Dark and high the war clouds were piling. Forked hatreds snaked flamingly across the blind gloom, and vengeance threatened in rumbling thunder growls. The red deluge was about to burst. Nothing now could hold back the storm.

Swashbuckling Ike Clanton, unable to read the signs and portents of impending tragedy, drove alone into Tombstone on the afternoon of October 25th. Rash, blundering fellow, thus to venture single-handed into the stronghold of his enemies. But he believed in his soul the Earps were secretly afraid of him, would not dare to molest him, stood in awe of the banded outlaw strength that for years had been at his back. How quickly and cruelly was this proud freebooter to be stripped of his foolish illusions. So confident of his own safety was he that, as a law-abiding gesture, he left his Winchester rifle and six-shooter behind the bar at the Grand Hotel and sallied forth to tipple and take his pleasure in the saloons and gambling halls.

An hour past midnight, Ike Clanton was eating a light repast in the lunch room in the rear of the Alhambra saloon when Doc Holliday strolled in. Holliday’s face went dark.

“You’ve been lying about me to Wyatt Earp,” he flared.

“I never said anything to Wyatt Earp about you,” returned Clanton in weak denial.

“You’re a liar!” snapped Holliday with an oath. “You’ve been saying a lot of other things about me lately. Don’t deny it. I’ve got the goods on you.”

Holliday was in a cold fury. He called Clanton a drunken blatherskite, a yellow cur, a braggart, a coward. The doctor had a scurrilous and blackguard tongue when his dander was up, and he exhausted upon Clanton a full and rich vocabulary of opprobrium.

“Moreover,” said Holliday, “you’ve been making your threats to kill me. Now’s a good time to do it. We are all alone, man to man. Get out your gun and get to work.”

Out flashed the doctor’s own six-shooter.

“I’ve got no gun on me,” cried Clanton.

“Don’t tell me that, you lying whelp,” said Holliday. “You’ve got a gun. You wouldn’t have the nerve to be knocking around Tombstone at midnight without one. Go to fighting.”

“No,” responded Clanton, “I’m unarmed.”

“Then, if you are not heeled,” shot back the doctor, “go and heel yourself. And when you come back, come a-smoking.”

Morgan Earp walked into the restaurant.

“Leave him alone, Doc,” said Morgan, and he took Holliday by the arm and led him outside. Clanton followed him out on the sidewalk. There Clanton attempted vain explanations, while Holliday, still boiling with wrath, continued to abuse him. While the heated colloquy was in progress, Wyatt and Virgil Earp walked up, and Virgil ended the argument by threatening to put both men in jail.

“Don’t shoot me in the back, Holliday,” said Clanton as he walked away.

“You heel yourself,” warned Holliday, “and stay heeled. Don’t have any excuses the next time I see you.”

Clanton found Wyatt Earp in the Oriental saloon a half-hour later.

“I wasn’t heeled when Doc Holliday was abusing me,” said Clanton. “No man can abuse me like that and get away with it. I’ve got my gun on now, and you can tell Holliday I’m going to kill him the first time I meet him.”

“You’re excited and about half drunk,” said Wyatt Earp. “I’d advise you to go to bed.”

“Don’t get the idea in your head I’m drunk,” said Clanton. “This fight talk has been going on long enough, and it’s time to fetch it to a close.”

“I’ll fight nobody unless I have to,” replied Wyatt Earp. “There’s no money in fighting.”

For a little longer, Clanton talked war and Wyatt Earp peace. Then Clanton went away. He returned in a little while and ordered a drink at the bar. He evidently had been nursing his resentment.

“You fellows had the best of me tonight,” he said. “You were four to one. But I’ll be fixed for you tomorrow. I’ll have my friends here then, and we’ll fight it out, man to man.”

He paused as he passed out the door.

“I’ll be after you fellows tomorrow,” he flung back. “Don’t forget it. I’ll be ready for all of you then.”

