American Experience (1988–…): Season 22, Episode 2 - Wyatt Earp - full transcript
Wyatt Earp has been portrayed in countless movies and television shows but these popular fictions belie the complexities and flaws of a man whose life is a lens on politics, justice and economic opportunity on the American frontie...
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(film projector whirls)
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp loved cowboy movies.
In the 1920s he would travel
from one end of Los Angeles
to the other just to watch
the latest releases.
Wyatt was always glad for
an escape from the monotony
of his tiny bungalow.
But even more, he hoped the
movies would vindicate him.
40 years earlier,
in an Arizona mining town,
Wyatt and his brothers were
drawn into a bitter conflict
that echoed through the West.
Tombstone and the OK Corral had
haunted him ever since.
CASEY TEFERTILLER:
His one brother had been maimed,
another murdered.
He went out and got the guys
who did it.
There weren't any doubts,
there weren't any questions.
He believed he'd done right,
but it would always come back
to him.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt had long since grown tired
of the looks and questions,
of wondering whether
the strangers just wanted
to shake the hand of a killer.
He spent his days
imagining a movie
that would set them
all straight,
starring Hollywood's most famous
cowboy, William S. Hart.
"If the story were exploited on
the screen by you,"
he wrote Hart, "it would do much
toward setting me right
before a public which has always
been fed lies about me."
Hart never made Wyatt's movie,
and Wyatt didn't live to see
his redemption.
But within a few years
of his death,
writers and filmmakers
turned Wyatt Earp
into a new kind of Western hero.
This story of a man who took
the law into his own hands
answered a deep longing
in a society
that had been transformed
by vast, impersonal forces.
In the retelling, Wyatt Earp
came to embody a time and place
where a man controlled
his own destiny,
and the explosion of violence
at the OK Corral
became a celebrated chapter
in the winning of the West.
Wyatt Earp becomes the symbol
of Western law and order,
the town taming marshal,
absolutely dedicated to the law,
and to all that means:
to the settlement of the West,
to the coming of civilization,
to the end of savagery,
to a place where schoolmarms
and churches will replace
the gambling dens and saloons
that infest Western towns.
NARRATOR:
Tombstone and the OK Corral
would become
part of America's creation myth,
and Wyatt one of its most
enduring heroes.
But that myth left out
the confusion and loss
that haunted the real
Wyatt Earp.
"The Good Lord," he once said,
"owes me an explanation
for the things that have
happened in my life."
(hawk screeches)
Wyatt Earp had never
belonged anywhere.
He was born in Monmouth,
Illinois, in 1848,
the third of Nicholas and
Virginia Earp's five sons.
But Nicholas was a roamer;
he dragged his family
across the West,
from Illinois to Iowa
to Missouri and back,
only to pull up roots again
for the crossing to California.
The generous way to describe
Nicholas Earp,
Wyatt Earp's father,
was that he was colorful
and that he was
larger than life.
The more accurate way
to describe him,
or at least to round out
the picture,
is that he was a deadbeat.
He skipped out on debts;
he was a drinker;
he was something of a bully.
I think that being
Nicholas Earp's son
was not an easy thing to be.
NARRATOR:
Adversity and isolation
hardened the bonds
between the Earp brothers,
so when Virgil and James left to
fight for the Union in 1861,
13-year-old Wyatt was desperate
to go along.
As it was, Wyatt had
to stay behind.
He would spend his formative
years watching over
his little brother, Morgan.
Morgan appears to be a little
bit more outgoing,
a little friendlier,
could get along with people.
But for Wyatt it was different.
Wyatt was dour.
He didn't laugh, he didn't get
along with people very well.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt was with his family
in California
when news came of the
Confederate surrender
at Appomattox.
The industrial leviathan that
had been created by the war,
the vast machinery
of the federal government,
the waves of immigration--
all of the forces that had
brought victory to the North
were about to be unleashed
in the West.
PAUL A. HUTTON:
The victory of the Union
in the American Civil War
is a victory for the forces
of incorporation for the West.
But what happens after the
Civil War surprises even those
that dreamed of settling
the West
because it happened so rapidly.
What had taken 300 years
to accomplish
now is wrapped up
in a generation.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt left his father's home
at the age of 17,
as the United States set about
expanding its reach
into the vast Western interior.
He was a loner, with no plan
and nothing to fall back on.
Like thousands of rootless
young men,
he saw only opportunity
in the West.
Like them, he could have no
sense of the speed and breadth
of the coming changes.
And like many of them, his life
would be altered forever
by the violence that attended
that transformation.
GARY L. ROBERTS:
"Hell on Wheels" was a term
that was given to the towns
that were built in advance
of the Union Pacific.
They're the gamblers and the
saloon men and the prostitutes
and all sorts of other predators
who were trying to live off of
the-the workers on the railroad.
So, it was a rough
and difficult environment.
NARRATOR:
By 1869, 21-year-old Wyatt had
been tempered by years
in the work camps and boomtowns
that dotted the West.
He had slowly made his way back
across the continent,
hauling goods and grading track
for the transcontinental
railroad.
That year he rejoined Virgil and
Morgan at their father's home
in Lamar, Missouri,
and, for the first time,
started putting down roots.
Wyatt took a job as the town's
constable
and courted Urilla Sutherland,
the hotel keeper's daughter.
He was an attractive suitor:
strikingly handsome,
with blue eyes and blond hair.
He had a stable job,
and he sweetened the pot
by lodging prisoners
at the Sutherlands' hotel.
The young couple married
at the beginning of 1870
and by summer were expecting
a child.
They bought land on
the outskirts of town
and set about building a life
of modest respectability.
But it all went to pieces
a few months later,
when Urilla died of typhoid,
along with their unborn child.
ROBERTS:
He was still
kind of raw anyway,
and this seems to have sent him
over the edge.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt sought out the saloons,
gambling houses and brothels
that flourished on the thinly
policed frontier.
Within months he was thrown
in jail for stealing horses
in Indian territory.
But he didn't stick around
to stand trial.
He climbed out through
the roof of his cell
and headed to Peoria, Illinois.
TEFERTILLER:
He gets arrested three times
in the Peoria area for his
adventures in prostitution.
So he's kind of going down
a bad hole.
ROBERTS:
It's not clear that he was
a pimp.
His role seems to have been
more that of an enforcer.
TEFERTILLER:
He was one tough SOB.
If a troublemaker came in
causing problems,
Wyatt Earp could come up to him
and beat the living crap
out of him.
NARRATOR:
When Earp wasn't roughing up
the clients,
he was spending time with
one of the prostitutes,
a woman named Sarah.
Sarah would disappear quietly
from Wyatt's life
within a year or two,
but she was only the first in a
string of women from that world.
ANNE BUTLER:
To find Wyatt Earp
in these multiple relationships
with prostitutes
is just a common factor
of his daily life.
It's not an unusual thing
for him to associate
with prostitutes.
ROBERTS:
You can see from this
the influence
that Urilla's death seems
to have had on him.
He just goes wild
for a period of time.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt's home was a tiny room
on a dank, floating whorehouse
on the Illinois River.
The woman who called herself his
wife was a working prostitute.
The fact was he had no other
trade and no reason to expect
anything else from life.
So when his brother James opened
a brothel in Kansas,
it was only natural that Wyatt
should make his way there.
TEFERTILLER:
Dodge City and Wichita,
they're cow towns.
The herds would be driven in,
the Texas cowboys would come in
and after a couple of months
on the trail
they'd want to have a good time,
so they went to the brothels,
went to the saloons.
They'd run around shooting their
guns and doing various things.
It was the fun at the end
of the trail.
NARRATOR:
"Everything goes in Wichita."
That's what the signs said, and
it wasn't far from the truth.
Wyatt Earp was right at home.
There was plenty of work
for a whorehouse bouncer,
at least during the summer
cattle drives.
But the trade ground to a halt
in the fall,
leaving him at loose ends.
So, in October 1874,
he took work helping an off-duty
police officer
track down some thieves
who had stolen a man's wagon.
ISENBERG:
They go off, encounter the
thieves, draw their weapons,
force these men to turn over
the stolen property.
They return to Wichita
and the story is written up
in the Wichita Eagle
and Earp gets praised publicly.
And this is a real turnaround
for Wyatt Earp.
Now he's on the other side.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt was hooked.
Every summer he signed on again
as deputy marshal,
first in Wichita and then
in nearby Dodge City.
As a lawman in the cattle towns,
he was expected to walk
a fine line.
The job of a lawman in Dodge
City wasn't to break crime
and do things like that;
it was to keep the Texas cowboys
from getting themselves
into trouble
so they could wake up the next
morning and spend more money.
JIM DUNHAM:
He really doesn't have
gunfights.
He hits 'em on the head with his
barrel of his Colt.
That steel barrel coming across
the side of your temple
definitely will knock you
unconscious if it's...
if it's hit pretty hard.
It's like a lead pipe.
He was much taller than average.
He was about six feet tall
in an era when Americans
were not that large.
He was... he was strong.
HUTTON:
Having some bulk to you was
a very good thing
when you're walking into a room
in which a lot of people
are packing iron and everybody
is drinking copiously.
You want to impress everybody
when you walk in.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp did shoot to kill
one time.
On a hot July night in 1878,
Dodge was going full tilt
at 3:00 a.m,
when a group of Texans rode
by the Commy-Kew theater,
firing dozens of bullets through
the crowded building.
Wyatt and several other men
returned fire
as the riders disappeared
into the night,
killing one of the cowboys.
No one knew whose shot
had hit home,
but Earp was troubled
by the incident.
Still, he could take
satisfaction
from reading about it
in the wildly popular
National Police Gazette,
which catered to America's
growing fascination
with the West.
ISENBERG:
Wichita is a very important
moment in Wyatt Earp's life.
