Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - Part 1 (Big Nose Kate)

This week, we discuss the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the 1881 confrontation between the Earp brothers, Doc Holiday, and the Cowboys in the town of tombstone, AZ.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of our Time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it, and come back to
tell you what we've learned. This week, we are discussing
the gunfight at the Ok Corral, the eighteen eighty one
shootout between the Earth Brothers and Doc Holliday and the Cowboys.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm Dave, I'm Joe. Yeah. Well, in honor of this episode, Dave,
since we are talking about the Old West, I am

(00:42):
going to be drinking out of a cowboy boot.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Ah does a boot? See? I think of that. I
think that a lot more German.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
It is, and I am drinking an Octoberfest out of it.
This is the time where I find if I see
an Octoberfest out in the wild, I probably will buy
it because they're not obviously they're not making these anymore
until next year. And I really like that style of beer.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Oh yeah, I'm a big fan.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, I should say they're not making that style of beer.
They're not making beers that they're labeling as Octoberfest. Come
in a few months they will start having marts and beers,
which is what an Octoberfest is. So actually, for those
in the know, you can still get that. But but yeah, anyway, Yes,

(01:38):
it's speaking.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Of German boot speaking of German stuff. I saw No Sparatu, Oh, yes,
which was quite good.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I wanted to go with you guys, but didn't didn't
make it. Sorry about that.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
That's why I asked if you were in town on Tuesday,
because Joe and I went Tuesday morning. Yeah, but it
was very good. I liked it a lot, and it
was very much like a horror movie in more of
the classic sense. It wasn't very modernized and it's feeling
a little bit. But I liked that.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
So are we gonna have to go see that? Are
we have to go see that? As a a bonus episode?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, it could be interesting to talk about in relation
to the story of Dracula, because it's basically just like
a ripoff of Dracula. In fact, the filmmakers were sued
by the heirs of Bram Stoker in the nineteen twenties
after the original one came out, and the ruling was
that they had to destroy all copies, but enough of
them survive that we still have it today, So it's
basically the same story. So it's a good conversation about

(02:48):
like copyright in friendship and intellectual property. But I digress.
Although speaking of Hollywood, we can get into that a
little bit with Wyatt Earp. As you mentioned Joe, today
we're talking about the Old West. We kind of want
to spend the whole month on the Old West. We
really only do two episodes to like mains line mainstream episodes,

(03:11):
not Patreon episodes per month, so it really just means
too But you know, for a while I've been wanting
to talk about the gunfight at the Ok Corral, and
Joe's been wanting to talk about the Old West in general,
and so it seemed like a good time to to
do that. We're not at a specific anniversary or anything
like that, just kind of wanted to talk about the

(03:32):
Old West.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I have to be honest, I've been like pretty
interested in the Old West, and is this is often
the case in this episode I find we'll find like
a little like rabbit hole to go down. In this case,

(03:55):
I kind of had the rabbit hole first and then
that kind of like begapped episode. I had been really
wanted to do something to talk about the Old West
and kind of like discussing the concept of the Old
West and in really like how violent the Old West
actually was, which is I'm finding or I have found

(04:21):
is an area of academic scholarship. Sure, so, so we
often talked about, like, you know, what did we already
know about this? I think, Dave you you already knew
like at least a good amount because of because of

(04:42):
the movies.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, I mean, one thing we can get into is
that at the end of Wyat's life he sort of
sold his story to Hollywood, and so there's been a
lot of depictions of his life and the Okay Corral
and things like that, the cow Boy War and we'll
get into and the accuracy of it is sort of

(05:05):
interesting because it's from his perspective a lot of the time,
you know, the stories that are told. You know, I
am pretty I'm familiar with a lot of the movies
around it. Tombstone is one of my favorites. And uh,
you know, I have that that tank top I love
that has Val Kilmer on the front as Doc Holiday

(05:26):
and it says I'm your Huckleberry.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I'm your Huckleberry.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
But you know, uh, it kind of you know, those
movies always sort of depict like good guys and bad guys.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Sometimes they they're called white hats and black hats. Yeah,
and Wyattre and his brothers and Doc Holliday are sort
of always like the good guys, but the truth of
it is that he kind of lives more in the
gray area there, and it's just not as simple some
of those movies put it out there to be. Although
you know, one thing that Joe and I discussed if
you are a Patreon subscriber or you would like to

(05:56):
do that, we were going to do an episode soon
about the movie Tombstone, and it's you know, accuracies and
inaccuracies about the history, the actual history, but some of
it's a little bit more accurate than I realized. So,
like I knew a lot of the movies, but in
really learning the real history in the last week, I
think I've realized that, Yeah, there's definitely inaccuracies, but there's

(06:17):
there's you know, it's kind of chopped down to fit
a movie, but there's maybe a little bit more accuracy
in it than I realized.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, so I what I knew about this was I
have to be honest. Also from the movie Tombstone, we
did study this particular event in high school American history.
We actually, like you know, discussed this particular event and

(06:47):
maybe some of what I'm thinking of or why I
I actually I heard an academical lecture. Actually I hosted
this lecture at an event that I you to run.
The event still happens, but I didn't run it anywhere
at the museum. The day of I workout, well, we
did a wild West themed event. This is for adults.

(07:09):
We weren't talking about shooting people in front of little kids,
so you know, don't at me. And actually had a researcher.
I found who his work was about like the Old
West and statistics about like how violent it was. I
didn't do anything about like reaching out to that person,
but I did look at some actual scholarship about this.

(07:32):
But yeah, but going back to high school, I had
high school history teacher who really loved to show us movies.
And he would show us a bunch of movies. And
now we were all, you know, like sixteen seventeen, we
watched a bunch of movies in that class that are
not okay to show to minors without like parent acknowledgment.

