TOMBSTONES Chapter Twelve

I know that 21 year old John Pleasant Gray was frightened on the evening of Saturday, 13 August, 1881.  He and a cook were alone in this isolated outpost, 15 miles north of the Mexican border. And in the clear air of the New Mexico dusk, a man,  dark brown blood caked on his lower face, staggering through the yellow Tabosa grasses, could mean an Apache raiding party nearby.

Raised in civilized Sacramento, California, and the Sonora, Mexico port of Guyamas, John Gray had never seen the Animus mountains before the spring of 1881. He could not know that Apaches could rarely afford attacking large parties of whites. John had never seen the Sonoran Desert before 1880, when after graduating college he joined his family in Tombstone, Arizona.

John's father, 56 year old (in 1881) "Colonel" Mike Lee had lived in Tombstone  almost since before it was a town - 1879. He had lived there long enough to be sued by Ed Schefflin for stealing ore from The Good Enough claim. But Mike had served in the California Legislature, and hired expensive Sacramento lawyers, who counter sued Ed - and won. The title of "Colonel" was purely ornimental. Mike Lee had been born in Tennessee and raised in Texas, and moved to California in 1849, but he never served in the militia in any of those places. 

In Tombstone(above) Mike Gray owned a boarding house, was secretary to the town council, and served as a Justice of the Peace, where he acquired the title of "Judge".  As such Judge Gray spent his time arrainging drunks and petty thieves, and assessing taxes. He was a "mover and a shaker" in Tombstone, well known as "selfish and dishonest" and "a slippery character". That spring of 1880,   looking to give his returning son John Pleasant a good start in life. Judge Gray paid the infamous Curley Bill Brocius $300 sight unseen for 300,000 acres of land on the slopes of the Animus Mountains, in New Mexico. And he sent John and his 18 year old son Richard "Dixie Dick" Lee Gray, to manage the place, although neither of them had any more experience at ranching than did Judge Colonel Mike Gray himself.

Curly Bill Brocius (above) did not actually own paper to the land in the Animus mountains. He claimed a homestead there. 

Brocius and he and his partner, Robert E. "Dutch"  Martin (above),  often grazed cattle there, which they had rustled in Sonora Mexico, and driven across the border through Guadalupe canyon, about 20 miles south of Martin's ranch around a spring called Cloverdale.  In Sonora 'Dutch' Martin was known as a thief and a murder, responsible for killing a dozen Mexican citizens a year.  But in Cloverdale Robert Martin was a respected businessman, with a wife and child.

Just about the time John Pleasant Gray was graduating from the University of California, "businessman" and rustler Dutch Martin had been murdered - shot in the head from ambush by rustlers who had lately taken to rustling the largest rustler's cattle.  'Dutch' Martin was 45 years old when he died, and William "Curley Bill" Brocius (above) was nearly 40 himself. Where the freckled faced "Curley Bill" had once been, ".. able to hit running jackrabbits, shoot out candle flames...and ...quarters from between the fingers of "volunteers, " the middle aged alcoholic Curley Bill's world was beginning to blur at the edges, like Wild Bill Hickock's before him. Hickok had died at 39, so Brocius the gunman was living on borrowed time. Time to change careers. And time to replace Dutch Martin in the Rustlers Trail.

The trail began between the western foot of the Dragoon Mountains and eastern rampart of the Mule Mountains, centered upon the San Pedro River (above, left). There, cattle were fattened on the feed lots of the Clanton and McLaury ranches before being slaughtered to feed the hungry miners in Tombstone and its mill town outliers of Charleston, Contention, Fairbank and Millville. The cows had arrived in this promised land from the east, by crossing the Dragoons through South Pass, and enduring the water-less desert of the Sulfur Springs Valley. The drovers had prepared the cows for this endeavor by fattening and watering them on the slopes of the 6,000 foot high Chihuahua Mountains (above, right), at way stations like the Horse Shoe Valley 7-Up ranch , whose owner of record was a San Francisco barkeep named "Buckskin" Frank Leslie - recruited by Curley Bill to be an absente owner.