He reinvented himself in Wichita
as a police officer,
as a kind of symbol
of civic respect.
A law firm in Dodge City
gave Wyatt Earp
a printed New Testament.
And they inscribed it to him,
"To Wyatt Earp,
in slight recognition of your
many Christian virtues."
And I think a little memento
like that was the kind of thing
that meant a lot to Wyatt Earp.
It meant that he had transcended
that transient upbringing
that he'd had.
It certainly meant
that he'd achieved
a kind of social acceptance.
And I think he wanted that
throughout the rest of his life.
ROBERTS:
I think there came a point
where Wyatt simply decided
that he'd outgrown all of this.
He wanted something more than
simply busting heads.
NARRATOR:
He was 31 years old.
In the cattle towns he had seen
wealth and power,
had watched the deference shown
visiting cattle barons,
and he wanted to be part of it.
He was ready for the next
chance, and Virgil provided it,
sending news of an
enormous silver strike
in a remote corner
of the Arizona desert.
In the fall of 1879,
Wyatt Earp set out across
the country once more
to rejoin his brothers
in the next boomtown.
(train engine chugging along)
It was a story tailor-made for
a man of Wyatt's disposition.
In 1877 a lone prospector
ignored soldiers' warnings
that he would find only his
tombstone in the hills
outside their encampment, and
headed into the Arizona desert.
He soon stumbled into an
outcropping of silver so rich
that in places it was visible
to the naked eye.
In no time, as one local wrote,
"men of every shade
and character"
had rushed to the scene
in a "mad career after money."
KATHERINE BENTON-COHEN:
It was a genuine,
real-deal boom camp.
It was growing by leaps
and bounds,
by the thousands each year.
Here were immigrants from China,
from England,
from South America,
from all parts of America
and around the globe
coming in search of fortune.
And here grew up a society
that wanted to see itself
as the new great city
of the West.
NARRATOR:
In fact, Tombstone's future
did look bright.
Apart from a few raids
by the Apache leader Geronimo,
the Indian menace was a thing
of the past,
and there seemed to be no end
to the silver.
Tombstone was even acquiring
an air of respectability.
ISENBERG:
There are professionals,
there are merchants,
they bring their wives,
there are ministers.
It's the Victorian age
and there's a Victorian elite
in every one of these towns.
And they set the kind of social
standard for everyone else.
You had fancy restaurants
and fancy hotels
but you also had this very
makeshift, violent, dirty
mining camp where people were
trying to make a living.
And those things coexisted
uncomfortably.
NARRATOR:
There were only a few hundred
people in Tombstone
when Wyatt Earp first arrived;
within two years
there were 7,000.
Wyatt had never seen anything
like it: exotic delicacies,
gourmet restaurants,
an oyster bar, a bowling alley;
even an ice cream shop
on Fourth Street,
where he liked to stop in
every day.
HUTTON:
This was the generation
that Mark Twain labeled
"The Great Barbecue."
This is the Gilded Age.
It's a nation on the make,
and Wyatt Earp was on the make.
Wyatt's first plan is to not do
any more lawing,
as he called it.
He'd had his fill in Kansas.
And he wanted to cash in, man.
He, you know...
this was the new boomtown
and he wanted to get in
on the ground floor
and he was going to work
this baby any way he could.
NARRATOR:
It had only been two years since
the discovery of silver,
but already the Earps had missed
the first rush of opportunities.
The lone prospectors of the
early days were long gone,
forced out in the blink of an
eye by vast mines and mills
run by capitalists from New
York, San Francisco and London.
BELL:
The mines in Tombstone really
brought an industrial attitude
to southeastern Arizona
that had never been there.
There had been other mines
and stuff,
but this was a very
sophisticated thing.
NARRATOR:
The Earps had come to Tombstone
on a couple of wagons
they planned to convert
to stagecoaches,
but no sooner had they arrived
than they were forced to sell
out to competitors
who sabotaged coaches and
poisoned each others' horses.
With no one to rely on except
each other,
the Earp brothers cast around
for opportunities,
dabbling in mining claims, water
rights, gambling concessions.
For Wyatt, every venture seemed
to bring home the same lesson:
Tombstone's riches were beyond
the reach
of a rough-edged young man
with no capital, skills
or connections.
BELL:
And so then they're
looking around,
and all of a sudden they said,
"You know, we need a shotgun
rider on the stage,"
and it paid pretty good.
So he couldn't turn that down.
There he is, back to lawing.
NARRATOR:
"That," Wyatt recalled,
"is the cursedness
of a shotgun messenger's life,
the loneliness of it."
As he loaded the Wells Fargo
strongbox
underneath the driver's seat,
he knew what passengers and
drivers alike were thinking.
"Without him and his
pestilential box," he said,
"their lives would be 90% safer,
and they know it."
When Wyatt was offered a job
as one of Tombstone's deputy
sheriffs in the summer of 1880,
he was glad to leave the stage
business behind.
WILLIAM SHILLINGBERG:
There's no question that he was
the most effective deputy
in Tombstone.
He could go out, ride 80 miles
to bring a prisoner back.
And he did on several occasions.
And it was recognized
by the people in Tombstone.
They thought, "Okay, now we
have someone here
that we can rely on."
NARRATOR:
Wyatt soon began to realize
that Tombstone's politics
could be treacherous
for a lawman.
The area was deeply divided.
On one side were the mostly
Republican townfolk
who worked the mines;
on the other were the ardently
Democratic ranchers
who'd arrived before
the silver strike
and who were deeply suspicious
of the newcomers.
This ranching crowd ranged
from legitimate operators
to straight-up outlaws.
Somewhere in between
were the cowboys.
HUTTON:
"Cow-boy," in the 1870s and
1880s, was a derisive term.
It's a term used for
a lawless element.
The cowboys tended to make
a living working
for the various ranchers,
getting day jobs whenever
they could,
and especially by going down
to Mexico and stealing cattle
and running them
north of the border.
ISENBERG
Legal authorities in Arizona
weren't terribly bothered
by the fact that there were
crimes going on in Mexico.
And this willingness
to look the other way
allowed a lawlessness among
the cowboys to go unchecked.
That made being a police officer
in Tombstone
a much bigger challenge than
being a police officer
in Dodge City or Wichita.
NARRATOR:
Truth be told,
Wyatt Earp had a lot in common
with the cowboys--
they looked like his past.
But he saw his future in the
class that was on the rise
in Tombstone and throughout
the West.
He couldn't know it,
but he'd enlisted in a much
larger conflict.
The new Republican establishment
that is attempting
to settle the West
wants law and order,
and they want to be able
to get statehood,
and they want to be able to get
investment from the East.
Men like Wyatt Earp work
for this establishment.
They work for the railroads.
They work for Wells Fargo.
They work for the mining
companies.
He's an individual struggling
to fit in.
And one of the ways
that he does that
is by taking the side
of business.
He is an instrument,
so to speak,
of the modernizing forces
in America.
He may not have thought
of himself as such,
but he becomes a foot soldier
in the struggle to establish
a new way of life.
(dog barking in distance)
NARRATOR:
With Wyatt serving
as deputy sheriff,
Virgil as deputy U.S. marshal,
and Morgan filling in
as shotgun guard,
the Earps were serving the cause
of Tombstone's establishment.
They had earned respect,
but by no stretch had
they gained admission.
Virgil's application to
the Masons was declined,
and the Earp women were shunned
by polite society.
Wyatt's own proclivities did
nothing to further the cause.
SHILLINGBERG:
He loved saloons and gambling.
He loved the atmosphere of it.
He loved it to the end
of his life.
He would be skirting the
boundaries of the underworld
his entire career.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt's closest friend outside
the family was a man
with a fearsome reputation
and a mysterious past.
Earp had met Doc Holliday
in Kansas,
and Doc had come to Tombstone
at Wyatt's invitation.
John Henry Holliday had grown up
in a good Georgia family,
and was setting up shop as a
dentist when, at the age of 23,
he suddenly cut all ties with
his former life and headed west.
Tuberculosis, a frustrated love
affair with a cousin,
a murder warrant--
nobody knew for sure
what had driven him away.
Whatever the case, he lived
as if he had nothing to lose.
His Southern background
is an interesting part
of his character because I think
it defined who he was.
He had a what you might call a
code that he brought with him
and maybe a chip on his shoulder
as well.
Wyatt would always say that Doc
had saved his life in Kansas.
And we can't find
the exact details,
but that's the kind of thing
that you don't really lie about.
He could do a lot of really
clever things
and be a pleasure to be around.
But then he'd have a little bit
too much to drink
and he'd be one of the most
rotten people you could imagine.
Wyatt got a lot of criticism
both from his family,
from his brothers and
from the people around him
that he would stay close to Doc
because Doc is the most
disreputable of the bunch.
Wyatt probably would have been
a lot smarter politically
to distance himself from Doc.
NARRATOR:
In the spring of 1881,
Earp thought his chance
had finally come along.
Booming Tombstone was about to
become the seat of a new county.
The territorial governor
would be appointing
all of the new county's
officers, including the sheriff.
A county sheriff had influence
and made a good salary.
But what really drew Wyatt's
attention was the fact
that the sheriff got to keep
some of the taxes he collected.
It's estimated that he might
have made $30,000
in a single year.
And if that's true,
you're talking about...
the average cowboy works
for a dollar a day
and here's a man making
$30,000 a year.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt assumed that his
Northern, Union roots
would give him an edge with
the Republican governor.
But he was out of his depth
in the murky waters
of territorial politics.
Wyatt was baffled when the
governor paid off some favors
by appointing a local Democrat,
John Behan,
as the new county's sheriff.
TEFERTILLER:
When you'd meet Johnny Behan,
you'd really like him.
He had the best jokes;
he'd offer you the best cigars.