(07:54):
And I think I have discussed on this podcast how
we once watched the movie Enemy at the Gates in
its entirety. Yeah, over the course of yeah, with a
very awkward sex scene over the course of like I
don't know, maybe two or or even three days. I
don't know. I don't remember how long that movie was
or how long our period for class was, but we

(08:15):
definitely watched the OK Corral scene from Tombstone after reading
about and discussing this. So anyway, that's like kind of
what I was familiar with. For the same reason as Dave,
I haven't been like particularly fascinated by the Old West

(08:36):
in my life until, like I said, relatively recently. Part
of that is probably because not that long ago I
got done playing the video game Red Dead Redemption Too.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Which I am currently playing. Yes, the other part show
is that you're you know, you're you're about you're hitting
forty So it's time.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I know, I know, I yeah, it's time for
me to start getting into the Old West. I have to.
I got to tell you the extremes. I hit both
extremes in studying for this episode for this podcast, Dave
I went to I texted Dave the My exact words were,

(09:20):
you know, I'm you know, I'd be on j Store baby.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Because I did not know what that meant.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Oh, j Store is a is a website that uh,
consolidates academic literature. Oh, you you can read journal articles.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Oh that's helpful. I feel like I should have known
that before.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
And it's actually free to use if you if you
register as an independent researcher.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Qualify.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, that's I've said, that's exactly what we're doing. We
read we you can read like one hundred articles, and
so if you're interested in like reading actual academic literature,
I highly recommend doing that because for a lot of
this stuff, there's a lot of bullshit information out there,
to be really honest, and this is a good place
to find information about it. I also do have to

(10:14):
credit so now on the one end, I'm doing like
real literature search. On the other end, i was reading
articles from guns and Ammo Magazine, which I'm like, you know,
this podcast leads me to places I might not otherwise
go right. And then I've also been on the ask

(10:34):
a Historian subreddit. I know, Dave, as an older gentleman
like me, you probably have this this idea of reddit
being like the armpit of the Internet, or like, you know,
I used to described it as a scuv. Iive of
scum and villainy. Yeah, many years ago they cleaned up

(10:58):
a lot of the really awful subreddit. But if you
are looking to learn a lot about history, ask a historian,
not our slash history. Just any Yahoo can post there
our slash ask a historian. If you are not a
historian and cite your sources in a bibliography, they'll delete

(11:21):
your comment. Oh shit, Okay, it's very very heavily mod modded,
and so you can find some very useful information by
people who are academics that then give you resources to
learn more, like books and journal articles and things like that.
So I, like I said, I was like on all

(11:43):
all ends of the internet here I got you, all right, Well,
want to jump into it here? What is the gunfight
at the Oka crow Well? Then a shootout at the
Okay crow Well.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
It's an event that happens in eighteen eighty one in Tombstone,
which is a city in the Arizona Territory.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
I guess wait, wait, wait what day was it on?
It's it happened on my birthday, October twenty.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Sixth Oh okay, I didn't I didn't connect those dots
that I didn't know your birthday was in October.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
This is the reason why I remember the date basically
my birthday.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, I mean to get it kind of quick and dirty.
It was a shootout that happened between the Irp brothers
who were marshalls and deputy marshals of the the cowtown
of Tombstone Territory of Arizona. Specifically, the marshall was Virgil
Irp Right, Virgil the oldest brother, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
And his brothers Wyatt and Morgan.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right and Doc Holliday who is a longtime friend of
the Earps. And they were up against the cowboys that
my Ike Clanton, who were basically they would rob trains,
they would rob cattle. Cowboys are at this time the
word is that those are bad guys. That would be

(13:09):
an insult. Now. They took it with pride and called
themselves the cowboys, but they were the bad guys.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
They were also sometimes referred to, at least later as
the Clanton McClory gang.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
And the dispute is over a number of things, but
largely Virgil is confronting them because he had issued a
proclamation in the town of Tombstone that you could not
carry weapons basically firearms and daggers on your person, and
the cowboys refused to give up their weapons when they
would enter the town, so he was confronting them about that.

(13:45):
That's sort of like the blanket confrontation.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, that's another thing that kind of gets into something
that I kind of want to discuss a little bit later,
or you know, whenever we think is appropriate. You watch these,
you know, you watch movies, especially like older westerns, that
are not attempting to be historically accurate, whereas this movie

(14:09):
kind of is. But Tombstone, Tombstone, Yes, I'm sorry, the
movie Tombstone.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, there's there's a nineteen fifty seven movie called The
Gunfight of the Okay Krral And to my understanding, that
one is pretty much like good Guys, Bad Guys, and
like kind of glamorizing the Old West, which is a
lot of what happened with the way that that history
is portrayed.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
But yes, and if you're were like me and your
for some reason, attempting to research with what kinds of
weapons they were using, you the first thing that you'll find,
if you just do a great cursory Google search, you'll
actually get the guns used in the filming of that movie.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Oh, or they are accurate.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Or no kind of kind of. We don't know exactly
what these guys were carrying. We have like a an
idea of what they were carrying. But anyway, a lot
of these while less towns, you weren't allowed to carry

(15:12):
a firearm. They would confiscate your firearm when you got
to the hotel or the saloon, and often if you
were at a gambling table, they would take your firearm.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
What I can read, I can read the actual wording
of the ordinance, But I don't know if we want to.
I mean, I feel like we're a little bit ahead
of ourselves here.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Setting setting the let me let me just set the
scene a little bit here. Let me talk about the
town of Tombstone for a second. So Tombstone itself was
found in eighteen seventy nine by a prospector named Ed Sheffelin.
He believed that there was silver in them their hills,
and he was told by some of the people. He
knew that if you go up there looking for the

(15:55):
only rock you're gonna find is your tombstone. That's why
he called the town Tombstone. But he was absolutely right.
Found a major silver vein at one point and then
there ultimately was four large silver mines that were dug
and they produced a lot of silver. And the town

