Lady at the O.K. Corral (5 page)

They traveled by stagecoach from Benson to Tombstone. Just before departure, a handsome young man climbed up and took the seat next to the driver, tipping his hat to Mrs. Jones. Kitty identified him as Morgan Earp, shotgun messenger for the Wells Fargo Company and one of the Earp brothers. You will be meeting the rest of those tall, blond Earps in Tombstone, she assured Josephine.

As they entered the town, Josephine was amazed by the dramatic changes it had undergone. Last year's tent city had become the largest city in the Arizona Territory, more than twice the size of Tucson or Phoenix. In place of the “overpowering silence” she had experienced on her last visit, the desert air was filled with the smell of leather and horses, a cacophony of construction and commercial activity, and the constant din of hammers mingled with the shouts of business and social exchange. The mines never stopped. Large ore wagons drawn by mules rumbled along crude streets that had not existed the year before. These were the sounds and sights of a town being created at a frantic pace, by settlers determined to take advantage of an opportunity that might only appear once in a lifetime.

The area now known as Tombstone was discovered by an enterprising miner named Ed Schieffelin, who persisted in his search for silver despite the remote and forbidding landscape. Soldiers at a nearby fort predicted Schieffelin would die of thirst or in an Apache raid, and warned him that he would find not his fortune but his tombstone. “The remarks being made often impressed the [word] on my mind,” he recalled. After finding an unusually rich lode of silver, he organized the first mining district in April 5, 1878, and had the droll idea to name his first claim “the Tombstone,” then the next ones “Graveyard No. 1” and “Graveyard No. 2.”

Tombstone would become the most famous boomtown in Arizona. Its first mayor, John Clum, described the town as having been conjured by the “greatest of magicians” and marveled that an incredible city could spring up from a vast empty landscape of boulders, mesquite, and cactus. At first, the residences and stores were rudimentary and small. Almost everything was made of wood, which made the Fourth of July fireworks terrifying for those who imagined the rockets raining down like giant matchsticks.

A rush of capital from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston assured that Tombstone would grow up in a hurry. The all-important Wells Fargo company opened an office, a sign that the boomtown had crossed the threshold of commercial viability, big and stable enough to warrant attention from the ubiquitous business agent of the West, “the ready companion of civilization, the universal friend and agent of the miner, his errand man, his banker, his post office.” One hundred new people arrived by stagecoach each week, not only miners and bankers, but engineers, lawyers, and merchants. The next wave brought their wives and prostitutes, with a rush of French restaurants and oyster bars, tennis courts and bowling alleys, springing up to serve and entertain them.

Despite the dust and the summer heat, Tombstone had style. Several dress shops and milliners outfitted the local women with the latest Paris fashions. Tombstone had “the most expensive of everything,” proclaimed an Arizona travel guide in 1881. Two luxury hotels, the Cosmopolitan Hotel and the Grand Hotel, competed for customers with bars and casinos and public rooms outfitted with chandeliers, carpets, grand pianos, and paintings, assuring a level of elegance that would not be out of place in San Francisco.

When Josephine climbed down from the Benson stagecoach, Kitty's husband Harry and Johnny Behan were waiting for her. Maria Duarte disappeared with the rest of the passengers into the Tombstone crowd.

Harry Jones had an office on Allen Street, right in the center of Tombstone, and a comfortable three-room residence across the street from Johnny Behan. But Josephine did not accept the Joneses' offer of a place to stay. Instead, she walked across the street to Johnny's house. There she discovered that he had a son who would be sharing her new home.

Josephine's initial hesitation was correct; Johnny Behan was escaping a failed marriage and a stalled career. He had married the former Victoria Zaff in San Francisco in 1869 and settled in Prescott, near her parents, fathering two children during their six years of marriage. It was true, as Johnny boasted, that he'd held elected and appointed offices, including stints as sheriff and as an elected member of the territorial legislature from Yavapai County. But he had lost his last election, and then his marriage and his political career began to fall apart.