The Chiricahua mountain ranches were a rest stop after the herds had traversed the north-south San Simon Valley, which they had crossed after resting on the slopes of the Pedrogosa or Peloncillo Mountains, transited by the easy, well watered Skeleton Canyon on the Arizona-New Mexico border (above). 

Beyond the western mouth of Skeleton Canyon, it had been an easy drive across the San Bernadino Valley from the Animus Mountains, where the new Gray Ranch (above) was to provide ample grass and water, just 15 miles north of the beginning of the trail - the American side of the the winding, deadly pass through the Guadalupe Mountains.

The man who finally staggered into the Gray ranch that Saturday evening had spent the day traversing an arm of the San Bernadino Valley, on foot. He was exhausted, sunburned, dehydrated, and incoherent. It was some time before he could even identify himself. But when John Gray learned the man was not one of the construction workers, but a Cow Boy named Harry Ernshaw he panicked. Ernshaw had been in the rustler party with John's  19 year old brother.  "Dixie Lee "Gray had gone south of the border to learn the rustler art under the tutelage of Old Man Clanton himself. As quickly as he could, John saddled a horse and went for help. He rode 20 miles east, to the slopes of the highest peak of the Animus mountains, Mount Gillespie. Here, he knew was a "Cow Boy" camp, where he could gather help to rescue the rustlers.

John Gray would dramatically described the  twisting canyon ride on dawn Sunday 14 August 1881, and the growing dread he felt approaching the grassy clearing where he had been told his brother's body lay. 

"Out of the clear sky," John recalled, "a black speck appears and soon other black specks ... Soon they are high overhead, beginning to circle slowly...circling round and round - and you know that somewhere within that circle on the earth below lies a corpse..." When the canyon walls fell away, John remembered the top of every tree in the clearing supported at least one of those "fiendish looking" birds. Sixty years later he said he thought of every buzzard as, "the worlds most vigilant undertaker."

The image of the 4 bodies was burned into his mind. "All were perfectly nude...Billy Lang...Jim Crane...Old Man Clanton...and my brother Dick, just turned nineteen....We found the dead body of Charlie Snow...about a half-mile from the camp. The other Cow Boy, Billy Byers, we found alive some five miles away. He was shot through the front of the abdomen and the ball had gone clear through his body..."  Byers was "completely out of his head", but he would recover.

John recalled, "We took our dead back to the ranch." There they ripped up the cabin's flooring to make coffins. "We buried the four bodies in a little square plot on the top of the nearby knoll."

Before its first stolen herd had even reached the new oasis, the Gray Ranch had turned to dust in the mouths of its new owners. In his 1940 memoir "All Roads Led To Tombstone", John Pleasant Gray sanitized the events of that summer, as people are wont to do with time. He remembered, "My father and I felt conditions were too hard at the time to fight against."  He did not mention that the naked scavanged corpse of his 19 year old brother had represented the inflated cost of stolen Sonoran cattle. But Judge Gray had $300 invested in the property, and John Gray remembered his father insisted they hold onto it. "I made a trip out from Tombstone every month," he remembered, "to sleep one night at the ranch in order to comply with the preemption law." And to visit his brother's grave. In closing that early episode in his long life he added that after the Guadalupe Canyon Massacare, "Even the rustlers kept out of the valley for fear of meeting the Mexicans."

A few years later, Judge Gray sold the rustler's oasis to the George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, for $12,000. So in the end I guess it proved worth the life of Judge Gray's youngest son. But John Gray never said so.