(16:16):
I had read at one point that like in the
span of a year it went from one hundred residents
to seven thousand residents, and that is only white men.
That number did not account for women or any minorities
that were there, so it very likely went from one
hundred to well over ten thousand. So when you talk

(16:38):
about like these cowtowns becoming like boom towns, huge and
obviously with that brings a lot of people from other areas,
a lot of debauchery, and a lot of people coming
from both the North and the South. We're talking, you know,
fifteen years after the end of the Civil War. And
that also plays into this a bit because the ERPs

(16:58):
are Southern and the Clantons and McClory's right is the
other name, Yeah, they're Southern. Virgil in fact, he's served
in the Union Army, So that plays into it a
little bit, just because there is some look at them
as sort of being like kind of carpetbaggers, or at

(17:18):
least that's the way that Ike Clanton will try to
portray them. Two reporters when he's asked that way and
as just like murderers, So that card is a little
bit played. And this is again very soon after the
end of the Civil War.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, that was a lot of the conflict was in
this time period was because this is most of what
we're discussing, and actually I think it's a pretty a
good time to talk about, Like what do we mean
by the wild West?

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, the wild West?

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, mainly talking about after the Civil War. Different people
define the Wild West or the Old West or whatever
in different ways. But the one historian at Montana State University,

(18:12):
they basically said it basically encompasses the mountain states like Montana,
so very far north, all the way down to Texas,
so essentially the entire range of latitudes in the US,
and then all the way from all the way to

(18:33):
the West coast, so basically that half of the the
western half of the current United States. It's important that
most of these places were not states, they were territories,
and thusly they had different level of federal control, which

(18:57):
is to say, very little at all compared to the
states in the eastern part of the country.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Hence the level of lawlessness.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yes, it is definitely true that they were more lawless
than like you know, ohioh which was a state at
that point.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Okay, Yeah, when I think about the Old West, I'm
thinking about like the eighteen seventies up until like nineteen hundred.
But I kind of searched for it, like, yeah, how
does history look at like the Old West? Usually it's
thought of as the eighteen fifties through the nineteen tens.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, eighteen fifty through to nineteen hundred excuse me ur
or later, depending on who you talked to.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
I mean, because we know we talked about this when
we talked about Las Vegas. There were gold rushes in
the eighteen forties and fifties. It brought a lot of people,
and then obviously silver rushes in the eighteen seventies eighteen
eighties a brought even more people. So the Civil War
sort of like divides things because things kind of st
at that point. But after the Civil War is when

(20:03):
it really picks up.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, the United States government actually declared the West tamed
around nineteen hundred.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
So but and Joe and Joe, what I dare say,
what do they mean about mean by tamed?

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Well that I think that me into a couple of
different things, but a lot of it had to do
with the extermination policy, extermination or relocation of the indigenous people's.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yes, and I will and I will discuss that a
little bit later because I think this kind of ties
into this idea of like was was the West truly wild?
And if you are like Dave and I you played
the Red Dead Redemption games, those take place just at

(21:00):
the end of this time period. Actually, the second, the
first one, Red Dead Redemption, which is actually Red Dead
two is a sequel or I'm sorry, our prequel to that.
Red Dead Redemption takes place after the period of time
that I said was considered to be the Wild West.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, yeah, very much at the very end of that.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
And I think Red Dead two takes place in eighteen
ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yes, I believe that's right.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
So anyway, just if you're like a fan of those
games or you know something like that, you're talking like
not quite the wild West. All right, So we got
these semi walls towns. We've got the town Tombstone, it's
only been a town for two years now, not allowed

(21:55):
to carry firearms. Yeah, what happens?

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, you mentioned it's only been in town for a
short time by the time that Wyatt, Erp and his
brothers end up in the town. Virgil was named the
marshall for Tombstone and traveled there and his brothers Wyatt
and Morgan went with him, and eventually Warren and James

(22:23):
I believe both ended up there as well. But it's Wyatt,
Virgil and Morgan that are serving as marshall's or deputy
marshals for the town of Tombstone, which is essentially like
when I understand the marshall, because there was a sheriff,
Sheriff be Han, who was above them. But I heard
the marshall sort of described as the police chief, which

(22:45):
I guess would make the sheriff like the the commissioner.
I don't know if you're looking at like a city
police force, but like the hierarchy here anyways, But why
at you know, he had been a law man in
the past. He had worked in Wichita, Kansas. He had
worked in Dodge City.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Dodge City, which is kind of like the most famous
I would say, like Frank wild West Town. Yeah, we
got to get out of Dodge exactly where that phrase
comes from. And Dodge City was also like notoriously lawless
and violent.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I mentioned you know, the IRPs are northern,
actually raised in Iowa, and so Wyatt and his brothers
are gradually moving west and when they arrive in Tombstone,
you know, Wyatt is trying to leave the law man
days behind him. He tries some other things. He tries

(23:45):
to start like a carriage company, but there's a lot
of that going on there, so that doesn't really work,
and eventually, just you know, out of the need for work,
starts working with his brothers.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Well, between eighteen seventy nine and eighteen eighteen eighty the
population of the town exploded and so it's about six
thousand residents. And so this is why they were looking
for people like the ERPs to come to Tombstone. Because

(24:16):
now you've got all the silver mines, like we mentioned earlier,
people are minding the silver. Then you've got to have
places for people to sell it. And now you've got
businesses popping up in like a town center that's like
the town of Tombstone, and now you need people to

(24:37):
maintain order. And then Dave, you mentioned that there was
also a sheriff. Was interesting. The the county sheriff Coachies County,
Johnny Bahan. He was Southerner, he was from.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Texas, and guess who he sides with.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
He was a Democrat.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
He's in with the cowboys. He's not in a gang,
but he's kind of in the pocket of the cowboys.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Right. Essentially the cowboys are they are ranchers, and so
they kind of gained some prominence because they are selling
meat to the town and also also a nearby fort.
But they're also supplementing their income. I'm using air quotes

(25:27):
by cattle rustling.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
They're also robbing wells fargo trains, yes, which is an
important part of the story as well well.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
I actually, in my research about like violence in the
Old West, an interesting perspective that I found was that
something like shooting someone or killing someone was in many
ways easier to get away with than something like horse rustling.

