By the Earp account, Holliday was angry that Clanton had made a false accusation against him. He told me to pull out my gun and if there was any grit in me, to go to fighting. Then came perhaps the most improbable event of the day. The game broke up around 7 a.
I am going down home now to go to bed, and I don? Virgil said he would not. Through the rest of the morning, Ike fueled his anger with whiskey, lurching from saloon to saloon to talk tough and make threats against the Earps. Deputy Marshal Andy Bronk also heard of the threats and woke Virgil.
About noon on the 26th, Virgil and Morgan Earp spotted Ike carrying a six-shooter and a rifle. You have been threatening our lives, and I know it. I think I would be justified in shooting you down any place I would meet you. But if you are anxious to make a fight, I will go anywhere on earth to make a fight with you — even over to San Simon among your crowd.
Ike refused, saying he did not like the odds. As Wyatt stepped out of the courtroom, he encountered Tom McLaury and engaged in an argument that led to Earp slapping the cowboy with his left hand, then beating him over the head with a six-shooter.
Cowboy pal Billy Claiborne told them of the beatings delivered to their brothers, and Frank dropped his whiskey glass without taking a sip. As the afternoon continued, the town grew more and more agitated, buzzing with trepidation that a conflict was brewing.
Frank and Billy purchased ammunition, but the proprietor refused to sell a gun to Ike. The Clantons and McLaurys left the gun shop and split up. They would meet up again a few minutes later, at the O.
Corral, where witnesses would overhear them making threats against the Earps. Instead, Behan offered to go down and talk to the Clantons and McLaurys to see if he could peaceably disarm them by himself. After Virgil had waited nearly 20 minutes for Behan to make his talk, local businessman John Fonck came to tell the marshal of the Cowboys?
Virgil said he would not interfere if they were getting their horses and leaving town, but if they were armed and walking the streets he would have to arrest them. Virgil Earp turned to his two brothers, and to Holliday.
He handed a short-barreled shotgun to Holliday to conceal under his long gray coat. Holliday then gave his walking stick to the marshal, and the four began the fateful walk that would become part of history. What the sheriff said next is uncertain. Wyatt Earp put his six-shooter back in his coat pocket; Virgil shifted his six-shooter off his hip into a more difficult position to draw and held the walking stick in his right hand.
When they arrived at the foot-wide vacant lot on Fremont Street where the Cowboys had congregated, the Earps were surprised to see that at least two of the opposition — Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton — still carried revolvers, and rifles were visible on the horses.
The shooting began quickly. Two shots, a pause, then the gunfight burst out on different fronts. At about the same moment, Ike lurched forward to grab Wyatt Earp. Clanton said he heroically tried to push him out of the way. Billy Clanton took a bullet in the chest, probably from Morgan, then a shot in the right wrist.
He switched gun hands, leaned back against a building and slowly crumpled to the ground as he continued firing. He rose, but soon fell again, probably tripping on a mound on Fremont Street where the town was putting in new water pipes.
Badly wounded, Frank McLaury tried to use his horse for cover as he lurched into the street. He fired at Morgan, causing his horse to bolt. The fight had been shot out of Frank McLaury. His brother Tom had made it to the corner of Third and Fremont, where he lay dying at the base of a telegraph pole.
Frank died in the street. Tom and Billy were carried into a nearby house, where they would survive for only minutes. With Morgan and Virgil Earp both wounded and Holliday grazed across the side, Wyatt Earp remained the only participant standing, untouched by lead. You deceived me, Johnny, you told me they were not armed. I won? I am not going to leave town. Almost immediately, journalist Richard Rule and his rivals at the Epitaph began scurrying to collect the news.
Both stories were dramatic, colorful and tinged with blood. In the style of the day, they did not present many direct quotes, instead making journalists?
