 1868. Wyatt rejoined them in 1869.
It was there, in Lamar, that Wyatt got his first job in law enforcement. Ironically, for a man who would become one of the most legendary lawmen of all times, he more-or-less stumbled into it. His father, Nicholas, had taken a job as town constable before Wyatt ever got there. Then, when Nicholas resigned as constable in 1869 to take a job as Justice of the Peace (a kind of judge), Wyatt was appointed constable in his place. He was 21 at the time.
Life was looking good for the young policeman. When he wasn’t performing his duties he courted a beautiful young woman by the name of Urilla Sutherland, who he married in January of 1870. It wasn’t long before the young couple was expecting their first child. Then, the tragic reality of life in the 19th century asserted itself. The expectant mother died of Typhoid Fever less than a year into the marriage, just weeks before she was expected to give birth, taking the unborn child with her.
Wyatt Earp was now a 22-year-old widower. He did not take it well, going into a downward spiral in 1871 that cost him his job and culminated in his own arrest for horse theft. He did not wait for trial, escaping out the roof of the jail and winding up in Peoria, Illinois. Things did not improve there. In 1872 he was arrested more than once for “keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame.”
Sometime in 1873 he left for the buffalo camps, where he worked into 1874. Little is known about his life at this time. Yet we can infer some things from what we know of these camps. Hunting buffalo was a big business at the time. Prized for their hides and horns, Buffalo fetched a hefty price. Young men could make a small fortune hunting the still plentiful beasts. It would have been a hard life, living in tents, often on the move, surrounded by the roughest sorts of men very far from civilization. Yet, perhaps that was exactly what the troubled young man needed at that time in his life.
By the time he reappears on the grid of history in Wichita, Kansas, 1874, he seems to have pulled himself together. He soon found gainful employment as a bouncer for saloons and brothels in the wild, booming cow town which, with its rail terminal, was the end point for many cattle drives from Texas. By the end of the year, he was refreshing his old policing skills. He volunteered to help the local police track down thieves until, in early 1875, he was officially hired as a deputy Wichita marshal. He left Wichita for Dodge City in 1876 after a fight with one of his boss’s rivals put him on the wrong side of city politics. He was quickly hired by the Dodge City police, where he worked for the next three years. He also worked a colorful variety of side-hustles, ranging from card dealer to land speculator to whorehouse bouncer.
Earp earned a reputation as an excellent policeman, but not particularly as a gunfighter. Rather, his style was more to knock heads together and avoid shooting anyone. He was very good with his fists. Relatively big for the time, at 6 feet tall, and broad shoulders, he was a powerful man who showed no fear of physical confrontation. Trouble-makers quickly learned that crossing Deputy Earp was a quick way to get yourself pistol whipped and dragged off. He only had to shoot one person during his entire time in Dodge City. In 1878, he and another deputy confronted a group of drunks who were riding around town shooting into buildings at random, nearly killing several people. Unable to reach the men with his fists, Earp shot one of them. The man later died of his wounds. This was the first and, up until the O.K. Corral, only person Earp shot during his time as a wild west lawman.
In late 1877, a gang led by a man by the name of “Dirty” Dave Rudabaugh, so called because he rarely bathed and was filthy even by old west standards, robbed a railroad camp near Dodge City. The gang fled the area, and Wyatt accepted a temporary commission as Deputy U.S. Marshall to hunt the robbers down. He tracked Dirty Dave and his gang 400 miles, passing through Kansas and deep into Texas. It was cold, late autumn passing into winter, traveling across the windswept plains. Yet Wyatt persisted, day after day, mile after mile, watering hole to watering hole, asking along the way after the fleeing outlaws. Finally, he arrived at Fort Griffin, where Rudabaugh and his men were said to have passed through. Wyatt made a Bee-line, so to speak, to the Bee Hive Saloon, whose owner John Shanssey he was acquainted with from a previous meeting up north. He asked the man if he knew anything about Dirty Dave’s gang. The man allowed as how the gang had passed through several days earlier, but didn’t know where they were headed.
“You might want to talk to the dapper fella sitting alone in the back corner,” Shanssey suggested. “Somehow he held his breath long enough to play a few hands with Dirty Dave.”
Wyatt approached the indicated corner where, indeed, a thin, well-dressed young man was coughing into a handkerchief. The man’s face was a bit haggard, despite the neatly trimmed moustache, but intense blue eyes regarded Wyatt as he approached. Wyatt introduced himself and asked to know who he was addressing.