(25:57):
The reason being that at they had a very broadish
definition of self defense. And so if Dave, if you
came up to me and threatened to kill me, or
if I thought that's what you said, and I pulled
out my gun and shot you dead in the street,

(26:21):
I probably would have to go talk to the sheriff
but they often would not even put you up to
trial because if maybe we had some eyewitnesses, or if
I was, you know, a member and good standing of
the town. Essentially they believed my story that I feared
for my life, then I probably would I may very

(26:43):
likely get off without any legal repercussions, whereas something like
horse wrestling or cattle rustling, or obviously train robbing had
a very clear legal definition that you could be jailed
and tried for. Yeah, that's that's something that was kind
of interesting. But yes, they were increasingly becoming in conflict

(27:08):
with the the business interests in the town, who were
all Republicans mm hmm, including the mayor who John Clumb,
who was also the editor of the newspaper.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, so that's an interesting thing because the newspapers are
going to sort of take sides on this as well,
although they because John Clumb is actually out of town
when this happens, there's another reporter that writes about it.
So initially the newspapers write about the event in the
same way, but eventually they are like different stories. But
but before we get there, let's introduce another character here,

(27:49):
who is Doc Holliday. Yeah, uh, Doc Halliday ki yeahalim.
Doc Holladay is sort of interesting character. He is from Georgia,
so he is, and he is a dentist. Now he
leaves Georgia for a couple reasons, and one of them

(28:11):
the accuracy of the story somewhat disputed. So the obvious
one that people know is that he had tuberculosis, and
his mother and his brother both died of tuberculosis, so
he was aware of the symptoms, he was aware of
the prognosis, and the only treatment at the time was
to head to drier areas, go to the dry heat,
you know. But the other reason he left is that there.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Was a disconsumption.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
There was a dispute. Where he grew up, there was
a local swimming hole where kids, both white and black
kids would swim. But at some point the white kids
decided they didn't want the black kids in their swimming
hole and told them to leave, and the black kids said, no,
we're not going anywhere. And Doc Holliday somehow heard about
this and goes down there with a gun. Now the

(28:58):
stories are range here. Some stories say that he shot
over the kids' heads and the white kids stayed, the
black kids ran away. Because his goal was to scare
the black kids off. The other story, and this is
mentioned by Bat Masterson, who wrote a profile on Doc
in nineteen oh seven, and he claims that this is

(29:19):
the story that Doc himself would tell, is that he
brought a double barrel shotgun shot at these kids and
killed two of them, and then his family said, you'd
better leave you better, you know, kind of go into
hiding and take off. There have been multiple historians that
have tried to trace this story, try to track it down.
Nobody's been able to confirm that aspect of the story,

(29:43):
although that is one I had heard, that is what
Doc had said. In any case, he moves west and
he kind of travels the liver the place he's in Texas.
He ends up in Denver. But eventually, you know, the
arrive in Tombstone in December, on December first, eighteen seventy nine,

(30:04):
and sometime after Doc Hall the Day joins them there.
Now he's not a dentist anymore. He had been a dentist.
Apparently his name is John Henry, but people called him
Doc after he stopped being a dentist. Coincidentally, he's just
sort of a professional gambler and drinker, as I've seen
him described many times.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
I mean, he's a professional gambler, high level amateur drinker,
right because you well, yes, professional means you can't get paid.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
And he also he also apparently had a real tendency
to be a hothead and was in multiple gunfights and
had killed at least a few people by this time,
so he was good with a gun and also tend
to have a temper, and so he could be effective,
although a bit of a wildcard.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So can I say a few things now speaking of
gun gun fights and show altercations with guns in the
Old West. Yes, so yeah, it's often you know, you
see in almost everything that you see in movies, especially
older westerns, about gunfights in the Old West. Were are

(31:18):
just fabrications. They are often sort of based on the
dime novels from the end of the eighteen hundreds and
the early nineteen hundreds, Sure about the Old West, so
basically like written by people who maybe lived through some

(31:41):
of this stuff but probably didn't like see it. But
certainly we're like exaggerated, but just a few things, like
the idea that people would stand in the street and
duel with each other almost never happened. So these people,
these people that Doc Holliday has said to have killed.

(32:09):
Those kinds of murders did happen in the Old West,
but they were usually people getting shot in the back. Yeah,
because if you want to kill someone and you don't
want them to be able to kill you, do you know,
it's a really bad way to make that happen, challenge
them to a duel and stand in the street. Now,
duels were a thing, famously, the famous duel with Aaron

(32:33):
Burr and oh who did Aaron Burr shot? Was it? Hamilton?

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Hamilton Halton?