Wyatt Earp went home to bed, his customary calm in no way ruffled by the night’s excitement, and suspecting that Clanton’s belligerent talk was mere drunken bluster which would be forgotten next day. Ned Boyle, bartender at the Oriental, awoke him at noon.

“Ike Clanton’s on a drunk,” said Boyle. “He was flourishing his six-shooter in the saloon this morning. ‘As soon as the Earps show up,’ he said, ‘the ball is going to open. I’ll have my people with me, and we’ll make a fight.’ ”

While Wyatt Earp was dressing, Harry Jones rushed in.

“What does all this mean, Wyatt?” he asked breathlessly.

“What does what mean?”

“Ike Clanton is on the warpath. He is armed with a Winchester and a six-shooter and is looking all over town for you Earp boys and Doc Holliday. He is threatening to kill the first man among you who appears on the street.”

“Tut-tut,” said Wyatt Earp. “I guess I’ll have to look up Ike Clanton and see what’s the matter with him.”

Marshal Virgil Earp remained on duty all night and went to bed at sunrise. He had been asleep only a few hours when his brother Warren aroused him to inform him that Ike Clanton was hunting him to kill him.

“Don’t bother me,” said Virgil Earp, and he turned over and went to sleep again.

Morgan Earp again awoke him.

“Ike Clanton is threatening to make a clean sweep of the Earps and Doc Holliday,” said Morgan. “Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery have arrived in town, all heavily armed. Better get up.”

Morgan Earp met Doc Holliday in the Alhambra. The doctor had finished a late breakfast and was lounging immaculately at the bar.

“Ike Clanton’s going to kill you as soon as he finds you,” warned Morgan.

“So I hear,” returned the doctor with polite interest.

In addition to his six-shooter, the doctor had a sawed-off shotgun strapped to his shoulder beneath his coat. The shotgun was a detail of costume reserved by the doctor for state occasions. He had put it on just after adjusting his tie before his morning mirror.

Wyatt and Virgil Earp met in the Oriental saloon.

“With Billy Clanton and the two McLowerys in town, the thing begins to look interesting,” said Wyatt Earp. “We’d better disarm Ike Clanton before he starts trouble. We’ll hunt him up. You go round the block by Fremont Street. I’ll take Allen Street.”

Virgil Earp saw Ike Clanton talking with William Stilwell on Fourth Street between Fremont and Allen.

“I hear you are looking for me,” said Virgil.

Clanton threw his rifle around threateningly. Virgil grabbed the barrel and clouted Clanton over the head with a six-shooter, knocking him down.

Wyatt and Morgan Earp came hurrying up. They disarmed Clanton and marched him to Justice Wallace’s court. Virgil Earp went to find Justice Wallace. Wyatt and Morgan Earp remained to guard the prisoner. Clanton was wild with drink and anger. His hair was matted with blood that dripped upon his shoulder.

“If I had my six-shooter,” Clanton shouted, “I’d fight all you Earps.”

Morgan Earp was standing in front of him, Clanton’s rifle in his left hand, the butt resting on the floor, and in his right hand, Clanton’s six-shooter.

“If you want to fight right bad,” Morgan sneered, “I’ll give you this.”

He extended the six-shooter butt foremost to Clanton. Clanton started from his chair to grasp it, but Deputy Sheriff Campbell pushed him down in his seat again.

“I’ll get even with you for this, Wyatt Earp,” shrilled Clanton.

Wyatt’s graven-image face for a moment contorted with rage.

“You dirty, low-down cow thief,” Wyatt Earp rumbled savagely. “I’m tired of being threatened by you and your gang of cutthroats. You intend to assassinate me and my brothers the first chance you get, and I know it, and I would be justified in shooting you down like a dog anywhere I met you. If you are game to fight, I’ll fight you anywhere.”

“Just wait till I get out of here,” yelled Clanton. “I’ll fight you then.”

Wyatt Earp walked out of the courtroom. On the street just outside the door, he almost collided with Tom McLowery.

