Suppose, Suppose

Wyatt Earp's statue in Dodge City, Kansas

By Dan Hagen

Wyatt Earp died Jan. 13, 1929, in Los Angeles, a legend living not in luxury.

The implacable lawman of Dodge City and Tombstone finished up in a one-room bungalow with a small kitchen sink and a stove behind a sad curtain.

Long lionized by the newspapers, Earp’s name was now appearing in books of varying quality, some featuring accounts provided by his surviving enemies. He got angry when they labeled him an old West “bad man.”

Earp was collaborating with biographer Stuart Lake when he died, saying he wanted to set the record straight about his exploits, and about his much-maligned friend Doc Holliday.

Earp died without knowing how sweeping his vindication would be. At least 10 Hollywood movies and two extremely popular television series would be based on his adventures.

“He would have preferred not to be remembered at all,” wrote biographer Casey Tefertiller. “Wyatt Earp never really understood his own story. In life, he had been mostly a gambler, saloon man and wanderer, always chasing a new opportunity. He was a man defined less by his character than by his courage. He had been reckless in his youth, but he seemed to find honor in the cowtowns. He had been honest and dependable, a standout among the unusual breed of frontier lawmen. He moved to Tombstone to make money, not to follow some higher calling. When the situation around him became desperate, he responded when unrelenting courage to avenge his brother’s death and protect the lives of his townspeople.”

“He was not a better man than those around him; he was a braver one.”

Weakened by the flu, burdened with chronic cystitis, Earp was planning another trip to the desert when he died. Moments before he stopped breathing, he whispered his last words to his wife Sadie. They were, “Suppose, suppose.”

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller

A Showdown in Ink and a Man for Breakfast

The Nugget mourns the cowboys

Battles were fought more often with ink than with lead in the Tombstone, AZ, of the 1880s.

The showdown at the O.K. Corral reignited a running battle between the town’s two major newspapers that had its origins in the animosities of the Civil War. The Tombstone Epitaph backed the Northern-oriented, Republican business interests and the Earps, while the Tombstone Nugget backed the Southern-sympathizing, Democratic rancher and “cowboy” faction (“cowboy” then being a term that referred to a red-sashed band of violent cattle thieves).

The Nugget was owned and edited by boyish-looking, blond Harry W. Woods, who also served as undersheriff. A former territorial legislator in Tucson, Woods had once jumped out a window to prevent lawmakers from having a quorum on a bill he opposed. Woods was an energetic politician but not much of a lawman, and had shamed himself throughout Arizona when he either ineptly or corruptly permitted the escape of Luther King, a stagecoach robber who had been tracked and arrested by the Earps.

After the Earps and Doc Holliday fought and killed cowboys Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury near the O.K. Corral on Oct. 26, 1881, the Nugget mourned their loss, and townspeople who had initially backed the Earps became increasingly suspicious of them. The Nugget helped get the Earps and Holliday charged with murder, but the prosecution’s case crumbled at the preliminary hearing and charges were dismissed.

Newspapers of the 19^th century rarely let fact interfere with partisanship. The Epitaph reported every cowboy crime in the county, while the Nugget accused the Epitaph of driving away business investment by over-reporting crimes committed by the faction the Nugget backed. The Nugget’s frequent references to baldness were shots at Tombstone Mayor John P. Clum, who was nearly murdered by cowboys in a wild stagecoach ride that was apparently an assassination attempt.

The Nugget was mocked by the San Francisco Report newspaper for its maudlin “drooling and driveling over the three murderous young thieves who were executed in such and inexpensive and timely manner.”

The Report dubbed the Nugget “the Daily Cowboy,” a nickname that delighted the editor at the Epitaph. The Nugget, in turn, helped hang the nickname “the Daily Strangler” on the Epitaph, accusing the paper of supporting anti-cowboy vigilantism.

The Nugget accidentally gave Tombstone a nickname that stuck — “Hell Dorado,” a pun that connected the violent mining town to the legendary riches of El Dorado. And the Epitaph, republishing a remark originally made in the Harshaw Bulletin, popularized a phrase that became Tombstone’s historic legacy — the town that “(has) a man for breakfast occasionally.”

The expression was a way of saying that Tombstone citizens would awaken in the morning to find a freshly murdered corpse on their streets. While that wasn’t strictly true, given the fact that most of the killings were committed in the remoter parts of Cochise County, it was true enough.