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Eleven

 

I know that Tombstone (above) City Marshal Ben Sippy could have been famous as a  cold eyed, steel nerved western lawman, you might say a real life Wyatt Earp.  Just after his election as town marshal and tax collector, in January of 1881, Ben faced down a mob of Cow Boys who wanted to string up the young hot headed gambler "Johnny Behind the Deuce" O'Rouke. The Earps, and Bat Masterson stood behind him -.not a bad supporting cast. But it was Ben Sippy in front and he did not waver. Instead he became an historical footnote, because Ben Sippy couldn't handle money.

It wasn't that Ben was as crooked as Cochise County Marshal Johnny Behan and his "10% grafters".  However, the constant need to feed Ben's addiction, whether it was gambling or opium,  or laudlem, one particular woman, or women in general or just whiskey nobody knew. But on 6 June, 1881, Ben  slipped out of town. Why, nobody could say.  And after 22 June, 1881, nobody was interested.

The disaster of that day - which forced Ben Sippy out of everybody's minds - started just after 4:30pm, when a quartet of porters at the small Arcade Saloon were struggling to manhandle a full 1,000 pound,46 inch tall by 24 inch wide, 46 gallon oak barrel of whiskey out from behind the bar. Once tapped it had been discovered that because of a broken seal the whisky had gone sour, and the owner wanted it returned to the distributor for credit. 

It was a time of day when sensible Hispanic residents were practicing the art of the siesta. The thermometer had peaked well above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, The air was so dry, the sweat evaporated right off the work men's skin. Out side, both Allen (above, Arcade is on right, half way up the street) and Fifth streets (opening to the right) were nearly empty. And in the shadowy narrow interior of the Arcade, languid drunks nursed warm beers while listless games of faro and poker were being played almost out of habit.

But the owner, being a penny pincher, ordered the weary stock men to pause in their efforts, and remove the barrel's tap, and measure the spoiled liquid within. He wanted to prove it was a new barrel, full and sour.  So the workmen did as they were told. Which is how they damn near burned down the entire town of Tombstone.

Braving the "waft of acetone" and fungus billowing up from small opening,  one workman slid a stick gauge (above) into the liquid,  but let it slip from his fingers. It disappeared with a slunk into the thickening witches' brew. And after uttering a curse at his own mistake, the poor dumb soul leaned over the barrel to see if he could spy the missing tool in the murk, and forgot the lighted cigar clenched in his teeth.

As the Tombstone Nugget explained, "A terrific explosion followed, scattering the blazing fluid in all directions and enveloping the whole structure in flames in the twinkling of an eye." But, the Nugget noted with a touch of annoyance, "...of the four men who stood around that portentous barrel not one of them was even singed." The Arcade, however, was not so lucky. The flames greedily consumed the bone dry wood, erecting a wall of flames that blocked the front door of the tiny establishment. As if a switch had been thrown, the suddenly electrified patrons, in unison, abandoned their languid reposes, and scrambled for the back door.

Three doors west, in the Golden Eagle Brewery, owner Edward Milton Joyce heard shouts of "Fire!", saw the flames, and tried to rescue $1,200 in cash from his safe.  But the flames drove him out of the building. Around the corner on Fifth Street, at "Saffors and Company Bank", the manager chose the  opposite solution. At the first shouts of fire, he threw all the cash into the safe and spun the dial, and just managed to escape as the building's roof crashed in behind him. The entire block went up in flames within five minutes.

Within another half hour, the blazing beast  had consumed the tinderbox buildings north to Fremont Street, and south to Toughnut.  Wrote John Clum, "Everybody went wild. Your correspondent picked up a little girl who was returning from school and got bewildered...I passed one house where a lady and her two daughters were engaged in...futile efforts to get a five hundred pound piano out of the house..."  

When the flames hit the row of "bawdy houses" east of Sixth Street the denizens were forced to drop whatever they had in in hand, and wearing in what they had or did not have on, to run out of doors. One prostitute ran from her place of business carrying "a bird-cage in hand, and a dress in the other. Another rushed frantically down the street, attired in a robe of Burlap, with vail of green mosquito netting on her bead. "  Amazingly, somehow, nobody was killed or even seriously burned. 