Victoria filed for divorce in 1875, going enthusiastically public with graphic allegations of Johnny's violence and debauchery. She charged that her husband was often drunk and subjected her to “a threatening and menacing manner calling me names such as whore and other epithets of like character and by falsely charging me with having had criminal intercourse with other men, threatened to turn me out of the house, quarreling with, and abusing me, swearing and threatening to inflict upon me personal violence.” Johnny frequented the local brothels, causing a scandal among their friends and neighbors, one of whom testified in support of Victoria's accusations, though dryly noting, “I can't say of my own knowledge that [Johnny] had carnal intercourse with the inmates of said houses of ill fame.”

“I have been nearly driven to distraction,” testified Victoria Behan, insulted and disgusted by Johnny's outbursts and his attachment to one particular house of ill fame and one favorite prostitute, Sadie Mansfield, with whom Johnny did “carouse, cohabit, and have sexual intercourse.”

Behan denied everything. But the damage was done. Victoria had incited Prescott and its environs, especially given her stepfather's prominence as the former sheriff. She was granted custody, and Johnny was ordered to contribute child support for their son Albert (their daughter died soon after the divorce). However, Victoria voluntarily allowed Johnny to take Albert to live in Tombstone, probably because she was already planning her second wedding, this time to a local businessman.

Behan and Albert, accompanied by Johnny's favorite racehorse, Little Mare, moved to Tombstone, where Johnny planned to resume his career as lawman, businessman, and politician. A new county would be created out of the bustling Tombstone region, and he hoped to be appointed as its first county sheriff. He invested in a livery stable with his well-connected friend John O. Dunbar, and they also leased the bar at the Grand Hotel.

Josephine would build two lasting relationships in Tombstone. One of them was with Johnny's son, Albert, who immediately warmed up to the pretty young woman who had moved in with his father. The other lasting relationship would not be with Albert's father.

Johnny introduced Josephine around town as Mrs. Behan, but Josephine was quickly disenchanted with the empty promise of the salutation. Johnny's conduct was inexplicable. He refused to set a wedding date and avoided any reference to marriage. In her letters home, she hinted enough of her unhappiness to prompt her father to wire her money.

What happened next was predictable, if sad. Josephine taunted Johnny with her financial independence, which prompted Johnny to renew his marriage proposal, take Josephine's parents' money and her diamond engagement ring, and sign a ninety-nine-year lease on a nice home on Safford and Sixth—listed solely in his name.

Johnny Behan had successfully restarted his life. He had acquired a desirable new mistress who acted as governess to his son, a responsibility that she gladly accepted out of affection for the young boy. Johnny's professional life was flourishing: the Grand Hotel bar business was thriving, he was well liked in Tombstone, and he balanced his Democratic connections with a close business partnership and friendship with the Republican Dunbar family. He had correctly anticipated the creation of the newly named Cochise County and was massaging the political connections that would smooth his path to becoming its first sheriff.

Wyatt Earp was the only hurdle in his way.

THE EARP WAGON
came rolling into Tombstone in December 1879, laden down with furniture and pots and pans, a sewing machine hanging off the back. The family looked more like a bedraggled pack of peddlers than smooth gamblers and cool lawmen. Their timing was excellent. Although founder Ed Schieffelin had already cashed out and would soon be headed for Alaska in search of the next big strike, Tombstone had not yet reached the pinnacle of boomtown prosperity.

Even to their wives, Wyatt and his brothers were like “peas in a pod.” Virgil was the eldest, and he had a certain twinkle in the eyes that his brothers, especially dour Wyatt, rarely betrayed. Josephine would later agree that Virgil's face was “filled with laughter and he was more free with his mannerisms than the others.” To the townspeople, however, the Earp brothers looked so much alike that one merchant sold a horse to Morgan and swore that he sold the horse to Wyatt. All of the brothers were light-haired, wore bushy mustaches, and topped six feet. When they walked down the street together, they were an imposing group, with lean, rugged physiques and a certain athletic grace.

Among the Earp brothers, Virgil was the most responsible and Wyatt the most handsome. One of the earliest Tombstone chroniclers, Walter Noble Burns, captured Wyatt as “the lion of Tombstone”:

His face was long and pale, his deep set eyes were blue gray, chin was massive, heavy tawny moustache, hair as yellow as a lion's mane, deep voice was a booming lion-like growl, and he suggested a lion in the slow, slithery ease of his movements and in his gaunt, heavy-boned, loose-limbed, powerful frame.