“If you’re looking for a fight, just say so,” said McLowery, his face going white with instant fury. “I’ll fight you any place, any time.”

“All right,” flashed Wyatt Earp, “fight right here.”

Full in the face Wyatt Earp slapped McLowery with his left hand, and with his right pulled his own six-shooter from its holster. McLowery had a gun stuffed down his trousers on his right hip, the butt in sight. But he made no move to draw it. Nor did he say a word.

“Jerk your gun and use it,” roared Wyatt Earp, and at the same time he bludgeoned McLowery over the head with his six-shooter. McLowery reeled under the blow across the sidewalk and measured his length in the gutter, blood gushing from his wound. Wyatt Earp walked away.

Soon afterward, as Wyatt Earp stood smoking a cigar in front of Hafford’s saloon at Fourth and Allen streets, Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery passed him. All three had their six-shooters buckled around them. They glared silently at Wyatt Earp, and Wyatt Earp glared silently at them. The three men entered a gunsmith’s shop half a block away on Fourth Street. Frank McLowery’s horse was standing on the sidewalk in front of the shop. This was a violation of a city ordinance. Also it was an opportunity for Wyatt Earp to confront these three armed enemies. If they wanted a fight, he would fight them all single-handed. He marched boldly to the shop and took hold of the horse’s bridle. Billy Clanton and Tom McLowery clutched the handles of their six-shooters. Frank McLowery stepped out and also took hold of the horse’s bridle.

“Get this horse off the sidewalk,” ordered Wyatt Earp.

Without a word, Frank McLowery backed the animal into the street. Ike Clanton, who had had his hearing before Justice Wallace and been fined $25, walked up at this juncture. He was unarmed. He averted his eyes as he passed Wyatt Earp close enough to touch him and went into the gunsmith’s shop. Wyatt Earp supposed, and had reason to suppose, that Ike Clanton, whose rifle and revolver had not been restored to him, went into the shop to rearm himself. Ike Clanton admitted later that this was his purpose. As it happened, however, the gunsmith did not let him have a gun.

At this time, beyond any question, Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery were all armed. And this was the last time Wyatt Earp saw any of the men until he met them in battle. But before the fight opened, Tom McLowery, all belligerency knocked out of him, perhaps, when Wyatt Earp clubbed him over the head with a gun, deposited his six-shooter in Moses & Mehan’s saloon. None of the Earps knew this. In fairness to them, it may be added, they had reason to believe that all four of their enemies were armed.

Sheriff Behan was getting shaved in an Allen Street barber shop when he heard of trouble brewing. He ordered the barber to hurry.

“I must stop this fight,” he said.

As the sheriff stepped out the door, his face smooth and rosy from the barbering, he spied Virgil Earp across the street and went over to him. Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were standing in a group near by on the corner.

“What’s the excitement, Marshal Earp?” the sheriff asked.

“Some scoundrels are in town looking for a fight,” replied Virgil Earp.

“You must disarm them,” declared the sheriff. “It is your duty.”

“They have been threatening our lives,” said Virgil, “and we are going to give them a chance to make their fight.”

The dangerous situation was at a crisis. Sheriff Behan realized that, to avert tragedy, he must act quickly. He proposed himself to disarm the Clantons and McLowerys.

Sheriff Behan found the Clantons and McLowerys standing in a vacant lot near the O.K. corral on Fremont Street between Third and Fourth. Billy Claiborne, a tough young fellow from the San Pedro and a close friend of the Clantons, was with them. Frank McLowery and Billy Clanton had their horses. Hanging from the pommel of each saddle, according to Ike Clanton’s own account, was a Winchester rifle in a leather scabbard.

“Boys,” said Sheriff Behan, “I’m going to arrest and disarm you.”

“What for?” asked Ike Clanton.

“To preserve the peace.”

“I am unarmed,” said Ike Clanton. “The Earps still have my rifle and six-shooter.”

“Let me see,” said the sheriff, and he put his arm around Ike Clanton’s waist feeling for a gun, but found none.