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Right, Yeah, so that was you know, duels were a thing,
but generally not on the Old West. It would be
more And this is the reason why they often didn't
want you to have your weapon in the saloon or
at the the gambling table, because if someone slighted you,
you could pull your gun out and shoot them. A
really good way to uh not get shot and shooting

(33:05):
another person, like I said, is to just wait until
their back is turned. I read some historian it was
saying that it's you know, a lot of like shooting
range targets will be like a burglar or a zombie
or like a cowboy, look with like a black mask

(33:27):
on his face and pointing a gun at you. But
like the real wild West target would be that guy,
but turned around shooting him in the back. Anyway. That
that is how often things went down. Now famously, there
were a couple showdowns the Hiccock touch shut showdown or shootout,

(33:51):
I should say, between the as you'd expect the wild
West showman wild Bill Hiccock. This was a an event
that took place in July twenty second, July twenty first,
eighteen sixty five in Springfield, Missouri, between wild Bill Hiccock
and a gambler and Lane Davis Tutt. It's one of

(34:12):
the only recorded instances of a quick draw duel in
a public place. And uh, it was you know, it
was so so so famous. It made it into Harper's
Magazine in eighteen sixty seven. This is one of the
ways that Hiccock actually became famous was because of this duel.
And I had to think that the fact that you know,

(34:35):
this duel happened is partly because of Hickock being like
this huge showman, which you know obviously served him later
on in life in his career. But yeah, mostly that's
not what happened. And as far as like how many
of these kinds of like shootouts and things like that happened.
I think it's important to remember we're doing a whole
podcast episode about this gunfight at the OK Corral, which

(34:57):
was notable for the huge death toll of three people.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, it lasted all of thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yes, So I mean, just to put that into perspective,
and obviously, like in a town of six hundred people,
I'm sorry, six thousand people, three people is a lot.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
It's probably more like ten thousand at the time.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
But yes, yes, yes, but I think part of the
but I think it's like important to to realize that,
like you know, the Wild West was both as violent.
It was both more violent than you think and less
violent than you think. I think it's a good way
to talk about it.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
So well, Well, I did read a statistic about the
Arizona territories at this at this time in the early
eighteen hundreds, you were as likely your your chance of
dying in the Arizona Territory in one of these towns
was about the same as an infantry man in Vietnam

(36:00):
the war, the American War, Vietnam War, And that statistic
came from a historian. Yea, so I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
I mean the problem is Okay, So there's this, So
there's a historian who is like the like the expert
on this is a guy named a doctor Robert Dickstra,
and so the problem so actually I think your point
is uh is good to bring up, Dave. There is

(36:30):
some scholarly disagreement about this, and and part of it
has to do with how people interpret statistics, but just
a few things. So scholarship since the nineteen seventies has
like pushed back on this narrative of the wild West
of the quote unquote wild wild West being like lawless

(36:53):
and an incredibly violent. So it is true that the
homicide rate was higher than in the Eastern States out
in the western territories. But when calculating the murder rate
of a town like Dodge City, the small population size

(37:16):
is what makes it seem dangerous. So because of the
law of and this is the research of this general
gentleman dick Strup, because the law the small number effect,
it makes the town seem more dangerous because the per

(37:37):
capita murder rate is much higher. But that's just because
the per capital murder rate or I'm sorry that's because
the population is so small that if you get three
murders in a year, it is a very high murder rate.
Now that's not to say that like if this gunfight
happened and three dudes got shot, it would not have

(37:58):
caused a stir in the town made people feel unsafe.
Things like that obviously would have. But I think like
when we just calculate the homicide rate like we would
with like FBI statistics today, it kind of skews it. Yeah,
So like in a town like Dodge City, which was

(38:19):
like notable for being dangerous like what we think of today,
they might have one murder a year. There were many
years where they add a single murder every year.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah, I should point out that, you know, Wyatt Earp
had been a law man at this point for oh
I think almost a decade not more, And he only
fired his weapon one time, and that was in Dodge
City shortly before he left. So he was very good
at what he did, but also didn't have the reason

(38:52):
to actually fire his weapon. So that maybe tells you
something as well. So confrontations maybe were common, but the
Islands wasn't what is maybe made out to be in Hollywood. Movies.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, so there. So, for instance, Deadwood, which again is
another famous like Lawless Town, there's a whole.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Show in South Dakota.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, there's a whole show about it.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Did you know that the word deadwood is also a
name for the discarded cards in poker?

Speaker 2 (39:20):
I did not.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, I learned that today.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
I thought it was named because when trees die out there,
they'll often like because of the dry environment, they'll they
won't rot. So you have this like ghostly looking dead tree.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Oh you that might be true. I'm not saying that
the town is named that way, but the term deadwood
is also used for the discarded cards in a card game.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Oh yeah, I believe you. I think. I wonder. I
wonder which came first.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Oh I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
So anyway, during the town of Deadwood, during its first
year of it as a settlement where there were almost
no oh, there was almost no law enforcement at all,
there were four murders. Yeah, when Dodge City one year

(40:10):
had a total of five murders. This is heralded as
a civic disaster, sure the and that was the highest
total the city experienced aside from its first year of
habitation in eighteen seventy two when there were about a
dozen homicides of all type, which is also like today,

(40:31):
most murders are crimes of passion. It's like someone murdering
often like violence against women and things like that.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
But an you know that in this country still today,
once a woman becomes pregnant, her chance of being murdered
doubles statistically.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, it's not great, it's not great. So anyway, Yeah,
and then also another thing is that a lot of
these towns, like I said with Deadwood, they're only wild
quote unquote for about the first year or so before
people got jobs.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
For sure, we're only talking about two years into the
existence of Tombstone. That's right in that sweet speed.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Because you got a bunch of dudes who have money
and guns, and they have nothing to spend their money
on except for gambling, booze, and prostitutes. But then as
that town gets established and people start bringing their families
there from out east or perhaps starting families, businesses start

(41:40):
getting established. People don't want gunfights to be happening in
the middle of the street because that's bad for business,
and that's exactly what's happening here. Oh yeah, the last
thing I would want to say is that most of
the greatest violence in the quote unquote Wild West happened
in instance, these instances of sort of semi organized violence

(42:01):
like the Lincoln County War, which we're going to talk
about next time. But most importantly, the greatest violence of
all was dealt against Native Americans, and those instances were
almost never recorded, so we'll never know the toll of

