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35 An O.K. Corral Obituary The McLaury Brothers in Arizona Territory There is only fragmentary evidence on the whereabouts of Tom and Frank McLaury during the middle 1870s, whether they lived with or worked for the Dewitt brothers in Lamar County,Texas. Frank andTom McLaury were definitely in Fort Worth long enough to have their portraits taken by August R. Mignon, a photographer whose studio was on the second floor of 24 Main Street, across from the Public Square.1 It’s unclear why they left central Texas and moved farther west. A family story claimed that Frank got into a fight or shooting. According to that story, Will helped to keep Frank out of jail, persuading him to leave town. A check of the docket for mayor’s court did not turn up any record of Tom or Frank ever having been arrested in Fort Worth. One newspaper story described a vicious fight that took place near the railroad depot. The mention of one man being a “mechanic” could be significant, as the words “boss mechanic” were used three years later to describe Frank’s occupation in the History of Buchanan County. However, the mechanic in the story was the loser who was painfully cut up. If the fight described in the paper involved Frank McLaury, it may have provided him with a motive to leave town quickly. At best, however, connecting this newspaper article to him is speculative.2 Some evidence exists that both brothers headed to West Texas and worked for a time for John Chisum. A handful of Chisum’s drovers delivered a small herd of 40 bulls to Walter L. Vail of the Empire Ranch in Arizona. The drive took place from a ranch of Chisum’s on the Pecos to another one on the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. At the time of their association with Chisum, if the McLaurys were among that group of drovers, the brothers may have first encountered the Clantons as well.3 Chisum had one of the largest ranching spreads in the Southwest at a time when monopolies were the most successful business model. Domination of a market meant control of a business from the supply to the price of the product. In ranching, control of the supply meant having control of grasslands and Six 36 The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona water sources as well as livestock. Chisum’s operation dominated the Pecos River valley of New Mexico Territory in Doña Ana and Lincoln counties, and he owned other ranches scattered throughout southern New Mexico and Arizona. There were other big ranchers in southern Arizona, such as Henry Clay Hooker of the Sierra Bonita Ranch. Hooker’s ranch stretched from the Sulphur Spring Valley into the San Simon Valley. South of his spread, John McKenzie and Thomas Steele owned the water rights at Croton Springs. Further south, Theodore White and his brothers ran a couple of ranches in the Sulphur Spring Valley off West Turkey Creek. New to Arizona in 1876, Walter Vail was willing to compete in that league. Vail purchased land in the Sonoita Valley, west of the Babocomari Valley.4 Not only were there a handful of very large ranching spreads, there were many smaller ranchers who managed small sections of land and operated on a shoe-string in the same harsh conditions as their more well-heeled brethren, but whose margins for mishap and misfortune were thin. Large or small, however, ranchers were prone to the kinds of hardships of the frontier, complicated by the nearby international border with Mexico. As ranchers settled these lands, crimes against them were hard to prevent and the border allowed for those escaping pursuit to simply cross into the other country. Sometimes the trouble was from criminals who raided from south of the border, sometimes from renegade tribesmen such as the Apaches, and sometimes from criminals originating north of the border. The alternating mountains and valleys were ideal for smuggling, as they were aligned like the fingers of a glove, reaching across the international border. While the valleys were ready-made routes for smuggling across the border, the cañons among the mountain ranges afforded places to hide. Newman Haynes Clanton was a pioneer settler in Arizona. His father had been a Tennessee planter and slave-holder who moved his family to Missouri . Newman married in Missouri but after an unsuccessful stint seeking gold in California, later moved his wife and family to Texas, then to...

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