“My name is John Henry,” the man said in a lazy southern drawl, “but everyone calls me “Doc” on account of my profession, Doc Holliday, at your service.”
“You’re a Doctor,” Wyatt asked.
“A dentist actually,” Holliday replied, “though I’ve found gambling to be a more lucrative trade. Won’t you sit down and have a drink with me.”
Wyatt shook his head. “I’m in a hurry.” He explained about the Dirty Dave, the robbery and his hunt for the man.
Holliday, pouring a generous glass of whiskey for himself, silently downed it at Earp talked.
“You won’t catch him in Texas,” Holliday responded. “He knows he’s being chased, and doubled back. Given his urgency I’ll waver he’s halfway back to Kansas by now.”
Wyatt, by now a seasoned lawman, was a good judge of whether someone was telling him the truth. He stared hard at dapper gambler, and for some reason he believed him.
“Damn,” he said, knowing the gang had several days lead on him and, if they were moving with all speed, he’d never catch up. “Thank you. I owe you one. If you’re ever in Dodge City, look me up.”
With that Wyatt went directly for the telegraph office and wired his fellow Dodge City lawman Batt Masterson to let him know the gang was coming back his way. Masterson put together a posse and set out for the area between Dodge City and the Texas panhandle, a sparsely populated area. He and the posse staked out the most likely spot, Lovel’s ranch, which was one of the few places in the area for travelers to obtain accommodations. Sure enough, the gang stopped there a couple days later and the posse arrested them. Although Wyatt was unable to get back in time to participate in the arrest, his work was credited with bringing the outlaws in and further enhanced his reputation.
When Holliday turned up in Dodge City in 1878 along with his favorite prostitute turned girlfriend, Big Nose Kate, the two men renewed their acquaintance. Their friendship was cemented one summer evening when an outlaw gang started making trouble at the Long Branch saloon, breaking things and harassing customers. Hearing the commotion, Wyatt Earp burst through the door to find all the gang’s guns pointed at him. He thought he was dead, until a familiar southern voice drawled:
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” It was Doc Holliday, who by luck had happened to be gambling at the saloon when the gang came in. Holiday had his gun pointed at the gang leader’s head.
“Kindly you and your men disarm,” Holliday said. Holliday had a manner about him that, despite his gentile air, clearly communicated threat. The gang disarmed, and Wyatt credited Holiday with saving his life. From that day forward, Wyatt Earp was Doc Holiday’s best and, some say, only real friend.
In 1879 Wyatt received a letter from his older brother Virgil inviting him to his appointment with destiny. He didn’t know that at the time, of course. All he knew was that Virgil extolled the virtues of a silver-mining boomtown in Arizona. The town was called tombstone and, unlike Dodge City, which was starting to lose its frontier wildness, it was a place where men of action could still make a name for themselves. Wyatt, ready for the next adventure, seized the opportunity. He turned in his resignation to the Dodge City police on September 9, 1879, and set out for Tombstone with his girlfriend Mattie, who he never married, but was sometimes listed as his common law wife (meaning they lived together), and his brother Jim and his wife. He later met up with Virgil in Prescott, Arizona, where Virgil had secured an appointment for himself as Deputy U.S. Marshal for the territory including Tombstone. The three brothers and their wives arrived in Tombstone in December of 1879. Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate, who had travelled part of the way with the Earps, remained for a time in Prescott, where the gambling was better, and followed the Earps to Tombstone some months later.
When the Earps arrived, Tombstone was a rough, uncivilized town that had only been officially founded nine months earlier and still consisted largely of tents, with most of the permanent structures consisting of saloons and the mines. Yet that was changing rapidly. In the two years from 1879, when the Earps arrived, to 1881, the town grew from a population of 100 to 7,000 men. That number actually understates the population growth since the census excluded women and children. The tents disappeared to be replaced with permanent housing, nice shops of all kinds, restaurants, 4 churches, 14 gambling halls, numerous brothels and an astounding 110 saloons.
This family of lawmen found a largely lawless community, where bandits frequently rode into town to shoot up the place, bully and steal from the townsfolk. The most prominent band of outlaws in the area were known as the Cowboys. It’s worth noting these “Cowboys” were not legitimate cattlemen (called ranchers or cattle herders). The Cowboys’ chief line of illicit business was stealing cattle from ranchers in Mexico and reselling it in the United States, but they weren’t above extortion and intimidation or other forms of thievery.
