Spurred West by Ian Neligh

Author:Ian Neligh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: West Margin Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wyatt Earp (Public domain)

The Tombstone battle was a gunfight that took place in less than thirty seconds, when thirty bullets were fired and ended with three men dead, three wounded, and the town of Tombstone, Arizona, going down in history as the location of the most famous gunfight of the Wild West—the erroneously titled Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

On October 26, 1881, a confrontation erupted between the sometimes-lawmen Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, their friend Doc Holliday, and a gang of Cowboys, then a term synonymous with rustlers. The tension had been brewing for months, and almost from the beginning the Earps, who arrived in Tombstone in December of 1879 because of a rash of stagecoach robberies, began to clash with the local rustling gangs.

“I was asked to go to Tombstone in my capacity as a United States Marshal, and went. My brother Wyatt and myself were fairly well treated for a time, but when the desperate characters who were congregated there, and who had been unaccustomed to troublesome molestation by the authorities, learnt that we meant business and determined to stop their rascality, if possible, they began to make it warm for us,” Virgil Earp said in an 1882 article in the Arizona Daily Star.

Unlike Virgil Earp who worked in law enforcement most of his life, his younger brother Wyatt started his professional life on the other side of the aisle. Wyatt was a gambler and often in trouble with law as a young man, which resulted in multiple arrests.

It wasn’t until he was appointed to the Wichita police force in 1875 did he begin his famous on-and-off career in law enforcement. Three years later, while he was working a similar position in Dodge City and tracking a fugitive in Texas, his life was saved during an incident by John “Doc” Holliday, which started their famous friendship.

It’s hard to say what one event, if there was just one, ultimately started the fatal turn of events leading to the famous Arizona gunfight, but the death of Tombstone’s City Marshal Fred White may have been a factor. In an alleged drunken accident, the notorious outlaw “Curly Bill” Brocius of the Cowboys killed White in October of 1880 while White was trying to disarm Curly Bill. After the shooting, Wyatt Earp came forward and “buffaloed” or hit Curly Bill across the head with the barrel of his pistol, knocking him out so he could be more easily arrested. White died some days later and Virgil Earp took over White’s duties as city marshal in addition to his job as Deputy U.S. Marshal.

Things continued to heat up between the two factions. Doc Holliday was later accused, without sufficient evidence, of robbing a stagecoach by Sheriff John Behan, who had aligned himself with the rustling gangs of the area. To add insult to injury, Wyatt had successfully courted an actress away from the arms of Behan and in addition was planning to run for Behan’s position. Meanwhile, tension continued to grow between the

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