Earp Vendetta Ride

The Earp Vendetta Ride, lasting from March 20 to April 15, 1882, was a manhunt for outlaw Cowboys led by newly appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp. He was searching for men he held responsible for maiming his brother, Virgil (who was both a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal at the time of his injury), and for assassinating his brother Morgan, an assistant U.S. Marshal. The Earps had been attacked in retaliation for the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, in which the Earps and Doc Holliday killed three Cowboys. Wyatt formed a federal posse that searched southeast Cochise County, Arizona Territory for suspects in both Virgil's and Morgan's attacks whom the court had freed, owing in some cases to legal technicalities and in others on the strength of alibis provided by Cowboy confederates. Wyatt Earp, deciding he could not rely on civil justice, took matters into his own hands to hunt the men down and kill them.

The event that triggered the long ride, during which the Earp posse did not return to Tombstone, and after which they ultimately left the Territory forever, was the shooting death of Frank Stilwell in Tucson on March 20. Wyatt, his brother Warren, Doc Holliday, and two other deputies had been escorting Virgil and his wife Allie to a California-bound train in Tucson, when Wyatt spotted Frank Stilwell lying in wait near the station. He and several men chased Stilwell down and killed him. The Tucson Justice of the Peace issued warrants for the arrest of the five men suspected of shooting Stilwell. The next day, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan attempted to detain the Earps' federal posse in Tombstone, but they brushed him aside and rode out of town to find the other Cowboys implicated in the attacks.

At the same time deputy federal marshal Wyatt Earp was riding in a federal posse, Behan formed an opposing Cochise County sheriff's posse consisting of deputies Phineas "Phin" (or "Fin") Clanton, Johnny Ringo, and about twenty other Arizona ranchers and outlaws, with the purpose of serving the Stilwell murder arrest warrants against five members of the federal posse. Behan deliberately failed to include Pima County Sheriff Bob Paul, who had jurisdiction over Tucson and thus in the killing in of Frank Stilwell, as he was a friend of the Earps. The Behan posse never engaged the much smaller Earp posse, which not only received help from local businessmen and ranchers, but at one point during the pursuit even wrote a letter to a Tombstone newspaper taunting Behan and his men.

Carrying arrest warrants for "Curly Bill" Brocius and others, the federal posse ultimately killed four men, beginning with the shooting of Stilwell and ending with the killing of Brocius. The ride ended April 15 when the Earps and their associates rode out of Arizona Territory and headed for New Mexico Territory.