King had been a San Simon Valley cowboy but had been working on the Redfield ranch for several weeks. He lied fluently at the start. But maintaining his innocence of active participation in the attempted robbery, he confessed finally that the bandits were friends of his, he had had previous knowledge of their plans, and had met them in their flight to replenish their stock of ammunition. He named Bill Leonard, Jim Crane, and Harry Head as the highwaymen. These were outlaws associated with the Clanton-McLowery group of Curly Bill’s band. King declared explicitly that these three men alone had been concerned in the attack on the stage.
King was taken to Tombstone by Sheriff Behan and Marshall Williams and placed in jail. His confession seemed unbelievable, and it was suspected that he had held the horses for the three road agents while they attempted to rob the stage. But nothing more of King’s connection with the crime was ever learned. He escaped under peculiar circumstances, two weeks later. He had sold the horse that had been found exhausted at Wheaton’s ranch to John Dunbar, and to complete the transaction had been taken into the sheriff’s office. Under Sheriff Woods, Dunbar, and Harry Jones were present, and Jones was drawing up the bill of sale when King slipped out the door, and mounting a horse saddled and waiting for him, rode out of town and out of any further knowledge of that part of the country from that day to this.
Meanwhile, the three Earps and Paul, joined near Benson by Detective Fred Hume of the San Francisco office of Wells-Fargo, pressed hard on the traces of the murderers. The trail led west along the northern flanks of the Rincon, Tanque Verde, and Santa Catalina mountains, south through Cañada del Oro, east past Tucson through the Santa Cruz Valley, and again across the San Pedro River. After travelling in a gigantic loop more than three hundred miles around, the criminals had come back to the Dragoons. Here, at Helm’s ranch, Sheriff Behan rejoined the posse, bringing with him Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge and Buckskin Frank Leslie.
Across the Dragoons and the Chiricahuas, the posse made its way to Galeyville. There Wyatt Earp, having been on the trail ten days, turned back for Tombstone. The others pressed on into the Cloverdale region of New Mexico, where Leonard and Head had a ranch. Finding the ranch deserted, the chase was abandoned. On the home trail, the posse encountered severe hardships. One could travel fifty or seventy-five miles through this semi-desert region—and can do it today—without sighting a ranch house. Food ran out. No water could be found. Virgil Earp’s horse became exhausted, and Morgan Earp took his brother up behind him. Under the double load, Morgan’s own horse was soon staggering from weakness, and the two Earps had to lead their horses and follow on foot far behind the others. When the possemen stumbled on a spring in the eastern edge of the San Simon, it was the first water they had had for forty-eight hours. Sheriff Behan, Deputy Breakenridge, and Buckskin Frank Leslie left the others here and, riding night and day, reached San Simon ranch a hundred miles to the north and sent back supplies by horseback messenger. When relief arrived, those left behind had been four days and a half without food.
Upon arrival in Tombstone, Sheriff Behan and his men received the plaudits of the press.
The persistent pursuit of the murderers of poor Bud Philpot [said the Epitaph] is a credit to each individual member of the posse and will pass into frontier annals as a record of which all may be proud. Especially worthy of praise was the tireless work of Bob Paul and Virgil and Morgan Earp, who were in the saddle continuously for seventeen days and followed the trail from the morning after the Benson road murders.
In the aftermath of gossip that followed the attempted stage robbery, the bungling amateur touch which had seemed to characterize the work of the road agents came in for criticism. If these fellows had been old hands, it was pointed out, they would have shot one of the lead horses. That would have brought the stage to a halt. Then, if they could have finished off Bob Paul, they could have looted the coach at their leisure. It must have been humiliating to see $80,000 escape them and go galloping over the hill in a cloud of dust. … The strangely shifted positions of driver and shotgun messenger caused comment. No such thing, it was said, had ever been heard of before. Why had Paul and Philpot changed places? Some attached deep meaning to this; others regarded it as a casual coincidence. Paul, it was argued, must have had some inkling that a robbery was to be attempted or have received a warning of some kind, which was probably untrue. The opinion grew that the highwaymen had been especially anxious to do away with the shotgun messenger, possibly because of secret information he possessed, and believed when they killed Philpot, they were killing Paul. … Philpot was an old-time stage-driver, who had had long experience on mountain routes in California and been through many holdups. Once, so the story ran, when highwaymen ordered him to throw out the money chest, he threw out a green bandbox belonging to a lady passenger and by the time the robbers discovered the trick, Philpot and the stage had passed out of danger. As reward for this heroic subterfuge, Philpot had been presented with a gold watch by the Wells-Fargo people. At his death, Philpot left a wife and four children in California.
While Sheriff Behan and his posse were scouring the country for the highwaymen, Tombstone awoke one morning to read in one of the papers this bit of startling news:
Positive proof exists that four men took part in the attack