And that's why everybody loved
Johnny and believed in him.
What they didn't understand was
Johnny was a pretty rotten law
officer and probably corrupt.
NARRATOR:
When his first term was up,
Behan was going to have to stand
for election.
Earp was sure that he could beat
Behan at the polls.
The status, money,
and influence Wyatt longed for
were finally within reach.
TEFERTILLER:
You've got the cowboys drifting
into Arizona;
you've got more rustling going
on against Anglo ranchers
in Arizona; and you've got
the Mexican government
bringing troops to try
and close the border.
There was a real sense that
something was coming to a head
in Cochise County.
It was very clear that something
bad was going to happen.
NARRATOR:
On a warm spring evening
in 1881,
as the Benson stage was making
its run through the desert
in the gathering darkness,
a group of cowboys suddenly
appeared in the road ahead.
The driver urged
the horses onward,
and the robbers opened fire,
killing the driver and mortally
wounding a passenger.
The shotgun guard managed
to steer the coach
out of the ambush, but by the
time word got back to town,
the robbers were long gone.
There was pandemonium,
all the people running around,
everybody wanting to get
into a posse.
They wanted someone to pay
for this.
NARRATOR:
Until now, the cowboys had been
somebody else's problem.
But if they got away with
murdering townspeople,
then no one would be safe.
What's more, the stage was
Tombstone's lifeline,
its only link
with the outside world.
SHILLINGBERG:
Wells Fargo put out a notice
on these people,
"wanted dead or alive."
No one thought anything of it.
A private corporation
could do this.
They were dead serious on this.
They wanted these guys
brought in.
They really needed
an example made here.
Wyatt in the back of his mind
thinks to himself,
"If I can catch these guys
"and get the credit for catching
these guys,
"that's going to be a terrific
thing that will be on my side
when I run for sheriff."
NARRATOR:
Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan set out
with Johnny Behan
toward the wilds
of the Dragoon Mountains.
BELL:
They went almost 400 miles.
One horse died;
they had to walk back.
That's how far these guys went
to trail these guys.
NARRATOR:
60 hours without food,
36 hours without water,
and an 18-mile walk
through a scorching desert
convinced even Wyatt that
the trail had gone cold.
But he had another plan.
Earp made an offer
to Ike Clanton,
a rancher who often bought
stolen cattle from the cowboys
and knew their comings
and goings.
If Ike would secretly turn
the suspects over to Wyatt,
he could keep the Wells Fargo
reward money.
Ike was interested, on one very
important condition:
Earp couldn't tell a soul.
If the cowboys ever got word
that Ike had betrayed them,
he'd be a dead man.
This seemed to be a good deal
for Ike
because he'd make
a lot of money;
it seemed to be a good deal
for Wyatt
because he'd catch the robbers,
which would give him
kind of a heads up
when he ran for sheriff.
NARRATOR:
The plan came to nothing.
The three suspects were all
killed in unrelated disputes
before Ike could reach them.
There would be no reward for Ike
and no glory for Wyatt.
What was left was a dangerous
secret between them.
Ike was left to wonder whether
Earp would reveal
that he had double-crossed
the cowboys,
whether he would be
their next victim.
Over the course of a long,
hot summer,
Ike's nerves began to unravel.
On the morning
of October 25, 1881,
Ike Clanton made his way
into Tombstone
to confront Wyatt Earp.
Ike comes in and he starts
drinking,
as these guys were wont to do.
And I mean really drinking.
I mean drinking all night,
going from saloon to saloon
to saloon and drinking.
And, of course, he gets his
mouth open and he starts talking
about things he shouldn't be
talking about.
NARRATOR:
As one whiskey faded
into the next,
Ike was engulfed by his worries.
Doubt became paranoia,
antagonism became hatred.
That evening he narrowly avoided
a gunfight with Doc,
and then took Wyatt aside.
"You mustn't think I won't be
after you all in the morning,"
he warned.
Wyatt brushed him off
and went home to bed.
Later that night, Ike found
himself playing poker
with Johnny Behan and,
of all people, Virgil Earp.
For hours he numbed himself with
the game's familiar routines.
But as dawn broke and
everyone else went home,
Ike was alone with his fears
again.
(pounding on a door)
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt gets woken up
and told that Ike's causing
some problems;
he doesn't pay much attention.
Virgil is also awakened
to be told that;
Virgil doesn't pay it
much attention.
They get down to the street
and find out that Ike has been
going from saloon to saloon
to saloon telling people,
"When those Earps wake up,
"that's when the ball will open.
I'm going to kill me an Earp."
When you're dealing with someone
like Wyatt Earp,
you really just don't casually
say, "I'm going to kill you."
You just don't do that.
NARRATOR:
Ike wasn't the only one fanning
the flames.
Rumors were swirling:
some said they'd seen Ike
in the telegraph office;
maybe he'd wired for backup.
There were reports that a dozen
or more cowboys were waiting
to ambush the Earps.
Tombstone's newly formed
vigilance committee was eager
to teach the cowboys a lesson.
TEFERTILLER:
As the Earps were standing
outside Hafford's Corner
wondering what was going on,
several members of
the vigilante committee
would come up and say to Virgil,
who was the chief of police,
"Do you want help?
Do you want assistance?
What can we do to help you?"
Did it ratchet up the situation?
You bet it did, because Virgil
is almost in a situation
where he has to...
he has to act or he looks weak.
NARRATOR:
Outside Hafford's saloon,
Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan
were joined by Doc Holliday,
who'd heard the rumors.
"We're going to make a fight,"
Wyatt said.
Doc volunteered to go along,
but Wyatt told him it was
none of his affair.
"That's a hell of a thing
for you to say to me,"
an indignant Doc replied.
Then Virgil handed Doc
a shotgun.
Virgil made a bad mistake in
choosing Doc to go with him,
not because Doc was going to go
off half-cocked
or create a problem but
basically on...
because of his reputation.
NARRATOR:
In fact, there was no mob
of cowboys.
In a small lot
near the edge of town,
behind an enclosure
known as the OK Corral,
Ike Clanton and his younger
brother Billy
had been joined by ranchers
Frank and Tom McLaury.
BELL:
It's a miserable day
and it's blowing...
you can see the dust blowing
out across there
between the buildings and stuff.
And the guys are probably
hugging the building
just to kind of stay out
of the cold and the dust.
And so then these four guys come
walking right up to 'em.
I mean this close to 'em;
they could touch each other.
And Virgil says,
"I've come to arrest you.
Throw up your hands."
At this point, the best evidence
suggests that Frank says,
"We will" and goes for his gun
and that Billy Clanton
also goes for his gun.
DUNHAM:
A gunfight is chaos.
And yet sometimes,
under the greatest of stress,
things just sort of slow down.
And probably to them,
when it was happening,
seemed like it was lasting
for half an hour or an hour
when it was only probably
30 seconds.
NARRATOR:
In the confusion,
Ike Clanton charged up to Wyatt
and grappled with him
for a moment.
Wyatt, realizing that Ike
didn't have a gun,
shoved him aside and said,
"The fight's commenced--
go to fighting or get away."
Ike broke and ran.
HUTTON:
The incredible presence of mind
on the part of Wyatt Earp
not to shoot that guy,
who's running right at him
in the middle of a gunfight,
is just absolutely
astonishing to me.
NARRATOR:
It was over within 30 seconds.
Frank McLaury was dead
in the middle of the street.
Tom McLaury had collapsed
at the base of a telegraph pole.
Ike's brother Billy lay
mortally wounded,
trying desperately to reload
his pistol
until someone finally grabbed it
from him.
Virgil, Morgan and Doc
had all been wounded.
Ike Clanton, the man who'd
started it all,
had kept running until he was
arrested several blocks
from the scene.
The only man to come through
without a scratch
was Wyatt Earp.
TEFERTILLER:
Right after the gunfight
it seemed almost like the town,
and like the West as a whole,
was celebrating the actions
of the Earps.
They were considered heroes
for taking action
against those dirty cowboys.
NARRATOR:
"The people of Tombstone
"have reason to congratulate
themselves
that they have marshals
who are dead shots,"
crowed the San Francisco
Exchange,
"and we hope that Tombstoners
appreciate the fact."
But not everyone took their cue
from San Francisco money men.
In the small towns and farms
outside Tombstone,
many saw the Earps
as unprovoked killers,
and the dead men--
the McLaurys in particular--
as innocent victims.
BELL:
The McLaurys are kind of a
tragic part of this story.
I don't think they were as bad
as history has portrayed them
because they get lumped in
with the Clantons.
But they got in with these guys
and they were in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
NARRATOR:
Trouble was brewing
in the countryside.
The day after the gunfight,
the bodies of Frank McLaury,
Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton
were displayed
at the undertaker's beneath
a sign reading,
"Murdered in the Streets
of Tombstone."
Their funeral procession was the
largest in the town's history.
This is an enormous
public spectacle,
and many people come in
from the surrounding areas.
And it's a kind of quiet
demonstration of resolve
from the cowboy faction.
The lines of animosity that were
created by that gunfight
were far, far deeper
and potentially lethal
than any disagreements that had
happened before.
NARRATOR:
Rumors of assassination were
everywhere.
The Earps were said
to be targets,
along with Doc Holliday, the
mayor, the Wells Fargo agent.
The mayor wired a request
to the governor for weapons
to arm the Vigilance Committee.
The governor upped the ante:
he wanted the U.S. Army
to crack down.
"Give us use of the military,"
he wrote President
Chester Arthur,
"and we will give you peace."
Washington couldn't help
but take notice
of Tombstone's troubles.
BENTON-COHEN:
They're really intensely
interested in this issue.
The cowboys were robbing and
murdering Mexican citizens
at a time
when the last thing
they wanted to do was stir up
what one official called
an international controversy,
if not war.
