Bud Philpot gathered up his lines. “Come on, boys,” he said to his four horses. The leaders pranced and curvetted, the wheelers leaned soberly in their collars. The Benson stage went at an easy trot out Allen Street. Bob Paul, shotgun messenger, was in his seat beside the driver. Three passengers sat on top. Six others filled the seats inside.

The sidewalk crowds paid no attention. This was merely the regular Benson stage starting on schedule time. They would have taken only slightly more interest if they had known that in the boot was $80,000. It was an unusual shipment, but treasure was going out on the stages every day or two. And Bob Paul was a brave, dependable fellow as shotgun messenger. So the stage rumbled out of Tombstone almost unnoticed and disappeared over a hill, leaving a little cloud of dust hanging against the sky.

But the departure of this lumbering old coach, March 15, 1881, was, in its long train of tragic consequences, one of the momentous events in Tombstone’s history. While the stage jogged peacefully out of the town, fate was waiting grimly on the Benson road.

At Contention, ten miles from Tombstone, Paul and Philpot changed seats. This change may have been a whim of Paul’s. He would see what kind of stage-driver he was, just for fun. Philpot was willing; he could take it easy for a time. When the stage swung briskly out of Contention, Philpot was in the customary seat of the shotgun messenger, and Paul was doing the driving, his shotgun leaning between his legs.

Beyond Drew’s ranch, six miles out of Contention, the stage crossed a dry wash. The wash was broad and deep, and on the far side, the road angled at a sharp grade up a hill. Up this incline the horses went at a walk. It was growing late; the sun was dipping toward the Huachucas; long, cool shadows lay across the landscape.

Halt!

Three masked highwaymen stepped out of the mesquite with levelled rifles. Dropping the reins, Paul seized his shotgun. As he threw the gun to his shoulder, the robber on his side of the road fired. The bullet crashed into the seat. Paul emptied both barrels of his shotgun without apparent effect. At the same instant, the robber on the other side of the road sent a bullet squarely through Philpot’s heart. Philpot half rose and pitched headlong beneath the heels of the wheelers. The terrified horses leaped into a run and went rearing and plunging up the grade. The bandits fired twenty shots after the coach. Peter Roerig, a resident of Tombstone, sitting on top at the rear, was killed and tumbled to the ground. With bullets whistling about it, the stage thundered over the crest of the hill out of range.

With the lines dragging on the ground, the horses left the road and went tearing through the mesquite, the coach careening over rocks and threatening every moment to upset. Clambering down on the tongue, Paul, at risk of his life, retrieved the lines. The horses ran away for a mile before he quieted them down and got them back into the highway. With the $80,000 safe in the boot, Paul brought the bullet-riddled coach into Benson. Searching parties went out after nightfall and took the two dead men into Tombstone.

Sheriff Behan and a posse took the trail at daybreak the morning after the murderous fiasco. In the posse were Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, Bob Paul, and Marshall Williams, agent of the Wells-Fargo Company in Tombstone. They found at the scene seventeen empty rifle shells and three strange-looking masks made of cloth to fit over the head like a wig and with an attached band to hide the lower face, wig and band covered with dangling strands of untwisted rope to simulate hair and beard. The trail of the robbers was followed east to the Dragoons. Woodchoppers at the base of the mountains said three riders had passed their camp and turned northwest.

The fugitives were tracked to Tres Alamos, sixty miles north of the scene of the crime, where they had crossed the San Pedro. They had taken advantage of a twelve hours’ start to play every trick known to plainsmen to confuse their trail. They had travelled Indian file. They had doubled back on their tracks and then switched off at right angles on stony ground that left no imprints. They had kept to long outcropping reefs of rock. Once they had rounded up a bunch of horses and, driving them before them, had hidden their own tracks in the swarming hoof prints. Again they had ridden for a mile through the San Pedro River, emerging in thick brush, and a little farther on had taken to the stream once more.

The scent grew warmer at Wheaton’s abandoned ranch. Here a horse was found so badly tuckered out it could hardly stagger, its back covered with saddle sores. A few miles farther down the river, at the ranch of H. T. Redfield, father of Leonard Redfield, who for thirty years has been postmaster at Benson, the posse saw a man in a field loaded with warlike armament and milking a peaceful cow. This remarkable milkmaid scurried for the brush as the posse galloped toward him. Wyatt and Morgan Earp headed him off and took him prisoner. He proved to be Luther King. Besides a rifle strapped across his shoulders, two six-shooters, and two belts full of cartridges, King had a dozen boxes of cartridges stuffed in his pockets. He admitted the exhausted horse found at Wheaton’s belonged to him.