By the Epitaph report, the battle began when two Cowboys pulled their guns and fired the first two shots. Both stories led to a belief that the law officers had been in the right. Within 48 hours, the situation would change dramatically. They would report that the Earp party fired the first several shots of the conflict. Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps, and a month-long preliminary hearing began at which both sides would air their versions of the events.
By the Earp version, it was self-defense; by the Cowboy account, it was murder. Behan would serve as the most significant witness for the prosecution, which tried to have the Earps bound over for a murder trial.
Key witnesses at the hearing in advancing the Cowboy version were Wesley Fuller, Billy Allen, Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne, who was under a murder indictment himself for an unrelated incident. The Earp-Holliday faction had rivals in Tombstone: the cowboys. The Clanton and the McLaury brothers had a reputation as outlaws and were known to make their living thanks to cattle rustling. Beef shortages in the growing towns had given them a way of making easy money. They would rustle cattle on both sides of the U.
The first source of tension between the cowboys and the Earps was over some stolen mules that the Earps tracked down to the McLaury ranch. The McLaurys, meanwhile, accused the Earps of acting for their own benefit instead of acting as law officers. Will cowboy poetry survive the modern era? The shoot-out between the Earps and the cowboys did not technically take place at the Old Kindersley horse corral.
Wyatt Earp developed a professional rivalry with a fellow politician, Johnny Behan. Ten months before the shoot-out, Behan and Earp had both run for sheriff in Cochise County. Partway into the race, Behan had convinced Earp to pull out, promising him the job of under sheriff in return. In October an ordinance was passed in Tombstone prohibiting the carrying of weapons in town. This riled the cowboys, who were used to carrying their weapons wherever they pleased.
As town marshal, Virgil Earp was responsible for enforcing the law and wanted to disarm the offenders. A heated argument took place between Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton at the Alhambra saloon on the night of October 25, The fight was broken up, but Clanton continued to drink into the morning.
Making threats against Holliday and the Earps, Clanton was armed with several guns, accounts say. Virgil Earp disarmed Clanton, took him before a judge, who imposed a fine before letting him go.
Ike, infuriated, sought out a group of five cowboys, including his brother Billy and the McLaurys, and went with them to Fremont Street. They spread the word that they were armed and intended to remain so. Sheriff Behan met the cowboys and tried to talk them into surrendering their weapons but failed. Sources differ: Some say the cowboys either denied having guns on them or refused to surrender them. This year-old cowboy still has lessons to share.
Behan then met with Virgil Earp, who had deputized his brothers and Doc Holliday. The sheriff tried to convince the Earps to back off, but they pressed on, finding the Clantons and the McLaurys in a lot near the Old Kindersley Corral.
Shots erupted, but no one knows who fired first. The ranchers, who sold meat to the town and nearby Fort Huachuca, often "supplemented" their income by rustling cattle.
Gage, and Episcopalian minister Rev. Endicott Peabody. Tensions between the two camps erupted in violence on October 26, , in a narrow vacant lot behind the O.
After a long night of poker that ended in an exchange of harsh words and a series of small scuffles, a confrontation appeared to be inevitable. Throughout the morning, various members of the vigilante businessmen's Citizens Safety Committee volunteered to intervene in the conflict, but Marshal Virgil Earp, seeking to avoid the involvement of armed citizens, respectfully declined their offers.
Instead he sought Sheriff Behan's aid in disarming the Cowboys, who had now moved to the vacant lot behind the O. Corral next to photographer C. Fly's Boarding House where Doc Holliday lived. Behan, however, was unable to convince the Cowboys to give up their weapons — and unable to prevent the Earps and Doc Holliday from heading to the O. Corral to disarm the Cowboys. The stage was set. As the Earps turned the corner and entered the narrow passageway between the Harwood House and Fly's Boarding House, they met their rivals face-to-face.
