Legends of the Old West - TOMBSTONE Ep. 1 | All That Glitters

Episode Date: August 12, 2018

Wyatt Earp earns a reputation as a peace officer in the tough cowtowns of Kansas before his brother Virgil entices him to move west. Doc Holliday begins a promising career as a dentist in Georgia befo...re tuberculosis, and possibly darker troubles, drive him out of the South. Holliday and the Earps converge on a mining camp called Tombstone in the Arizona desert with dreams of making their fortunes. Join Black Barrel+ for early access and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:19 Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Lego Fortnite. Lego Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of Lego play and
Starting point is 00:00:45 Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Prussian immigrant Frederick Brunkow was prospecting along the banks of the San Pedro River in
Starting point is 00:01:15 southeastern Arizona when he found some promising signs that silver ore might be in the area. He had been well-schooled in mining and geology in Europe and had immigrated to the United States in 1848. He used his expertise to get a job with the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company in early 1856 and soon found himself in Tucson, Arizona. When he identified a potential spot for a silver mine along the San Pedro, he quickly formed the St. Louis Mining Company with a pair of brothers, James and William Williams, and they filed a claim on the land. Then a fourth man joined the team, J.C. Moss, and they began to build their mining operation. A small community soon sprang up around their mine, and they hired some laborers from the Mexican province of Sonora to help get the ore out
Starting point is 00:02:03 of the ground. The wives and children of the workers populated the tiny hamlet, but what began as an encouraging venture turned dark and brutal almost overnight. On January 23, 1860, the Sonoran workers took over the mine. They massacred Frederick Brunkow, James Williams, and J.C. Moss. They plundered the mine and fled back to Mexico. William Williams was out of town at the time, and he was the only founder who escaped the slaughter. Mining efforts in southern Arizona had bloody origins,
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Starting point is 00:03:52 of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r e a l m now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, welcome to Season 2 of the Legends of the Old West podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this is the first episode of friend Doc Holliday, lived in the last great boomtown of the American West. It's a story of murder and betrayal, love and lust, greed and vengeance, and it captivated the entire nation. Americans from San Francisco to New York opened their newspapers every week to read about the larger-than-life events in the Arizona desert. This is episode one, All That Glitters. Ed Sheflin trudged through the barren desert of southeastern Arizona. He was on another
Starting point is 00:05:21 excursion from his headquarters at Fort Huachuca, where he was employed as an Indian scout. But he was convinced there were riches in the San Pedro River Valley, and he was obsessed with finding them. So he made continuous trips out from the fort to find his fortune. But at this time, in 1877, and in this place, to leave the army base and just wander through the desert could easily be a death sentence. leave the army base and just wander through the desert could easily be a death sentence. Not only was the landscape inhospitable, but the stronghold of the Chiricahua Apaches was only about a dozen miles away. They were fierce warriors and the last remaining real force that threatened the United States, and they were led by men whose names would live forever in American lore, Cochise and then Geronimo. One man roaming through the hills wouldn't even be sport for them,
Starting point is 00:06:07 let alone a challenge. But Ed didn't care. He went anyway. And now he stumbled onto some chunks of ore that held promise. They looked good, but where had they come from? Were these just random deposits left here by time and circumstance? Or had they washed down from a rich vein miles away? He was desperate to find out. He trudged onward. His long black hair and beard were matted with sweat. His battered clothes were a patchwork of different fabrics. He was 29 years old, but early historian James McClintock later wrote that he looked 40. None of this mattered to Ed. McClintock later wrote that he looked 40. None of this mattered to Ed.
Starting point is 00:06:47 He traced the root of the ore, and finally he found it. Buried in a ledge was the vein of silver that had produced the deposit he'd found miles away. This was it. His fortune was right here in front of him. But he had to get it out of the ground. And he had to own the land before he could do that. So he hurried to Tucson to file a claim on the land. Actually, two pieces of land. But he needed names for them. He couldn't just call them Crazy Chef's Claim and Ed's Land. He needed something better.
