Page 63 - All About History - Issue 12-14

With his own and his family’s lives threatened by a murderous band of

outlaws, Wyatt Earp took the law into his own hands and formed a posse

to track them down, becoming a hunted outlaw himself

Written by Robert Jones

our gunshots splintered another concealed assassins last night. His wounds are fatal.
dry and dusty night in Tombstone, Telegraph me appointment with power to appoint
Arizona. A man, wandering from the deputies. Local authorities are doing nothing. The
town’s central Crystal Palace Saloon lives of other citizens are threatened. Wyatt Earp.”
F back to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, For weeks, Wyatt, his brothers and their friends
suddenly felt time slow to a crawl as his back and had been receiving death threats for their role in
arm were lit up in a blaze of agonising pain. The the Shoot-out at the OK Corral, a gunfight that had
contact of three loads of double-barrelled buckshots seen a number of infamous outlaws taken out. The
slammed into him like a runaway freight train. The critical condition of his brother Virgil convinced
force of the impact sent him crashing back into Wyatt that everyone he knew and loved had been
the side of the Crystal Palace, with excess shots marked for death. Unfortunately, while the lawman
peppering the saloon’s walls and smashing through knew those responsible he was powerless to act,
its windows. In excruciating pain, the fallen man with the sheriff of Tombstone, Johnny Behan,
stumbled toward the Cosmopolitan, blood dripping openly hostile to the Earps. Behan was close
from him onto the baked earth. Drawing upon friends with William ‘Curly Bill’ Brocius whom Earp
his last reserves of energy, he managed to reach believed had his brother’s blood on his hands.
the hotel’s entrance and fall through its door – a The tall, pale and serious-looking Wyatt, with his
moment later everything was black. Across the rough and gravelly voice, was going over the head
street on the upper floor of an unfinished building, of Behan to US Marshal Crawley P Dake, a man
the assassins slipped away into the night. who had the authority to grant Wyatt deputising
The morning after, on 29 December 1881, powers to assemble a posse capable of bringing
Tombstone’s Deputy Town Marshal Wyatt Earp the assassins to justice. The question was whether
sent a telegram that read: “Virgil Earp was shot by or not Dake would free his hands and if so, how

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