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller

The Horse at the O.K. Corral

Tombstone scene by William Turner Porter

Before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp watched Frank McLaury and 19-year-old Billy Clanton walk into Spangenberg’s Gun Shop to fill their cartridge belts with the ammunition they planned to use to kill the Earps and Dr. John Henry Holliday.

McLaury’s horse must have been fond of him, because it strolled up the wooden sidewalk and stuck its head inside the door of the gun shop. Wyatt startled McLaury and Clanton by walking up to the shop and leading the horse away. When the angry McLaury charged out to grab the reins from Wyatt, the lawman coolly warned him that letting his horse wander onto the sidewalks was a violation of a city ordinance.

Violation of another city ordinance — the one against carrying firearms inside city limits — had gotten Billy’s brother Ike pistol-whipped over the head earlier by Virgil Earp. Ike joined the others at the gun shop to buy a pistol. Owner George Spangenberg looked at Ike’s bleeding head, remarked that it looked like Ike had been in trouble and said that he therefore refused to sell Ike a gun — demonstrating that gun dealers in the “Wild West” were sometimes smarter and more ethical than the ones today.

Wyatt Earp has been portrayed at least 10 times on the movie screen, by everyone from James Garner to James Stewart, but in none of the films, to my knowledge, does a horse poked his curious head into the gun shop just prior to the big battle.

And why not? A little comic relief can provide just the right, light touch in a melodrama. And the unlikely scene would have the additional advantage of being true.

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller

The Hand of Frontier Justice

One model for “Gunsmoke’s” Kitty Russell was Dora Hand, Dodge City’s most respected dance hall performer and, probably, a lady of the evening.

The Dodge City of 1878 had muted, if any, moralistic objections to prostitutes. The notably beautiful Hand attended the First Methodist Church and balanced the rowdiness of her evenings with the benevolence of her days.

A clichéd prostitute with a heart of gold, Hand — who earned a heady salary of $75 a week as a soprano soloist at the Lady Gay saloon — helped out Dodge’s unfortunates. 

Dodge City dance hall queen Dora Hand

“If some raw boy from Texas who had never even seen a train before lost his pile at faro or drank too much redeye and was rolled south of the Deadline, she could be counted on to grubstake him or redeem his saddle so that he could ride home,” wrote Stanley Vestal in “Dodge City: Queen of the Cowtowns.” “She asked no security or even the names of the men she helped. When someone fell sick, she was willing to play the part of a practical nurse.”

“She was often observed setting out in the morning, modestly dressed, with a market basket bulging with groceries on her arm,” wrote Harry Sinclair Drago in his “Notorious Ladies of the Frontier.” “Somewhere in its depths there was likely to be found a toy or a bit of candy she had promised to an ailing child — white, black or Mexican.”

The 34-year-old Hand was well respected even by Dodge City Mayor Dog Kelley, who loaned her the use of his house while he was at Fort Dodge for medical treatment.

Tragically, however, the mayor had offended Spike Kenedy, the arrogant 23-year-old son of a wealthy Texas cattle baron. On July 19, Kenedy was arrested by Wyatt Earp for carrying a pistol in Dodge. After other run-ins with the law, Kenedy complained to Kelley, who cut him no slack and told him he’d better behave himself in Dodge. Kenedy — who may also have been jealous of the mayor’s relationship with Hand — was enraged.

So, at 4 a.m. on Oct. 4, Kenedy fired four shots into the mayor’s house, instantly killing Dora Hand in her sleep.

The town was outraged, and Assistant Marshal Earp, Deputy Sheriff Bill Tilghman and Sheriff Bat Masterson formed a posse to ride Kenedy down. They caught up with him after a long chase, Masterson shooting Kenedy in the arm as Earp brought down Kenedy’s racehorse. “I hated to do it,” Earp said. “Kenedy’s horse was a beauty.”

Badly wounded, Kenedy had a question for the lawmen: “Did I kill him?” Kenedy went into a tortured rage when they told him he’d instead killed Dora Hand. “You ought to have made a better shot than you did!” Kenedy told Masterson, who replied, “I did the best I could.”

In the end, Kenedy walked away as free as a Wall Street banker, his father apparently spending as much as $25,000 to bribe his way to an “insufficient evidence” verdict.