Starting point is 00:07:18 He'd been teased by the soldiers back at Fort Huachuca, and now their words echoed in his mind. They had said the only stone he would find out there was his tombstone, so he called his claims graveyard and tombstone. But Ed had another problem. He had exactly 30 cents in his pocket, and that was considerably less than a person would need to build a mining operation. He needed more money. He needed to find his brother Al, who was working at the Silver King mine in Globe, Arizona, which was 100 miles north of where he now stood. Ed made it to Globe,
Starting point is 00:07:54 only to find out that Al was gone. He had moved to the Signal mine more than 200 miles away. Ed was going to have to cross nearly the entire width of Arizona, but he would do it as soon as he got some more money. He worked in Globe for a spell and then set out for the signal mine. Thankfully, Al Sheflin was still at the signal mine when Ed arrived. Ed showed his brother some samples of the ore he'd found in the southeastern desert.
Starting point is 00:08:21 Al and Ed showed the samples to an assayer at the McCracken mine nearby named Richard Gerd, and Gerd had good news for the brothers. The ore was worth $2,000 a ton. That was big, but what they didn't know was that it was nothing compared to what was to come. The three men formed a partnership and headed for Ed's claims in the far corner of the territory,
Starting point is 00:08:43 only about an hour from the Mexican border. When they arrived in the area that would later be known as Goose Flats, Ed showed Al and Richard the vein he'd found. The vein was so pure and rich, they could press a coin into it and leave an exact imprint. Richard quickly assayed the ore and then made a startling declaration. It was worth $15,000 a ton. Richard supposedly said to Ed,
Starting point is 00:09:09 You lucky cuss, you've hit it. And the Lucky Cuss Mine was born. As rich as it was, it would prove to be the smallest of the four major mines that would eventually take root in the area. The Toughnut, the Grand Central, and the Contention Mines would all be bigger and richer. But the point was the same. Ed Sheflin was right, just as Frederick Brunkow had been right nearly 20 years earlier. He and his partners were millionaires. There was almost unimaginable wealth in these hills, and soon they would be swarming with miners. And with the miners would come every other
Starting point is 00:09:46 form of human life. Shopkeepers, saloon keepers, businessmen, stage performers, rich investors and their wives, prostitutes, lawmen, outlaws, drunks, vagrants, loafers, and those just curious to see the circus. All these people would need a headquarters from which to do business. In March 1879, a town site was laid out on a mesa overlooking the Tough Nut Claim, and when it came time to name the town, there was only one choice that would do. Tombstone. Wyatt Earp never really wanted to be a lawman. He just sort of fell into it. But as sometimes happens, when you end up being good at something, people want to keep hiring you to do it.
Starting point is 00:10:32 He wore his first badge as the constable of Lamar, Missouri at 21 years old. Next, there was a stint in Ellsworth, Kansas, where he gained notoriety for a face-off with Ben Thompson. Ben and his brother Billy were Englishmen who had moved to Texas. They were known as tough men and good with guns, and they had mixed it up with Wild Bill Hickok and Abilene before moving on to Ellsworth. One night, the brothers were gambling in Brennan's Saloon with two policemen.
Starting point is 00:11:02 There was plenty of drinking, and soon there was a dispute over the game. One of the policemen hit Ben Thompson in the face. All four men reached for their guns. They started arguing loudly. They moved outside, and shots were fired, but no one was hit. The situation was about to explode when County Sheriff Chauncey Whitney ran in to stop it.
