Volume 14 , Issue 40

Wyatt Earp & Brothers (Stage Robbers)

In The Columbus Journal, dated Wednesday, 27 January 1897, in Columbus, Nebraska, we found an interesting article concerning Wyatt Earp portrayed as one of four brothers in a group faction called "Stage Robbers."

Have you heard about the Earp Stage Robbers? Wyatt Earp led a life of a coward throughout the west and south, shooting on a slight provocation and always had "The drop."

As the article reported, Wyatt Earp, whose decision recently robbed Robert Fitzsimmons, the prizefighter, of the purse, was one of four brothers. Two of whom were Julian and Warren Earp who were dead. The four Earp brothers were abundant about Tombstone in 1881, 1882 and 1883. The community in 1883 assumed a positive attitude toward the Earps and presented a front to that household made up in the main of Winchesters and Colt six shooters.

The Earps construed this into a lack of confidence on the part of the Tombstone public. They resented it by shaking the dust of Tombstone from their feet forever. They migrated to the Gunnison country. They were subsequently run out of the Gunnison. Wyatt and Virgil Earp went to California. The four Earps were named, respectively, Virgil, Wyatt, Warren and Julian. They had a sister, Jessie, who was with them in Tombstone. Of her, as novelists say, more anon.

Virgil was the oldest Earp, Wyatt the wisest, Warren the most foolhardy, Julian the bravest, and Jessie the most loving. As a result Wyatt and Virgil lived to get out of Tombstone and Gunnison in advance of public opinion, and the bullets that expressed it. While Warren was killed in Tombstone and Julian in the Gunnison by Ike Clauton (sp - Clanton), who had married his sister Jessie, and whom Wyatt and Virgil subsequently killed at Socorro - and Jessie, the loving one, wedded Ike Clauton (sp - Clanton), with whom her four brothers had a blood feud at the time.

Wyatt Earp and, for that matter, all the Earps were gun fighters and men of prompt and bitter courage. Wyatt Earp himself was credited with ten men; one, his own brother-in-law, Clauton (sp - Clanton). Every one of the Earps had killed his men - not man - and were famed inTombstone and in the Cochise country round about as qualified to pull and make a center shot in less than one-tenth of a second. They had all filed the sights from their six shooters when the reporter writing this piece had known them in 1881 and 1882, and eschewing the intervention of a trigger, were prone to that prowess known as "fanning" their pistols in a fight, whereby a Colt's six shooter becomes for the nonce a miniature gatling.

In the early 1880's there were two factions in Tombstone. Virgil and Wyatt Earp led one - the "Stage Robbers." Johnny Behan, Ike Clauton and Jack Ringo led the other - "The Rustlers."

"The Stage Robbers" were in politics republican and stood up stages and plundered express companies for a livelihood. The Rustlers were democrats, and devoted themselves to cattle stealing, murder, whisky and faro bank as steady pursuits.

In these days Johnny Behan was sheriff of Cochise county and Virgil Earp was the marshal of Tombstone. Behan, as stated, belonged to the cow thief democracy party, while Earp robbed stages and voted with the republicans.

The Earps - Wyatt, Virgil, Warren and Julian - had treated themselves to many a killing. But there was no money in murder; nothing but relaxation. So they devoted themselves to holding up the stage.

Virgil Earp had a combination with Barshel Williams, then the Wells Fargo agent at Tombstone. When big money went out on the stage, Williams tipped it off to Virgil Earp. The hold-ups were then planted in a convenient canyon. When the stage came along, at the word, "Hands up!" Warren Earp, who was a stage company guard, meeky put his hands over his head. Then the holdups went through the express pouches and boxes like the grace of heaven through a camp meeting. There was never any shooting. It was from all standpoints a family affair on the part of the Earps. Often they got as high as $25,000. After a robbery the Earps made further money listing themselves with a posse comitatus [comitatus from medieval Latin, - of the county.] and chasing themselves. Virgil, as marshal, would enlist Wyatt, Warren and Julian, together with Curly Bill, their cousin, and hunt the hold-ups.

It was a great industry, and by thus playing both ends against the middle, first robbing the stage, and then pretending to chase the robbers, Virgil, Wyatt, Warren and Julian Earp waxed opulent. But it all came out on them. Williams, the Wells Fargo agent, confessed.

After following the varying phases of the feud between the Earps and the opposing faction in the Tombstone war of extermination, as reviewed in the Kansas City Star of Saturday, of 1897, Dan Quinn concluded as follows:

"His last public appearance in a gun play was in the middle 1880's, when Mayor Kelly ran Luke Short out of Dodge City, and the fugitive Luke summoned Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Charley Bassett, Bat Masterson and Shotgun Collins to aid him in the recovery of his own. They reinstated Luke and he and Kelley divided Dodge City between them.

"Wyatt Earp must now be 45 years old. He is grim, game and deadly. He never took water. But he doesn't kill as he used to. Age has cooled his blood, many wounds have brought him caution. Moreover, the communities he honors with his presence won't stand these gayeties which marked Wyatt Earp's earlier career. And Wyatt has grown to like a quiet life. As a result he has not taken a scalp for years. His business just now should be that of a blackleg gambler; crooked as a dog's hind leg.

"If there are any honest hairs in his head they have grown since he left Arizona. He is exactly the sort of a man to referee a prize fight if a steal is meditated, and a job put up to a make the wrong man win. Wyatt Earp has all the nerve and dishonesty needed to turn the trick. The mere name of Wyatt Earp as referee shows that Fitzsimmons was against a hard game."

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