As long as the Earps remained in Tombstone the statement by Ike Clanton was the only charge ever made openly that they at any time engaged in robbing stages. It was only after the Earps had shaken the dust of Tombstone from their feet that a thousand wild tales were set going about them. Then it was said they had had part in almost all the stage robberies in the Tombstone country, and it became a part of the absurd legend that they had joined frequently with great gusto and exuberance in chasing themselves hither and yon over the landscape. These scandalous old tales have come down to today and are still given wide credence. But careful research has failed to bring to light any evidence except Ike Clanton’s accusations that the Earps were ever involved directly or indirectly in any stage robberies. In the light of investigation, these old charges seem a farrago of suspicion and mendacities born of bitter personal and political hatreds.
The robbery of the Bisbee stage was one more milepost on the trail of hatred that led to tragedy. The stage pulled out of Tombstone at dusk on . Levi McDaniels was driving, unaccompanied by a shotgun messenger and with four passengers aboard, three inside and one sitting on the box with the driver. The stage road between Tombstone and Bisbee in those days circled the Mule Mountains to the westward, kept to the level stretches of the San Pedro Valley through Charleston and Hereford, and came into Bisbee from the south. McDaniels’ four-horse team was climbing a grade three miles beyond Hereford at eleven o’clock at night. A red moon was sinking behind the Huachucas. The Mule summits towered darkly close by on the east. Old Mexico lay in a luminous haze across the line four miles to the south. The lead horses shied off the road as two highwaymen masked with handkerchiefs stepped out of the mesquite. One of the robbers had a shotgun; the other a six-shooter.
“Hold on!” commanded the bandit with the shotgun.
As McDaniels brought his team to a halt, the man with the six-shooter walked alongside the coach.
“Don’t get excited, boys,” he said. “Nobody’s going to get hurt. It’ll all be over in a minute.”
He spoke in the manner of a doctor about to administer a dose of disagreeable medicine and encouraging his patients to be brave and keep cool. If the Benson stage robbers had been amateurs, these had the air of veterans.
“Throw out the Wells-Fargo box and the mail sack, driver,” ordered the bandit with the six-shooter.
McDaniels obeyed.
“Now throw out everything in the boot.”
McDaniels threw out everything except a roll of blankets.
“Never mind the blankets,” said the robber. “We don’t need them.”
He peered in the window of the coach at the passengers.
“How are you all this evening, boys?” he said genially. “I’ll have to ask you to climb out. On the other side of the road, if you please. And line up with your hands in the air. My partner will keep you covered till I join you.”
S. W. Rae, Owen Gibney, and E. T. Hardy climbed out, and the robber walked around the coach and searched their pockets. He took $600 from Rae, a small sum of money and a gold watch from Hardy, and a diamond pin from Gibney.
“This stone,” he said as he slipped the pin out of Gibney’s necktie, “will look good on my gal in Tombstone. She likes diamonds.”
Then the bandit told the passengers to get back in their seats and ordered McDaniels to drive on.
“Hold on a minute,” called the robber with the shotgun as McDaniels started up the team. “You’ve overlooked that fellow sitting beside the driver.”
“Sure enough, I have,” said the polite robber with the six-shooter, and he climbed up on the front wheel.
“Excuse me, but I forgot you,” he said to Matt Delehan, the fourth passenger. “You may have a little sugar.”
Having extracted $50 from Delehan’s pockets, he climbed down.
“I guess that’s all,” he said. “Now you can go ahead, driver. Good night, boys.”
The robbers obtained $2,500 from the Wells-Fargo box, according to express company officials. The mail sack, slashed open, was found at the scene. A Tombstone posse that took the trail next morning comprised Wyatt and Morgan Earp, Deputy Sheriffs Breakenridge and Nagle, Marshall Williams, Wells-Fargo agent, and Fred Dodge, Wells-Fargo detective. The tracks of the robbers led across the Mule Mountains into Bisbee.
Within a week, Frank Stilwell and Pete Spence were captured. Stilwell had been indiscreet enough after the robbery to take a pair of boots, almost new, to Shoemaker Dever of Bisbee with orders to take off a narrow pair of heels and put on a broad pair. The suspicious cobbler reported this to the authorities. The narrow heels removed from Stilwell’s boots fitted the tracks left at the scene of the robbery by the polite bandit who had ransacked the pockets of the stage passengers. Stilwell was arrested by the posse in Bisbee. Wyatt and Morgan Earp caught Spence in Charleston. Both prisoners were taken to Tombstone, where they were released on bond.
Stilwell and Spence, intimate friends of the Clantons and McLowerys, had been suspected of many stage robberies, though until now they had escaped arrest. Spence was ostensibly a gambler; Stilwell owned a livery business in Charleston. Stilwell was a handsome fellow, twenty-seven years old, of engaging politeness