Each lawmen carried a six-shooter. In addition, "Doc" Holliday carried a shotgun hidden under his long coat. Less than six feet away from the Cowboys, Virgil called out, "Boys, throw up your hands, I've come to disarm you. I don't want to fight! Within thirty seconds, nearly thirty shots were fired. A bullet just grazed Doc Holliday's hip. Cowboys Ike Clanton and Billy Claibourne were unarmed, and both ran away when the fighting began. Tom McClaury, who also may have been unarmed, was shot and killed by a blast from Doc's shotgun.
Nineteen year old Billy Clanton was shot in the chest and the right arm which forced him to continue shooting left-handed. He died of his wounds 30 minutes after the fight. Only Wyatt remained unharmed. As reported in the Tombstone Nugget newspaper on October 27, , the gunfight reflected "one of the crimson days in the annals of Tombstone, a day when blood flowed as water For a detailed account of the gunfight and the subsequent Earp-Holliday murder inquest come watch our gunfight reenactment , or purchase a reprint of the Tombstone Epitaph at the O.
Corral or Tombstone Epitaph Newspaper offices. The coroner opened a formal inquest on October 27th, which led to a month-long preliminary hearing before Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer. Ike Clanton's testimony obviously differed on key points from the recollections of the Earps and Doc Holliday. The townspeople were split in their allegiances, some believing the Earps used necessary force to quash a threat to Tombstone's civil order, others believing the lawmen were oppressors of individual rights.
At the trial's end, Justice Spicer censured Virgil Earp but found insufficient cause for the defendants to be tried for murder: "I cannot resist the conclusion that the defendants were fully justified in committing these homicides.
Under indictment for murder in the revenge shootings of his brothers' killers, Wyatt Earp left Tombstone with Doc Holliday in April There are those who say Wyatt Earp was the Lion of Tombstone, the man who saw his unpleasant duty and brought peace to a troubled town. There are others who just as strongly proclaim that the Earps were no better than the men with whom they fought, and the killings were the outgrowth of outlaw activities in which all were involved.
Still others say Wyatt Earp was really just a hired gun, doing what he was told to do, a man no better and no worse than a horde of like contemporaries throughout the unstable West. Today, evaluation is difficult, for we judge by present standards the men who lived in a different world, at a hard to imagine time, and under a flexible set of rules.
For over years, the dramatic events of October 26, , have captured the imagination of historians and storytellers. The Earps and the Cowboys have become iconic symbols of the untamed Western frontier. But of all the Old West gunbattles, why do these thirty seconds live on in history?
In boomtowns like Tombstone, economic and political concerns dominated the community's culture, reinforced by social allegiances. Turbulent events like the Gunfight remain significant today not because of their the "good" defeated the "bad," but rather because they reflect the complex realities of the Western frontier.
Drawn to Tombstone by the alluring prospect of striking it rich in the town's silver boom, James, Virgil, and Wyatt Earp arrived with their common law wives in , and were soon joined by their close friend Doc Holliday, followed in by Morgan and Warren.
They operated gambling concessions, ran saloons, and invested in real estate and mining claims. However, it was the Earps tough, unyielding skill as lawmen able to bring order to rowdy frontier communities that brought them to the attention of Tombstone's Republican businessmen Celebrated by many as a man who brought law and order to America's boomtowns — while denounced by others as a revenge-seeker and murderer who took the law into his own hands — Wyatt Earp remains one of the Old West's most enigmatic figures.
The subject of scores of movies, television dramas, and novels, Earp stands out as an iconic legend. Yet his actual life story reflects the thin line between respectability and notoriety that permeated America's frontier communities. The middle brother of five, Wyatt was born in to Nicholas and Virginia Earp. A tall, quiet loner, he moved frequently with his family, settling in Illinois, Iowa, and California before returning east in to become constable in Lamar, Missouri.
Married in , his young pregnant bride died suddenly from typhoid. Devastated, Wyatt drifted, spending his twenties one step ahead of the law. Old Tucson - S. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes. Related news. Aug 1 Den of Geek.
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