When the West Was Young

by Frederick R. Bechdolt

And then, while the town was seething with gossip concerning the coming trial, Frank Stilwell stole into Tombstone with a half-breed and slew Morgan Earp, who was playing billiards at the time. The murder accomplished, Stilwell took a fast horse and rode to Tucson. The half-breed fled to the Dragoon Mountains.

The next day the three surviving Earp brothers and Doc Holliday started for California with Morgan’s body. At dusk that evening the train reached Tucson. Now Ike Clanton was in the town, out on bail awaiting trial for a stage-robbery. And Frank Stilwell was there. It was no more than natural that the Earps should keep a sharp lookout when the locomotive stopped at the station.

Their vigilance was rewarded. Stilwell came slipping through the shadows just as the train was pulling out. The passengers in the Pullman were startled by a crackling 102 of revolver shots from the rear platform. Directly afterward the Earps came back inside and took their seats. And Tucson was given something to talk about that evening by the discovery of Frank Stilwell’s body riddled with bullets beside the track.

The Earp party held council in the Pullman and determined to return to Tombstone. Leaving Virgil to complete the journey with Morgan’s body, the other two brothers and Doc Holliday left the train at a way station and flagged a freight which took them back to Benson. Here they procured horses and rode to the county seat.

Sheriff Johnny Behan received telegraphic advices from Tucson to arrest them. He found the trio sometime in the afternoon. They had got their effects together and sent them ahead on a wagon. They were themselves on horseback, about to set forth for Colorado.

Wyatt glanced down upon the sheriff as the latter came up.

“Listen,” he said. “Don’t you even look as if you wanted to arrest us.”

And with that the three rode down the main street. They passed the saloons and gambling-houses, and men came flocking to the doors to see them go by.

At the running walk the horses came on, three abreast; the faces of the riders were set; their eyes swept the crowds on the sidewalks. They went on by. They turned the corner into the road that leads to the Dragoons. That was the last that Tombstone ever saw of them.

They stopped at Pete Spence’s ranch, where the half-breed 103 was working who had been with Frank Stilwell on the evening of Morgan’s murder, and a cow-boy found the man’s body the next morning.