Lady at the O.K. Corral (7 page)

Josephine's once clear vision of her future as Johnny's wife was fading. As she walked through the streets of Tombstone, conducting the ordinary business of picking up her mail, buying groceries, or ordering a new dress, she was known to all as Mrs. Behan. She received her mail under that name, and may have told her parents that they were already married. Her family was far away; although there were several Marcuses listed in the hotel registers of the time, they were most likely traveling merchants, not Josephine's relatives.

IN 1881 TOMBSTONE
was three years old—and for those keeping score, it was approaching the upper limits of an average boomtown lifespan. True to the timetable, and despite the frantic activity everywhere, the easy days were over. Tombstone's biggest silver deposits had been mined. Copper was the new thing; the boom in nearby Bisbee was already siphoning off people and capital investment. California senator George Hearst hired Wyatt Earp to accompany him on a tour of the Tombstone mines; they became friends, but Hearst declined any Tombstone investment.

Beneath the glittering surface was a city growing carelessly, built on top of a shaky foundation. Disputes over mining and real estate claims kept the city's lawyers busy. The mines were experiencing water seepage. Sanitation was rudimentary, and fire was a constant concern. Because of the scarcity of water, local editorials warned that the town was a “tinder box, and liable any day to be swept from existence.” Gas lamps were a recent innovation, but they merely illuminated the filthy streets and the rats. Cowboys were running wild, and not the relatively harmless variety known to Wyatt in Dodge City, young cowhands who rode into town after months on the trail, looking to have a good time, make a lot of noise, and return to the range. A more dangerous lot, Tombstone cowboys had friends in high places. Clara Brown defined cowboys as “a convenient term for villains,” and George Parsons considered them a synonym for “rustler” and “desperado—bandit, outlaw, and horse thief.”

Crime was on the rise. A transaction at a Tombstone bank was a “special event” that called for “special precautions,” noted Endicott Peabody wryly. When entering the bank, “one came to the receiving teller with a pistol near to his hand. The paying teller was still more fortified, while, at the back, on the manager's desk, lay a pistol; at his side was a gun, and in a box at the other side of the barrier at which a customer of his would be standing was another pistol which, unbeknownst to him, would be pointed directly at his diaphragm.”

As concern about crime rose, the question of who would be the first sheriff of Cochise County became more pressing. Josephine assumed that the decision was important to her future, since the county sheriff kept the peace but also collected the taxes and the fines. The city fathers passed ordinances against gambling, prostitution, and carrying of firearms, but they were less concerned with the thankless task of regulating public morality in a frontier town than with keeping the peace and raising money for the town's essential services—including paying the sheriff.

If it was money that would finally drag Johnny to the altar, then Josephine wanted him to become sheriff of Cochise County.

Johnny Behan and Wyatt Earp openly campaigned for the position. The two men could hardly have been more different. Johnny was a natural politician: he was “Glad Hand” to Wyatt's “Trigger Finger,” as writer Walter Noble Burns would later characterize their rivalry. “Johnny Behan was friendly, Wyatt Earp was grim; Johnny Behan smiled, Wyatt Earp shot from the hip.” Dark-eyed, short, and round-faced, Johnny was a lifelong Democrat. Wyatt towered over him, tall and athletic, fair and blue-eyed, and staunchly Republican. Johnny represented the interests of ranchers and was a good friend to the cowboys, while Wyatt stood with the miners and town officials and was a close friend of many of Tombstone's business leaders. As two men-about-town, they competed in horse races and in shotgun competitions. They enjoyed the company of women, though Wyatt tended to be serially monogamous, while Johnny Behan had a soft word and a welcoming smile for all desirable women.

Eager to avoid a public battle, Johnny Behan offered Wyatt a deal: if he would withdraw from the race, Behan would appoint him as deputy. Wyatt obligingly followed the script, but when Governor John C. Fremont appointed Johnny to the position, the new Sheriff Behan reneged on his offer to deputize Wyatt. Johnny's double-dealing made permanent enemies of all the Earp brothers.