(42:22):
violence from those and that's often not depicted in westerns,
at least not in the same way.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah. So, yeah, a good point to make.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
So getting back to this wild experience of the Ok
Corral though.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, and one more thing about Doc Holliday is that
not only did he know why at Earth and the Earps,
and they kind of were friends for a number of years.
Why why it claims that Doc Holliday saved his life
in the summer of eighteen seventy eight while in Dodge City,
and there's not a record that actually shows this, but

(43:00):
that he was in a situation in a saloon where
a number of cowboys were he got into a confrontation
with them. They're pointing their guns at Arp, and out
of nowhere, Holiday, who's also in the saloon, jumps up
puts his gun to one of the cowboys heads and
forces them to disarm, thus saving Wyatt. And so Wyatt

(43:22):
always sort of felt that he one could trust Doc
Holliday and that he owed him something.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, he's a huckleberry.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Absolutely so yeah, so that's sort of their relationship when
he does arrive in Tombstone. Okay, now let's let's get
to this this city ordinance, and I had it here
to read, so I mentioned that Virgil as the Marshall,

(43:53):
had helped the city council pass Ordnance nine acquired anyone
carrying a bowie knife, a dirk which is like a
long dagger, pistol, or rifle to deposit their weapons at
a livery which is like a it's like a coral.

(44:15):
It's what's the word. I'm looking for a sta boarding
stable for horses or a saloon soon after entering the town.
As it was actually written, section one, it is hereby
declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person,
or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said
City of Tombstone without first obtaining a permit in writing

(44:37):
Section two. This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately
leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith and
within reasonable time, are proceeding to deposit or take from
the place of deposit such deadly weapon. In section three,
all firearms of every description and bowie knives and dirks
are included within the prohibition of this ordinance. That was

(44:59):
effective April nineteenth, eighteen eighty one, so about six months
prior to the shootout.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah. So you've got these kinds of ordinances which you're
trying to maintain order, and you've got this uh Citizen's
Safety Committee, Yeah, which are basically.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Which sounds like a bunch of dorks, but you know,
the cowboys have a little bit of like a sovereign
citizen complex about them.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Well, yeah, that was a lot of these conflicts.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
And they would be guys today they're like walking into
like a library wearing an AR fifteen shirt that says
like come and take it or become ungovernable on the
back or something. That's the cowboys. That's how I view
these guys. They're guys that like have their sunglasses on
the back of their head, but they would be even
if they were on the front, they'd be super ugly.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
I did fucking stumble upon some article from this conservative
think tank that was arguing that actually the wild West
was better and because there wasn't the government telling people
what to do, it was actually safer.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Well, well, the government's gonna tell him what to do.
It's coming.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
But yeah, actually this is like kind of the opposite.
It's like people trying to establish some kind of order
because you've got these guys who are, you know, rustling
cows and robbing trains and shit like that.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, they're trying to establish order but have very limited backing.
And Chester Arthur is the president at the time. He's
kind of like, he's very ineffective. He's actually rated as
one of the least effective presidents in history.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
I say, if you ask people to name presidents that
Chester Arthur is not making it on the family Feud Board.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
No, And because of the problems with the cowboys in
the Arizona Territory, he attempts to send the army down there,
but he has to get approval from Congress to do that,
and Congress doesn't approve it because all of the southern
congressmen cannot vote to send a northern army into what

(47:26):
is viewed as a kind of a southern stronghold.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Do you remember when the president used to have to
get Congress to sign off on using the military.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, Joe, I do remember that.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Okay, So how does this get us to the Faithful
Day of October twenty sixth? Well, I think it's relevant
to mention that earlier in eighteen eighty Vergil had tried
to become the sheriff but he lost out to at

(48:03):
the county sheriff Charles Shibel, had appointed White as deputy
sheriff for county, but then Beehn, who he mentioned earlier,
had become the sheriff through some kind of like using
his political connections, and he promised Wyatt a position as

(48:27):
his under sheriff if he was appointed over White. And
then the governor appointed Bahan as the chop the job
of co chief county sheriff. And then be Han reneged
on his deal with ERP and appointed another guy, Harry Woods,

(48:48):
as sheriff. And this is kind of the IRP had
already been sort of beefing with the Clantons.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Oh do you also know why he's beefing with be
Hann as well? He's he's fucking his lady. Oh yeah, yeah,
So Josephine, who was an actress. She later became his wife.
His her name is Josephine Marcus married her at eighteen

(49:20):
eighty two. Apparently common law wife, but she was an actress.
But she was with Sheriff be Hann formally. Informally she's
on that Wyatt dick. So that and be Hann figures
that out, which is the point in which he arrests
Wyatt after the gunfight. But that's either I missed, I

(49:42):
missed that. Oh yeah, that's the other thing here. Yeah,
whyat's why it's uh, you know, with be Hann's lady.
And so if be Hann already is siding with the cowboys,
that really just shovels some more coal on that fire.
But to the actual event, October twenty second, sorry October

(50:04):
twenty sixth, eighteen eighty one. Four men Virgil Wyatt and
Morgan Erp and Doc Holliday go down Fremont Street in Tombstone.
If you look at the OK Corral website, the actual
historical website for it, it claims this is around the

(50:25):
corner in a now vacant lot behind the OK Corral.
But I actually read that it actually happened a couple
of doors down from the ok Corral behind a photography studio.
Lies photography studio, but you know, near the Okay Corral,
and there they are. And this is funny because I

(50:47):
have read both five and six cowboys are waiting there.
The Okay Carral website says six, so it doesn't name
them specifically, but from my understanding it's it's five Billy
Claire Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McClory.
I don't know who the sixth one is. Maybe I'm

