Wyatt Earp Frontier Lawman

 

In october 1878, Wyatt Earp assisted in the arrest of James Kennedy
for the murder of Dora Hand

Bat Masterson said Wyatt Earp “more than any man I have ever known was devoid of physical fear.” He said Earp was a “terror in action, either with his fists or a gun.”

In 1877, the Dodge City Times said, Wyatt Earp “had a quiet way of taking the most desperate characters into custody which invariably gave one the impression that the city was able to enforce her mandates and preserve her dignity.” The paper said, “It wasn’t considered policy to draw a gun on Wyatt unless you got the drop and meant to burn powder without any preliminary talk.”

The meaning was clear. If you were on the business end of a 45, dealing with Wyatt Earp, you’d soon need a reservation at Boot Hill.

In October 1878, Wyatt assisted in the arrest of James Kennedy for the murder of Dora Hand, alias Fannie Keenan.

Four pistol shots rang out in a Dodge City saloon shortly after 4 a.m. James Kennedy ran out of the saloon, jumped on his horse, and galloped down the road, heading towards the fort.

The next afternoon, Wyatt Earp, Jim Masterson, Marshal Basset, and William Tilghman rode off in pursuit. They started down the river road and halted at a ranch just below the fort.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It helped define the violence in the Old West

The next day they were slowed down by a colossal storm, during which it rained and hailed all day. They took up the trail again the next day and waited at a ranch near Meade City. Marshal Basset was sure they were ahead of their man, so the posse milled about, trying to look inconspicuous.

About 4 p.m., a solitary rider appeared on the distant plain. “The cautious manner in which he approached the camp led the officers to believe that he snuffled [sniffed out] the danger from every movement forward.” The rider halted a few hundred yards from the camp. It appeared to the posse as if he dreaded coming any closer.

Sensing that he wouldn’t ride any closer, the posse hollered for him to “Throw his hands up!” For a moment, it looked as if he was going to turn and run. The posse fired several shots in quick succession, instantly killing the man’s horse.

When the posse captured Kennedy, they discovered a carbine, two pistols, and a knife.

By the end of 1879, Wyatt Earp, his brothers Morgan and Virgil, and Doc Holliday made their way to Tombstone, Arizona. Since their arrival in Tombstone, the Earps had nursed a feud with the Clantons.

It came to a head in late August 1881.

“Tuesday night Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday had some difficulty in the Alhambra saloon,” wrote the Arizona Weekly Citizen. “Hard words passed between them, and it was assumed next time they met, there would be trouble.”

That was an understatement.

The next day, Ike Clanton strode down the street, armed with a revolver and a rifle. Wyatt Earp disarmed him. In court later that morning, Earp challenged Clanton to “get his crowd” and get ready for a fight.

Wyatt Earp making an arrest

About 2 p.m., crowds gathered on the corners of Allen and Fourth Streets, waiting for the expected fight to break out.

Sheriff Behan ordered Wyatt Earp to disarm his posse.

The Earps continued to walk down Fremont Street. Behan shouted at Earp, warning him not to go. He had disarmed the men waiting at the corral.

Earp kept walking.

He yelled out to the men in the O.K. Corral. “Throw up your hands, boys; I intend to disarm you.”

Frank McLaury made a move to draw his revolver. Wyatt drew first and let him have it in the belly. Doc Holliday blasted Tom McLaury in the side at that same moment, using a short Wells Fargo style shotgun he had concealed under his coat.

Billy Clanton got off a shot that tore into Morgan Earp’s shoulder. Morgan fell to the ground, rose, and got several shots fired off after Frank McLaury, as he attempted to escape up Fremont Street.

Doc fired two more balls after Frank McLaury. His shots were deadly, as always. One hit McLaury in the temple, the other in the chest.

Billy Clanton shot Virgil Earp in the right leg.

Ike Clanton ran like his ass was on fire. The Arizona Weekly Citizen said, “He ran through the O. K. Corral, across Allen Street into Kellogg’s saloon, and thence into Toughnut Street, where he was arrested and taken to the county jail.”