Starting point is 00:11:24 He was able to talk the Thompson brothers down. He said, let's go back into the saloon, let's have a drink, and we'll smooth this thing out. They were headed for the door when one of the city policemen staggered outside with guns in both hands. Ben Thompson immediately raised his gun and fired, but missed. Billy Thompson, who was drunk as hell and had a shotgun with both hammers cocked, unloaded on the policeman. But he missed his target and tore up Sheriff Whitney's shoulder instead. Whitney would later die of his wounds. Ben knew it was time to go. He grabbed Billy and tried to rush him out of town, but Billy wasn't having it. Their escape was too slow, and soon, Mayor James Miller
Starting point is 00:12:06 ran out and ordered Ben to give up his guns. Ben had no intention of surrendering his weapons, and now the street began filling with Texas cowboys who backed up their friends. For more than an hour, the gang of Texans lingered on the boardwalk on one side of the street. The city police force of John Norton, Policeman Ed Hogue, and Policeman John Morco, who had been gambling with the Thompsons, just stood on the other side of the street doing nothing. The mayor fired all of them right then and there. What happened next is still a matter of debate, but Stuart Lake made Wyatt out to be a classic western hero in his 1931 biography. He claimed Mayor Miller made Wyatt the town marshal right on the spot,
Starting point is 00:12:52 and Wyatt marched up to the gang of Texans and challenged Ben Thompson to fight or throw down his guns. Wyatt yelled at the Texans to move back, and they did. Then he reached over and unbuckled Ben Thompson's gun belt and walked him across the street to the Justice of the Peace. Now there's zero evidence to back up these details, but through stories that have been handed down over the years, it seems likely that Wyatt did step in to defuse the situation. Exactly how he did it will never be known, but it was still another notch on the belt of his growing reputation. Whether Stuart Lake's version was wildly embellished or not, his story highlights two traits that everyone would come to recognize about Wyatt Earp. He was uncommonly cool under pressure,
Starting point is 00:13:36 and he was absolutely fearless. Those traits would be on display when he and his brothers walked into a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral in the fall of 1881, and notorious Arizona outlaw Curly Bill Brocious would learn about them the hard way in the spring of 1882. Around the time Wyatt Earp was settling the Thompson dispute in Ellsworth, Kansas, John Henry Holliday was bidding goodbye to his native state of Georgia forever. He was born in Griffin, Georgia and grew up in Valdosta during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. In 1870, he went north to Philadelphia to enroll in the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. He emerged two years later with his degree and then made his
Starting point is 00:14:23 first trip to the West. John Henry, as he was called at the time, tagged along with a classmate who was returning to his home in St. Louis. John Henry's time there was brief, but it would have a lifelong impact on the young man. In St. Louis, he met Kate Fisher, though that wasn't her real name. History knows her best as Kate Elder, or by her nickname, Big Nose Kate. She was buried under the name Mary Kay Cummings in Prescott, Arizona, but her real name was Mary Catherine Harony. She was a Hungarian immigrant, and she and John Henry apparently made impressions on each other because they would be closely linked for the rest of their lives. They wouldn't reunite for several years,
Starting point is 00:15:05 but the seed of a relationship had been planted. John Henry went back to Georgia and set up his first dental practice in Atlanta in the summer of 1872. But his first of two real stints as a dentist was short-lived. Within a year, he was on the road west to Texas, never to return to Georgia again. The reason for his departure has always required a two-tier explanation. The top tier is the most common.
Starting point is 00:15:32 He developed tuberculosis. His mother and his adopted brother died of the disease, and he knew the symptoms well and the remedy of the time, a dry climate. The bottom tier is the sinister underbelly. Local legends hold a darker reason for his flight westward. Several versions of the story survive, ranging from fairly benign by the standards of the day to downright brutal. At the time, there was a swimming hole near the family's home in Valdosta that was used by both white children and black children. At some point, the white children decided they didn. At some point, the white
Starting point is 00:16:05 children decided they didn't want to share the spot any longer, and they told the black kids to move along and find a different swimming hole. The black kids protested and said they weren't going anywhere. This enraged the white population in the area. John Henry ran down to the spot with a gun. The most benign version of the story claims he had a pistol and he fired over the heads of the black kids to scare them away. But Bat Masterson's version is much more ruthless and he claimed that his version
Starting point is 00:16:33 came directly from John Henry himself. In this version, John Henry confronted the black kids with a double barrel shotgun. He told them to get out of the river. As they rushed toward the opposite shore, he fired both barrels. The story claims he killed two kids outright and wounded several others, and that was why he had to leave for the West. There are no surviving documents to support or
Starting point is 00:16:57 deny any version of the story, but either way, John Henry Holliday headed for the western frontier. Abilene, Kansas was the granddaddy of the cow towns. It was the first, and it established the tradition of Texas cattlemen driving their herds north to the rail lines that would ship them east. As the railroad zigzagged west from Abilene, Ellsworth was the next stop, where Wyatt Earp confronted Ben Thompson in August of 1873. Wichita was the next stop on the line, and by the spring of 1874, that's where Wyatt found himself. But he wasn't the first Earp in town. His older brother Jim broke the ice. Jim was the eldest child of Nicholas Earp and his second wife, Virginia Ann Cooksey. They had a brood of eight children, but only six survived to adulthood.