That outcome — coupled with a pay cut for the lawmen the next month, and a near-fatal street fight the next spring — contributed to Earp’s growing bitterness with frontier justice.

“There was no one to champion the cause of the victim, who was without money and influence,” Earp recalled.

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller; “The Killing of Dora Hand” Susan L. Silva and Lee A. Silva.

The Day He Rode Into Dodge City

Dodge City, Kansas, during the summer of 1876

Wyatt Earp rode into Dodge City, Kansas, on May 19, 1876, a 28-year-old Illinois native who’d just lost his job in Wichita.

He had acquired his position as a Wichita police officer with his fists, and he lost it the same way. Earp’s slugfest with a hotel owner he’d caught bullying a young boy had impressed City Marshal Bill Smith, who decided to hire him instead of jail him. A year later, on April 2, 1876, a political wrangle with Smith came to blows, and Earp was out.

“The year 1876 was a turning point for frontier legends,” wrote Allen Barra. “As Wyatt’s was beginning, two others came to an end.”

On June 26, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull shocked the nation by killing Gen. George Armstrong Custer and more than 250 of his men at the Little Big Horn. Then on Aug. 2, a friend of Custer’s, a poker player holding aces and eights, was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Thus ended the career of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok.

“Custer’s last stand and Hickok’s last poker game eliminated two of the most famous men in the West,” Barra noted. “Within five years, Jesse James and Billy the Kid would also be dead. Of the best known figures of the Old West, only Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson lived out the century. (Buffalo Bill Cody doesn’t count in this context: he became famous as a showman, not a frontiersman).”

The Wichita Beacon newspaper had followed Earp’s exploits, including the night of Dec. 8, 1875, when Earp found a drunk passed out near a bridge carrying $500 in cash, a sum which represented about eight months’ wages for Earp. The man awakened in jail with his bankroll intact.

In fact, Earp had such a solid reputation as an honest lawman with nerve that the Wichita City Commission had nearly kept him on the police force, despite his fistfight with his ex-boss. The vote was four to four.

“One more yes vote would have kept Wyatt out of Dodge City at its peak,” Barra noted. “A couple of dozen movies and two of the most successful TV series of all time, ‘The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp’ and ‘Gunsmoke,’ would never have been made.”

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller

Illinois, Land of Earp

Wyatt Earp in 1874

The western legend Wyatt Earp arose from a Midwestern reality.

Born in 1848 in Monmouth, IL, he was the fourth son of a farmer, harness maker, saloonkeeper and justice of the peace, and was named after his father’s captain in the Mexican War, Wyatt Berry Stapp. His father, Nick, led at least one hunt for bear in the forests surrounding Monmouth, a town of about a thousand people when Wyatt was born.

Illinois left its impression on Earp, biographer Allen Barra noted. “The most celebrated peace officers of the cattle town era — Wild Bill Hickok, the Earp brothers, the Masterson brothers — lived in Illinois as young men and grew up in the same pro-Union, Republican, progressive, antislavery atmosphere that spawned Abraham Lincoln. (Several other prominent lawmen were raised in neighboring states; the great Bill Tilghman, whom Wyatt and Bat Masterson would know in Dodge City, grew up in equally pro-Union Iowa.)”

Sources: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra; “Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend,” Casey Tefertiller

How the West Was Sane

The Dodge City and Tombstone lawman in 1928,
47 years after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

“When Pat Buchanan kicked off his bid for the presidency in Arizona in the 1996 Republican primary, he posed for pictures, replete with gunbelt, in front of the O.K. Corral.”

“If Virgil or Wyatt (Earp) had found this NRA supporter posing for pictures wearing a Colt .45 in public, they’d have clubbed him — or ‘buffaloed’ him in this parlance of the time — hauled him off to jail, and fined him $25 for carrying firearms within the city limits.”

In other words, the Wild West was tamer than 21^st century America.

Source: “Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends," Allen Barra

The Tame, Tame West

The difference between America now and America in Wyatt Earp's day is that in Wyatt Earp's day, he took away people's guns by law. Then, when they got drunk, they didn't have them.

The Earps’ ordinance #9 was put into effect on April 19, 1881. This regulation forbade the carrying of weapons, including knives, inside Tombstone city limits.

So it's official. American society in the 21st century is loonier than the wild, wild West.