King had been a San Simon Valley cowboy but had been working on the Redfield ranch for several weeks. He lied fluently at the start. But maintaining his innocence of active participation in the attempted robbery, he confessed finally that the bandits were friends of his, he had had previous knowledge of their plans, and had met them in their flight to replenish their stock of ammunition. He named Bill Leonard, Jim Crane, and Harry Head as the highwaymen. These were outlaws associated with the Clanton-McLowery group of Curly Bill’s band. King declared explicitly that these three men alone had been concerned in the attack on the stage.

King was taken to Tombstone by Sheriff Behan and Marshall Williams and placed in jail. His confession seemed unbelievable, and it was suspected that he had held the horses for the three road agents while they attempted to rob the stage. But nothing more of King’s connection with the crime was ever learned. He escaped under peculiar circumstances, two weeks later. He had sold the horse that had been found exhausted at Wheaton’s ranch to John Dunbar, and to complete the transaction had been taken into the sheriff’s office. Under Sheriff Woods, Dunbar, and Harry Jones were present, and Jones was drawing up the bill of sale when King slipped out the door, and mounting a horse saddled and waiting for him, rode out of town and out of any further knowledge of that part of the country from that day to this.

Meanwhile, the three Earps and Paul, joined near Benson by Detective Fred Hume of the San Francisco office of Wells-Fargo, pressed hard on the traces of the murderers. The trail led west along the northern flanks of the Rincon, Tanque Verde, and Santa Catalina mountains, south through Cañada del Oro, east past Tucson through the Santa Cruz Valley, and again across the San Pedro River. After travelling in a gigantic loop more than three hundred miles around, the criminals had come back to the Dragoons. Here, at Helm’s ranch, Sheriff Behan rejoined the posse, bringing with him Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge and Buckskin Frank Leslie.

Across the Dragoons and the Chiricahuas, the posse made its way to Galeyville. There Wyatt Earp, having been on the trail ten days, turned back for Tombstone. The others pressed on into the Cloverdale region of New Mexico, where Leonard and Head had a ranch. Finding the ranch deserted, the chase was abandoned. On the home trail, the posse encountered severe hardships. One could travel fifty or seventy-five miles through this semi-desert region⁠—and can do it today⁠—without sighting a ranch house. Food ran out. No water could be found. Virgil Earp’s horse became exhausted, and Morgan Earp took his brother up behind him. Under the double load, Morgan’s own horse was soon staggering from weakness, and the two Earps had to lead their horses and follow on foot far behind the others. When the possemen stumbled on a spring in the eastern edge of the San Simon, it was the first water they had had for forty-eight hours. Sheriff Behan, Deputy Breakenridge, and Buckskin Frank Leslie left the others here and, riding night and day, reached San Simon ranch a hundred miles to the north and sent back supplies by horseback messenger. When relief arrived, those left behind had been four days and a half without food.

Upon arrival in Tombstone, Sheriff Behan and his men received the plaudits of the press.

The persistent pursuit of the murderers of poor Bud Philpot [said the Epitaph] is a credit to each individual member of the posse and will pass into frontier annals as a record of which all may be proud. Especially worthy of praise was the tireless work of Bob Paul and Virgil and Morgan Earp, who were in the saddle continuously for seventeen days and followed the trail from the morning after the Benson road murders.

In the aftermath of gossip that followed the attempted stage robbery, the bungling amateur touch which had seemed to characterize the work of the road agents came in for criticism. If these fellows had been old hands, it was pointed out, they would have shot one of the lead horses. That would have brought the stage to a halt. Then, if they could have finished off Bob Paul, they could have looted the coach at their leisure. It must have been humiliating to see $80,000 escape them and go galloping over the hill in a cloud of dust.⁠ ⁠… The strangely shifted positions of driver and shotgun messenger caused comment. No such thing, it was said, had ever been heard of before. Why had Paul and Philpot changed places? Some attached deep meaning to this; others regarded it as a casual coincidence. Paul, it was argued, must have had some inkling that a robbery was to be attempted or have received a warning of some kind, which was probably untrue. The opinion grew that the highwaymen had been especially anxious to do away with the shotgun messenger, possibly because of secret information he possessed, and believed when they killed Philpot, they were killing Paul.⁠ ⁠… Philpot was an old-time stage-driver, who had had long experience on mountain routes in California and been through many holdups. Once, so the story ran, when highwaymen ordered him to throw out the money chest, he threw out a green bandbox belonging to a lady passenger and by the time the robbers discovered the trick, Philpot and the stage had passed out of danger. As reward for this heroic subterfuge, Philpot had been presented with a gold watch by the Wells-Fargo people. At his death, Philpot left a wife and four children in California.