It was obvious that the cowboys
would strike again.
It was obvious that there would
be more trouble.
Ike Clanton was eager to exact
any degree of revenge he could.
BELL:
The cowboys come up into town,
they sneak up to a drugstore
that's under construction
right across from
the Oriental Hotel.
And they wait in there.
And here comes poor Virgil,
he's just talked to Wyatt
and he leaves and he comes out
the door.
(muted gunshots)
And they spin him around
completely,
blows his arm in two, okay.
And he doesn't leave his feet.
He walks back across the street
and falls in his brother's arms,
Wyatt's arms.
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt immediately wired to
become a deputy U.S. marshal.
And he took his posse and they
went looking for Ike Clanton.
Wyatt built a huge bonfire
to give light,
and he took a human hostage,
he took a human shield,
one of the cowboys,
grabbed him, pulled him
to his chest
and went house to house
kicking in the doors.
NARRATOR:
Rather than wait for Earp
to find him,
Ike surrendered to Sheriff Behan
and stood trial
for attempted murder.
But Ike had stacked the deck:
a parade of friends swore that
he had an alibi
the night Virgil was shot, and
nobody could prove them wrong.
The judge reluctantly
let Ike go.
TEFERTILLER:
I think there was definitely
a sense of betrayal.
Wyatt believed that he should
have had the community support
because they'd been the ones
calling for tough enforcement
against the outlaws.
I think it was a shocking
situation for the Earps.
NARRATOR:
After the trial was over,
the judge took Wyatt aside.
"You'll never clean up this
crowd this way," he said.
"Next time you'd better leave
your prisoners out in the brush
where alibis don't count."
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt doesn't take the advice.
What Wyatt does is
he sends one of his friends down
to Ike saying,
"Let's end this right now before
there's any further bloodshed.
Let's, let's end this
altogether."
Ike refuses.
NARRATOR:
Late on the night
of March 18, 1882,
Morgan and a friend were playing
pool at Hatch's Billiard Parlor
while Wyatt sat watching.
He had heard talk of trouble
and had come along
rather than leave
his brother alone.
As Wyatt looked on,
Morgan walked around the table
to line up a shot,
leaving his back to the glass
door at the rear of the room.
(gunshots)
One bullet narrowly missed
Wyatt's head,
but Morgan pitched forward
onto the table
and then collapsed in a pool
of blood on the floor.
As Wyatt, Virgil
and Doc laid him out,
he asked to be sure that
his legs were straight
and his boots off.
Within an hour he was dead.
Something changes in Wyatt Earp
after Morgan dies.
He does not care.
He is going to bring vengeance
upon them.
TEFERTILLER:
The cowboys had come after him.
They'd shot Virgil,
they'd murdered Morgan.
Wyatt Earp suddenly became
a whole different person.
NARRATOR:
On his 34th birthday,
Wyatt made arrangements to send
Morgan's casket
to their father's home
in California.
Virgil was still bedridden,
but he and the Earp women
had to leave too.
As they waited in the gathering
darkness for Virgil's train
to pull out of Tucson,
Wyatt spotted two men with
rifles lying on a flatcar
in the distance.
He wasn't taking any chances.
He crept up and recognized Ike
Clanton and Frank Stilwell.
The two men made a break for it.
Ike got away, but Earp ran
Stilwell down.
SHILLINGBERG:
He caught him on
the railroad track
and he put the double-barrel
shotgun to him
and Frank hit the ground begging
and he just squeezed off a shot.
Blew open his belly.
Fired another shot
and tore up a leg.
Other bullets were fired
through him.
He was found the next morning
by a railroad worker.
A fellow by the name
of George Hand later said
he was the most shot-up man
he ever saw.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp left Tombstone
with Doc Holliday
and a heavily armed posse
and headed into the wilderness
to hunt down
the rest of his suspects.
Although Earp was now wanted for
the murder of Frank Stilwell,
he was being quietly supported
by the powerful men
who had once shunned him.
ROBERTS:
Essentially,
after the death
of Morgan Earp,
Wyatt had a blank check
from the powers in the territory
of Arizona.
He's getting money from banks,
he's getting money from some
of the mine owners,
he's getting money
from Wells Fargo,
he's getting money
from the federal government.
NARRATOR:
Tombstone's business
establishment
was quietly backing Wyatt,
but they weren't the only
game in town.
County Sheriff John Behan
had a warrant for the arrest
of Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp
in the Stilwell killing,
and was tracking him
with a posse of his own.
Word had it that Behan had even
deputized the notorious outlaw
Curly Bill Brocius.
Wyatt Earp was now both lawman
and outlaw, hunter and prey.
The morning after
he left Tombstone,
Wyatt came across a cowboy
he knew only as Indian Charlie
at a wood camp in the mountains
and shot him down in cold blood.
DUNHAM:
Well, he had heard rumors
as to who killed Morgan.
And it's real interesting
because he doesn't take the time
to make absolutely 100%
sure who's involved.
He just says, "These guys are
part of this cowboy gang"
and he goes after them.
HUTTON:
He had a list.
And he especially wanted to get
Curly Bill Brocius,
who he saw as the leader
of the cowboy faction.
NARRATOR:
The day after the Indian Charlie
killing,
Earp and his men were
approaching a watering hole
in the desert when they were
ambushed by a group of cowboys.
In a hail of gunfire,
unaware that Doc and the others
had retreated,
Wyatt closed in alone
on the cowboy leader.
"From the instant I laid eyes
on Curly Bill,"
Earp later recalled, "I was
seeing and thinking clearly.
Nothing that went on
in that gully escaped me."
TEFERTILLER:
As best we can understand
what happened,
Curly Bill's shot hit the skirts
of Wyatt Earp's coat.
Wyatt Earp came forward with his
shotgun, took aim at Curly Bill
and fired and left Curly Bill
with his chest shattered.
NARRATOR:
"What a comment on the United
States government,"
the Arizona Star declared,
"that a band of so-called
officials rove over the country
murdering human beings
out of a spirit of revenge."
Newspapers across the West
gave daily reports
of Earp's vendetta, reinforcing
doubts about the rogue lawman.
With every headline,
Wyatt became more of a liability
to the businessmen, bankers
and politicians
who were backing him.
ROBERTS:
The political temperature was
heating up.
I'm sure he would have liked
to have had another chance
at Ike Clanton or some of the
other leaders of the cowboys.
But that just wasn't
going to happen.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt and his men
scoured the area
for more than a week,
but the cowboys had scattered.
Time was running out.
In mid-April, Earp snuck back
to the outskirts of Tombstone
for a covert meeting
with his patrons.
DUNHAM:
Wyatt was in trouble.
Wyatt had now completely gone
off in an area
that he had no legal right
to be.
The people who wanted law and
order now saw him as a problem.
They were glad to have him
leave.
NARRATOR:
On April 13, 1882, 28 months
after he had arrived,
Wyatt Earp left Arizona
Territory.
He waited in Colorado for help
from the wealthy supporters
who had spurred him on.
"We look for a pardon in a few
weeks," Wyatt told a reporter,
"and when it comes I'll go back.
I'm going to run for sheriff
this fall."
The pardon never came.
In the fall of 1882, six months
after leaving Arizona,
Wyatt Earp finally gave up and
drifted west to San Francisco.
A few weeks after Wyatt left,
President Chester Arthur
finally threatened to impose
martial law in southern Arizona.
But the crisis had passed.
Even as Wyatt hunted
Morgan's killers,
the Grand Central mine
was flooding.
Within a few years all of
the big mines had closed down,
and the outlaws disappeared
along with the silver.
Tombstone became almost
a ghost town;
only the ranchers were left
behind, including Ike Clanton.
Wyatt never caught up with Ike,
but another lawman did in 1887.
Ike was wanted for a series
of felonies;
he was once again trying to make
a running exit
when he was finally gunned down.
Doc and Wyatt had shared every
danger and hardship,
but they fell out soon after
leaving Arizona.
Doc had been living
on borrowed time
ever since he contracted
tuberculosis back in Georgia
and it finally killed him
in 1887.
He died among strangers
at a hotel in Colorado
at the age of 36.
Wyatt and Virgil also went
their separate ways.
SHILLINGBERG:
After the aftermath
of that fight,
the family relationships started
to break down.
And they were never quite
the same again.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp had lost almost
everything in Tombstone,
but in the aftermath he found
his lifelong companion.
Josephine Marcus, a striking
beauty who had come to Tombstone
as Johnny Behan's wife,
was waiting when Wyatt arrived
in San Francisco.
He and Josephine
would never reveal
how their relationship
had begun,
but it would last until death
finally parted them
46 years later.
Like Nicholas and Virginia Earp
before them,
they roamed the West, always
chasing the next boomtown.
They ran saloons in Idaho
gold towns,
followed the gold rush
to Alaska,
and played the horses
in San Francisco
before making their way to
the biggest boomtown of all,
Los Angeles.
But like Nicholas and Virginia,
they never found
what they were looking for.
Wyatt listed himself
as "capitalist"
in the city directory,
but he could only wonder
at the rich and powerful.
He remained a loner,
an outsider,
to the end of his days.
Despite all the hardships
and disappointments,
Wyatt never lost
the quiet charisma
that had inspired both loyalty
and hatred in Tombstone.
"He did not seem or look old,"
a friend recalled.
"Somehow like a mountain, or
desert, he reduced you to size."
ROBERTS:
He is a figure who,
in many ways,
is more important than some
of the other Western icons,
because his life
so clearly represents
the essential conflict
that's taking place
in America during that time.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp died at home
on January 13, 1929.
He died unsure of what
his legacy would be
and without ever making sense
of the forces
that had shaped his life.
His last words, whispered
to Josephine:
"Suppose, suppose."
