The Earp-Clanton feud was an evolution rather than a sudden flare of lethal violence. Its origin was complicated. Contributory causes linked in involved sequence, were: The attempted robbery of the Benson stage and the murder of Bud Philpot; the robbery of the Bisbee stage; a proposition whatever it was—and there were two conflicting stories concerning it—made by Wyatt Earp to Ike Clanton; a tipsy remark made by Marshall Williams; Doc Holliday’s flaming resentment; Ike Clanton’s drunken spree.
Bad blood grew between the Earps and the Clantons and the Clantons’ close friends and partners in outlawry, the McLowerys, in the very early days of Tombstone’s history. Only a few days after Wyatt Earp arrived in Tombstone, a horse was stolen from him. For a long time, he lost all trace of the animal. Then he heard it was in the possession of the Clantons. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday went to Charleston to investigate. Sheriff Behan was in Charleston on that occasion to serve Ike Clanton with a subpoena in some court case.
“I was told by a friend of mine,” testified Wyatt Earp later, “that the man who carried Sheriff Behan’s subpoena from Charleston to the Clanton ranch rode my horse.”
Wyatt Earp was over in the Huachuca Mountains later, looking after some water rights, and on his way back to Tombstone, Scar-Face McMasters met him on the road and told him, if he rode fast enough, he would find his horse in Charleston.
“As soon as I reached Charleston,” said Wyatt Earp, “I saw Billy Clanton ride my horse through the street and put him up in a corral. It struck me as pretty brazen for Billy Clanton to ride my stolen horse about in this public fashion within nine miles of Tombstone. But Charleston was a Clanton-McLowery stamping ground and was filled with friends of these desperadoes. I was alone, but I determined to get possession of my horse legally and take him back home. As Justice Jim Burnett was away in Sonora, I telegraphed to Tombstone to my brother James to have papers for the recovery of the animal made out before Justice Wallace and sent over to me at once. Billy Clanton learned of this telegram and went to the corral to ride the horse out of town. I followed him and, with my hand on my gun, told him he could not take the horse, as it was mine and I proposed to have it with or without process of law. Warren Earp, my youngest brother, brought the legal papers to Charleston a little later, and Billy Clanton gave up the horse without service.
“ ‘Have you got any more good horses to lose, Earp?’ Billy Clanton bantered me.
“ ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘but I’ll keep them locked in the stable after this so you can’t steal them.’ ”
A few months after this incident, Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, and Marshall Williams joined Captain Hurst and four soldiers in a search for six government mules that had been stolen from Camp Rucker. At Charleston, Dave Estes, a Curly Bill man, told Wyatt Earp he would find the mules at the McLowery ranch near Soldier Holes. Estes had seen the mules there the day before, he said, and the McLowerys were then changing the government brand of U S into D S. The posse rode to the McLowery ranch and found the D S branding iron and the six mules bearing the blotted brands.
“Frank Patterson, a member of the McLowery outfit,” said Wyatt Earp, “made some sort of compromise with Captain Hurst and agreed to give up the mules if my brothers, Williams, and I went back to Tombstone. I argued with Captain Hurst not to listen to this proposition and cautioned him that it was only a trick to get us out of the way. But he insisted, and we returned to Tombstone. When I met Captain Hurst in Tombstone three weeks later, he told me that, after we left the ranch, the McLowerys refused to give up the mules and threatened to fight it out with the soldiers. Captain Hurst left the mules in possession of the McLowerys and never recovered them. Captain Hurst warned me to look out for those outlaws, saying that, while he was at the ranch, they had made their threats that they would kill me and my brothers at the first opportunity. When I met Frank and Tom McLowery in Charleston a short time afterward, they tried to pick a quarrel with me, but I refused to fall into the trap. They told me that, if I ever followed them again, my friends would find me lying dead in the mesquite some fine morning.”
The attack on the Benson stage added in a peculiarly incidental but intricate way to the growing hatred between the Earps and the Clantons and McLowerys. The attempted stage robbery, it will be recalled, occurred in , and the trail of Leonard, Head, and Crane had been lost in New Mexico. Efforts to trace the three highwaymen having failed, Wyatt Earp, according to his story, opened negotiations in the early part of June for the betrayal of the bandits.
“I knew that Leonard, Head, and Crane were friends and associates of the Clantons and McLowerys,” said Wyatt Earp. “It was well known among all officers of the law in Tombstone that Ike Clanton was a sort of chief among the outlaws, and that the Clantons and McLowerys were cattle thieves and in the secrets of the stage robbers, and that the Clanton and McLowery ranches were meeting places
