Lady at the O.K. Corral (10 page)

Josephine would only learn the details much later, and not from Wyatt. His friends told her how Wyatt and Johnny Behan led different posses around the Arizona Territory for months, sometimes within sight of each other, Behan waving a warrant for Wyatt's arrest and making a great show of following him, but only halfheartedly trying to capture his dangerous prey, while Wyatt ignored Behan and continued to hunt his brothers' attackers, one by one, with ruthless precision. Again and again, Wyatt emerged unscathed from savage gunfights.

The Vendetta Ride was followed closely, especially in Tombstone, where public opinion was divided as to the righteousness of Wyatt's quest. “The sheriff was at the head of a gang of cowboys, hunting the Earps. A nice community,” was Clara Brown's sarcastic summation. “The posses have marched and counter-marched until people have become accustomed to seeing armed horsemen upon the streets.” She considered it unfair that newspapers like her own
San Diego Union
carried lurid accounts of the Frank Stilwell murder, with no mention of the “even more villainous” assassination of Morgan Earp that preceded it. That Wyatt had turned his back on the law was inexcusable, but she urged her readers to consider that “it was not the Earps who first disturbed this quiet, and that their criminal actions since have been from the determination to avenge the murder of a dearly beloved brother.” George Parsons had no sympathy for Stilwell and his associates, and congratulated Wyatt on “a quick vengeance, and a bad character sent to Hell.”

As Wyatt's body count increased, his advocates back in Tombstone began to waver in their support. The town's future was at stake: Would it be remembered for its success as a mining town, or as the seat of terror and anarchy? Even Earp partisans had grown weary of the tension created by the vendetta. “Fine reputation we're getting abroad,” Parsons worried. He was ever the most bellicose of the Earp supporters, but he had investments to protect. “A regular epidemic of murder is upon us,” declared Endicott Peabody, fearing that the town's violence would compromise his attempts to expand his congregation and build a new church.

By April, the killing was over. The groups on horseback broke up, and the exhausted participants staggered back to Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.

Wyatt's next steps were uncertain; while the family still had business interests in Tombstone, including the Mattie Blaylock mine, not even he could doubt that the Earps were finished in Tombstone.

Johnny Behan was done, too, though it would take more time before he left Tombstone. As with Wyatt Earp, opinion would remain sharply divided about Behan's character and motivation. He gained a coveted place in history as the first sheriff of Cochise. His deputy Billy Breakenridge described him as a “brave and fearless lawman, who could see something good in even the worst of men.” But Earp advocates such as Sol Israel mocked Johnny as a man who was afraid of his own shadow. “The Tombstone pace was a bit too fast for him,” scoffed mayor John Clum.

Behan never wore a badge again, but he did have a respectable, even colorful career after Tombstone. As a civil servant he was posted to Tampa, then Havana, and lived in China during the period of the Boxer Rebellion. He had senior political appointments as a customs inspector for the port of Buffalo and warden of Yuma Territorial Prison. He never won another election or married again; his advancing case of syphilis compromised his health, and eventually killed him.

It was Wyatt, more than Johnny, who remained a controversial figure, forever defined by Tombstone and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. From that time on, the name Earp would set off a chain reaction that would make some cheer, some cringe, and all look around to make sure that there was no gun pointed in their general direction.

Tombstone marked the end of the Earp brothers' dream of shedding their law enforcement jobs and becoming a clan of capitalists. The brothers were not given to recrimination against one of their own, nor did they dwell on the past. There was enough blame to go around, but it was Wyatt who had kept the brothers in Tombstone too long, in the mistaken belief that he could win an election against Sheriff Behan. He wanted to leave town with Josephine, and not with Mattie; instead, he left with neither. The family had suffered much, and gained little, in Arizona.

AFTER THE DRAMA
of the Vendetta Ride, a much ballyhooed visit from the commanding general of the U.S. Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, provided a welcome distraction for the people of Tombstone, who must have wondered whether to be gratified or insulted by his surprise to find “such a number of fine looking intelligent citizens in this place so badly thought of outside.”