“I’ve got no gun on me,” said Tom McLowery, and he threw back both flaps of his coat to prove his assertion.

“I didn’t come to town to make a fight,” said Billy Clanton who had a six-shooter on his hip. “I came to get Ike to come home. No use in my giving up my arms. We are getting ready to leave town right now.”

“That’s so,” cut in Ike Clanton. “My spring wagon is in the West End corral, and I’ve just left word there to have my team hitched up.”

“I’ve got a six-shooter and my rifle is hanging there on my horse,” said Frank McLowery, “but I won’t give them up unless you disarm the Earps. Wyatt Earp beat my brother Tom over the head with a gun an hour or so ago, and there’s no telling what the Earps will try next. But if you don’t disarm the Earps, I’ll promise to leave town as soon as I have attended to a little business.”

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 disarm the Clantons, failed to stop the Earps. Now he followed behind with vain expostulations.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he kept saying. “There must be no fight.”

The sheriff stopped at Fly’s front door. If bullets began to fly, he could step at one stride to safety.

Keeping their alignment, almost shoulder to shoulder, the Earps and Holliday came on with lethal momentum. As they drew near, they pulled their guns. Holding their weapons at a level before them, they halted within five feet of the Clantons and McLowerys, so close that if the foemen had stretched out their arms their fingertips would almost have touched. They could look into the pupils of one another’s eyes. The whisper of an Earp would have been audible to a Clanton.

“You fellows have been looking for a fight,” said Wyatt Earp, “and now you can have it.”

“Throw up your hands!” commanded Virgil Earp.

What happened now in the smoke of flaring guns happened while the clock ticked twenty seconds⁠—twenty seconds packed with murderous hatred and flaming death.

Ike Clanton asserted that all the Clantons and McLowerys threw up their hands “as high as their shoulders,” at Virgil Earp’s command, and that Tom McLowery threw back his coat, saying, “I am unarmed.” He declared, too, that Billy Clanton, as he held his hands in the air, said, “Don’t shoot me. I don’t want to fight.” But according to Wyatt Earp, Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery jerked out their six-shooters and started shooting on the instant. Whatever the truth, two guns blazed almost simultaneously with Virgil’s command. These two first shots, it was believed, were fired by Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp.

“Billy Clanton levelled his pistol at me,” said Wyatt Earp, “but I did not aim at him. I knew that Frank McLowery was a good shot and a dangerous man, and I aimed at him. Billy Clanton and I fired almost at the same time, he at me and I at Frank McLowery. My shot struck Frank McLowery in the belly. He fired back at me as he staggered out across the sidewalk into the street.”

Morgan Earp’s first shot struck Billy Clanton, who fell against the wall of the dwelling behind him and slid to the ground on his back. Dangerously hurt, the boy drew himself up on one knee, and grasping his six-shooter in both hands⁠—a heroic figure of dauntless courage worthy of deathless bronze⁠—kept on gamely fighting, his gun coughing swift spurts of fire.

Tom McLowery sprang toward his brother’s horse, probably with intent to get Frank McLowery’s rifle out of its saddle scabbard. The coolly alert Doc Holliday suspected such purpose. Throwing open his overcoat, Holliday seized his sawed-off shotgun hanging in its loop to his right shoulder and fired both barrels quickly with unerring accuracy. Tom McLowery, lifted off his feet by the heavy double charge of buckshot, crashed sidewise to the earth in a lifeless, limp huddle, his head between the horse’s hind heels. As McLowery fell, Holliday allowed his shotgun to swing back on its shoulder band beneath his coat and fought from now on with his six-shooter. Terrified by the sudden rattle of battle and the acrid, drifting swirls of powder smoke, the two horses belonging to Frank McLowery and Billy Clanton dashed pell-mell from the lot and went careering off through the street in wild, clattering flight.

