Volume 17 , Issue 40

Referee Earp's Frontier Life

It was in The Times, out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sunday, 6 December 1896, page 23, that we find this frontier life story of the kind of man that defeated Bob Fitzsimmons. That man was Wyatt Earp. But who was Bob Fitzsimmons? Let us explore this and find out.

Found on Newspapers.com

Referee Earp's Frontier Life
The kind of man that defeated Bob Fitzsimmons. In strife and bloodshed nearly all of his life had been passed and his family was one that had helped to make the wild and woolly west a name as well as a tradition. "Not an honest hair in his head," so said one that had known him for years.

Wyatt Earp was attracting widespread attention back in 1896 as the man that had the nerve to deprive Fitzsimmons of a well earned victory. Alfred H. Lewis, writing in the New York Journal, had this to say of him: "In the early eighties I was a neighbor of the Earp family. They abode at Tombstone, Arizona, and did much toward making that hamlet a thrilling place of residence.

"Wyatt Earp is one of four brothers; two of whom, Julian and Warren Earp, are happily dead and out. 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 wee subsequently run out of Gunnison and Wyatt and Virgil Earp went to California, where Wyatt Earp went to California, where Wyatt the other night refereed the Fitzsimmmons-Sharkey fight."

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 the 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 Clanton, who had married his sister Jessie, and whom Wyatt and Virgil subsequently killed at Socorro, and Jessie, the loving one, wedded Ike Clanton, with whom her four brothers had a blood feud at the time!

Wyatt Earp, and, for that matter, alls he Earps, were gunfighters and men of prompt and bitter courage. Wyatt Earp himself was credited with ten men: one his own brother-in-law, Clanton. Every one of the ears had killed his men - not man - and were famed in Tombstone and in the Cochise country round about as qualified to pull and make a centre shot in less than one-tenth of a second. They had all filed the sights from their six-shooters when the writer knew them in 1881 and 1882; and, eschewing the intervention of a trigger, were prone to that prowess known as jamming their pistols in a fight, whereby a Colt's six-shooter becomes for the nonce a miniature gatling.

In the early 1880s there were two factions in Tombstone. Virgil and Wyatt Earp led one - the Stage Robbers. Johnny Behan, Ike Clanton and Jack Ringo led the other - the Rustlers. The Stage Robbers were in politics Republican,a nd 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 those 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 he 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 Barthel Williams, then the Wells-Fargo agent at Tombstone. When big money went out on the stage, Williams tipped it off to Virgil Earp. The holdups 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, meekly 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 ears. Often they got as haul as $25,000. After a robbery the Earps made further money, enlisting themselves. Virgil, as marshal, would enlist Wyatt, Warren and Julian, together with Curly Bill, their cousin, and hunt the holdups. It was a great industry, and by thus playing both ends against the middle, first robbing the stage and then proceeding 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. It happened thus. It was a gala occasion in the Bird Cage Opera House, in Tombstone. Sheriff Jimmy Behan, Ike Clanton, Ringo and others of the cow thieves and boxers on one side. The Earps, Curly Bill, Doc Holliday, Nixon and others of the stage robbers had boxes opposite. When one side cheered a performer, the others hissed, and as whisky flowed the spirits of both gangs mounted.

At last Ike Clanton took umbrage because Nixon opposite reposed his boot on the rail of his box. Clinton was too far away for conversation, so in testimony of his condemnation of nixon's action, he pulled his gun and put a bullet through Nixon's offensive foot. It came off the box rail.

Much good and enthusiastic shooting ensued. Twelve men were killed and wounded; none of the Earps, however. Williams, the confederate of Virgil and Wyatt Earp in the stage robbing, was badly shot up.He expected to die and confessed. At this Wyatt Earp and his three brothers, with others of the gang, fortified themselves in an old dory house on the edge of Tombstone. Began and the cow thieves put in what time they could spare from faro bank and theft in besieging them. The siege was a stand-off. At last Warren Earp - the foolhardy one - heeled himself and came down from the dory fortress to play faro bank. He had just set a stack of blues on the king open when a cow thief listlessly put a bullet through his head.

Thus died the first of the ears. There was no more fighting then, and at last the Earps were driven out of Tombstone and into the Gunnison. Their sister Jessie went with them. Ike Canton, one of the Democrats and cow thieves, followed them to Colorado, and eloped with Jessie. This was too much for the Republican stage robbing blood of Wyatt earp and his brothers. They pursued. They ran Clanton and his bride into a mine tunnel. The miners interfered. There must be fair play. Ike Clanton offered to fight Virgil, Wyatt or julian Earp for their sister. Julian took it up. The two shot it out with pistols and Julian was killed.

Thus died the second Earp. Ike Clanton and Jessie, nee Earp, lived in peace two years. Then Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp and Curley Bill crossed up with Canton, and there was another feast of the guns. Clinton was killed and took within Curly Bill to the happy hunting grounds. Wyatt Earp, when the smoke blew away, was also full of well made bullet holes, but he got well.

It was then that Wyatt and Virgil Earp lined out for the slope. Just before they left Tombstone the ears killed the two McLowries, Billy Clanton and frank Stilwell. It was these killings rather than the Wells-Fargo holdups that caused the pubic to lay for them. Wyatt Earp was prominent - with his gun - in the Cochise county seat war between Tombstone and Charleston of long ago.

His last public appearance in a gun play was in the middle eighties, 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 Like and he and Kelly divided Dodge City between them.

In 1896, Wyatt Earp must have been 45 years old. He was grim, game and deadly. He never took water. But he didn't kill as he used to. Age had cooled his blood, many wounds had brought caution. Moreover, the communities he honors with his presence wouldn't stand those gayeties which marked Wyatt Earp's earlier career. And Wyatt had grown to like a quiet life. As a result, he had not taken a scalp for years.

His business back then should be that of a blackleg gambler - crooked as a dog's hind leg. If there were any honest hairs in his head they had grown since he left Arizona. He was exactly the sort of man to referee a prize-fight if a steal was meditated and a job put up to make the wrong man win. Wyatt Earp had all of the nerve and dishonesty needed to turn the tick. The mere name of Wyatt Earp as referee shoed that Fitzsimmons was against a hard game.
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