Johnny had friends everywhere, and to his detractors, he was far too cozy with the cowboys and rustlers, who resented any restriction on how they lived, how they made a living, and how they entertained themselves. With the population exploding, demand for beef had grown to the point where it was second only to silver as local currency. Cattle thievery was rampant, and among those suspected of being involved in the practice were families like the Clantons and McLaurys, substantial property owners and close associates of Sheriff Behan. As long as Johnny Behan could keep a lid on things, however, and there was an ample supply of beef, the town officials would tolerate some level of cattle thievery.

In the summer of 1881, things spiraled out of control for Johnny. He was struggling to control violence in the streets in Tombstone, while another explosive situation was building at home. He could no longer pretend to Josephine that he was delaying their marriage until his financial situation became stronger: he was now the sheriff, and making plenty of money. Yet the higher his status rose, the less interest he showed in her.

Josephine was still calling herself Mrs. Johnny Behan, but the title had long turned sour. Eighteen eighty-one was not destined to be an auspicious year for Mrs. Behan, or for the city of Tombstone.

THAT SUMMER WAS
unbearably hot. With stifling days that Clara Brown called “wringoutable,” the city was buffeted by dust storms that swirled through it like a gritty fog, and endured ferocious nighttime thunderstorms that delivered no rain. On June 22 the town was struck by a major fire that began in a barrel of whiskey and then roared through the main part of town, consuming four square blocks, destroying dozens of stores and restaurants, and causing major damage to the Cosmopolitan and Grand Hotels. Firefighting resources were woefully inadequate, and ironically, Mayor Clum was away pricing new equipment. Among the injured volunteer firefighters was George Parsons, who was caught under a collapsing roof and had a nasty encounter with a stick of wood that pierced the left side of his face. Clara Brown's bank was destroyed, a financial loss from which many depositors (including Clara and her husband) never fully recovered.

The town immediately began to rebuild, using adobe rather than wood whenever possible and raising money for fire equipment and an emergency supply of water. The newly organized “Rescue Hook and Ladder Company” was inaugurated with a grand ball to raise money, but attendance was disappointing; most women had already left town to avoid the summer heat. “Now is the time when the fashionable dame packeth her Saratoga and departheth for some haven in the East or West outside the precincts of Arizona,” Clara Brown explained. The only women left in Tombstone were what she called the SAH or the “stay at homes,” who would have loved to escape Tombstone's baking temperatures with a vacation in the mountains, but were deterred by illness or fears of an Indian attack.

When the rains finally came, floods overran the badly designed Tombstone streets. “We're in a bad way in town,” George Parsons wrote in his diary on August 25. “Eggs and potatoes gone and flour getting scarce owing to the wash-outs. No mail at all and things generally are in a deplorable condition.”

Josephine was not affected directly by the fire, and any distraction from her personal woes was fleeting. She had no money and no wedding ring. She could no longer tell herself that Johnny Behan intended to marry her. She left their home briefly, possibly to accompany Albert to consult with a doctor, but this good deed met with no reward. She returned home to discover Johnny Behan with another woman.

She had been slow to acknowledge the reality behind Johnny's reputation as a womanizer, so indiscriminate that one of his drinking buddies joked that he'd seen a horse that reminded him of Johnny, always trying to get at the mares. There may have been several lovers and prostitutes competing with Josephine that summer, but one likely candidate was Emma Dunbar, wife of Johnny's business partner and friend, John Dunbar, who either did not know about their dalliance or simply didn't care, since the couple remained together. Emma stayed in touch with Johnny Behan for years afterward, writing to him with a playful intimacy long after they'd both left Tombstone.

Josephine was not inclined to be so forgiving. Whether she confronted Johnny about another woman or discovered the disturbing signs that Johnny had contracted syphilis, her situation had become dire. It was time for her to leave Johnny. Her next steps were less obvious: her parents would be appalled if she returned home for a second time without a husband. But if she wanted to stay in Tombstone, she would have to find some means of support. Although she was reasonably well educated for a woman of her time, she had no profession or independent source of income.

Models for financially independent women were rare in Josephine's experience. She hadn't known any self-supporting Jewish women in San Francisco. On the frontier, things were different. She had seen for herself the example of Pauline Markham, who made a comfortable living as an actress and theatrical producer. Tombstone had a number of successful women. Josephine undoubtedly knew about Nellie Cashman, who built a string of frontier businesses, including a restaurant and grocery store in Tombstone. Josephine's friend Addie Borland ran a millinery shop. Clara Spalding Brown was a freelance writer. But Josephine was only too aware of her limitations. She was no actress or writer, and had more interest in wearing fine clothes and dining in restaurants than in running a retail establishment.