Four square city blocks - 60 buildings, 20% of the town - were consumed within 45 minutes. The only thing that stopped the fire was a desperate bucket brigade and because the down wind end of the fire ran out of town to burn. In three quarters of an hour one hundred souls lost their living space, and $300,000 went up in smoke, most of it uninsured. And yet before the last ember had winked out, somebody put up a sign in front of a pile of timber ashes, which read, "We will reopen when it cools."

The fires never touched the mines, and with silver still coming out of the ground and wages still being paid, rebuilding began almost immediately. Eighteen days later Ms. Clara Brown attended the opening of the rebuilt "Golden Eagle" - now renamed "The Crystal Palace".  She assured her readers in far off San Diego that "The Palace " was "...simply gorgeous...The bar is a marvel of beauty...Every evening music from a piano and a violin attracts a crowd..." There were fewer wood frame structures this time, many opting for adobe, such as the new Wells Fargo Office and the Bird Cage Theatre ", built in the vacant lot where Sheriff Fred White had died.

Since Marshal Sippy had disappeared  Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp (above) stepped in. He hired dozens of temporary officers to police the burned out areas, ending all looting. He assigned 18 men as around the clock guards for the safe at the Wells Fargo office, now repository of most of the town's cash. He did so well that by the end of June, the absent Ben Sippy had been fired. Ben left behind angry creditors, but no solid evidence of any crimes committed. But Ben also gave the town it's new marshal - Virgil Earp, now wearing 2 hats, with jurisdiction not only in the town, but across the entire territory as Deputy Federal Marshal for Tombstone.

While the rebuilding was reaching its peak, Joe Hill rode back into town, collecting the watch and cash he had left with Virgil. But he brought only bad news - depending on how you looked at it. All 4 of the men who had tried to rob the Bisbee stage were now dead. Escapee Luther King had been killed, probably by his fellow Cochise County Cow Boys, because he had identified his accomplices to the Earp posse.  Harry Head and Jim Crane were executed by the same because they had botched the robbery, but mostly because killing the driver Bud Pierpot had brought too much attention on the rustlers. 

But most troubling of all for the Cow Boys was the death of one time jeweler Bill Leonard, who ran south, away from the vengeful Cow Boys and the determined Earp posse, until he found friends who had yet to hear of the Bisbee stage fiasco.  But in escaping across the border into Mexico, Bill Leonard crossed paths with a rustling party returning north with 800 head of stolen cattle,  lead by Old Man Clanton. Unfortunately, the Clanton party were being tracked by Sonorian Ruales under Commandant Felipe Neri.

Just at dawn on 13 August, 1881 about 25 Mexican militia opened fire on the rustlers, killing 4 of them - Bill Leonard probably died in his sleep.  Dick Gray and Billy Lang were cut down trying to escape. And "Old Man" Newman Hawes Clanton was shot while leaning over the breakfast fire. The slaughter in the canyon was undeniable proof that law and order was closing the open frontier, from both sides of the border. The anarchy, which had allowed rustlers a viable business model, was being squeezed out of existence.

For the Clanton and the McLaury families, the death of their patriarch (above) was a body blow. The grief, and the tightening web of law enforcement on both sides of the border,  induced a feeling of helplessness, and anger.  Wyatt Earp would later testify that after the Guadalupe Massicure, “Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury,....shunned us, and... (the lawmen)began to hear their threats against us.”  The fuse which  had been smoldering for 20 years, had suddenly been cut short.

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TOMBSTONES Chapter Ten

 

I know what Wyatt Earp was thinking when he found that confessed stage coach robber Luther King, had walked out of the Tombstone jail. After entrusting their prisoner to the Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, Wyatt and the other members of the posse spent 2 weeks tracking King's accomplices across 100 miles of Arizona and New Mexico desert.  Wyatt came home dirty, exhausted and frustrated. And then to find the one prisoner he had caught, had been allowed to escape, Wyatt Earp was not just infuriated. He was desperate. Allow me to explain.