Thirty shots were fired off in less than 25 seconds. Three men lay dead on the streets near the O.K. Corral.

More than any other, it was a day that would define the violence that besieged the Old West.

On March 24, 1882, the Earp Party fought the Battle of Burleigh Springs

An uneasy peace followed the shootout.

Ike Clanton took his case to court and filed murder charges against the Earps and Doc Holliday. After two months of heated testimony, Judge Spicer determined there wasn’t enough evidence to charge the Earps.

Virgil Earp got ambushed walking down Allen Street in Tombstone in late December. Several months later, Morgan Earp got killed shooting billiards at Campbell and Hatch’s Saloon. He leaned over to take a shot when two pistol shots rang out.

That was on March 17, 1882.

Three days later, Frank Stillwell, one of the men responsible for Morgan’s death, lay dead outside the train depot in Tucson, Arizona.

Allen Hinckley was standing near the depot around 7:15 p.m. He remembered seeing six quick flashes and a crowd of six to ten men standing near where the body lay. J. W. Evans watched Doc Holliday get off the car. He had a shotgun in each hand and walked towards the railroad office. Not long after that, he watched him return with no weapons.

Several minutes later, Doc hooked up with Wyatt at Porter’s Hotel. When Virgil Earp joined them, they started walking towards the depot. Doc had an “Ulster over his shoulder and a shotgun concealed under it. The Earps had short Wells Fargo shotguns.”

They boarded the train and walked towards the rear of the sleeper. Two shots were fired in the head of the train, followed by five more in quick succession.

The grand jury ruled that Frank Stillwell died from “gunshot wounds inflicted by Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp, Sherman McMasters, J. H. Holliday, and Johnson whose first name is unknown.”

The Seattle Post Intelligencer said, “When Stillwell’s body was found, it was so riddled with bullets that it would have made a very good sieve.”

After killing Stillwell, the Earp posse made a brief stop back in Tombstone, most likely searching for Pete Spence, another of the men indicted for killing Morgan Earp. Sheriff Behan attempted to disband the Earp party, but the heavily armed posse pushed past him. Behan shrugged his shoulders and let them ride out. There wasn’t much he could do as he didn’t have the firepower to stop them.

Wyatt Earp reffing a boxing match

The Earp party rode towards Pete Spence’s ranch in the south pass of the Dragoons. Theodore Judah testified he was ranching in the Dragoons when the Earp party stopped him. They questioned him concerning the whereabouts of Pete Spence and Florentino Cruz, then rode off. Not much later, shots rang out over the hill in the direction the posse headed.

Judah said that the “shooting did not last over twenty seconds.” The shots rang out, “one after another in quick succession.” He thought he heard ten or twelve shots altogether.

The next day, Judah discovered Florentino Cruz dead near Pete Spence’s ranch in the south pass of the Dragoons. Dr. G. E. Goodfellow testified he found four bullets in the body—one in the right temple (that penetrated the brain), one in the right shoulder, one in the right side of the body near the liver, and another in the left thigh. He was confident that the wound in the thigh was inflicted after Cruz was dead.

On March 24, 1882, the Earp party engaged in what would later be called the Battle of Burleigh Springs. Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp, Sherman McMasters, Doc Holliday, and Texas Jack faced a dangerous group of “cowboys” led by “Curly Bill” Brocius.

Burleigh Springs rests about eight miles outside of Tombstone. The Earps rode towards the spring from the east and dismounted.

They said nine men rode in from nowhere and began shooting at them. The Earps ducked for cover, regrouped, and charged their attackers—throwing up a murderous fire. One cowboy went down.

The “cowboys” ran toward the brush, jumped on their horses, and sped off towards Charleston. The man killed by the Earp party was Curly Bill Brocius, who had killed Marshal White of Tombstone the previous September.