Starting point is 00:17:52 Those were five brothers and a sister. Jim, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, Warren, and Adelia. Patriarch Nicholas Earp was restless, like John Henry Holliday. Patriarch Nicholas Earp was restless, like John Henry Holliday. He moved the Klan from Kentucky to Illinois to Iowa to California to Missouri and then back to California. Along the way, as the boys grew older, they dropped off to blaze their own trails. Jim was a saloon operator and a gambling man his entire life. He worked in saloons in Wichita and his wife Bessie set up a brothel,
Starting point is 00:18:26 and that's where Wyatt found them in the spring of 1874. Wyatt had seen much of the West during his family's travels and through other various jobs, but he had never seen anything like Wichita. The St. Louis Republican newspaper described the town as, "...a brevet hell after sundown. Brass bands whooping it up, harlots and hack drivers yelling and cursing, dogs yelping, pistols going off, bullwhackers cracking their whips.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Gayly attired females thumpin' drum pianos, and in dulcet tones and mocking smiles, invite the boys in, and night is commenced in earnest. That was Wichita when Wyatt Earp became a deputy marshal. Wyatt was 26 years old and had filled out to six feet tall with the same sandy blonde hair and mustache that adorned most of the Earp boys. This was where his career as a lawman really began. He amassed an impressive record during the two
Starting point is 00:19:25 years he wore a badge. He made numerous arrests and never once fired his gun. But his time as a lawman in Wichita ended unceremoniously. He was fired on April 2nd, 1876, after he got mixed up in politics. His boss, the town marshal Bill Smith, was running for office against former marshal Mike Meager. Smith made some disparaging comments about Jim Earp and his wife Bessie working in the vice trade and Wyatt's connection to them. Wyatt, being Wyatt, was not going to let that slide for any reason. He started beating the hell out of his boss until, ironically, Mike Meager stepped in to stop the fight. Regardless, that was the end of Wyatt's career in Wichita. But lucky for him, Dodge City was just 150 miles to the west.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Over the last four years, it had exploded to become the queen of the cow towns, and it desperately needed lawmen. Just a month after Wyatt was fired, the mayor of Dodge City, George Hoover, put out a call to bring the popular deputy to the most hell-raising town in the West. As Mayor Hoover pinned a Marshall's badge on Wyatt's chest in Dodge, John Henry Holliday was winding down three years' worth of whirlwind travels around the West. He had left Atlanta and landed in Dallas, where he had opened a dental practice in the summer of 1873. Like most things in John Henry's
Starting point is 00:20:51 life, it didn't last long. He dissolved the practice in October, and from that point forward, he was a professional gambler and drinker. He moved north to Denison, then struck west to Fort Griffin. Fort Griffin. Fort Griffin was basically the end of the world in Texas. It was the last stop between the green hills and grass of central Texas and the barren flatland of west Texas. It was located about 50 miles north of present-day Abilene, but the founding of Abilene was still 15 years in the future. For now, it was just Fort Griffin, out there on the prairie,
Starting point is 00:21:27 and it had the same characteristics of so many of the raucous towns of the West. Early Texas newspaperman Don H. Biggers described it years later. There were buffalo hunters, bullwhackers, soldiers, cow punchers, Indians, gamblers, toughs, refined businessmen, and fallen women mingling in one common herd on the streets.
Starting point is 00:21:51 From more than a dozen places, music was being ground out on pianos, fiddles, banjos, and guitars, and the whole town was a babble of boisterous talk, whoops, curses, laughter, song, and miserable music. These were the kinds of towns that John Henry Holliday would gravitate toward for the rest of his life. But by this point, fewer and fewer people called him John Henry. Ironically, as soon as he gave in to his love of the nightlife and quit being a dentist, everyone started calling him Doc. Doc Holliday roamed the West from Fort Griffin to Denver to Cheyenne and maybe as far north as Deadwood, South Dakota before turning back south.