Burns had never seen young Earp, but Burns's flowery prose was matched by contemporaries who knew Wyatt in his prime. When Kansas judge Charles Hatton was interviewed about Wyatt, his wife interrupted to add her two cents that he was “the handsomest, best-mannered young man in Wichita.” Men were no less effusive and lingering in their description of Earp's hunky good looks. Wyatt's close friend Bat Masterson described Earp as “weighing in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty pounds, all of it muscle. He stood six feet in height, with light blue eyes, and a complexion bordering on the blond.” John Clum, the mayor of Tombstone, recalled Earp as “tall, erect, manly, serene, and in neat attire . . . I still have a clear vision of that dignified figure walking calmly along Allen Street.” Clum went on to praise Wyatt's manner as friendly but reserved, “equally unperturbed whether he was anticipating a meeting with a friend or a foe.”

The Earp brothers preferred each other's company to that of any outsider. All veterans of an outdoor life and a frontier philosophy that had toughened them, they relied on each other. Their wives were equally clannish and mutually supportive. But Tombstone would be the first time—and the last—that all of them lived and worked together.

THE EARPS BELONGED
to an old Scotch-Irish family who immigrated to Maryland around 1680. Ever a roving clan, generations of Earps changed their residences as the borders of the young country expanded, crisscrossing the thirteen original colonies and eventually wandering westward to the frontier.

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19, 1848, in Illinois, the fifth of the eight children of Nicholas and Virginia Cooksey Earp. Named for his father's commanding officer in the Mexican War, Wyatt was too young to serve in the Civil War, but three brothers fought on the Union side. Oldest brother Newton was unharmed, but James Earp was injured enough to qualify for a lifetime pension. Virgil suffered a less visible wound: before going off to war, he had married without the consent of his bride's parents, who took advantage of his absence to spirit the young woman away. They told Virgil that she was dead. It would be nearly thirty years before Virgil would discover what had become of his young wife.

As the Civil War drew to a close, the Earp family uprooted themselves once again to join one of the great migrations of American history, the fulfillment of the “manifest destiny” that had driven American policies and demography since the founding of the country. Nicholas Earp was asked to lead a wagon train headed to California. A strict disciplinarian with a salty tongue, Nicholas soon alienated some of his constituency with his profane language and his intolerance of noisy and active children, whom he threatened to whip if their parents did not. Tensions were high during this long and dangerous journey. As attacks by Indians were relatively rare, deprivation and disease caused the most fatalities during the seven-month journey, especially for children and the many babies who were born along the way. While men emphasized the adventure and the economic objectives of the trip, the women were consumed with the difficult communal life of the wagon train, especially the challenges of everyday tasks like child care, laundry, food preparation, caring for the sick, and hygiene. It was the women who counted the horrifying number of roadside graves and recorded the terrors of the journey in their journals and letters.

By the time Nicholas Earp's wagon train had arrived in San Bernardino, California, in December 1864, the accompanying families were grateful to have reached their destination—and eager to say good-bye to the demanding Nicholas Earp.

Despite the ardors of the trip, the Earp family stayed on the West Coast only a few years before returning to the Midwest. They took up residence in Iowa, and then in Lamar, Missouri. At twenty-two, Wyatt ran for election as the town constable, and fell in love with the local hotelier's daughter. He married Aurilla Sutherland on January 10, 1870, with Nicholas Earp presiding as justice of the peace. Of the four women who would eventually take the name Mrs. Earp, only Aurilla would celebrate with Wyatt in a public ceremony.

With a legally sanctioned marriage, a responsible job, and most of his family gathered around him, Wyatt bought a house and showed every sign of being ready to settle down and become a pillar of the community.

Less than one year later, Aurilla died in childbirth during a cholera epidemic; her son was buried with her. Wyatt never spoke publicly about his young bride, other than to acknowledge that he had been married. He never admitted that his wife's death set off a personal crisis as well as a family feud.