This courtesy of the Arizona Memory Project (typos part of the official transcript): He was the sheriff of Cochise County, a political rival to the Earps and a friend to many of the Cowboys, and one of many interviewed afterward during a hearing into the gunfight. Here, we jump ahead to the firsthand witness account of John H. They were overheard, and that's what saved the Earps and Doc from maybe going to a murder trial." "They made open threats that they were going to kill the Earps. "When came into town and Billy saw his brother Ike had been hit, and Frank saw his brother Tom had been cocked, they were spoiling for a fight then," Trimble says. Most estimates put the two groups not much farther than 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart. And that's how things started that day.Īfter some threats and two pistol-whippings - the Earps didn't take any guff from scofflaws, and both Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury tasted a little frontier justice from the handles of the Earps' pistols earlier that day - the two groups squared off at about 3 p.m. Virgil Earp let that be known to the Cowboys. In late 1881, it was against the law to carry weapons within the Tombstone town limits. The Cowboys didn't recognize Virgil Earp as marshal or his legal authority, and the Cowboys despised the fact that Earp and his "lawmen" often used possibly extra-legal methods to enforce the law. Needless to say, the two groups had a history of run-ins. Town leaders wanted men like Virgil and Wyatt Earp because they had solid reputations as gunfighters and lawmen.īut the Clanton and McLaury families, who were prominent ranchers, formed their own coalition, known as the Cowboys, and they were against the Earp brothers and the law, even though the Earps had support from Tombstone's leading businessmen, including Mayor John Clum and mining tycoon E.B. Between 18, Tombstone's population exploded with prospectors searching for silver ore and the town needed law enforcement.
They were Billy Claiborne, brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, and brothers Frank and Tom McLaury. The "Bad Guys" were known as the "Cowboys," a cow-rustling, horse-thieving group of no-good cusses who didn't like the iron-handed Earps or anything to do with the law. They were Tombstone Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Morgan and Wyatt (both officially special policemen), and temporary policeman (and Wyatt Earp friend) John Henry "Doc" Holliday. The "Good Guys" were the lawmen in an otherwise lawless part of the Arizona Territory. In true Western fashion, the cast of the real-life fight is easily broken into two groups.