Ike Clanton, the pot-valiant one, whose drunken, braggart threats had brought on this tragedy, rushed upon Wyatt Earp and caught him by the left arm, hung on tenaciously for a moment, doing what he could do to distract him and spoil his marksmanship and make him an easy target for his foes. Wyatt Earp could have killed Ike Clanton. Nine out of ten men under the same circumstances would have killed him. But lion-like in his magnanimity as in his courage, Wyatt Earp only flung him aside.

“The fight has begun,” said Wyatt Earp. “Go to fighting or get away.”

Ike Clanton darted into Fly’s photograph gallery into which Sheriff Behan already had disappeared, ran through a hall, and out the back door across a lot to Allen Street, where he hid in a Mexican dance hall. But if Wyatt Earp was merciful, no such quixotic chivalry actuated Doc Holliday, “the coldest blooded killer in Tombstone.” As Ike Clanton fled across the lot, Holliday turned for a second from the fighting and sent two bullets after him which missed him by inches and thudded into the walls of an adobe outhouse.

Pitiful, chickenhearted Ike Clanton. No hero soul in him. No knightly gallantry or warrior devotion that might have prompted him to stay and die with his brave brother and equally brave comrades. The panic fear of death was upon him, and he ran like a frightened rabbit to save his worthless hide. One almost feels a twinge of regret that this craven fellow escaped, but there is a certain pagan consolation in the knowledge that he preserved his paltry life only to lose it ingloriously in later years while again running from his enemies.

Billy Clanton, still down on one knee and handling his six-shooter with both hands, was resting his elbow on the crook of the other knee and taking deliberate aim at every shot. Virgil Earp fired at him, the bullet boring a hole through the flap of the boy’s hat. Billy’s blue eyes flashed and his face twisted into a murderous snarl as he threw the muzzle of his gun around upon the marshal and pulled the trigger. The ball cut through the calf of Virgil Earp’s right leg and brought him to the ground. He, too, rose on one knee and continued firing. Now there were two wounded men fighting on their knees.

Frank McLowery was wavering and weaving about in the middle of the street, clasping his left hand now and again to his body where Wyatt Earp’s bullet had torn into him. He was plainly in agony. Doc Holliday ran toward him, firing once as he ran and halted within a distance of ten paces of him.

“You are the man I want,” cried McLowery. “I’ve got you now.”

“Got me to get,” flung back Holliday with a poisonous smile.

McLowery rested his six-shooter across his left arm and drew a careful bead. Just as he pulled the trigger Holliday suddenly turned sideways to him. This cool trick in the thick of the furious tumult of battle was characteristic of this cheerful desperado, whose poise no desperate circumstance could shake. The stratagem saved the doctor’s life. With his side turned to his antagonist Holliday, who was only skin and bones offered the merest sliver of a target. McLowery’s bullet crashed through Holliday’s pistol scabbard and burned a deep crease across his thigh.

At that instant, Billy Clanton shot Morgan Earp through the shoulder.

“That one clipped me good,” shouted Morgan, as the impact of the forty-five calibre ball bowled him over flat on his back.

Frank McLowery, staggering about blindly, had drawn close to Morgan Earp. Wyatt Earp saw his brother’s danger.

“Look out for Frank McLowery, Morg,” Wyatt called.

Morgan flung himself over on his side, snapped his pistol down on Frank McLowery, and let fly on a quick chance. Doc Holliday fired at the same moment. McLowery fell dead with a bullet through his brain. Whether Holliday or Morgan Earp killed him has been a subject of conjecture to this day.

Ike Clanton evaporated in shameless flight, Tom and Frank McLowery dead, Billy Clanton, in the last few seconds of the battle, was left on a lost field to fight alone. Wounded to the death, without hope or a single chance for his life, but still undaunted, the boy faced his remorseless foes.

“God damn you!” He hurled the curse at them as he crouched upon his knees. “I’ve got to kill one of you before I die.”

He straightened up his lithe young body, his tortured face flamed defiance, and the sunlight sparkled on the long, nickelled barrel of his heavy revolver as he brought the weapon to a level for his last shot. A bullet fired, it was believed, by Virgil Earp, struck him full in the breast, and he toppled over upon his back. But the fearless youth was still not ready to die or give up the battle.