About six weeks after Sherman's visit, another fire struck the beleaguered city, and this time the destruction was still more devastating. The long-suffering citizens of Tombstone had rebuilt before, and they were sure that they would rebuild again, but now the town's foundation was shaken to the core. The recent history of lawlessness, constant fires, and threats of Indian attack were all factors in Tombstone's demise, but what finally doomed the town was that the silver was running out, and the mines were filling with water. Labor unrest was growing, and wages were falling. The railroad came tantalizingly close . . . and then terminated, less than fifteen miles away.

Those who had come to Tombstone with vague notions of adventure and wealth began to leave, most of them no richer than before. Gamblers, prostitutes, and saloonkeepers moved on to ply their trades in the next boomtown. By the fall of 1882, even some of the town's leading citizens were moving on, including the memorable trio of Peabody, Brown, and Parsons.

Endicott Peabody never had intended to stay very long, and he grew bolder in his dislike of the place. “O unfortunate! To contemplate a sojourn in such a country,” he warned a prospective settler. The inhabitants are “rotten,” he said, and life there is “crude,” dismissing the whole lot of Tombstoners in his sweeping indictment. Yet he never wavered in his good opinion of Wyatt Earp. “Y
OUNG MAN
,” elderly Peabody raised his voice in rebuke of a whippersnapper who inquired if the distinguished educator and clergyman really approved of “such men” as Wyatt Earp. “I don't think you realize the kind of person we needed as law officers 60 years ago,” Peabody lectured. “The Earps were very good law officers.”

Clara Brown was the next to depart. She and her husband had lost their nest egg after the destruction of their bank in the June 1881 fire. “All feel that this is a place to STAY in for a while; not a desirable spot for a permanent home,” Clara predicted early in her residence. Now that it was time for her to leave, she vowed to remain a booster, declaring that Tombstone still had a bright future as a good place to make money, despite being “so gloomily named a town.”

The last to leave was George Parsons, who stayed for a few more years before moving to California. For the rest of his life, he would defend the Earps as “a benefit and a protection to the community.” He would continue to cross paths with Wyatt in far-flung places, and would remain his loyal admirer, though he remained resolutely silent on the subject of Josephine Marcus.

Tombstone deflated as quickly as it had expanded. When the biggest mines closed down in 1886, half the population fled in just six weeks.

For Josephine and Wyatt, Tombstone would remain forever the wellspring of their romance, despite the violent contradictions of that complicated time when she belonged to Johnny Behan and fell in love with his rival, and when Wyatt's family peace was shattered forever.

For now, she was Josephine Sarah Marcus again, back in her parents' home in San Francisco.

Mattie Blaylock Earp was in San Bernardino, California, with the other Earp wives.

Both of them were waiting for Wyatt.

J
OSEPHINE'S SECOND
return home was as ignominious as her first. From her parents' point of view, she accomplished nothing in Arizona other than embarrassing love affairs. She had been in contact with her parents during her brief career as Mrs. Behan, but it must have taken some serious talking to explain that she was now in love with Behan's archenemy, the subject of so many lurid stories in their local newspaper.

The contrast between her home in San Francisco and the lethal but exciting world of Tombstone was even more jarring to Josephine than before. Yet her family hoped that she would settle down, and perhaps be more like her siblings, who had done a much better job of meeting their parents' expectations. Josephine's older half sister Rebecca had married Aaron Wiener and was raising a Jewish family. Nathan was still in school, though he was not much of a student and seemed to have little ambition. Younger sister Hattie was a charming young girl of seventeen, with large blue eyes and light hair. An up-and-coming businessman named Emil Lehnhardt, who was also from an immigrant family, was courting her, and so far he had expressed no strange plans to conquer the frontier West.

It was hard for Josephine to predict what her future might be with Wyatt, but it wasn't likely to fall into a pattern that anyone in the family would consider normal.

No one would blame Josephine's mother and father for wanting to lock her in her bedroom. Within a few weeks of having seen one brother assassinated in front of his eyes, and another crippled for life, Wyatt had killed at least three men. During his reign of terror, he lived for months in a shadowy jurisdiction where he was both outlaw and lawman, his posse circling around Behan's like hungry wolves. By the end of the Vendetta Ride, Wyatt and his friends were confronting the more mundane work of figuring out their futures. They left their horses in Arizona and crossed into New Mexico. There was money to be divided—the remainder of the funding Wyatt had received from the U.S. marshal and Wells Fargo—and debts to be settled. Wyatt stayed with his friend Henry Jaffa, a prominent Jewish merchant from Colorado and New Mexico, who gave Wyatt a coat to replace the one he was wearing, now full of bullet holes and covered in the filth of the trail.

