John Ringo, King of the Cowboys: His Life and Times from the Hoo Doo War to Tombstone, Second Edition

Chapter 22. “Ringo . . . the cowboy leader”

226 22 C H A P T E R “Ringo . . . the cowboy leader” TOMBSTONE LAPSED INTO A PERIOD OF CALM as Christmas passed. The Earps now used Virgil’s federal authority as deputy US marshal to arm their cohorts for protection. Virgil was never reinstated as town marshal. Armed as they were, as days passed without violence, they began to relax their vigilance. These were not men like Scott Cooley, raised in a climate of violence and feud culture. Their backgrounds had not prepared them for what was to come. Shortly before midnight on December 28, Virgil Earp was walking from the Oriental Saloon to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. As he passed the Eagle Brewery, shotgun fire blossomed from the darkness. The blasts struck his left arm and back. The Epitaph reported five shots were fired in quick succession “by unknown men” hidden in the Palace Saloon then being rebuilt. The Epitaph speculated three men were involved: “it has been learned that immediately after the shooting three men ran past the ice house on Tough Nut street, and sung out to the man in attendance , who had his door open at the time, ‘Lock your door.’ The same three men were seen by a miner a few moments later making down into a gulch below the Vizina hoisting works.” The paper concluded “there is a band of assassins in our midst, who, having threatened the lives “Ringo . . . the cowboy leader” 227 of Judge Spicer, Mayor Clum, Mr. Williams, the Earp brothers and Holliday, have attempted on two occasions to carry their threats into execution, first upon Mayor Clum and second upon Virgil Earp.”1 Virgil’s left arm was shattered above the elbow and he was struck in the back. His wife Allie rushed to his side. Dr. George Goodfellow removed a significant portion of bone from the arm, leaving him permanently crippled. Although no one was ever convicted in the attack, speculation, much of it wrong, abounds. Bailey, for instance, wrote, “It is surmised that Ike Clanton, ‘Curly Bill’ and [Will] McLaury did the shooting.”2 However, Will McLaury had left for Fort Worth two days before the shooting, and Brocius had already left the country.3 Brocius’ biographer notes that from the time of his rumored lynching, no sightings of Curly Bill were noted for the “next two and a half months. . . . Only rumor and innuendo implicate the cowboy in crimes committed during this period.”4 As for Clanton, Wyatt later claimed that the Earps “found Ike’s hat near the building.”5 A hat was found, but not found by them, and it was never identified as Clanton’s. The newspapers would have covered it if this fiction had any validity. Clanton was provably out of town at the time of the shooting. “Ringo has often been listed as one of the assailants who ambushed and crippled Virgil Earp on December 28, 1881,” writes one author.6 Another lists the assailants as Clanton, Frank Stilwell, John Ringo, Hank Swilling, Pete Spencer, and Johnny Barnes.7 None of these men were identified by any contemporary source. Possibly Milt Joyce was one of the shooters, avenging his personal grudge against Earp, but this is theory, not fact. Several men were suspected at the time, but John Ringo was not one of them. Ringo’s whereabouts are uncertain, but he was probably at Joe Hill’s ranch where Joe’s children fondly recalled him as “Uncle John.” No one was ever convicted of the crime. It was readily apparent that Virgil was critically wounded and might die. He certainly could not appoint special deputies, which meant the Earps would have no authority to carry guns. Being at the mercy of 228 JOHN RINGO, KING OF THE COWBOYS the men who shot their brother was an intolerable situation for the Earps. On December 29, Wyatt sent a telegram to Dake telling him that Virgil had been shot and that his brother’s wounds were fatal. He requested a commission with power to appoint deputies. It was a bold move, and it worked. Yesterday afternoon United States Marshal Dake, who happened to be in this city, received intelligence, by telegraph, of the attempted assassination of his deputy Virgil Earp, at Tombstone, an account of which appears in our dispatch today. As Major Dake’s advices were to the effect that Earp’s wounds were fatal, he telegraphed an...