Billy Claiborne said he was unarmed and was not of the Clanton party, a statement corroborated by Ike Clanton. As the battle opened, it may be added, Claiborne threw up his hands and ran into Fly’s photograph gallery where he hid until the firing ceased.
“You know where my office is,” said Sheriff Behan to Frank McLowery. “I want you and Billy Clanton to go there and leave your weapons.”
“Well, Sheriff,” said McLowery, “we won’t do it. We don’t know what’s in the wind, and we might need our weapons at any moment.”
So it was established by Sheriff Behan that Ike Clanton and Tom McLowery were unarmed and only Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery had weapons. But there were four weapons in the crowd. If they had cared to do so, Ike Clanton and Tom McLowery could have armed themselves quickly with the rifles of Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery hanging on the saddles of the two horses.
Fremont Street in this block between Third and Fourth was a wide avenue at the edges of the business district with wooden sidewalks and a roadbed of packed red desert sand. On the west side, at the corner of Third, stood a small dwelling. To the south, between the dwelling and Fly’s two-story frame photograph gallery, was the open lot perhaps thirty feet wide in which the sheriff’s talk with the Clantons and McLowerys took place. Beyond a small adobe lodging house next door to Fly’s, was the rear gate of the O.K. corral, which was, in fact, a livery stable running through to a frontage on Allen Street, roofed in front, but at the Fremont Street end flanked by rows of open-air horse stalls. Next to the corral was Bauer’s butcher shop, with a striped awning over the sidewalk, and between Bauer’s and Fourth Street a fenced-in lot with no houses on it. On the opposite side of Fremont at the Fourth Street corner was a large adobe building filled with stores, with business offices upstairs, among them that of Dr. George Goodfellow. Next door was the one-story frame in which the Epitaph was printed, then an assay office, the home of Sandy Bob, owner of the Charleston stage line, and on the corner of Third, Dunbar’s corral in which Sheriff Behan owned an interest. Looking out Fremont, one saw the Whetstone Mountains, softly blue across the rolling mesquite land, while the Third Street vista to the east was closed by the massive yellow ramparts of Cochise’s old stronghold in the Dragoons, nine miles away.
While Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday stood on the corner of Fourth and Allen streets, R. F. Coleman rushed up to them excitedly.
“I met the Clantons and McLowerys a little while ago, down by the O.K. corral,” said Coleman. “They are all armed and talking fight. You boys had better look out.”
For a little longer, the Earps and Holliday stood in silence. Then they looked into one another’s eyes and each one understood.
“Come on, boys,” said Wyatt Earp.
Sheriff Behan, still in the vacant lot urging peace and disarmament on the Clantons and McLowerys, saw the Earps and Holliday turn the corner of Fourth Street and come walking with businesslike strides along the sidewalk on the west side of Fremont. Holliday was on the outside, Morgan next to him, Wyatt third, and Virgil on the inside. Their faces were cold and set, and they kept their eyes fixed steadily ahead on their enemies. All wore dark clothes except Holliday, and Wyatt Earp looked almost funereal in a long black overcoat that hung below his knees. Holliday never appeared more neatly groomed as he swung along with an air of cool unconcern in a gray suit and an overcoat of rough gray material which hid his six-shooter in its holster at his hip and his sawed-off shotgun strapped to his shoulder. Yellow leather gun scabbards showed beneath the coats of Virgil and Morgan Earp. Wyatt’s hand grasped a six-shooter in his overcoat pocket. The street was silent. The boots of the four men clicked noisily on the sidewalk planking.
“Here they come,” said Sheriff Behan. “You boys wait here. I’ll go and stop them.”
As the sheriff started off, the Clantons and McLowerys were ranged in the vacant lot along the side of the corner dwelling. Frank McLowery stood a foot or two off the inner edge of the sidewalk, and to his right in order were Tom McLowery, Billy Clanton, and Ike Clanton. Fine-looking fellows, all of them, tall, lean, vigorous, with suntanned faces, having the appearance of cowboys in off the range, white sombreros, flannel shirts, pants stuffed in their fancy-leather half-boots. Billy Clanton was a blue-eyed, fresh-faced, handsome boy only eighteen years old but, for all his boyishness, an outlaw of experience and a daredevil fighter. Frank McLowery, who had on mouse-coloured pants almost skin tight, rested his hand on the bridle of his horse which stood out broadside across the sidewalk. Billy Clanton’s horse, unhitched, was nipping at weeds. It was half past two o’clock of a crisply cool, sunshiny afternoon.
Sheriff Behan confronted the Earps under the awning in front of Bauer’s butcher shop and raised his hand to halt them.
“Go back,” he said. “As sheriff of this county, I command you not to go any farther. I am here to disarm and arrest the Clantons and McLowerys. I won’t allow any fighting.”
The Earps and Holliday paid no attention but brushed on past the sheriff without a word. Sheriff Behan as peacemaker had done his best, but he had failed at both ends of the line—failed to