Starting point is 00:22:31 He may have stopped in St. Louis to rekindle a romance with Kate Elder before starting the circuit all over again in Dallas. His movements and activities are hard to track, but he was back out in Fort Griffin with Kate in the summer of 1877, and we're pretty sure he was still there in the winter, because that's when he met a lawman from Kansas named Wyatt Earp. Wyatt had been in and out of law enforcement during his first couple years in Dodge. He was assistant marshal in the summer of 76 when the first cattle drives came to town, but then he resigned to go to Deadwood for the winter of 76 with his
Starting point is 00:23:10 brother Morgan. They returned to Dodge in the summer of 77, but Wyatt didn't work with the police in an official capacity. By that point, Ed Masterson, older brother of Bat Masterson, had taken Wyatt's spot. By October of 1877, Wyatt left again, apparently to go fugitive hunting. It seems he was after train robbers Mike Rourke and Dave Rudabaugh. The trail led him right through Fort Griffin, where he met Doc Holliday and Kate Elder. Wyatt and Doc were unlikely friends. Wyatt was stern and resolute. He rarely smiled and almost never laughed. He preferred ice cream to whiskey. Doc was a powder keg cloaked in
Starting point is 00:23:53 southern gentility. He spoke with a drawl and could be jovial and gentlemanly in one second and then fly into a rage the next second, especially when he was drinking, which he did more and more as the years wore on. Wyatt spent maybe a month in Fort Griffin before moving on. Doc and Kate lingered until the spring of 1878 when, according to Wyatt, they made a speedy and creative getaway. Doc was locked in a poker game with gambler Ed Bailey. Ed had the disagreeable habit of messing with the discarded cards. A skilled che the disagreeable habit of messing with the discarded cards. A skilled cheater could exchange one of the cards in his hand for one of the cards in the deadwood, as the discarded cards were called. Doc told Ed to stop. Ed didn't stop. He kept toying
Starting point is 00:24:38 with the cards. Doc admonished him a second time. He cautioned Ed to just play poker. Now, whether Ed was intentionally trying to rile up Doc, or whether he was trying to cheat, or whether he was just too dumb to help himself remains to be seen. But he wouldn't stop touching the discarded cards. Doc's patience was gone. He slapped his cards down on the table without showing them to Ed, and he raked in the pot. Ed pulled his gun and
Starting point is 00:25:05 started waving it at Doc. Doc swept the gun aside, yanked out a knife, and drove it into Ed's ribs. Doc was quickly seized and dragged out of the saloon. He was hauled across the street to a hotel and stuffed in a room. Outside, a crowd shouted for his head. Kate wasn't in the saloon, but she heard about the incident and came running. She saw the crowd yelling for blood. She had to act quickly. She ran around the back of the hotel and set a shed on fire. She hollered that there was a fire behind the hotel, and the crowd raced around to the shed to battle the flames.
Starting point is 00:25:41 Kate slipped inside the hotel and got the drop on the town marshal who was guarding Doc. She shoved a pistol in his face and said, come on, Doc. Doc didn't need to be told twice. They hurried out of the hotel and hid in some willows near a creek until a friend brought them horses and fresh clothes. They then rode 400 miles to Dodge City, where Doc's friend Wyatt Earp had just been reinstalled as the assistant marshal on the police force. While Doc and Kate were riding from Texas to Kansas, Ed Sheflin, Al Sheflin, and Richard Gerd were celebrating the discovery of their lives. Ed had convinced the two men to follow him to a desolate corner of the Arizona Territory, and now they were staring at the richest silver vein in the country.
Starting point is 00:26:34 Less than a year from now, the last great boomtown of the West would rise out of the dust, and its siren song would lure fortune-seekers from all over the country. And in Dodge, the spring, summer, and fall of 1878 were the most exciting and most violent seasons in the early days of the Cowtown. It was full of sin and opportunity for men like Doc Holliday, but it was hard on peace officers like Wyatt Earp. In April, shortly before Wyatt and Doc arrived, Ed Masterson, who was the town marshal, was
Starting point is 00:27:06 killed by a couple of drunken Texas cowboys. His younger brother, Bat Masterson, was the county sheriff, and he was nearby at the time of the shooting. He immediately avenged his brother's death and killed one of the cowboys. In July, Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday were gambling in a saloon at 3 a.m. when Texas Cowboys rode up out front and fired through the walls. Everybody inside hit the ground and no one was injured or killed, but the gunfire brought Wyatt Earp and Jim Masterson running.
Starting point is 00:27:40 Wyatt and Jim shot back as the Texans galloped away from the scene, and it was the only time that Wyatt fired his gun in the years he worked the cow towns of Kansas, and he may have killed a man for the first time in his life. Most of the cowboys escaped but Wyatt and Jim found one man in the dirt who had been badly hurt in the exchange. He died of his wounds a month later though no one knew for sure whose gun fired the fatal shot. In September Wyatt and Bat Masterson had a run-in with famous Texas gunfighter Clay Allison on the streets of Dodge, though it didn't result in gunplay. In October, the son of a prominent Texas rancher mistakenly shot and killed an actress when he had meant to assassinate the mayor. Bat Masterson assembled an all-star posse that included Wyatt Earp and Bill Tillman, among others.
