“I didn’t do none o’ that shootin’,” snarled Curly Bill.
“Gimme that gun o’ yours,” ordered the marshal.
Curly Bill slid his weapon from its holster and was in the act of handing it over when Wyatt Earp ran up behind and threw his arms about him. Marshal White at the same instant seized the gun, but, as he was wresting it from Curly Bill’s grasp, the weapon was discharged and the marshal fell with a mortal wound. As the gun flamed, Wyatt Earp bent his six-shooter, as they say, over Curly Bill’s head and, knocking him down, hustled him off to jail, where the outlaw nursed his split scalp and flamed into bitterness against Wyatt Earp for this abrupt manhandling—a bitterness that grew bitterer through the years and never died until Curly Bill himself died.
Marshal White was dead within a few hours, and when the news of his death spread through the town, a crowd gathered at the jail and threatened to lynch Curly Bill, but was persuaded to disperse by Wyatt Earp who thus saved the life of the man who was to become one of his relentless enemies.
After a preliminary hearing before Justice Gray, Curly Bill, who gave his name as William Brocius, as appears by the official records, though old-timers who knew him say it was William Graham, was removed to Tucson where he stood trial before Justice Neugass. Curly Bill testified that Marshal White had caused his own death by the violence with which he had seized the outlaw’s six-shooter. This view of the fatality was sustained by Wyatt Earp on the witness stand and by a dying statement made under oath by Marshal White and submitted in court. Thus exonerated by the two officers concerned in the affair, Curly Bill was acquitted, Justice Neugass holding the tragedy “a misadventure.”
Curly Bill afterward boasted that he had killed Marshal White intentionally. The outlaw declared that he had presented his six-shooter butt foremost but, slipping a forefinger inside the trigger guard, had trickily whirled the weapon around end for end and fired as Marshal White seized it. This story may possibly have been true, though the details of the tragedy as they came out in court seemed to discredit it. If Curly Bill fired with malice aforethought, the trick was so deftly performed that it deceived not only such a six-shooter expert as Wyatt Earp but also the man who died from the bullet.
The tragedy that deprived Tombstone of its first town marshal was effective, it may be mentioned in passing, in advancing materially the fortunes of the Earps. Marshal White was killed , and at a general election a few days later, Virgil Earp was chosen without opposition to fill the vacancy. With Virgil Earp at the helm of police affairs and Wyatt Earp in an important Federal position, the Earps were in a way to become politically powerful.
Much more characteristic of Curly Bill than this early Tombstone adventure was a later one in which the principal role was enacted by the only man who ever played a joke on the outlaw chief. Dick Lloyd was an old cowboy as seriously stupid as a range steer and perfectly harmless until he came to town and got drunk enough to imagine himself a bad man. When he rode into Fort Thomas one hot dusty day from Bear Springs Valley over in the Grahams, he was dry with a five-months’ thirst. Tying his paint pony to a mesquite tree, he clanked into E. Mann’s saloon, where, as it happened, Curly Bill was playing poker. Around the table with the outlaw leader were such convivial spirits as John Ringo, Joe Hill, Tom and Frank McLowery, Ike Clanton, and Jim Hughes, and the game had been roaring for two days and nights without interruption. After a few rounds of raw whisky with the genial E. Mann, Dick Lloyd wandered with a sunrise smile to the poker table. These rustlers were old friends of his. As a cowboy in off the range to spend his money, he had had many a social glass with them in Charleston and Galeyville, and he greeted them with boisterous goodfellowship. “Hello, Curly. … Howdy, Ringo. … Put her there, Hill … How’s all the boys?”
“I’ve knowed old Dick ever sence he worked for the Diamond A over in the Animas,” remarked Curly Bill when Lloyd had gone back to the bar, “and a better hand never punched cows.”
After Dick had had a few more drinks with E. Mann, the two men walked to the front door. There the cowboy, with no apparent reason, pulled his six-shooter and hauled up and threw down, as they say, on the genial E. Mann. The bullet creased the saloon-keeper’s neck as he dodged behind the bar, leaving a scar that became a lifelong mystery, E. Mann being too drunk ever to remember why he was shot, and Dick Lloyd being past the point of explanations. This was the beginning of the affair.
Reeling across the street, Dick climbed on his pinto pony. Drawing his Winchester from its saddle scabbard and sticking the muzzle high over his head, he fired a shot by way of advertising the show, securing Fort Thomas’s instant and undivided attention.
“Whee‑e‑e‑e‑e!”
Raising a war whoop, he went charging through the street, shooting up the town with fine abandon, his devastating course marked by crashing windows and splintered store fronts and citizens running madly for cover. When he chanced to spy the fine-looking horses of the Curly Bill outfit