“Just one more shot,” he murmured as if in prayer. “God! Just one more shot.”

He was too weak to roll over, too weak to raise himself to shooting position. He managed to prop his head against the foundation stones of the house at his rear. Lying at full length on his back, he raised his gun and pointed it blindly toward his enemies. For a second, the weapon wavered weakly in the air. His finger fumbled on the trigger. Then his hand fell limply at his side. The six-shooter rolled upon the ground. A shiver shook him from head to foot. He collapsed and lay still. The battle was over.

Citizens carried Billy Clanton across the street into Dr. George Goodfellow’s upstairs office.

“Pull off my boots,” whispered the dying boy. “I promised my mother I’d never die with my boots on.”

As he breathed his last, the promise to his dead mother was fulfilled. The bullet that had killed him passed through a letter from his sweetheart which he had carried in his pocket.

As the Earps started back up town, Virgil limping as he leaned on Doc Holliday’s arm, and Morgan supported by Wyatt, Sheriff Behan bustled out of Fly’s photograph gallery.

“I will have to arrest you, Wyatt,” he said.

“I will not allow you to arrest me today, Johnny,” Wyatt replied. “Maybe I’ll let you arrest me tomorrow. I’m not going to run away.”

At the inquest held by Coroner H. M. Matthews, eyewitnesses estimated that twenty-five or thirty shots had been fired during the third of a minute the battle lasted. Billy Clanton had been struck twice, once below the midriff, and a second time within an inch of the heart. Frank McLowery’s body showed two wounds. The first, made by Wyatt Earp’s first shot, was a straight, penetrating wound in the abdomen; the second was in the head, just below the right ear. Twelve buckshot from Holliday’s gun had torn a hole in Tom McLowery’s right side six inches below the armpit and between the third and fifth ribs. Coroner Matthews said the wound could have been covered by the palm of a man’s hand. A report was circulated that Tom McLowery had been killed while holding his hands in the air. Coroner Matthews set this rumour at rest by testifying that the charge of buckshot had also left a torn wound in the fleshy rear portion of the right upper arm. Such a wound obviously could not have been made if McLowery’s arms had been elevated.

The Earps were tried before Judge Wells Spicer late in November. The most important witnesses were Sheriff Behan, Ike Clanton, and Wyatt Earp. It was on this occasion that Ike Clanton told his story of the attack on the Benson stage in which he attempted to implicate Holliday and the Earps. Though some of the witnesses said that the two shots that opened the battle were fired by Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp testified that the first two shots were fired by himself and Billy Clanton simultaneously.

“No shots were fired,” Wyatt Earp said on the witness stand, “until Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery drew their guns. If Tom McLowery was unarmed, I did not know it. His six-shooter was in plain view when he and I had had our encounter an hour or so before in front of Justice Wallace’s courtroom and I had no reason to believe that he had later laid aside his weapon. Though no evidence has been introduced to sustain me, I still believe he was armed and fired two shots at our party before Holliday killed him.

“Because of Ike Clanton’s repeated threats against my life, I believe I had a perfect right to kill him when I easily could have done so but I did not do it because I thought he was unarmed. I believed before the battle that Ike Clanton and Frank and Tom McLowery had formed a conspiracy to murder my brothers, Doc Holliday, and myself, and I would have been legally and morally justified in killing any of them on sight. I had several chances to kill Ike Clanton in the twenty-four hours before the battle, and when I met Tom McLowery I could have killed him instead of hitting him with my gun. But I sought no advantage, and I did not intend to fight unless it became necessary in self-defense. When Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery drew their pistols, I knew it was to be a fight, and I fired in defense of my own life and the lives of my brothers and Doc Holliday.”

The Earps were acquitted. Judge Spicer reviewed the evidence in a long written opinion and justified the battle, holding that the Earps and Holliday had acted in performance of official duty as officers of the law.