Absentee Territorial Governor John C. Fremont had named the amoral Johnny Behan (above) the new sheriff of Cochise County. Wyatt thought Johnny had promised the job of under sheriff for Tombstone to him, but instead Behan had pinned the badge on printer and editor of the Democrat leaning "Tombstone Nugget", Harry Jones Woods. And it was Woods who had allowed confessed armed robber Luther King to saunter out of jail, with help from Johnny Behan's business partner, John Dunbar.

Dunbar owned the Dexter Livery Stable, on Allen Street, between Fourth and Third Streets. That was his excuse to come to the jail to pay for and pick up Luther King's horse, which the cow boy was selling to pay for his lawyer. And while Harry Woods was out the front door with Dunbar finishing up the bill of sale, Luther walked out the back door, where he found a horse, saddled and waiting. Any secrets about who got a cut for aiding and abetting the botched robbery, rode off with Luther King. Johnny was a skilled enough politician to know there would be a public outrage at this display of arrogance and power by the Cochise County Cowboys. So he poured a little whiskey on the issue and stirred it up, producing a mud cloud.

The weak point for the Earps was John "Doc" Holliday (above). A few years earlier, Doc had lived in Los Vegas, New Mexico, where, a few doors down from Holliday's dentist office had been the jewelry shop owned by William "Bill" Leonard, one of the escaped Benson Stage robbers. Also, Doc had occasionally stopped by the Redfield Ranch, where Luther King had been caught. 

But most helpful for Johnny Behan, Doc's decision to join the posse had set off a loud, passionate and public argument with his common law Hungarian born wife, Mary Katherine "Big Nose Kate" Horony (above, right).  Doc (above, left) rode off with the Earps, but during the 2 weeks the posse was gone, Kate was clearly miserable. Johnny took to commiserating with her, even buying her a drink or two. Or Three, or ten. And during one of those alcohol fueled conversations, Johnny got Kate's drunken signature on a statement claiming Doc had been one of the Bensen stage robbers.Johnny Behan and Harry Woods wasted no time in arresting "Doc" Holliday as soon as he returned from the posse.

Doc Holliday's arrest certainly muddied the image of Luther King's miraculous escape from Johnny Behan's jail. Still, moments after the crime the Drew family had seen 4 men riding away. The one confirmed member of the gang, Luther King, had named his accomplices - Harry Head, "Bill" Leonard and Jim Crane.   Doc was seen in Charleston (above) an hour after the shooting of Bud Pierpont and Pete Roerig. But he was looking for Ike Clanton. The most logical explanation is that Doc heard rumors of the intended robbery, and was looking for Ike to identify the robbers before going to Virgil Earp. But such a story would imply that Ike Clanton could be expected to betray the Cow Boys.

Wyatt Earp had no doubts about Doc's innocence of the charge. He paid Doc's bail. And as soon as "Big Nose" Kate sobered up, she recanted her statement. All charges against Doc Holliday were dropped.  Only then could the Earps return to pursuing the criminals. One night in late May of 1881, Wyatt stepped away from his faro table in the Golden Eagle Brewery (above), and approached three men eating dinner in the Occidental hotel bar. Wyatt asked if he could buy the men a drink. And while their cocktails were being prepared, Wyatt sat and began to talk.

The three men were Ike Clanton (above), Frank McLaury, and...

..."Joe Hill" (above,) He was known as  "rancher" in Arizona and New Mexico. But  under his real name, Joseph Graves Olney, he was wanted for the deaths of 3 men in Texas - one them a deputy sheriff,  and at least one other man  in New Mexico.  The three Cow Boys were suspicious, but willing to listen when Wyatt suggested he had a plan for them to make $3,500.  Did they want to hear the details?  The Cow Boys said yes, there were willing to listen. Wyatt then mysteriously added that he would only continue if they first swore to keep their conversation secret, even if they decided to turn down the deal to be offered.  Reluctantly Clanton,  McLaury and Olney swore they would never tell anyone what Wyatt was about to say. Then Wyatt asked his captive audience to step out into the middle of Fifth Street, where they could speak without being overheard.