(51:08):
missing one, but I've got five and a lot of
the things I've read just the Okay Corral history website
says six.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
I can dig more into that. But what happens next
is it takes about thirty seconds, and the stories differ
from the side of the ERPs. They ask the cowboys
to disarm, The cowboys draw on them, and the IRPs
and Doc Halliday fire in self defense. They yes, they

(51:43):
they kill a number of them. I believe three of
uh yeah, three of them. Billy Clanton, I think Billy
Claiborne and.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Billy Clanton and Tom Tom mcclury were both.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
That's the y. Yes, Ike runs away, Yeah, as it's
shown in Tombstone. He like runs at Wyatt with his
hands up and Wyatt says, don't get out of here,
and he runs into a nearby building. And supposedly that's
actually how that went down, so he basically, you know,
he ran away from the side of Ike. He claimed

(52:24):
that they all put their hands up yep, and then
were shot in cold blood by the IRPs and Doc Holliday.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Yeah. Supposedly, Virgil said, boys, throw up your hands. I
come to disarm you, and Billy Clanton supposedly said, don't shoot.
I don't want to fight. Or they put up their hands,
and then Wyatt supposedly said, you sons of bitches have
been looking for a fight and now you have it
and started shooting them.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Yeah. Now, if you want something objective here, Doctor George Goodfellow,
who was the one that exist examined the bodies of
the cowboys after their deaths, said in court, because this
is going to go to court, that the angles of
the wounds and Billy Clanton's wrists indicated that his hands
could not have been up in the air or, as
some claimed, holding open his lapels to show that he

(53:16):
didn't have any weapons. So it basically said that his
the way his wrist was shot, he had to have
been pointing at his assailants. So yeah, so the forensic
evidence would suggest that the cowboys did draw. Now did
they draw after hands were up? You know, hard to say,

(53:38):
but witnesses do come forth later that are more objective
and claim that the cowboys did draw first.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Uh, yeah, there was Tom mcclury probably was unarmed. So
not all of these guys actually had firearms.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Clearly some of them did. Because I should we didn't mention. Uh,
Morgan is is struck. So more Morgan is wounded. Yeah, Uh,
it is Virgil wounded too. Uh, they're both wounded.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Morgan was shot through the leg and Virgil Irp was
shot through the shoulders.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Right, So, and clearly the cowboys are armed, at least
some of them are on Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
And Doc Holliday got grazed on the hip.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
He was graised on the hip and then blew a
dude away with a shotgun.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Yes, because he says that guy, that guy Fox, the
only one who had well, as we know, it was
I'm sorry, that was why it was.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Well, we didn't talk about was it? What was Doc
Holliday's lady called big big Nose Maggie or do you
know this no oh ship hold on her name was?
Her name was Bigness Big nose Kate. Big nose Kate
his common law wife. Supposedly she didn't have a big nose.

(55:09):
It was more about her being sort of like a
nosy person. Okay, in people's business all the time, but
big nose Kate.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Anyways, you never choose your nickname, it's always gifted to you.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Well, absolutely, yes.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
To your point, Tom McClary had twelve buckshot wounds on
his chest under his right arm.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah, forensis was suggested McClory was killed by Doc Holliday
and most likely Billy Clanton was killed by Morgan. And
this is just by like witness accounts and where people
were supposedly standing. Also, Yeah, in this shootout, if you

(56:00):
look at it in movies, these guys are relatively far apart.
They're you know, goodly fifteen twenty feet apart. Apparently they
were more like six feet apart. Yeah, they mean're fucking close.
It's amazing that more people didn't die.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Well, that's another thing about this kind of fight is
that they were often very close to one another because
for a couple of reasons. But when like people were guns,
well they're using handguns.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, and for the most part.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Well yes, except for the one shotgun. So let's talk
a little bit about these firearms. I'm not going to
go into a huge detail, but I think it is
interesting and I think it has but but are you well,
only in so much as it has bearing on the outcome.
And sure why they were standing so close to each other,
it's said by firearms experts, are people that like our

(56:56):
historians of this time period, that the weapons were more
accurate than the people firing them.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
So interesting, So they were like difficult to fire.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
In a lot of ways compared to modern firearms.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yes, but if you were good at firing them, you
could be extremely accurate.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
So yeah, So often often gun battles, so they are
usually using weapons that have five or maybe six cartridges
loaded into them, so that's how many shots you get.
And often these in these gun battles, everyone would fire
all of their rounds and no one would get hit.

(57:38):
And sometimes they would just say okay, well fuck you
and then run away. Right because reloading reloading some of
these guns could take thirty seconds to a minute. So often,
you know, like I said, in the heat of like

(58:00):
in like the sort of like a crime of passion,
it would either be like you know, like someone cheated
you in gambling, you'd either shoot him in the gut
and lead them to die. Or if it was more
of a protracted shootout, like I said, they may discharge
all their ammunition and then okay, well I got it
out of my system and then you know, kind of

(58:21):
like go their separate ways, or both parties would get
shot and wounded or killed with no clear sort of winner.
So it was often it was not really the glamorous
thing that you see in older Wild West movies. But
what are these guys shooting each other? They are so
the cowboys, Billy Clanton and Frank mcclury are the ones

(58:43):
that we are fairly sure what they were carrying. We
do think that Tom McClory was unarmed. As for the
other ones, when it's not, it's unclear what they were shooting,
possibly the same as the other guys. But there was
a point where, uh, one of the witnesses said that

