Thirty Seconds at the O.K. Corral

A Town Named for a Grave

In 1877, a prospector named Ed Schieffelin headed into the hills of southeastern Arizona looking for silver. It was rough, dangerous country. The story goes that soldiers warned him the only thing he'd find out there was his own tombstone.

He found silver instead. And he named his claim Tombstone.

A town grew up around the mines almost overnight. It became an official town in 1879. Within a couple of years it had thousands of people, saloons, hotels, a theater, two competing newspapers, and a whole lot of money changing hands.

Money draws people. Miners and merchants. Gamblers and lawyers. And trouble.

Out on the ranches and along the border lived a loose crowd of men people called the Cowboys. Some of them were ordinary ranchers. Some were rustlers and horse thieves, running stolen cattle back and forth across the Mexican border. In Tombstone in those days, calling a man a cowboy wasn't always a compliment. It often meant you thought he was an outlaw.

So here was a boomtown full of money, with a crowd of outlaws on its doorstep. What it needed was somebody willing to wear a badge.

Badges and Bad Blood

The Earp brothers came to Tombstone in 1879. Virgil Earp was the lawman of the family. He held an appointment as a deputy United States marshal, and by 1881 he was also Tombstone's town marshal, the chief of police. His younger brothers Wyatt and Morgan helped him out as deputies when he needed them. Wyatt had worn a badge before, as an assistant marshal in Dodge City, Kansas.

Then there was their friend, John Henry Holliday. Everybody called him Doc. He'd trained as a dentist back East, but by now he made his living gambling. He was sick with tuberculosis, he drank hard, and he had a temper.

On the other side were two pairs of brothers. Ike Clanton and his younger brother Billy. And Tom and Frank McLaury. They ran cattle outside of town, and they moved with the Cowboy crowd.

Caught in the middle was the county sheriff, Johnny Behan. Behan was friendly with the Cowboys, and he and Wyatt Earp were rivals. Tombstone's politics, its newspapers, even its gossip all seemed to split along the same line. You were with the Earps, or you weren't.

Here's something every sailor knows. A ship has one captain for a reason. Tombstone had a town marshal and a county sheriff who were on opposite sides, and a town split right down the middle with them.

That spring, Tombstone passed a new law. On paper, it was simple.

Check Your Guns

No carrying deadly weapons inside town limits without a permit. If you rode in armed, you were supposed to check your guns at a stable or a saloon.

Simple, until the night of October 25th, 1881.

Ike Clanton and Doc Holliday got into a nasty argument in a saloon. But Ike didn't go home and sleep it off. He stayed up drinking all night. And the next morning, he told anybody who'd listen that he was going to kill the Earps.

One Long Morning

By midday on the 26th, Virgil and Morgan found Ike on the street carrying a rifle and a revolver, in a town that had banned exactly that. Virgil hit him over the head with his pistol, disarmed him, and hauled him in front of a judge, who fined him.

That might have been the end of it. It wasn't. Not long after, Wyatt ran into Tom McLaury and struck him too.

So now two men on the Cowboy side had been hit by an Earp on the same day. And that afternoon, two more of them rode into town. Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury. They were armed.

Tombstone was a powder keg. Everybody knew it. Before the afternoon was over, these men would be standing a few feet apart. The only question was who would make the first move.

A Few Doors Down

By about two-thirty that afternoon, the Clantons and McLaurys had gathered in a narrow empty lot on Fremont Street. It sat next to a boarding house and photography studio run by a man named C. S. Fly.

The back entrance of the O.K. Corral was a few doors down. Just a few doors. That's how the corral got its name attached to the fight.

Sheriff Behan went to the lot and tried to talk the men into giving up their guns. Ike told him he wasn't armed. Tom McLaury opened his coat to show he wasn't either. But Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury still had their pistols. And there were rifles on their horses.

Virgil Earp decided it was time to enforce the law. He handed Doc Holliday a short shotgun to carry under his long coat. Then Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Doc walked down Fremont Street together.

Behan met them on the way and tried to stop them. It didn't work.

I'll tell you what a veteran notices about that walk. Four men moving together, one of them hiding a shotgun under his coat. That's not a patrol. That's a decision that's already been made.

Which brings us back to that narrow lot, and the four men stepping into it.

Thirty Seconds

Remember where we left them. A narrow lot, fifteen or twenty feet wide. Four men on one side. On the other, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and a young man named Billy Claiborne. Two of them still had pistols.

The two groups ended up just a few feet apart. Virgil ordered the men to throw up their hands. He wanted their guns. Then he heard pistols being cocked. Virgil threw both hands up, a cane in his right hand. At the hearing, he told the court what he shouted next. "Hold on, I don't want that!"

Then somebody fired. Then everybody did.

Ike Clanton, unarmed, grabbed at Wyatt. Wyatt later said he told him to fight or get out of the way. Ike ran, ducked through Fly's building, and got away. Billy Claiborne ran too.

Tom McLaury took a blast, most likely from Doc's shotgun. Frank McLaury was shot in the stomach, staggered out into the street still firing, and was killed. Billy Clanton, just nineteen years old, was shot in the chest and the wrist, and kept trying to shoot until he couldn't.

Virgil took a bullet through the leg. Morgan was hit across the shoulders. Doc was grazed on the hip.

Wyatt Earp walked away without a scratch.

About thirty shots. About thirty seconds. In the Navy, you drill for hours, over and over, because when the real thing comes, it comes that fast.

So who fired first? The people in that lot told it two different ways. The Earps said Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury went for their guns. Witnesses on the Cowboy side said Billy and Tom had their hands in the air. A judge spent about a month hearing it, and ruled there wasn't enough evidence to send the Earps and Holliday to trial.

The feud wasn't finished. That December, hidden gunmen shattered Virgil's arm with shotguns. In March, Morgan was shot dead through a saloon's glass door. Wyatt rode out with a posse, and two of the men suspected of killing Morgan were shot dead.

For decades, most Americans had never heard of any of it. Then a 1931 biography turned Wyatt into a fearless frontier hero, and a 1957 movie fixed the corral's name on the fight for good.

Anybody who has worn a uniform knows the difference between the recruiting poster and the real thing. The real thing is messier, faster, and a lot less glamorous.

No corral at all. Just a narrow strip of dirt on Fremont Street, fifteen or twenty feet wide, beside a photographer's studio.

Tomorrow: a lone pilot thirteen miles above Cuba, on the most dangerous day of the Cold War. The Daily Muster is supported by Parcaut Supply Co. Subscribe, and it'll be waiting for you every morning. Muster's done. Fair winds. I'm Ed Parcaut, and I'll see you tomorrow.