“ ‘I want you to know, Clanton,’ he said, ‘that Wyatt Earp is my friend, and anything you fix up with him will be all right with me, and you can count on me for any help you need.’
“Clanton flared up at this foolish remark.
“ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘I have had no dealings of any kind with Wyatt Earp. You are drunk or you and I would have trouble right now. Wyatt Earp is no friend of mine, and if I ever hear of your connecting my name with him in any way, I’ll kill you. Remember that and learn to keep your mouth shut.’
“Ike Clanton, mad as a hornet, hunted me up and told me I had blabbed the whole matter to Williams. I denied it, but my denial was useless, and he went away convinced that I had told Williams all about our transaction. A week or two later, Clanton came to me again and accused me of having told Doc Holliday. Again I denied it.
“ ‘Doc Holliday himself told me so,’ Clanton said flatly.
“ ‘I know Doc Holliday told you nothing of the kind,’ I retorted. ‘He could have told you nothing because he knows nothing. Doc Holliday is in Tucson now, but as soon as he comes back, I’ll prove to you by him that I never have said a word to him about it.’
“When Doc Holliday returned from Tucson, I asked him about Ike Clanton’s statement.
“ ‘Ike Clanton is a liar,’ declared Doc hotly, ‘and I’ll tell him so the first time I see him.’
“Ike Clanton filled Frank McLowery and Joe Hill up with the idea that I had told Williams and Holliday about our negotiations, and after that the three men shunned me like poison every time they came to town. This misunderstanding, which grew out of a drunken falsehood babbled by Marshall Williams, finally led to the battle in which three men were killed. The bitterness of these three outlaws was easy to understand. If, as they wrongly assumed, I had told of their plans to betray their old friends, it meant that they would be marked for death by all the desperate cutthroats of the Curly Bill confederacy. Unless they found some way to square themselves, they were doomed. The situation was serious for me. I was the one man who had full knowledge of their treacherous plot against their comrades, and I had it in my power to betray the plotters to the vengeance of their associates. As long as I remained alive, this danger of my betraying them would hang over their heads. Their safety depended on my death. From this time on, they and their outlaw friends were plotting and scheming to kill me. I heard every little while of their threats to put me out of the way.”
This was the Earp side of the story of the origin of the Earp-Clanton feud as told by Wyatt Earp on the witness stand. Ike Clanton told the Clanton side in the same court.
“I met Leonard, Head, and Crane near Hereford on the San Pedro River five days after the attack on the Benson stage,” said Ike Clanton. “Bill Leonard then told me that Holliday had taken part in the attempted stage robbery but was drunk at the time. Leonard said Holliday killed Bud Philpot, and if it had not been for this drunken blunder, the stage robbery might have been successful. I met Holliday next day in Jim Vogan’s saloon in Tombstone and told him I had seen Leonard, Head, and Crane, and they were heading for the San José Mountains in Mexico. He asked me if Leonard had told me how Philpot happened to be killed. I told him no.
“ ‘Bob Paul had the lines, and Philpot had the shotgun and tried to make a fight and got left,’ Holliday said to me. ‘I shot Philpot through the heart and saw him tumble off the cart.’
“Several times after that conversation, Holliday told me, if I ever saw Leonard, Head, and Crane again, to tell them he was all right and would not give them away.
“Ten or twelve days before the Benson stage holdup, I had a talk with Morgan Earp in the Alhambra saloon. He told me he and Wyatt Earp had passed the tip to Bill Leonard and Doc Holliday that a large sum of money—I think he said $29,000—was going out on the stage.
“After Sheriff Behan’s posse had abandoned the pursuit, I met Virgil Earp in one of the Allen Street saloons. He asked me to let Leonard know that the three Earp brothers had led the posse off the trail to give Leonard, Head, and Crane a chance to escape.
“ ‘Tell Leonard,’ said Virgil Earp, ‘we were not trying to catch them. When the posse got to Helm’s ranch at the foot of the Dragoons, Wyatt, Morgan, and myself saw that the trail led south toward the San Pedro Valley and the Mexican line, but we steered the posse on a false scent east across the Dragoons and on into New Mexico. Tell Leonard we did all we could for him and his pals and advise him to get Head and Crane out of the country, as we are afraid they may be captured and get us all into trouble. I want to get this word to Leonard to let him know we have not gone back on him.’
“Early in June,” Ike Clanton continued, “I met Wyatt Earp in the Oriental saloon. He asked me to have a drink, and while our drinks were being mixed, he said he wanted to have a long private talk with me. After we had had our drinks, we stepped out on the sidewalk, and he said he could put it in