The most common occupation for a woman in Tombstone was prostitute or performer. Or both: many of the more attractive prostitutes also performed at the theaters and dance halls in town. Tombstone's sex trade was regulated by the city, with license fees and fines that went into the town treasury. Prices were set according to age, ethnicity, and privacy. At the bottom of the ladder were the women who worked alone in the “cribs,” crude little shacks with room for a bed and chair. Rates ranged from twenty-five cents for Chinese, black, and Indian women to fifty cents for Mexican women, with higher rates for French and American women. In madam-operated parlor houses, the women charged $15, with a premium for overnight stays or special requests. The most popular prostitutes could make up to $150 per week in private rooms lavishly appointed with fancy furniture and drapery. However, even for the high-priced women carrying engraved calling cards with French names, there were high rates of alcoholism, disease, violence, and suicide. Many of the women were addicted to laudanum. Prostitutes were subject to weekly medical inspections by Dr. George Goodfellow, an Ohio-trained surgeon who treated the women with compassion and skill. His real specialty was gunshot wounds, but he was also the local abortionist.

Although Tombstone residents were well aware of where the prostitutes lived and worked, public solicitation was forbidden. Care was taken to protect married women and children through an unwritten law that kept the “soiled doves” away from the main streets. “Where is the mining camp without its gamblers and sharpers, its courtesans and adventurers?” theorized Clara Brown, who shrugged at the presence of saloons and brothels as an inevitable feature of boomtown life, though she did not expect to set a place for any of these men and women at her table.

Josephine worked tirelessly to obscure this troubled time of her life, and she was mostly successful. She left Johnny, but with the exception of a few money order receipts, Josephine Marcus or Josephine Behan disappeared from the public record for about six months. Her residence was unrecorded. She may have kicked her faithless lover out of the house they shared; it had, after all, been purchased with her parents' money. Out of affection for young Albert Behan that would last a lifetime, hesitant to leave him with his faithless father, she may have stayed in that house with the child while she took some time to plan. Or she may have moved into one of the local rooming houses or found shelter with Kitty and Harry Jones, or with John and Annie Lewellen, a family who lived nearby.

To add to the mystery of where and how she lived, Johnny's favorite prostitute Sadie Mansfield, the particular focus of his wife's fury in their divorce suit, had followed him from Prescott to Tombstone, where she became known as “Forty-Dollar Sadie.” Decades later, this would lead to speculation that Sadie Mansfield and Josephine “Sadie” Marcus were one and the same. They were not, according to Tombstone old-timers who knew both women. Moreover, given Josephine's pride and the option of appealing to her parents, it is unlikely that Josephine would have risked even a temporary stint as a prostitute.

Josephine conserved her meager store of capital and pondered her next step. As one of Clara Brown's so-called SAH women, she was a prisoner of Tombstone. She could find a job. Or she could find a new lover. There were nine men for every woman in Tombstone.

JOSEPHINE MET WYATT
in the summer of 1881, most likely at Sol Israel's Union News Depot on Fourth Street.

They had been circling each other for the better part of a year. Unlike the Earp wives, Josephine did not keep herself hidden at home but was often in town, shopping and picking up her mail at the post office, which meant waiting in a lengthy outdoor queue, while all of Tombstone walked by. Harry Jones, who acted as Wyatt's lawyer on at least one occasion, may have introduced her to Wyatt. She was publicly seen on Johnny Behan's arm, and Wyatt would have known that the alluring Josephine was living with his professional rival. But now the enmity between Wyatt and Johnny would become personal. Just because Behan was cheating on Josephine did not mean he was ready for another man to have her, especially Wyatt Earp. As Wyatt's biographer Stuart Lake put it: “In back of all the fighting, the killing and even Wyatt's duty as a peace officer, the impelling force of his destiny was the nature and acquisition and association in the case of Johnny Behan's girl. That relationship is the key to the whole yarn of Tombstone.”