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Bitter Feud, Deadly Showdown
venue travel
February 13, 1998
By James Abarr
Of the Journal
It was a showdown that was a long time coming.
For more than a year, the bitter feud between Wyatt Earp and his brothers and the Clanton gang had grown in intensity, and foreshadowings of a deadly climax loomed on the night of Oct. 25, 1881, when Ike Clanton rode into Tombstone from the family ranch south of town.
Ike had arrived with the announced purpose of a long, sodden night in Allen Street saloons, but scarcely had he entered the Alhambra when he encountered Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday, a staunch Earp ally.
Heated words were exchanged and Holliday, a mean-tempered gunman with whom few cared to tangle, challenged Ike to step into the street and fight it out. Clanton, however, was unarmed, but as he backed down with angry embarrassment, he warned Holliday and the Earps that when Ike's brother, Billy, and other members of the Cowboy faction arrived in town the next day, he would kill them all.
Ike proceeded to an all-night poker game and drinking bout where, bleary-eyed and belligerent, he continued to loudly proclaim the fate that awaited the Earps and Holliday.
Next morning, Oct. 26, 1881, Ned Boyle, a bartender at the Oriental saloon and hotel, awakened Wyatt in his room and warned the deputy U.S. marshal that Ike had been boasting:
"As soon as those damned Earps make their appearance on the street today, the ball will open."
Wyatt went to the office of his brother, Virgil, town marshal of Tombstone, and together they went looking for Ike, who by this time was heavily armed.
When the two peace officers encountered the bellicose Cowboy on Allen Street, Virgil asked: "You been hunting me, Ike?"
Clanton retorted: "If I'd a seen you a moment earlier, I'd a killed you."
Virgil promptly arrested Ike for carrying firearms within the town limits. Taken before Justice of the Peace A.O. Wallace, Ike was fined and released, but as he left the court, he hurled new threats at the Earps. He warned that as soon as he could find his brother, Billy, who had ridden into town that morning with Frank and Tom McLaury, he would settle things.
Meanwhile, Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, was getting a shave in a barber shop when a friend rushed in to advise him that trouble was brewing between the Earps and the Clantons.
Hurrying into Allen Street, Behan, a friend and benefactor of the Cowboys, encountered Wyatt and Virgil, now joined by their brother, Morgan, who was Virgil's deputy. Advised of the Clanton threats and told that they and the McLaurys had gathered behind the OK Corral at Third and Fremont, Behan announced he would go and disarm them.
When the sheriff returned to where the Earps waited, he told them the Cowboys had surrendered their weapons, but he had not arrested them for carrying guns in town.
Years later, Wyatt told his biographer, Stuart Lake, that he was convinced Behan was lying and that he and his brothers were being set up to be murdered.
Shoving Behan aside, the Earps, walking three abreast, headed for the OK Corral as the nervous Behan shouted after them: "For God's sake, Earp, don't go down there!"
Striding along the middle of Fremont Street, the Earps were joined by Doc Holliday, who had heard about the pending trouble and hurried to join his longtime friends.
Wyatt described the moment to Lake: "I told Doc there was no need for him to mix in, that this was our (the Earps') fight."
When Doc replied: "That's a hell of a thing for you to say to me, Wyatt," Virgil Earp deputized Doc on the spot, handed him a shotgun, and beckoned him to come along.
At the rear of the OK Corral, the lawmen encountered Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Claiborne, a Cowboy ally, lined up with their backs to an adobe wall.
When Virgil called for the Cowboys to give up their guns, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury drew and fired almost simultaneously with Virgil and Wyatt. They missed, but slugs from the Earp brothers' Colts ripped into the two Cowboys. Wyatt's first shot caught Frank McLaury in the stomach, just above his belt buckle. Virgil's bullet shattered Billy Clanton's gun arm.
Firing became general as the two factions blazed away. In 30 seconds, in which more than 35 shots were exchanged, the most famous shootout in Western annals was over.
Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, riddled with bullets. Ike Clanton, whose mouth proved greater than his courage, and Billy Claiborne lost their nerve when the shooting started. They threw down their guns, fled through the OK Corral, and disappeared down Allen Street.
Virgil Earp was wounded in the leg; Morgan took a slug in the shoulder; and a bullet grazed Doc Holliday's hip. Wyatt was uninjured.
R.F. Coleman, one of several witnesses to the shootout, told the Tombstone Epitaph:
"Morg was shot through the shoulder and fell. Doc Holliday was grazed in the hip, but kept on firing. Virg was hit in the leg, which staggered him, but he kept up his effective work.
"Wyatt fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit. Doc was as calm as if at target practice and fired rapidly."
In the aftermath, Behan brought murder charges against the Earps and Holliday, but a coroner's jury, empaneled a few hours after the battle, ruled: "We can find no reason to indict four duly appointed peace officers for performance of their necessary duty."
Later efforts to indict the Earps were thrown out in magistrate court.
The Epitaph expressed what was probably the view of many Tombstone residents, grown weary of the Cowboy reign of terror, when the paper noted:
"The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the marshal and his party were entirely justified in efforts to disarm those men, and that being fired upon, they had to defend themselves, which they did most bravely."