Legend has it, Wyatt Earp took seven bullets through his clothes that day but didn’t receive a single scratch. Sherman McMasters took one shot through his clothes, and Texas Jack’s horse was shot dead under him.

Altogether, the Earp party killed four men in their desperate search for the murderers of Morgan Earp. Pete Spence escaped their grasp by turning himself into Sheriff Behan. A year later, he was imprisoned for pistol-whipping a suspect while he was a deputy sheriff in Georgetown, New Mexico. He received a five-year sentence in the Tombstone, Arizona Territorial Penitentiary for that killing.

The San Francisco Daily Record Union said the Earp party was “composed of desperate men, who will fight to the death, and it is stated they have all been sworn in as Deputy United States Marshals, in which case they will have the color of law under which to act.”

Like Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp became involved in sporting events and boxing matches in the 1890s.

In 1896, he refereed the Sharkey- Fitzimmons fight. Manager Gibbs of the National Club said Earp was selected because Sharkey and Fitzimmons could not agree on a choice. Because they couldn’t decide, it fell to the club to choose a referee. Gibbs told the press, “I knew Wyatt Earp was a cool, clear-headed person of unimpeachable reputation and one who would be perfectly fair to both fighters.” Besides, Earp had refereed thirty previous bouts. What was one more?

As soon as  Earp was chosen to referee the bout, rumors circulated that the contest was fixed. Wyatt Earp awarded the $10,000 purse to Thomas Sharkey because of a foul committed by Robert Fitzimmons. When doctors examined Sharkey after the bout, they said his injuries did not incapacitate him—therefore, a foul was not warranted. Fitzimmons sued Wyatt Earp, Thomas Sharkey, and the National Athletic Club for corruption, collusion, and fraud.

The day after the fight, officials arrested Earp for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. He got off on that one, but they discovered a connection between him and one of Sharkey’s backers—a horserace promoter named Dan Lynch.

In August 1897, Wyatt Earp followed the flood of gold seekers into Alaska. He built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, Alaska, with Charlie Hoxie. It was a lavish spot, the fanciest and most luxurious in the city. Downstairs, men could grab a drink and roll their money on dice and card games. There were twelve rooms upstairs for those seeking more intimate pleasures.

In 1899, Wyatt Earp left Alaska, headed towards Seattle, then Tonopah, Nevada, where he worked as a saloonkeeper and hotel owner. In 1910, he became a part-time police officer in Los Angeles. The following year, the tables were turned on him, and the Los Angeles Police Department arrested Earp for running a crooked Faro game.

Wyatt Earp died on January 13, 1929. He was eighty years old and desperate to get his story told the way he wanted it told. In 1931, Stuart Lake wrote the first full-scale biography of Wyatt Earp, titled Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. More than anything else, that book transformed Earp into the legendary lawman we know him as today.

If not for it, this 1882 quote from the Tombstone Epitaph more likely would have best characterized Wyatt Earp. “In their dealings with the so-called cowboys, they [the Earps] have forgotten that they were peace officers and constituted themselves as executioners...In our opinion...were all official authority taken from the hands of the Earp brothers, there would be comparative peace in Tombstone unless they became mere desperadoes, as is possible.”

The truth is Wyatt Earp was nothing but a two-bit conman, elevated into national folklore shortly after his death. He was brave. He possessed plenty of nerve, but he played fast and loose with the law—twisting it to fit his ever-changing circumstances.

 

Before you go ...

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I remember that,” you’re in the right place.

I dig up stories about Old West lawmen, outlaws, gunfighters, robberies, murders, forgotten towns, and all the strange, fascinating pieces of history that somehow slipped through the cracks. No clickbait. No fluff. Just authentic stories and actual history.

If you enjoy what you read and would like to help keep the lights on, consider buying me a Big Gulp.

Every little bit helps pay for books, newspaper archives, research trips, and the countless hours spent tracking down stories most people forgot decades ago.

Buy Me a Big Gulp / NickVulich.com

If the Old West is your thing, you may enjoy these books...

Shot All To Hell

Shot All To Pieces