In Tombstone, Wyatt Earp served off and on in various law enforcement roles, ranging from a brief stint as County Sheriff to several short-term deputations with the town marshal. Yet he mostly made his money through various side hustles, ranging from dealing cards to serving as paid guard and protector for various Tombstone businesses, including the brothels. The latter fact has led some unkind critics to call him a pimp, but there’s no evidence he actually ran the whorehouses and his role therefore appears more along the lines of a bouncer protecting the workers from over-aggressive drunks in exchange for a small cut of the proceeds. He did, however, invest heavily in various saloons and gambling halls.
Inevitably, the Earps’ involvement in law enforcement brought them into conflict with the most prominent group of outlaws in the area. In July of 1880 the Cowboys robbed some mules from a U.S. Army outpost. The unit’s commander asked Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp for help, and Virgil recruited his brothers Wyatt and Morgan. They tracked the mules down to the McLaury ranch, owned by a family that worked with the Cowboys selling stolen livestock, where they found a branding iron designed to change the initials “U.S.” (for federally-owned livestock) to “D.8.” The Cowboys promised to return the mules to the government if only the posse would withdraw and avoid bloodshed. Then then Cowboys reneged on their promise. There was not enough evidence to arrest the bandits, but the U.S. Army commander printed and widely distributed a handbill calling the men thieves. The Cowboys blamed the Earps for this attack on their reputation, and two McLaury brothers told Wyatt they would kill him if he ever interfered with them again.
In September of 1880 the Tombstone town marshal, Fred White was shot and killed by Cowboy Curly Bill Brocius. Wyatt Earp, was a Deputy Sheriff at the time, arrived at the scene in time to see White attempt to disarm Brocius, who had been making a drunken scene, at which point the gun discharged. It was clear to Earp that the shooting was accidental. Rather than shooting Brocius he just pistol whipped him to the ground. An angry crowd started to gather. Fred White had been popular. Voices called out that Brocius should be strung up. Wyatt, despite his bad blood with the Cowboys, wouldn’t hear it. He told the crowd, coolly but firmly, that Brocius would stand trial, and dragged the man off to jail. Wyatt later testified in favor of Brocius at the man’s trial, saying the shooting appeared accidental. As a result, Brocius went free. If Wyatt expected Brocius to be grateful for saving his life from a lynch mob and a murder conviction, he was disappointed. Instead Brocius remained furious at Earp for pistol whipping and dragging him off.
In March of 1881 three Cowboys attempted to rob a stagecoach near Tombstone. They failed and coach got away, but not before a passenger and the guard riding shotgun were killed in a shootout. Virgil again deputized his brothers and they gave chase, catching one of the robbers and pursuing the others for 400 miles before having to turn back because their horses could go no further. The one robber they caught, a drifter by the name of Luther King, escaped from jail under suspicious circumstances, apparently just walking out the back. The Earps blamed Cowboy-friendly Sheriff Johnny Behan.
Wyatt increasingly clashed with Sheriff Behan, whom he had run against for County Sheriff. He had withdrawn after Behan promised to appoint him a Deputy Sheriff, which Behan then reneged after getting the job in February of 1881. Wyatt later wooed away Behan’s girlfriend, the glamorous performer Josephine Marcus, which cemented the hatred between the two men. Wyatt’s previous love interest, Mattie, had fallen deep into a Laudanum addiction until the relationship fell apart.
The Cowboys robbed another stagecoach, this time successfully, in September of 1882. Although masked, the driver recognized one of them by his voice and reference to money as “sugar,” which was a favored expression of Cowboy Frank Stillwell. The Earps arrested him and another Cowboy. Once again there was too little evidence to prosecute, and the men went free. But this didn’t prevent the Cowboys from resenting the Earps, with Cowboy Frank McLaury promising to kill them if they arrested any more of their gang.
In the following weeks the Cowboys let it be known around town that they were gunning for the Earps, until that famous day on October 26, 1881, when Virgil decided to disarm the Cowboys near the O.K. Corral. You’ve already heard the tail, which ended with three Cowboys dead, the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton.
Incredibly, Sheriff Behan announced after the gunfight that he’d have to arrest the Earps. Wyatt stared the man down for two or three seconds before announcing “I won’t be arrested today.” Behan did not press the issue. The Earps and Holliday were briefly charged with murder, but they were cleared after a preliminary hearing.
Despite the dismissed charges, the Cowboys put it out that the Earps had murdered their friends and vowed revenge. They didn’t take long in getting it. On December 28, Virgil Earp was walking home one night when he was ambushed with a shotgun blast fired from hiding. The blast nearly destroyed his left arm he was never able to use it again. Cowboy Ike Clanton’s hat was found at the scene. With Virgil unable to continue, Wyatt wired the U.S. Marshal and asked to take up his brother’s role as Deputy. The request was granted.