Closed captions ripped by:
Tantico Croatia) 07.2011
for American Experience
is provided by:
Major funding
is made possible by:
American Experience
is also made possible
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and:
(film projector whirls)
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp loved cowboy movies.
In the 1920s he would travel
from one end of Los Angeles
to the other just to watch
the latest releases.
Wyatt was always glad for
an escape from the monotony
of his tiny bungalow.
But even more, he hoped the
movies would vindicate him.
40 years earlier,
in an Arizona mining town,
Wyatt and his brothers were
drawn into a bitter conflict
that echoed through the West.
Tombstone and the OK Corral had
haunted him ever since.
CASEY TEFERTILLER:
His one brother had been maimed,
another murdered.
He went out and got the guys
who did it.
There weren't any doubts,
there weren't any questions.
He believed he'd done right,
but it would always come back
to him.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt had long since grown tired
of the looks and questions,
of wondering whether
the strangers just wanted
to shake the hand of a killer.
He spent his days
imagining a movie
that would set them
all straight,
starring Hollywood's most famous
cowboy, William S. Hart.
"If the story were exploited on
the screen by you,"
he wrote Hart, "it would do much
toward setting me right
before a public which has always
been fed lies about me."
Hart never made Wyatt's movie,
and Wyatt didn't live to see
his redemption.
But within a few years
of his death,
writers and filmmakers
turned Wyatt Earp
into a new kind of Western hero.
This story of a man who took
the law into his own hands
answered a deep longing
in a society
that had been transformed
by vast, impersonal forces.
In the retelling, Wyatt Earp
came to embody a time and place
where a man controlled
his own destiny,
and the explosion of violence
at the OK Corral
became a celebrated chapter
in the winning of the West.
Wyatt Earp becomes the symbol
of Western law and order,
the town taming marshal,
absolutely dedicated to the law,
and to all that means:
to the settlement of the West,
to the coming of civilization,
to the end of savagery,
to a place where schoolmarms
and churches will replace
the gambling dens and saloons
that infest Western towns.
NARRATOR:
Tombstone and the OK Corral
would become
part of America's creation myth,
and Wyatt one of its most
enduring heroes.
But that myth left out
the confusion and loss
that haunted the real
Wyatt Earp.
"The Good Lord," he once said,
"owes me an explanation
for the things that have
happened in my life."
(hawk screeches)
Wyatt Earp had never
belonged anywhere.
He was born in Monmouth,
Illinois, in 1848,
the third of Nicholas and
Virginia Earp's five sons.
But Nicholas was a roamer;
he dragged his family
across the West,
from Illinois to Iowa
to Missouri and back,
only to pull up roots again
for the crossing to California.
The generous way to describe
Nicholas Earp,
Wyatt Earp's father,
was that he was colorful
and that he was
larger than life.
The more accurate way
to describe him,
or at least to round out
the picture,
is that he was a deadbeat.
He skipped out on debts;
he was a drinker;
he was something of a bully.
I think that being
Nicholas Earp's son
was not an easy thing to be.
NARRATOR:
Adversity and isolation
hardened the bonds
between the Earp brothers,
so when Virgil and James left to
fight for the Union in 1861,
13-year-old Wyatt was desperate
to go along.
As it was, Wyatt had
to stay behind.
He would spend his formative
years watching over
his little brother, Morgan.
Morgan appears to be a little
bit more outgoing,
a little friendlier,
could get along with people.
But for Wyatt it was different.
Wyatt was dour.
He didn't laugh, he didn't get
along with people very well.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt was with his family
in California
when news came of the
Confederate surrender
at Appomattox.
The industrial leviathan that
had been created by the war,
the vast machinery
of the federal government,
the waves of immigration--
all of the forces that had
brought victory to the North
were about to be unleashed
in the West.
PAUL A. HUTTON:
The victory of the Union
in the American Civil War
is a victory for the forces
of incorporation for the West.
But what happens after the
Civil War surprises even those
that dreamed of settling
the West
because it happened so rapidly.
What had taken 300 years
to accomplish
now is wrapped up
in a generation.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt left his father's home
at the age of 17,
as the United States set about
expanding its reach
into the vast Western interior.
He was a loner, with no plan
and nothing to fall back on.
Like thousands of rootless
young men,
he saw only opportunity
in the West.
Like them, he could have no
sense of the speed and breadth
of the coming changes.
And like many of them, his life
would be altered forever
by the violence that attended
that transformation.
GARY L. ROBERTS:
"Hell on Wheels" was a term
that was given to the towns
that were built in advance
of the Union Pacific.
They're the gamblers and the
saloon men and the prostitutes
and all sorts of other predators
who were trying to live off of
the-the workers on the railroad.
So, it was a rough
and difficult environment.
NARRATOR:
By 1869, 21-year-old Wyatt had
been tempered by years
in the work camps and boomtowns
that dotted the West.
He had slowly made his way back
across the continent,
hauling goods and grading track
for the transcontinental
railroad.
That year he rejoined Virgil and
Morgan at their father's home
in Lamar, Missouri,
and, for the first time,
started putting down roots.
Wyatt took a job as the town's
constable
and courted Urilla Sutherland,
the hotel keeper's daughter.
He was an attractive suitor:
strikingly handsome,
with blue eyes and blond hair.
He had a stable job,
and he sweetened the pot
by lodging prisoners
at the Sutherlands' hotel.
The young couple married
at the beginning of 1870
and by summer were expecting
a child.
They bought land on
the outskirts of town
and set about building a life
of modest respectability.
But it all went to pieces
a few months later,
when Urilla died of typhoid,
along with their unborn child.
ROBERTS:
He was still
kind of raw anyway,
and this seems to have sent him
over the edge.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt sought out the saloons,
gambling houses and brothels
that flourished on the thinly
policed frontier.
Within months he was thrown
in jail for stealing horses
in Indian territory.
But he didn't stick around
to stand trial.
He climbed out through
the roof of his cell
and headed to Peoria, Illinois.
TEFERTILLER:
He gets arrested three times
in the Peoria area for his
adventures in prostitution.
So he's kind of going down
a bad hole.
ROBERTS:
It's not clear that he was
a pimp.
His role seems to have been
more that of an enforcer.
TEFERTILLER:
He was one tough SOB.
If a troublemaker came in
causing problems,
Wyatt Earp could come up to him
and beat the living crap
out of him.
NARRATOR:
When Earp wasn't roughing up
the clients,
he was spending time with
one of the prostitutes,
a woman named Sarah.
Sarah would disappear quietly
from Wyatt's life
within a year or two,
but she was only the first in a
string of women from that world.
ANNE BUTLER:
To find Wyatt Earp
in these multiple relationships
with prostitutes
is just a common factor
of his daily life.
It's not an unusual thing
for him to associate
with prostitutes.
ROBERTS:
You can see from this
the influence
that Urilla's death seems
to have had on him.
He just goes wild
for a period of time.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt's home was a tiny room
on a dank, floating whorehouse
on the Illinois River.
The woman who called herself his
wife was a working prostitute.
The fact was he had no other
trade and no reason to expect
anything else from life.
So when his brother James opened
a brothel in Kansas,
it was only natural that Wyatt
should make his way there.
TEFERTILLER:
Dodge City and Wichita,
they're cow towns.
The herds would be driven in,
the Texas cowboys would come in
and after a couple of months
on the trail
they'd want to have a good time,
so they went to the brothels,
went to the saloons.
They'd run around shooting their
guns and doing various things.
It was the fun at the end
of the trail.
NARRATOR:
"Everything goes in Wichita."
That's what the signs said, and
it wasn't far from the truth.
Wyatt Earp was right at home.
There was plenty of work
for a whorehouse bouncer,
at least during the summer
cattle drives.
But the trade ground to a halt
in the fall,
leaving him at loose ends.
So, in October 1874,
he took work helping an off-duty
police officer
track down some thieves
who had stolen a man's wagon.
ISENBERG:
They go off, encounter the
thieves, draw their weapons,
force these men to turn over
the stolen property.
They return to Wichita
and the story is written up
in the Wichita Eagle
and Earp gets praised publicly.
And this is a real turnaround
for Wyatt Earp.
Now he's on the other side.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt was hooked.
Every summer he signed on again
as deputy marshal,
first in Wichita and then
in nearby Dodge City.
As a lawman in the cattle towns,
he was expected to walk
a fine line.
The job of a lawman in Dodge
City wasn't to break crime
and do things like that;
it was to keep the Texas cowboys
from getting themselves
into trouble
so they could wake up the next
morning and spend more money.
JIM DUNHAM:
He really doesn't have
gunfights.
He hits 'em on the head with his
barrel of his Colt.
That steel barrel coming across
the side of your temple
definitely will knock you
unconscious if it's...
if it's hit pretty hard.
It's like a lead pipe.
He was much taller than average.
He was about six feet tall
in an era when Americans
were not that large.
He was... he was strong.
HUTTON:
Having some bulk to you was
a very good thing
when you're walking into a room
in which a lot of people
are packing iron and everybody
is drinking copiously.
You want to impress everybody
when you walk in.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp did shoot to kill
one time.
On a hot July night in 1878,
Dodge was going full tilt
at 3:00 a.m,
when a group of Texans rode
by the Commy-Kew theater,
firing dozens of bullets through
the crowded building.
Wyatt and several other men
returned fire
as the riders disappeared
into the night,
killing one of the cowboys.
No one knew whose shot
had hit home,
but Earp was troubled
by the incident.
Still, he could take
satisfaction
from reading about it
in the wildly popular
National Police Gazette,
which catered to America's
growing fascination
with the West.
ISENBERG:
Wichita is a very important
moment in Wyatt Earp's life.
He reinvented himself in Wichita
as a police officer,
as a kind of symbol
of civic respect.