While Sheriff Behan and his posse were scouring the country for the highwaymen, Tombstone awoke one morning to read in one of the papers this bit of startling news:

Positive proof exists that four men took part in the attack on the Benson stage. The fourth is in Tombstone and is well known and has been shadowed ever since his return to town. He is suspected for the following reasons: On the afternoon of the attempted robbery, he engaged a horse at a Tombstone livery stable stating that he might be gone for seven or eight days or might return that night. He left town about four o’clock armed with a Henry rifle and a six-shooter. He started toward Charleston and about a mile below Tombstone cut across to Contention. When next seen, it was between ten and one o’clock at night, riding back into the livery at Tombstone, his horse fagged out. He at once called for another horse, which he hitched in the street for some hours, but he did not again leave town. Statements attributed to him, if true, look very bad and, if proved, are most conclusive as to his guilt either as a principal or an accessory after the fact.

The man brought under suspicion as the fourth highwayman was Doc Holliday. The suspicion against the right bower of the Earp faction seemed to have a certain semblance of logic, and Tombstone was soon rolling the delicious tidbit of scandal over its tongue. Holliday’s many friends were indignant at what they denounced as a new trick of the Behan crowd. Holliday’s many enemies gleefully and promptly returned a verdict of guilty in the first degree. The insouciant doctor, wit, and desperado, took the matter lightly.

“So I’m a stage robber,” he remarked with cynical good-humour. “Well, I don’t believe it. They’ll have to prove this to me. If I had been there, you can bet a stack of blue chips that eighty thousand never would have got away.”

The doctor seemed to resent the implied reflection on his well-known artistry.

“And I’ve made incriminating statements, eh?” the doctor smiled derisively. “Well, it’s just like me to talk the rope around my neck. I shoot up the stage, kill a couple of fellows, and blab it all over the country. No honest stage robber’ll trust me after this, and serve me right.”

The doctor was noted for a pleasant garrulity, but he had never been known to reveal any of his own secrets. He was habitually too wise in the treacheries of the underworld to place his own safety unreservedly in the hands of any man.

“They seem to think being armed with a rifle and a six-shooter makes the case against me look pretty black,” he pursued. “Humph! The next time I ride out into the brush in this outlaw country, I’ll wear kid gloves and carry a bunch of Sunday-school tracts.”

Holliday declared he had gone to Charleston on personal business. He denied having been anywhere in the neighbourhood of Contention, and denied also that he had kept a fresh horse standing for several hours in the street after his return to Tombstone. The story of this fresh horse may have been true or it may have been a case of bad reporting on the part of the newspaper. If true, the saddled horse waiting in the street was a gravely suspicious circumstance which suggested rather vividly preparedness for instant flight. The story was contradicted by another that became rife at the same time, that after the attempted stage robbery, Holliday had ridden to the Clanton ranch near Charleston and obtained a fresh mount there for his trip back to Tombstone.

A little adventure that befell Mr. and Mrs. John Slaughter on the Charleston road that night added to the suspicion against Holliday. Slaughter, afterward famous as the fighting sheriff of Cochise County, had drawn $10,000 that afternoon from the Charleston bank. He had the money with him when he and his wife at ten o’clock at night set out to drive to the dairy ranch of Amazon Howell, Mrs. Slaughter’s father, at William Springs, between Charleston and Tombstone.

At a lonely spot in the road, a horseman rode toward them out of a dry wash. He may have had some sinister design. Or he may have been following the wash as a shortcut from Charleston to Tombstone. But, at any rate, he had a drawn six-shooter in his hand, and Slaughter suspected the fellow meant to rob him.

“Look out, John,” cried Mrs. Slaughter in alarm, “that man has a gun in his hand.”

“Well,” replied her husband calmly, “so have I.”

And Mrs. Slaughter saw her husband’s hand gripping a six-shooter held in his lap, its barrel grimly following the shadowy figure moving in the darkness. Whatever was in the mind of the man on horseback, he made no menacing move with his revolver, but riding on without a word, disappeared on the road to Tombstone. Slaughter recognized the horse. “That was Charlie Tribolett’s blaze-face roan,” he said. “I’d know that horse anywhere.” Slaughter believed the man on the horse was Doc Holliday. Moreover, he always remained of this opinion.

Suspicion against Holliday grew when it was learned that he had been a close friend of Bill Leonard. This friendship, however, had been of several years standing. Leonard and Holliday had first known each other in Las Vegas. There Leonard was a prosperous jeweller and stood well as a business man. He came to Tombstone from Las Vegas and for a long time worked in a jewellery shop, and in Tombstone also, during this period of employment, his reputation was good. He was an expert watch repairer, and some of Tombstone’s old-timers still recall his deftness at his trade. Gambling, drinking, and bad associates caused Leonard’s fall. He became intimate with the Clantons and other Curly Bill outlaws, and was soon taking part in their criminal affairs. For several months before the Benson stage holdup, Leonard, Head, and Crane had been “batching” in a cabin at a place called the Wells, ten miles from Tombstone, over toward Contention. It was bruited about that Holliday several times had visited Leonard there, and it was suspected that he had seen Leonard at the Wells a few hours before the attack on the stage.