(59:06):
he saw Frank McClory in the middle of the street
shooting a revolver and trying to remove a Winchester rifle
from a scabbard on his horse. But and but that
did not end up getting used.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
No, And in the days beforehand, Ike is going around
Tombstone claiming he's going to kill Doc Holiday, right, So
it's not like they were just it wasn't like there
was no confrontation, right. And I'd also.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Say, this guy has been beefing for like six months.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
Oh yes, oh yes. And I'd also say, you know,
and tell me if if I'm wrong here. But like
the fact that they were so close together, Yeah, maybe
it speaks to the firearms, but it also says to
me that the IRBs did not go there to kill them.
They just wanted to disarm them, which is why they
were so close when the shooting started.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
That sort of makes sense, it does. Yeah, they are
very close to each other. So anyway, sorry, Billy Clanton
and Frank McClory were both using something called a cult
Frontier eighteen seventy three, which was a single action revolver.
So when people are thinking of like quote unquote cowboy guns, yeah,

(01:00:27):
probably thinking of a later invention, or well not a
later invention, I should say they're likely thinking of the
cult double action revolver, which was introduced in eighteen seventy seven,

(01:00:48):
so it probably would not have been very widely in
use at this point. So what is the difference between
single action and double action? This has been okay. So
a modern automatic or semi automatic firearm handgun, you cock

(01:01:09):
it to prime it or get it ready to fire,
and then every time you pull the trigger, it's gonna
fire a bullet until it runs out bullets. These revolvers
have a chamber. That's the part that sort of spins.
If you're like again you're watching one of these films,

(01:01:29):
that sort of pops out and it can spin freely
and you load the bullets into it. Some of them,
the chamber sort of pops out to the side, making
it easier to load some of them. You Actually, it's
brake action. The barrel of the gun comes apart at
a hinge. And that'd be a great podcasting because I'm

(01:01:50):
demonstrating it today, but it's like this and this part breaks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
No, I know exactly what you mean, Like you've seen like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
The way a shotgun is often loaded.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the hilt where the barrel in
the hilt meet it opens up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Uh. Yeah, well the other barrel in the what you
call the receiver, this is where the bullets are. Uh.
It breaks their new load from there. Okay, single action
double action. Single double action just means every time I
pull the trigger automatically brings the hammer back to cock it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
So it's semi auto.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
When I pull the trigger, that gets another gets it
ready to fire another one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
That's so, it's right, So it's semi auto. It's semi automatic.
That's yeah, that's the cult double action.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
The problem with that early, those early cult double actions,
is it was it was hard to pull the trigger
to cock it. That double action took a lot of
strength from your finger. So even when that was introduced,
a lot of these guys still preferred the uh, the
eighteen seventy three single action. What that means is you

(01:02:54):
have to fire, pull the hammer back with your thumb. Fire,
pull the hammer back with your thumb. Now, the way
that people hold modern firearms is you'd use two hands
for steady aim. They didn't do that. They were one
handing it, which also makes it more inaccurate. But you
also have to use your thumb and cock it. The

(01:03:18):
unless some guys, they would actually modify their firearms so
they would have like a smoother action, meaning it would
be easier to pull the trigger. But unless you would
like modified it by like filing parts down, you're talking
six or seven pounds of pressure to pull that trigger.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Wow, okay, which is a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
So now imagine you have to do all that. You
have to pull that hammer back with your thumb of
the hand that you're firing with aim, pull that seven
pound pull trigger at a guy that is also shooting
at you, trying to kill you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Damn okay.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
And that is what I mean by the fact that
they were often less accurate than the gun that they
were firing, and that's why a lot of rounds would
go off and often people would not get hit or
they were very close to each other. The best gunfighters
were people who weren't necessarily the best shots.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
It was the people that had big brass balls to
stand there and calmly point and aim and shoot at
the other person while bullets are flying past them because
they were usually they were fighting someone who was panicking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Yeah, huh, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
It's a very different perspective than like movies, which make
it seem like they're either like running around like ahh
or which is actually is a lot of that probably
or the like quick draw thing. There were no quick
draw holsters. That's a modern invention for shooting competitions. Oh really, yes, holsters.

(01:05:11):
Most guys did use holsters because remember, you weren't allowed
to bring your gun into town. It was just like
today when you're legal firearm that it shoved in their waistband.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Well, it's not like today and now in Ohio you
could just well that's true, you just walk them into
a grocery store holding the handgun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
You could just be fucking strapped and it's just fine.
M Yeah, you would, you'd already put it in a
pocket or something like that. That's why guns like you know,
small concealable ones were really popular. And that's also why
people mainly use revolvers and handguns and not things like
a long rifle because you can't conceal that. Yeah, anyway,

(01:05:50):
I just wanted to say really quickly, the gun that
Doc Holliday was using was probably a forty five caliber Showfield,
which is one of these top break revolvers that I
was talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
That was like so not not a shotgun.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
No, well he did have a shotgun. Oh okay, they
also the IRPs had this. Uh oh, I'm sorry, did
I say, Doc Holliday. I meant the Irp brothers were
probably carrying eighteen seventy five Showfield Revolvers, which is like,

(01:06:34):
I don't know, if you look at a picture one
of these, this is like like one of the more
famous wild West weapons. Sure, but yeah, neither of these
were probably like more you know, accurate than the the others.
But just if you're like a if you if you
want to have a little bit of a point of reference,

(01:06:54):
we talk about this a little bit because it was
probably used by General Custer at the Battle of a
Little Bighorn.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
The only reason that I want to mention it. It
was one of the more famous rifles. It was used
by the United States military until nineteen eleven or so.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
But yeah, Joe, I think we will surpassed an hour now.
I think we need to do this in two parts
because we've gotten through the gunfight, but now we need
to talk about the trial and the ensuing Wyatt erb
Vendetta ride. So it kind of feels like we might
have a couple months of old West here, so strap in.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Get your spurs and your cowboy hat on or something
something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
And remember, if you're not a Patreon subscriber and you
want to know more about the accuracies and inaccuracies of
the movie Tombstone, we'll have that coming shortly sometime in
the next week or two, so consider that as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
I'm your hucklebee or your huckleberry.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
You fucked it up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
I fucked that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
All right. We'll talk to everybody soon.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
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Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
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