A law firm in Dodge City
gave Wyatt Earp
a printed New Testament.
And they inscribed it to him,
"To Wyatt Earp,
in slight recognition of your
many Christian virtues."
And I think a little memento
like that was the kind of thing
that meant a lot to Wyatt Earp.
It meant that he had transcended
that transient upbringing
that he'd had.
It certainly meant
that he'd achieved
a kind of social acceptance.
And I think he wanted that
throughout the rest of his life.
ROBERTS:
I think there came a point
where Wyatt simply decided
that he'd outgrown all of this.
He wanted something more than
simply busting heads.
NARRATOR:
He was 31 years old.
In the cattle towns he had seen
wealth and power,
had watched the deference shown
visiting cattle barons,
and he wanted to be part of it.
He was ready for the next
chance, and Virgil provided it,
sending news of an
enormous silver strike
in a remote corner
of the Arizona desert.
In the fall of 1879,
Wyatt Earp set out across
the country once more
to rejoin his brothers
in the next boomtown.
(train engine chugging along)
It was a story tailor-made for
a man of Wyatt's disposition.
In 1877 a lone prospector
ignored soldiers' warnings
that he would find only his
tombstone in the hills
outside their encampment, and
headed into the Arizona desert.
He soon stumbled into an
outcropping of silver so rich
that in places it was visible
to the naked eye.
In no time, as one local wrote,
"men of every shade
and character"
had rushed to the scene
in a "mad career after money."
KATHERINE BENTON-COHEN:
It was a genuine,
real-deal boom camp.
It was growing by leaps
and bounds,
by the thousands each year.
Here were immigrants from China,
from England,
from South America,
from all parts of America
and around the globe
coming in search of fortune.
And here grew up a society
that wanted to see itself
as the new great city
of the West.
NARRATOR:
In fact, Tombstone's future
did look bright.
Apart from a few raids
by the Apache leader Geronimo,
the Indian menace was a thing
of the past,
and there seemed to be no end
to the silver.
Tombstone was even acquiring
an air of respectability.
ISENBERG:
There are professionals,
there are merchants,
they bring their wives,
there are ministers.
It's the Victorian age
and there's a Victorian elite
in every one of these towns.
And they set the kind of social
standard for everyone else.
You had fancy restaurants
and fancy hotels
but you also had this very
makeshift, violent, dirty
mining camp where people were
trying to make a living.
And those things coexisted
uncomfortably.
NARRATOR:
There were only a few hundred
people in Tombstone
when Wyatt Earp first arrived;
within two years
there were 7,000.
Wyatt had never seen anything
like it: exotic delicacies,
gourmet restaurants,
an oyster bar, a bowling alley;
even an ice cream shop
on Fourth Street,
where he liked to stop in
every day.
HUTTON:
This was the generation
that Mark Twain labeled
"The Great Barbecue."
This is the Gilded Age.
It's a nation on the make,
and Wyatt Earp was on the make.
Wyatt's first plan is to not do
any more lawing,
as he called it.
He'd had his fill in Kansas.
And he wanted to cash in, man.
He, you know...
this was the new boomtown
and he wanted to get in
on the ground floor
and he was going to work
this baby any way he could.
NARRATOR:
It had only been two years since
the discovery of silver,
but already the Earps had missed
the first rush of opportunities.
The lone prospectors of the
early days were long gone,
forced out in the blink of an
eye by vast mines and mills
run by capitalists from New
York, San Francisco and London.
BELL:
The mines in Tombstone really
brought an industrial attitude
to southeastern Arizona
that had never been there.
There had been other mines
and stuff,
but this was a very
sophisticated thing.
NARRATOR:
The Earps had come to Tombstone
on a couple of wagons
they planned to convert
to stagecoaches,
but no sooner had they arrived
than they were forced to sell
out to competitors
who sabotaged coaches and
poisoned each others' horses.
With no one to rely on except
each other,
the Earp brothers cast around
for opportunities,
dabbling in mining claims, water
rights, gambling concessions.
For Wyatt, every venture seemed
to bring home the same lesson:
Tombstone's riches were beyond
the reach
of a rough-edged young man
with no capital, skills
or connections.
BELL:
And so then they're
looking around,
and all of a sudden they said,
"You know, we need a shotgun
rider on the stage,"
and it paid pretty good.
So he couldn't turn that down.
There he is, back to lawing.
NARRATOR:
"That," Wyatt recalled,
"is the cursedness
of a shotgun messenger's life,
the loneliness of it."
As he loaded the Wells Fargo
strongbox
underneath the driver's seat,
he knew what passengers and
drivers alike were thinking.
"Without him and his
pestilential box," he said,
"their lives would be 90% safer,
and they know it."
When Wyatt was offered a job
as one of Tombstone's deputy
sheriffs in the summer of 1880,
he was glad to leave the stage
business behind.
WILLIAM SHILLINGBERG:
There's no question that he was
the most effective deputy
in Tombstone.
He could go out, ride 80 miles
to bring a prisoner back.
And he did on several occasions.
And it was recognized
by the people in Tombstone.
They thought, "Okay, now we
have someone here
that we can rely on."
NARRATOR:
Wyatt soon began to realize
that Tombstone's politics
could be treacherous
for a lawman.
The area was deeply divided.
On one side were the mostly
Republican townfolk
who worked the mines;
on the other were the ardently
Democratic ranchers
who'd arrived before
the silver strike
and who were deeply suspicious
of the newcomers.
This ranching crowd ranged
from legitimate operators
to straight-up outlaws.
Somewhere in between
were the cowboys.
HUTTON:
"Cow-boy," in the 1870s and
1880s, was a derisive term.
It's a term used for
a lawless element.
The cowboys tended to make
a living working
for the various ranchers,
getting day jobs whenever
they could,
and especially by going down
to Mexico and stealing cattle
and running them
north of the border.
ISENBERG
Legal authorities in Arizona
weren't terribly bothered
by the fact that there were
crimes going on in Mexico.
And this willingness
to look the other way
allowed a lawlessness among
the cowboys to go unchecked.
That made being a police officer
in Tombstone
a much bigger challenge than
being a police officer
in Dodge City or Wichita.
NARRATOR:
Truth be told,
Wyatt Earp had a lot in common
with the cowboys--
they looked like his past.
But he saw his future in the
class that was on the rise
in Tombstone and throughout
the West.
He couldn't know it,
but he'd enlisted in a much
larger conflict.
The new Republican establishment
that is attempting
to settle the West
wants law and order,
and they want to be able
to get statehood,
and they want to be able to get
investment from the East.
Men like Wyatt Earp work
for this establishment.
They work for the railroads.
They work for Wells Fargo.
They work for the mining
companies.
He's an individual struggling
to fit in.
And one of the ways
that he does that
is by taking the side
of business.
He is an instrument,
so to speak,
of the modernizing forces
in America.
He may not have thought
of himself as such,
but he becomes a foot soldier
in the struggle to establish
a new way of life.
(dog barking in distance)
NARRATOR:
With Wyatt serving
as deputy sheriff,
Virgil as deputy U.S. marshal,
and Morgan filling in
as shotgun guard,
the Earps were serving the cause
of Tombstone's establishment.
They had earned respect,
but by no stretch had
they gained admission.
Virgil's application to
the Masons was declined,
and the Earp women were shunned
by polite society.
Wyatt's own proclivities did
nothing to further the cause.
SHILLINGBERG:
He loved saloons and gambling.
He loved the atmosphere of it.
He loved it to the end
of his life.
He would be skirting the
boundaries of the underworld
his entire career.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt's closest friend outside
the family was a man
with a fearsome reputation
and a mysterious past.
Earp had met Doc Holliday
in Kansas,
and Doc had come to Tombstone
at Wyatt's invitation.
John Henry Holliday had grown up
in a good Georgia family,
and was setting up shop as a
dentist when, at the age of 23,
he suddenly cut all ties with
his former life and headed west.
Tuberculosis, a frustrated love
affair with a cousin,
a murder warrant--
nobody knew for sure
what had driven him away.
Whatever the case, he lived
as if he had nothing to lose.
His Southern background
is an interesting part
of his character because I think
it defined who he was.
He had a what you might call a
code that he brought with him
and maybe a chip on his shoulder
as well.
Wyatt would always say that Doc
had saved his life in Kansas.
And we can't find
the exact details,
but that's the kind of thing
that you don't really lie about.
He could do a lot of really
clever things
and be a pleasure to be around.
But then he'd have a little bit
too much to drink
and he'd be one of the most
rotten people you could imagine.
Wyatt got a lot of criticism
both from his family,
from his brothers and
from the people around him
that he would stay close to Doc
because Doc is the most
disreputable of the bunch.
Wyatt probably would have been
a lot smarter politically
to distance himself from Doc.
NARRATOR:
In the spring of 1881,
Earp thought his chance
had finally come along.
Booming Tombstone was about to
become the seat of a new county.
The territorial governor
would be appointing
all of the new county's
officers, including the sheriff.
A county sheriff had influence
and made a good salary.
But what really drew Wyatt's
attention was the fact
that the sheriff got to keep
some of the taxes he collected.
It's estimated that he might
have made $30,000
in a single year.
And if that's true,
you're talking about...
the average cowboy works
for a dollar a day
and here's a man making
$30,000 a year.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt assumed that his
Northern, Union roots
would give him an edge with
the Republican governor.
But he was out of his depth
in the murky waters
of territorial politics.
Wyatt was baffled when the
governor paid off some favors
by appointing a local Democrat,
John Behan,
as the new county's sheriff.
TEFERTILLER:
When you'd meet Johnny Behan,
you'd really like him.
He had the best jokes;
he'd offer you the best cigars.
And that's why everybody loved
Johnny and believed in him.
What they didn't understand was
Johnny was a pretty rotten law
officer and probably corrupt.
