Murdered on the Streets of Tombstone, Joyce Aros, Goose Flats Publishing, (520) 457-3884, $26.99, Paper. 340 pages, Author’s Notes, Photos, Illustrations, Bibliography, Index.
Countess books, movies, magazine articles, radio programs and internet chat rooms have hashed and re-hashed the history of Tombstone, Arizona “The Town Too Tough To Die.” The most important incident triggering all the excitement was a shootout that came to be known as “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”
So along comes Hollywood to tell about a huge band of outlaws and cattle rustlers known as “The Cowboys” who are terrorizing Cochise County. But not to worry, in order to rid the Territory of these villainous, snaggle-toothed ruffians, the illustrious Earp boys arrive from Kansas to settle their hash.
And settle it they did! On a cold and windy day in late October, 1881, things came to a head and when the smoke cleared, brothers Frank and Tom McLaury, and their young pal Billy Clanton lay dead in the street behind the O.K. Corral.
One hundred and thirty years later, why are we still worrying about it? Everybody knows (Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Hugh O’Brien, and Rhonda Fleming told us) the Earps were the good-guy heroes, and the three dead cowboys had it coming.
But Wait! Not so fast! There is a lot more to the story, and Tombstone writer-researcher Joyce Aros gives us the benefit of her sleuthing. She has tediously combed through courtroom testimony, oral history on file at the Arizona Historical Society, books, letters, interviews plus a good dose of horse sense to draw her conclusions.
Aros begins Murdered on the Streets of Tombstone explaining the circumstances of life in the new Territory, and how the Clantons and the McLaurys fit into all this. Aros allows the reader to become familiar with these men by putting faces on them. They were living, breathing human beings who had struggles, hopes and dreams in a new land where hardworking, determined men built their ranches.
The fateful day they came to town, Tom and Frank McLaury had business to finish before heading to Iowa to attend their sister’s wedding. Meeting with them was their friend Billy Clanton, a nineteen-year-old rancher who was on business of his own that day.
Aros is able to show the Earps were prepared to fight, but the young ranchers were not. Tom McLaury was not even carrying a gun, Frank McLaury was leading his horse, (who takes a horse to a gunfight?) and when confronted by the gun-wielding Earps, Billy Clanton shouted “I don’t want to fight!” Even so, guns blazed and in less than thirty seconds three men were dead.
Tom, Frank and Billy were not outlaws. They came to a sad and thunderous end behind a dusty corral on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona where they have been vilified for more than 130 years. When you turn the last page of this book, the Earps might still be your heroes, but certainly Tom, Frank and Billy will become real people whose lives were taken far too soon.
We still do not know for sure what triggered the deadly hatred the Earps had for these three young ranchers. However, through this detailed examination in Murdered on the Streets of Tombstone, Joyce Aros has done an incredible job of finally declaring balance to a tragedy that has gone unchallenged far too long. See for yourself by grabbing the book HERE.
Editor’s Note: The reviewer Phyllis Morreale-de la Garza is the author of numerous books about the Old West including The Earp Gamble, published by Silk Label Books, P. 0. Box 700, Unionville, New York 10988 (845) 726-3434. www.silklabelbooks.com