Wyatt and his men had been on horseback for a long time, and tempers were short. Doc Holliday caused the most commotion; he had an irrepressible tendency to rage, especially when he was drunk, which was most of the time. One night, he went too far. Wyatt was becoming “a damn Jew boy,” he complained. Doc also hinted that he had given money to “Behan's woman,” which would later fuel speculation that Doc had been intimate with Josephine, though he might also have been referring to Behan's expensive prostitute, Sadie Mansfield.

Doc's ill-timed insult was a distraction that soon blew over. But it signaled bigger problems that would soon divide the friends forever, with Josephine again in the middle.

Behan was pushing for Wyatt's extradition back to Arizona to stand trial for the murder of Frank Stilwell. Colorado governor Frederick Pitkin was pressured from all sides, but was ultimately swayed by George W. Crummy, an influential saloonkeeper who allegedly ran gambling houses in partnership with Pitkin and may have been an associate of Bat Masterson. Together, they managed to lift the Stilwell indictment permanently. If Bat could have helped Wyatt without assisting Doc, he probably would have, as Bat had little respect and no affection for Doc. But the cases were inextricably linked, and so both Wyatt and Doc benefited from Bat's timely intervention.

With the legal situation settled, Wyatt's Tombstone chapter was closed. Turning his back on Mattie, Wyatt headed for San Francisco. Virgil was there, consulting with doctors about his shattered elbow and meeting with Wells Fargo, who presented him with a large gold five-pointed star for his efforts to keep the peace in Tombstone.

Josephine was also there, waiting for Wyatt. Whatever commitments he offered were enough for her. Without any wedding ceremony, Josephine was ready to leave San Francisco with him.

Perhaps her parents had grown accustomed to Josephine's bewildering changes of suitors. Wyatt had none of Johnny Behan's unctuousness, and unlike Aaron Wiener or Emil Lehnhardt, he had little to offer in the way of a secure future. At least Johnny Behan had presented himself as a lawman with some business interests. The glibness that greased his path through politics would have come in handy when wooing prospective in-laws.

Between Wyatt's compelling physical presence and Josephine's obvious determination to attach herself to him, Hyman and Sophia Marcus probably made little attempt to stop Josephine from leaving home a third time. Of all their children, Josephine would always be the most unconventional.

JOSEPHINE BEGAN THE
next phase of her life in Utah, excited about leaving San Francisco with Wyatt and staying in elegant hotels. In her memoir, she invested some of her first encounters with unusual significance. In Salt Lake City, she listened thoughtfully to an impromptu tale of woe from a Mormon hotel maid, who poured out her heart about her childless marriage. Her husband cast her aside for a second, and then a third wife, until at last one of her rivals delivered a child. From Utah, Josephine traveled to Colorado, where she stayed at the luxurious Tabor Hotel, owned by a wealthy industrialist and his beautiful young wife, the improbably named Baby Doe. Although she could not have known it at the time, the glamorous Tabors would come to a sad end, and Baby Doe would die in despair and debt. Josephine would have much in common with both women: the barren maid and the impoverished widow.

But for now, Josephine cared only for her immediate happiness. After her furtive days in Tombstone, she was exhilarated to be openly acknowledged as Wyatt's woman by his closest associates, especially Bat Masterson and his wife Emma. They made a congenial foursome. Emma had also taken a turn on the stage, and she and Josephine became good friends. Josephine was immediately taken with Bat Masterson's “Irish blue eyes and long curling eyelashes” and listened eagerly to his explanation of why Wyatt felt compelled to “clean up” the frontier by comparing him to a “fastidious housewife” who “hates dirt and untidiness in her home.” For his part, Bat openly admired Josephine and compared her to the celebrated actress Jefferys Lewis, who happened to be performing nearby, and joined them one night for dinner. Josephine professed not to see the resemblance, other than the basics of another “dark-eyed young woman with smooth skin and rosy cheeks,” but she glowed under his flattery.