Deputy Sheriff Frank Hereford [the letter read] was hiding in a corncrib at Henderson’s ranch when we arrived. He decamped, fearing violence. His fears were groundless. He would not have been injured. … We rested for a day at Hooker’s Sierra Bonita ranch. Hooker did not, as has been reported, outfit us with fresh horses and supplies. We are all riding the same horses on which we left Tombstone except Texas Jack. His horse was killed in the Curly Bill fight. He purchased another animal. … Hooker did not pay me the reward of $1,000 offered by the Arizona Stock Association for the death of Curly Bill. No reward was asked for or tendered. … Leaving Hooker’s, we went north within five miles of Eureka Springs. … We have kept careful track of the movements of Sheriff Behan and his posse of honest ranchmen. If they possessed even average trailing ability, we might have had trouble with them, which we are not seeking. Neither are we avoiding these honest farmer boys. We thoroughly understand their intentions.
Sheriff Behan and his posse arrived at Hooker’s ranch the morning after the Earp party had departed. Henry C. Hooker, rich and influential, was famous among the pioneer cattlemen of Arizona. Concerning the sheriff’s visit at the Sierra Bonita ranch, the Epitaph printed, in substance, this story:
Sheriff Behan asked Hooker the direction the Earp party had gone. Hooker said he did not know and would not tell if he did.
“If you will not tell me,” said Sheriff Behan, “you are upholding murderers and outlaws.”
“No,” replied Hooker. “I know the Earps and I know you. The Earps have always treated me like a gentleman. Damn you and your posse. Your men are a set of horse thieves and outlaws.”
One of Sheriff Behan’s honest farmers spoke up. “Damn the old son of a gun,” he said. “Let’s make him tell.”
Hooker’s hostler went out and got a rifle and, when he came back, he made the posseman skin back the name he had called Hooker.
When Hooker again criticized the posse, repeating that they were a lot of horse thieves and cutthroats, Sheriff Behan and Deputy Sheriff Woods told him these fellows were not their associates. “They are only with us,” said the sheriff.
“Well,” replied Hooker, “if they are not your associates, I will set an extra breakfast table for you and set them at a table by themselves.” Which he did.
Sheriff Behan went from the Sierra Bonita to Fort Grant, where he offered $500 to Colonel Bidwell for some Indian trailers. “Hooker,” remarked Sheriff Behan to the Colonel, “said he did not know which way the Earp party had gone and would not tell me if he did.” Colonel Bidwell stroked his beard. “Did Hooker tell you that?” he said. “Well, then, you can’t get any scouts here.”
Sheriff Behan’s pursuit ended in failure at the Arizona line. Wyatt Earp and his men passed into New Mexico, sold their horses at Silver City, and at Deming, took a train for Denver. The Colorado capital was their final destination. Efforts made to bring Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday back to Tombstone for trial failed when Governor Pitkin of Colorado refused to honour the requisition issued by Governor Tritle of Arizona.
No man in Tombstone’s history has been more bitterly maligned than Wyatt Earp. On the field from which he withdrew, his enemies were left in inglorious triumph, and what his enemies had failed to do to the man himself they did to his reputation. No charge was too black to be made against him, no slander too atrocious to be believed. Obloquy held an orgy. Political spite and malevolence born of vendetta revenged themselves upon him in a war dance of calumny and hatred. One hears today echoes of these old revilings.
If Wyatt Earp impressed himself upon Tombstone, Tombstone left its indelible mark upon him. When he took his departure he was not the same man he was when he came. The tragic experience of two years had wrought an immeasurable change. The difference was that between a mountain silent and peaceful in the sunshine and the same mountain bursting with volcanic fires and red with streaming lava.
When Tombstone first knew Wyatt Earp, he was an imperturbably calm man, not unkindly, not without humour and a certain geniality, magnanimous to his enemies, generous and loyal to his friends. His rise to a position of authority was a gradual, businesslike climb, unmarked by violence or bloodshed. He was at the peak of his power before he ever had a fight. Long after he had become the acknowledged six-shooter boss of the town, his guns remained silent, and he ruled only by the fear of the unpressed trigger. He nursed no petty grudges and harboured no murder in his heart. He wanted no quarrel with any man. His anger was a cerebral process rather than a passion; he grew wrathful only when he deliberately believed he had just cause for wrath. He was forced into feud warfare by a strange concatenation of circumstances, to a large extent accidental. But when he had to fight, he fought.
But neither the tumultuous developments that led to battle, nor the battle itself, shook him out of his old imperturbable calm. It was not until his enemies had assassinated one of his brothers and left another brother crippled for life that the slumbering whirlwind deep in the soul of him was unleashed. Then the coldly balanced man, apparently devoid of emotions, blazed into inextinguishable fury. Then he became suddenly transformed into an avenger, terrible, implacable, merciless. Up and down through the deserts he raged like a lion ravenous for blood. He tracked down the assassins. He killed them cruelly without pity. There was no flinching in what he did, and no alibis or apologies afterward. He became his own law in a lawless land and atoned for the blood of his brother with the blood of his brother’s murderers. Right or wrong, he believed with absolute faith