Wyatt tried over the next couple months to handle things through the law, but as usual nothing would stick to the Cowboys. Everyone knew they had shot Virgil, among many other crimes, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it. Then, on March 18, 1882, somebody shot Wyatt’s younger brother Morgan Earp in the back, firing through the window from a dark alley while Morgan was playing billiards. Shot through the spine, Morgan took 40 excruciating minutes to die in front of his brothers.
Something broke in Wyatt Earp that day. This man who, less then two years earlier, stood up to a lynch mob, decided he couldn’t rely on the justice system. It had become personal. He gathered up a posse, including Doc Holliday, and embarked on a revenge ride the likes of which even the wild west rarely saw. Hearing rumor that Frank Stillwell and other Cowboys planned to kill Virgil at the Tucson train station, where Virgil and his wife were leaving the area, Wyatt and his boys laid in wait. When Frank showed himself, Wyatt made no attempt to arrest him; instead he opened up, riddling the man so full of bullets he was barely recognizable. Over the next couple of weeks Wyatt Earp and his posse rode down every known Cowboy hideout and camp in riding distance of tombstone and systematically gunned down more than a dozen outlaws.
In one particularly memorable battle Wyatt and his posse came across a large group of Cowboys led by Curly Bill Brocius, the same man who Wyatt had saved from lynching. They were camped by a stream in the woods, and the two groups opened fire at each other on sight. The gunfire was so intense that most of Wyatt’s posse retreated. Not Wyatt Earp. He waded out in the open, exposing himself to fire, and exchanged shotgun blasts with Curly Bill until the gut-wounded man tumbled dead into the water. Then he drew his pistol and shot two more Cowboys. He later found holes in his long coat and a bullet lodged in his bootheel. However, incredibly, Wyatt Earp was never so much as injured.
Wyatt had clearly gone beyond his authority as a Deputy U.S. Marshal and gone vigilante. He lost his badge, was even indicted for murder, and, for a time, had to flee a posse led by his old rival Sheriff Behan. He escaped, however, leaving the area, and eventually the matter was dropped.
After bidding farewell to Doc Holliday, who had stuck with Wyatt through the entire revenge ride and subsequent escape despite severely ailing health, Wyatt reunited with Josephine Marcus and married her. The two then lived the wild west version of happily ever after, staying together 46 years until Wyatt’s death in 1929. They made a small fortune traveling from boomtown to boomtown, running saloons and gambling halls and investing in real estate and then moving on to the next one before the boom ran its course. They eventually settled in southern California in the early 20th century.
Although long since needing it for a paycheck, Wyatt occasionally still dabbled in law enforcement. As late as 1910, at the age of 62, he accepted a job from the Los Angeles police department to perform jobs quasi “outside the law,” that their officers couldn’t do, such as running down fugitives in Mexico. He did the job capably, presumably for the fun of it.
Living in Los Angeles at the dawn of the film industry, Wyatt Earp consulted on several early Cowboy films. One night in 1916 he was having dinner with the novelist Jack London, whom he knew from some time spent in Alaska during the gold rush, when Charlie Chaplin approached to introduce himself to the two men. They all spoke in what has to have been one of the most interesting conversations of all time, though the details are lost to history.
In 1928, while consulting on the set of one of the first “talkies,” the 79-year-old Earp struck up a conversation with a 21-year-old bit actor and prop boy named Marion Morrison. Most people know that man by the stage name he adopted later, John Wayne. The young man was fascinated by Earp’s stories of the wild west, listening spellbound to the old man’s stories. Wayne later said that he based his legendary persona after the way Earp walked, talked and lived. Given Wayne’s subsequent influence, it’s probably fair to say that every cowboy movie you’ve ever seen has a piece of Wyatt Earp in it.
That’s not surprising for a man whose life sounds like the plot of a movie and about which, indeed, several have been made. Yet Wyatt Earp really lived. The shootout at the O.K. Corral actually happened. These were real people who lived these events. Wyatt Earp is representative of that legendary era of the frontier when the line between lawman and outlaw, between justice and vengeance, was thin. He walked that line. In today’s world he would probably wind up in prison. In his world, his time, he and those like him were necessary. Wyatt Earp embodies the true story of the American west. He was flawed, and sometimes criminal, but he fought for his notion of justice and fought hard.
. . .
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