NARRATOR:
When his first term was up,
Behan was going to have to stand
for election.
Earp was sure that he could beat
Behan at the polls.
The status, money,
and influence Wyatt longed for
were finally within reach.
TEFERTILLER:
You've got the cowboys drifting
into Arizona;
you've got more rustling going
on against Anglo ranchers
in Arizona; and you've got
the Mexican government
bringing troops to try
and close the border.
There was a real sense that
something was coming to a head
in Cochise County.
It was very clear that something
bad was going to happen.
NARRATOR:
On a warm spring evening
in 1881,
as the Benson stage was making
its run through the desert
in the gathering darkness,
a group of cowboys suddenly
appeared in the road ahead.
The driver urged
the horses onward,
and the robbers opened fire,
killing the driver and mortally
wounding a passenger.
The shotgun guard managed
to steer the coach
out of the ambush, but by the
time word got back to town,
the robbers were long gone.
There was pandemonium,
all the people running around,
everybody wanting to get
into a posse.
They wanted someone to pay
for this.
NARRATOR:
Until now, the cowboys had been
somebody else's problem.
But if they got away with
murdering townspeople,
then no one would be safe.
What's more, the stage was
Tombstone's lifeline,
its only link
with the outside world.
SHILLINGBERG:
Wells Fargo put out a notice
on these people,
"wanted dead or alive."
No one thought anything of it.
A private corporation
could do this.
They were dead serious on this.
They wanted these guys
brought in.
They really needed
an example made here.
Wyatt in the back of his mind
thinks to himself,
"If I can catch these guys
"and get the credit for catching
these guys,
"that's going to be a terrific
thing that will be on my side
when I run for sheriff."
NARRATOR:
Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan set out
with Johnny Behan
toward the wilds
of the Dragoon Mountains.
BELL:
They went almost 400 miles.
One horse died;
they had to walk back.
That's how far these guys went
to trail these guys.
NARRATOR:
60 hours without food,
36 hours without water,
and an 18-mile walk
through a scorching desert
convinced even Wyatt that
the trail had gone cold.
But he had another plan.
Earp made an offer
to Ike Clanton,
a rancher who often bought
stolen cattle from the cowboys
and knew their comings
and goings.
If Ike would secretly turn
the suspects over to Wyatt,
he could keep the Wells Fargo
reward money.
Ike was interested, on one very
important condition:
Earp couldn't tell a soul.
If the cowboys ever got word
that Ike had betrayed them,
he'd be a dead man.
This seemed to be a good deal
for Ike
because he'd make
a lot of money;
it seemed to be a good deal
for Wyatt
because he'd catch the robbers,
which would give him
kind of a heads up
when he ran for sheriff.
NARRATOR:
The plan came to nothing.
The three suspects were all
killed in unrelated disputes
before Ike could reach them.
There would be no reward for Ike
and no glory for Wyatt.
What was left was a dangerous
secret between them.
Ike was left to wonder whether
Earp would reveal
that he had double-crossed
the cowboys,
whether he would be
their next victim.
Over the course of a long,
hot summer,
Ike's nerves began to unravel.
On the morning
of October 25, 1881,
Ike Clanton made his way
into Tombstone
to confront Wyatt Earp.
Ike comes in and he starts
drinking,
as these guys were wont to do.
And I mean really drinking.
I mean drinking all night,
going from saloon to saloon
to saloon and drinking.
And, of course, he gets his
mouth open and he starts talking
about things he shouldn't be
talking about.
NARRATOR:
As one whiskey faded
into the next,
Ike was engulfed by his worries.
Doubt became paranoia,
antagonism became hatred.
That evening he narrowly avoided
a gunfight with Doc,
and then took Wyatt aside.
"You mustn't think I won't be
after you all in the morning,"
he warned.
Wyatt brushed him off
and went home to bed.
Later that night, Ike found
himself playing poker
with Johnny Behan and,
of all people, Virgil Earp.
For hours he numbed himself with
the game's familiar routines.
But as dawn broke and
everyone else went home,
Ike was alone with his fears
again.
(pounding on a door)
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt gets woken up
and told that Ike's causing
some problems;
he doesn't pay much attention.
Virgil is also awakened
to be told that;
Virgil doesn't pay it
much attention.
They get down to the street
and find out that Ike has been
going from saloon to saloon
to saloon telling people,
"When those Earps wake up,
"that's when the ball will open.
I'm going to kill me an Earp."
When you're dealing with someone
like Wyatt Earp,
you really just don't casually
say, "I'm going to kill you."
You just don't do that.
NARRATOR:
Ike wasn't the only one fanning
the flames.
Rumors were swirling:
some said they'd seen Ike
in the telegraph office;
maybe he'd wired for backup.
There were reports that a dozen
or more cowboys were waiting
to ambush the Earps.
Tombstone's newly formed
vigilance committee was eager
to teach the cowboys a lesson.
TEFERTILLER:
As the Earps were standing
outside Hafford's Corner
wondering what was going on,
several members of
the vigilante committee
would come up and say to Virgil,
who was the chief of police,
"Do you want help?
Do you want assistance?
What can we do to help you?"
Did it ratchet up the situation?
You bet it did, because Virgil
is almost in a situation
where he has to...
he has to act or he looks weak.
NARRATOR:
Outside Hafford's saloon,
Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan
were joined by Doc Holliday,
who'd heard the rumors.
"We're going to make a fight,"
Wyatt said.
Doc volunteered to go along,
but Wyatt told him it was
none of his affair.
"That's a hell of a thing
for you to say to me,"
an indignant Doc replied.
Then Virgil handed Doc
a shotgun.
Virgil made a bad mistake in
choosing Doc to go with him,
not because Doc was going to go
off half-cocked
or create a problem but
basically on...
because of his reputation.
NARRATOR:
In fact, there was no mob
of cowboys.
In a small lot
near the edge of town,
behind an enclosure
known as the OK Corral,
Ike Clanton and his younger
brother Billy
had been joined by ranchers
Frank and Tom McLaury.
BELL:
It's a miserable day
and it's blowing...
you can see the dust blowing
out across there
between the buildings and stuff.
And the guys are probably
hugging the building
just to kind of stay out
of the cold and the dust.
And so then these four guys come
walking right up to 'em.
I mean this close to 'em;
they could touch each other.
And Virgil says,
"I've come to arrest you.
Throw up your hands."
At this point, the best evidence
suggests that Frank says,
"We will" and goes for his gun
and that Billy Clanton
also goes for his gun.
DUNHAM:
A gunfight is chaos.
And yet sometimes,
under the greatest of stress,
things just sort of slow down.
And probably to them,
when it was happening,
seemed like it was lasting
for half an hour or an hour
when it was only probably
30 seconds.
NARRATOR:
In the confusion,
Ike Clanton charged up to Wyatt
and grappled with him
for a moment.
Wyatt, realizing that Ike
didn't have a gun,
shoved him aside and said,
"The fight's commenced--
go to fighting or get away."
Ike broke and ran.
HUTTON:
The incredible presence of mind
on the part of Wyatt Earp
not to shoot that guy,
who's running right at him
in the middle of a gunfight,
is just absolutely
astonishing to me.
NARRATOR:
It was over within 30 seconds.
Frank McLaury was dead
in the middle of the street.
Tom McLaury had collapsed
at the base of a telegraph pole.
Ike's brother Billy lay
mortally wounded,
trying desperately to reload
his pistol
until someone finally grabbed it
from him.
Virgil, Morgan and Doc
had all been wounded.
Ike Clanton, the man who'd
started it all,
had kept running until he was
arrested several blocks
from the scene.
The only man to come through
without a scratch
was Wyatt Earp.
TEFERTILLER:
Right after the gunfight
it seemed almost like the town,
and like the West as a whole,
was celebrating the actions
of the Earps.
They were considered heroes
for taking action
against those dirty cowboys.
NARRATOR:
"The people of Tombstone
"have reason to congratulate
themselves
that they have marshals
who are dead shots,"
crowed the San Francisco
Exchange,
"and we hope that Tombstoners
appreciate the fact."
But not everyone took their cue
from San Francisco money men.
In the small towns and farms
outside Tombstone,
many saw the Earps
as unprovoked killers,
and the dead men--
the McLaurys in particular--
as innocent victims.
BELL:
The McLaurys are kind of a
tragic part of this story.
I don't think they were as bad
as history has portrayed them
because they get lumped in
with the Clantons.
But they got in with these guys
and they were in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
NARRATOR:
Trouble was brewing
in the countryside.
The day after the gunfight,
the bodies of Frank McLaury,
Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton
were displayed
at the undertaker's beneath
a sign reading,
"Murdered in the Streets
of Tombstone."
Their funeral procession was the
largest in the town's history.
This is an enormous
public spectacle,
and many people come in
from the surrounding areas.
And it's a kind of quiet
demonstration of resolve
from the cowboy faction.
The lines of animosity that were
created by that gunfight
were far, far deeper
and potentially lethal
than any disagreements that had
happened before.
NARRATOR:
Rumors of assassination were
everywhere.
The Earps were said
to be targets,
along with Doc Holliday, the
mayor, the Wells Fargo agent.
The mayor wired a request
to the governor for weapons
to arm the Vigilance Committee.
The governor upped the ante:
he wanted the U.S. Army
to crack down.
"Give us use of the military,"
he wrote President
Chester Arthur,
"and we will give you peace."
Washington couldn't help
but take notice
of Tombstone's troubles.
BENTON-COHEN:
They're really intensely
interested in this issue.
The cowboys were robbing and
murdering Mexican citizens
at a time
when the last thing
they wanted to do was stir up
what one official called
an international controversy,
if not war.
It was obvious that the cowboys
would strike again.
It was obvious that there would
be more trouble.