Starting point is 00:28:26 This was like the 1992 Dream Team that had Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird in the same starting lineup. The posse caught its man and dragged him back to Dodge to stand trial. But it was a mysterious event in August that solidified the friendship forever between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Wyatt always said Doc saved his life, but he would never give details. As close as we can tell, Doc Holliday was gambling in a saloon, as he did most every night. In the same saloon, two Texas Cowboys, Tobe Driscoll and Ed Morrison, grew more and more drunk.
Starting point is 00:29:03 Soon, they convinced their fellow Texans to take over the entire bar. They would confiscate all the liquor and pour their own drinks. Wyatt and another policeman ran in and started clubbing the Texans with their pistols before the cowboys could take control of all the whiskey. Wyatt had perfected the art of cracking skulls in Dodge, and it was quickly known as buffaloing. As he and the policeman knocked out the offending cowboys, a Texan behind Wyatt pulled his gun and pointed it at Wyatt's
Starting point is 00:29:30 back. Doc shouted, look out, Wyatt. He drew and fired at the cowboy. He scared the man off, and Wyatt Earp breathed a sigh of relief. Dodge City calmed down in the winter of 1878, as it always did in the winter when the cattle season was over. True to form, Doc and Kate pulled up stakes and moved on. But this time, it wasn't because of a restless nature. In the harsh Midwest winter, Doc's tuberculosis worsened. He and Kate fled Kansas for the montezuma hot springs near las vegas new mexico the action in dodge city in the spring and summer of 1879 was mild by comparison to the bloodshed of the previous year and during that time wyatt began receiving letters from his older brother virgil in arizona territory Virgil and his common-law wife Allie had been in Prescott
Starting point is 00:30:26 for a year and they'd been hearing rumors of a silver strike in the southeast corner of the territory. In March of 1879, a town with an ominous name had sprouted out of the desert and there were said to be riches for the taking down in that area. Meanwhile in the Midwest, Ogallala, Nebraska became the premier destination for cattle drives that summer. Wyatt could feel his time in Dodge coming to an end. In September 1879, Wyatt turned in his badge. He and the woman he'd become involved with, Celia Ann Blaylock, packed up and headed west. They were joined by Jim and Jim's wife, Bessie, and her two kids from a previous marriage. Everyone called Celia Ann Maddie, and she was Wyatt's second wife,
Starting point is 00:31:13 for all intents and purposes. He had been briefly married back in Missouri, but his wife had died of typhoid fever less than a year later. Wyatt and Maddie were never officially married. They were in a common-law relationship, like Virgil and Allie, who never went through a marriage ceremony but stayed together for the rest of their lives. But unlike Virgil and Allie, the relationship between Wyatt and Maddie would not survive the trials of Tombstone. The Earp families rolled out of Dodge in the fall of 1879. They stopped in Las Vegas, New Mexico to collect Doc and Kate, and then pushed on to Prescott, where they met up with Virgil and Allie. Doc and Kate liked Prescott, so they decided to stick around for a while.
Starting point is 00:31:55 But the Earps were itching to ride. There was money to be made in the San Pedro River Valley, and they wanted to get it as fast as they could. In December 1879, Jim, Virgil, Wyatt, and their wives headed for Tombstone. On the next episode, old man Clanton sets up a ranch outside Tombstone and hires Tom and Frank McClowry to work with his son Ike. The first marshal of Tombstone is killed at the hands of an outlaw named Curly Bill Brocious, and the Earp brothers become lawmen and clash for the first
Starting point is 00:32:30 time with a loose network of rustlers and thieves known as the Cowboys. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, the best way to help is to give it a rating and a review on iTunes. Recording and sound design for this series were by Rob Valliere in Phoenix, Arizona. Our website is oldwestpodcast.com, and that's where you can find links to source material, music, and the ways to subscribe. Lastly, check out our social media pages for photos, videos, and discussions. Our Facebook page is Legends of the Old West Podcast, and our handles on Twitter and Instagram are at Old West Podcast. Thanks again.

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