“All I ever knew about the connection of the Earps and Holliday with the Benson stage holdup was what they themselves and Bill Leonard told me. Later, Leonard, Head, and Crane were all killed, and since their deaths I have been afraid the Earps would murder me because of my knowledge of their secrets.”
Whether true or false, Ike Clanton’s statement contained a number of discrepancies which, in the light of the evidence, were difficult to explain. Holliday’s alleged confession of how he killed Philpot was contrary to the facts indubitably established by Bob Paul and other eye witnesses among the stage passengers. Philpot did not have the shotgun and try to make a fight, as Holliday was alleged to have said. Paul had the shotgun, as well as the reins, and he discharged both barrels of the weapon. If Holliday had taken part in the attack on the stage, it seemed improbable that, in his account of the affair, he would have made any such mistake.
Whether the killing of Philpot was a blunder, drunken or otherwise, was a question. It will be recalled that the first shot was fired at Bob Paul by one of the robbers afterward believed to have been Leonard himself. At this highwayman Paul emptied his shotgun and, as proved at the time of Leonard’s death, struck Leonard in the groin. Paul was in the act of discharging his shotgun when Philpot was killed by a shot from a second robber at the opposite side of the road. This second robber, according to Ike Clanton, was Holliday. The first shot evidently was a more serious blunder in foiling the robbers’ plans than the second. In view of the desperate fight Bob Paul made, this second shot seemed less a blunder than a logical detail of a murderous battle the first shot had precipitated.
Virgil Earp’s alleged confession to Ike Clanton of having misled Sheriff Behan’s posse seemed manifestly absurd. Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp were not the only experienced trailers in the posse. Buckskin Frank Leslie was a veteran army scout who had trailed Indians in a number of campaigns; Sheriff Behan himself had had experience in Indian wars; and Bob Paul and Deputy Sheriff Breakenridge were no novices on a man hunt. All these men were equally convinced with the Earps that the trail of the three robbers led east over the mountains and not south toward Mexico. Moreover, Sheriff Behan was in command, and it was reasonable to assume that he would not have followed the trail into New Mexico unless he had believed it to be the right one.
It seemed unbelievable also, if Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp were accomplices in the stage holdup, that they would have taken part in the relentless pursuit of Leonard, Head, and Crane. There was no doubt whatever that, at least in the early days of the chase, when the trail led down the San Pedro River, west around the Santa Catalina Mountains and back again to the Dragoons, a distance of more than three hundred miles, the posse was close on the heels of the highwaymen, so close that, on one occasion, a camp fire of the robbers was found still smouldering. No one charged that, in this part of the pursuit, the Earps attempted to lead the posse off on any false scent. In these first days, capture of the robbers seemed imminent at any time, and if they had been captured, it is obvious that the Earps would have been doomed to exposure and ruin.
Why Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp should each one separately have confessed guilt to Ike Clanton seemed past understanding. Who was Ike Clanton that these four deeply sophisticated men should have made him their father confessor? If the Earps and Holliday were the criminals Ike Clanton declared they were, for what reason would they have imparted to a notorious outlaw secrets that might have sent them to prison or the gallows? There is no evidence that they ever were concerned with Ike Clanton in any criminal enterprise but every evidence, on the other hand, that they were his enemies almost from the time of their arrival in Tombstone. In consequence, there was no logical reason apparent why they should have taken him, of all men, into their confidence.
Ike Clanton’s story was utterly at variance with that of Wyatt Earp regarding Wyatt Earp’s proposition relating to Leonard, Head, and Crane. Ike Clanton said there was but one conference, and it was between Wyatt Earp and himself alone. His statement was a tacit denial that Frank McLowery and Joe Hill had anything to do with the proposition, that Joe Hill made a trip to New Mexico to interview the three outlaws, or that any telegram was sent to San Francisco concerning the reward. These details gave a colour of truth to Wyatt Earp’s statement and it was difficult to believe them the fanciful coinage of a liar.
From the day that Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton told these two stories in court, the Southwest has argued as to