Ike Clanton was eager to exact
any degree of revenge he could.
BELL:
The cowboys come up into town,
they sneak up to a drugstore
that's under construction
right across from
the Oriental Hotel.
And they wait in there.
And here comes poor Virgil,
he's just talked to Wyatt
and he leaves and he comes out
the door.
(muted gunshots)
And they spin him around
completely,
blows his arm in two, okay.
And he doesn't leave his feet.
He walks back across the street
and falls in his brother's arms,
Wyatt's arms.
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt immediately wired to
become a deputy U.S. marshal.
And he took his posse and they
went looking for Ike Clanton.
Wyatt built a huge bonfire
to give light,
and he took a human hostage,
he took a human shield,
one of the cowboys,
grabbed him, pulled him
to his chest
and went house to house
kicking in the doors.
NARRATOR:
Rather than wait for Earp
to find him,
Ike surrendered to Sheriff Behan
and stood trial
for attempted murder.
But Ike had stacked the deck:
a parade of friends swore that
he had an alibi
the night Virgil was shot, and
nobody could prove them wrong.
The judge reluctantly
let Ike go.
TEFERTILLER:
I think there was definitely
a sense of betrayal.
Wyatt believed that he should
have had the community support
because they'd been the ones
calling for tough enforcement
against the outlaws.
I think it was a shocking
situation for the Earps.
NARRATOR:
After the trial was over,
the judge took Wyatt aside.
"You'll never clean up this
crowd this way," he said.
"Next time you'd better leave
your prisoners out in the brush
where alibis don't count."
TEFERTILLER:
Wyatt doesn't take the advice.
What Wyatt does is
he sends one of his friends down
to Ike saying,
"Let's end this right now before
there's any further bloodshed.
Let's, let's end this
altogether."
Ike refuses.
NARRATOR:
Late on the night
of March 18, 1882,
Morgan and a friend were playing
pool at Hatch's Billiard Parlor
while Wyatt sat watching.
He had heard talk of trouble
and had come along
rather than leave
his brother alone.
As Wyatt looked on,
Morgan walked around the table
to line up a shot,
leaving his back to the glass
door at the rear of the room.
(gunshots)
One bullet narrowly missed
Wyatt's head,
but Morgan pitched forward
onto the table
and then collapsed in a pool
of blood on the floor.
As Wyatt, Virgil
and Doc laid him out,
he asked to be sure that
his legs were straight
and his boots off.
Within an hour he was dead.
Something changes in Wyatt Earp
after Morgan dies.
He does not care.
He is going to bring vengeance
upon them.
TEFERTILLER:
The cowboys had come after him.
They'd shot Virgil,
they'd murdered Morgan.
Wyatt Earp suddenly became
a whole different person.
NARRATOR:
On his 34th birthday,
Wyatt made arrangements to send
Morgan's casket
to their father's home
in California.
Virgil was still bedridden,
but he and the Earp women
had to leave too.
As they waited in the gathering
darkness for Virgil's train
to pull out of Tucson,
Wyatt spotted two men with
rifles lying on a flatcar
in the distance.
He wasn't taking any chances.
He crept up and recognized Ike
Clanton and Frank Stilwell.
The two men made a break for it.
Ike got away, but Earp ran
Stilwell down.
SHILLINGBERG:
He caught him on
the railroad track
and he put the double-barrel
shotgun to him
and Frank hit the ground begging
and he just squeezed off a shot.
Blew open his belly.
Fired another shot
and tore up a leg.
Other bullets were fired
through him.
He was found the next morning
by a railroad worker.
A fellow by the name
of George Hand later said
he was the most shot-up man
he ever saw.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp left Tombstone
with Doc Holliday
and a heavily armed posse
and headed into the wilderness
to hunt down
the rest of his suspects.
Although Earp was now wanted for
the murder of Frank Stilwell,
he was being quietly supported
by the powerful men
who had once shunned him.
ROBERTS:
Essentially,
after the death
of Morgan Earp,
Wyatt had a blank check
from the powers in the territory
of Arizona.
He's getting money from banks,
he's getting money from some
of the mine owners,
he's getting money
from Wells Fargo,
he's getting money
from the federal government.
NARRATOR:
Tombstone's business
establishment
was quietly backing Wyatt,
but they weren't the only
game in town.
County Sheriff John Behan
had a warrant for the arrest
of Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp
in the Stilwell killing,
and was tracking him
with a posse of his own.
Word had it that Behan had even
deputized the notorious outlaw
Curly Bill Brocius.
Wyatt Earp was now both lawman
and outlaw, hunter and prey.
The morning after
he left Tombstone,
Wyatt came across a cowboy
he knew only as Indian Charlie
at a wood camp in the mountains
and shot him down in cold blood.
DUNHAM:
Well, he had heard rumors
as to who killed Morgan.
And it's real interesting
because he doesn't take the time
to make absolutely 100%
sure who's involved.
He just says, "These guys are
part of this cowboy gang"
and he goes after them.
HUTTON:
He had a list.
And he especially wanted to get
Curly Bill Brocius,
who he saw as the leader
of the cowboy faction.
NARRATOR:
The day after the Indian Charlie
killing,
Earp and his men were
approaching a watering hole
in the desert when they were
ambushed by a group of cowboys.
In a hail of gunfire,
unaware that Doc and the others
had retreated,
Wyatt closed in alone
on the cowboy leader.
"From the instant I laid eyes
on Curly Bill,"
Earp later recalled, "I was
seeing and thinking clearly.
Nothing that went on
in that gully escaped me."
TEFERTILLER:
As best we can understand
what happened,
Curly Bill's shot hit the skirts
of Wyatt Earp's coat.
Wyatt Earp came forward with his
shotgun, took aim at Curly Bill
and fired and left Curly Bill
with his chest shattered.
NARRATOR:
"What a comment on the United
States government,"
the Arizona Star declared,
"that a band of so-called
officials rove over the country
murdering human beings
out of a spirit of revenge."
Newspapers across the West
gave daily reports
of Earp's vendetta, reinforcing
doubts about the rogue lawman.
With every headline,
Wyatt became more of a liability
to the businessmen, bankers
and politicians
who were backing him.
ROBERTS:
The political temperature was
heating up.
I'm sure he would have liked
to have had another chance
at Ike Clanton or some of the
other leaders of the cowboys.
But that just wasn't
going to happen.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt and his men
scoured the area
for more than a week,
but the cowboys had scattered.
Time was running out.
In mid-April, Earp snuck back
to the outskirts of Tombstone
for a covert meeting
with his patrons.
DUNHAM:
Wyatt was in trouble.
Wyatt had now completely gone
off in an area
that he had no legal right
to be.
The people who wanted law and
order now saw him as a problem.
They were glad to have him
leave.
NARRATOR:
On April 13, 1882, 28 months
after he had arrived,
Wyatt Earp left Arizona
Territory.
He waited in Colorado for help
from the wealthy supporters
who had spurred him on.
"We look for a pardon in a few
weeks," Wyatt told a reporter,
"and when it comes I'll go back.
I'm going to run for sheriff
this fall."
The pardon never came.
In the fall of 1882, six months
after leaving Arizona,
Wyatt Earp finally gave up and
drifted west to San Francisco.
A few weeks after Wyatt left,
President Chester Arthur
finally threatened to impose
martial law in southern Arizona.
But the crisis had passed.
Even as Wyatt hunted
Morgan's killers,
the Grand Central mine
was flooding.
Within a few years all of
the big mines had closed down,
and the outlaws disappeared
along with the silver.
Tombstone became almost
a ghost town;
only the ranchers were left
behind, including Ike Clanton.
Wyatt never caught up with Ike,
but another lawman did in 1887.
Ike was wanted for a series
of felonies;
he was once again trying to make
a running exit
when he was finally gunned down.
Doc and Wyatt had shared every
danger and hardship,
but they fell out soon after
leaving Arizona.
Doc had been living
on borrowed time
ever since he contracted
tuberculosis back in Georgia
and it finally killed him
in 1887.
He died among strangers
at a hotel in Colorado
at the age of 36.
Wyatt and Virgil also went
their separate ways.
SHILLINGBERG:
After the aftermath
of that fight,
the family relationships started
to break down.
And they were never quite
the same again.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp had lost almost
everything in Tombstone,
but in the aftermath he found
his lifelong companion.
Josephine Marcus, a striking
beauty who had come to Tombstone
as Johnny Behan's wife,
was waiting when Wyatt arrived
in San Francisco.
He and Josephine
would never reveal
how their relationship
had begun,
but it would last until death
finally parted them
46 years later.
Like Nicholas and Virginia Earp
before them,
they roamed the West, always
chasing the next boomtown.
They ran saloons in Idaho
gold towns,
followed the gold rush
to Alaska,
and played the horses
in San Francisco
before making their way to
the biggest boomtown of all,
Los Angeles.
But like Nicholas and Virginia,
they never found
what they were looking for.
Wyatt listed himself
as "capitalist"
in the city directory,
but he could only wonder
at the rich and powerful.
He remained a loner,
an outsider,
to the end of his days.
Despite all the hardships
and disappointments,
Wyatt never lost
the quiet charisma
that had inspired both loyalty
and hatred in Tombstone.
"He did not seem or look old,"
a friend recalled.
"Somehow like a mountain, or
desert, he reduced you to size."
ROBERTS:
He is a figure who,
in many ways,
is more important than some
of the other Western icons,
because his life
so clearly represents
the essential conflict
that's taking place
in America during that time.
NARRATOR:
Wyatt Earp died at home
on January 13, 1929.
He died unsure of what
his legacy would be
and without ever making sense
of the forces
that had shaped his life.
His last words, whispered
to Josephine:
"Suppose, suppose."
Closed captions ripped by:
Tantico Croatia) 07.2011