Holliday admitted he had hired a horse in Tombstone on the afternoon of the attempted robbery. He said, however, that he had hired it, not from Charlie Tribolett, but from John Dunbar’s corral. He denied that he had been in Charleston or that he was the man on the blaze-face roan whom John Slaughter had encountered at night on the Charleston road. He had returned to Tombstone, he declared, at dusk, at about the hour the attempted stage robbery was taking place some sixteen miles away. He had hitched his horse in the street, he said, and after taking supper in a restaurant, played faro for several hours in the Alhambra. After his faro game, he declared, he returned the horse to Dunbar’s corral.

Holliday’s story, if true, was a clear alibi, despite the fact that he failed to tell where he had gone on his trip out of town. Moreover, his alibi had apparent corroboration in a story told by a man named Fuller, who did a business hauling water from the Wells to Tombstone. Fuller declared that, just after he had left the Wells with a wagonload of water, about four o’clock on the afternoon of the stage holdup, Holliday had joined him. Holliday, Fuller said, hitched his horse to the rear of the wagon and took his seat beside Fuller. Holliday, according to Fuller, had come back to Tombstone seated in Fuller’s wagon. Wyatt Earp also corroborated Holliday’s alibi.

“I received a wire message about half past six o’clock that evening direct from Bob Paul at Benson telling me that the stage had been held up,” said Wyatt Earp. “Immediately after I had received the telegram, I found Doc Holliday playing faro, and it would have been impossible for him to have been at the scene of the attack on the stage. In identifying Holliday as the rider of Charlie Tribolett’s blaze-face roan, John Slaughter simply made a mistake.”

One point generally overlooked at the time stood out in Doc Holliday’s favour. This was Luther King’s statement that Leonard, Crane, and Head were alone in the attempted robbery. Despite the printed assertion of positive information that there were four robbers, it was never definitely settled there were more than three. It may be pointed out that there were stronger grounds for suspecting King as a possible fourth robber than for suspecting Holliday.

“Despite King’s denials,” said Wyatt Earp, “there was never any doubt in my mind that he was the fourth robber. I never took any stock in the fishy story he told when we captured him loaded down with guns and ammunition. If King had not escaped, I think his participation in the robbery would eventually have been proved.”

Holliday was never arrested. If the authorities had any evidence against him, they never saw fit to bring it into court. Leonard, Head, and Crane were chased all over the map of southeastern Arizona, but Holliday lived unmolested in Tombstone. But from the time of the Benson stage affair, Holliday remained in a fourth dimensional vagueness of suspicion, his guilt never established and his innocence never proved. Which, it may be remarked in passing, worried the genial doctor not at all.

Gossip was still acute when this second statement, as astounding as the first, was printed in the newspapers:

Evidence in the hands of the authorities implicates four robbers and five accomplices and arrests will follow as soon as everything is ready. Meanwhile it is certain that several men around Tombstone, among them one who was a participant in the preliminary pursuit, are under surveillance.

Identity of the five men under suspicion as accomplices was a more difficult riddle than the Holliday affair. Though the Clantons and McLowerys were mentioned it was generally assumed that the accomplices indicated were the Earps and Marshall Williams, and Williams was identified as the man who had “participated in the preliminary pursuit.” There was no evidence against Williams, and he was suspected only because he was a friend of the Earps and was in a position to know when shipments of money and bullion went out on the stages. But the gossip had it that Williams had tipped off the treasure cargo to the Earps and the Earps had assigned Holliday as their personal representative to assist in the robbery and see the spoils were evenly divided. But these innuendos were circulated only in the most discreet whispers. None of the promised arrests ever was made, and it is doubtful that at this time Wyatt Earp and his brothers realized that they were under suspicion. It was not until six months later that the first and only open charge against them was made.

Long before the Earp-Clanton feud reached its climax of battle in Tombstone’s streets, the three highwaymen who had made the attack on the Benson stage and were the indirect cause of the vendetta were in their graves. Jim Crane died with Old Man Clanton in the fight with Mexicans in Guadalupe Canyon. Leonard and Head were killed at Owl City, New Mexico, by Ike and Bill Haslett, whose ranch the two outlaws had coveted and whose lives they had threatened. When Bob Paul fired on the stage robbers, his aim had been better than he knew. Leonard said with his last breath that he was glad to die to escape the agony from a gaping wound in his groin left by the shotgun messenger’s charge of buckshot.