Once in the middle of the wide dark street, Wyatt elicited yet another promise that their conversation would remain secret, even if they rejected his offer. And only after Clanton, McLaury and "Hill" had sworn yet again, did Wyatt Earp (above) lay out his plan. As Wyatt later testified, "I told them I wanted the glory of capturing Leonard, Head, and Crane and if I could do it, it would help me make the race for Sheriff at the next election. I told them if they would...tell me where those men were hid, I would give them all the reward and would never let anyone know where I got the information."

The reward being offered by Wells Fargo for Bill Leonard, Harry "The Kid" Head and Jim Crane was $1,200 each. It would have been higher, if the crooks had actually stolen the $26,000 silver shipment. But it was still high enough that it tempted the three Cow Boys to consider betraying their "friends".  

According to Wyatt, “Ike Clanton (above) said he would like to see them captured. He said that Leonard claimed a ranch that he claimed, and that if he could get him out of the way, he would have no opposition in regard to that ranch. Clanton said that Leonard, Head, and Crane would make a fight, that they would never be taken alive, and that I must find out if the reward would be paid for the capture of the robbers dead or alive."

The next morning Wyatt Earp dropped by the Wells Fargo office on Fremont Street, and asked agent Marshall Williams the exact conditions on the rewards for the three accused murderers. Williams agreed to telegraph the company home office in San Francisco, for clarification.

By 1870 Wells Fargo had a virtual monopoly on all stage service connecting towns and villages with the Southern Pacific Railroad and its trunk lines - everything between Idaho and the Mexican border, and Nebraska and the California coast. Wells Fargo could extend or contract their 3,000 miles of routes at will, extort subsidies from states and cities to ensure service. 

Wells Fargo could afford to undercut their competition on valuable routes by gouging customers on established ones. Wells Fargo even earned a profit from their few competitors because they insured shipments on those carriers, such as the silver bars on the Tombstone to Benson stage. Wells Fargo agents, like William Sheriff in Tombstone, were unlicensed lawmen, with unlimited jurisdiction and without legal limitations.

Again, according to Wyatt, "The next day I met Ike Clanton and Joe Hill on Allen Street (above) in front of a little cigar store next to the Alhambra." He showed the telegram confirming the reward for all three Cow Boys was "dead or alive. " It was then agreed....they were to have all the $3,600 reward, outside of necessary expenses for horse hire in going after them." 

Frank McLaury (above) and Ike Clanton's plan to lure the fugitives back was for Jose Olney to ride to New Mexico, where the 3 were  hiding. He would tell them that because water had been struck in the mines - which it had -  the mines were going to be shut down and a paymaster was bringing enough cash to pay off the miners.  He would be traveling on the Bisbee to Tombstone stage. According to Wyatt, they would meet at "...Frank and Tom McLaury's ranch near Soldier's Holes....I would be on hand with a posse and capture them."

It seems clear Ike, Tom and Olney were  hopeful Wyatt's posse would simply murder Leonard, Head and Crane, thus preventing any revelations they might provide. In fact, Luther King had already been shot dead by the very men who had helped him to escape. Supposedly this was retribution for naming his accomplices. But it was also because the botched robbery had produced no income, but a lot of unwanted attention.  Ike, Frank and Joe's plan would at least provide $3,600 compensation for the Cochise County Cow Boys. In short their reaction to Wyatt's offer was exactly what the Earps had hoped it would be.

That the plan was generally known among both sides was shown when Joe Hill left his watch and $300 in cash with Federal Marshal Virgil Earp, as a guarantee of his return from New Mexico. But Joe's mission was a actually trap,  half of a vice that was now closing, squeezing the Cochise County Cow Boys right out of existence.

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