Earp Vendetta Ride

Earp Vendetta Ride

Wyatt Earp began the search for the Cowboys who ambushed Virgil Earp in Charleston, Arizona Territory.
Date	March 20 to April 15, 1882
Location	Cochise County, Arizona Territory, United States
Participants	Wyatt, Warren, and James Earp; Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster, Jack "Turkey Creek" Johnson, Charles Smith, Dan Tipton, and John Vermillion vs. Johnny Behan, Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, Ike Clanton, Florentino Cruz, Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Ringo, Frederick Bode, Pony Diehl, Johnny Barnes, Frank Patterson, Milt Hicks, Bill Hicks, Bill Johnson, Ed Lyle, and Johnny Lyle
Outcome	Four Cowboys killed; arrest warrants issued for Earps, Holliday, and others, who leave Arizona Territory
Deaths	Frank Stilwell, Florentino Cruz, Curly Bill Brocius, and Johnny Barnes

The Earp Vendetta Ride was a deadly search by a federal posse led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp for a loose confederation of outlaw "Cowboys" they believed had ambushed his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, maiming the former and killing the latter. The two Earp brothers had been attacked in retaliation for the deaths of three Cowboys in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881. From March 20 to April 15, 1882, the federal posse searched southeast Cochise County, Arizona Territory for the men they believed were responsible for the attacks on Virgil and Morgan. Several suspects had been identified and were charged, but were soon released by the court, owing in some cases to legal technicalities and in others to the strength of alibis provided by Cowboy confederates. Wyatt hoped that the legal system would bring the Cowboys to justice, but after suspects in both ambushes were freed, Wyatt resolved to take matters into his own hands.^[1]

On March 20, two days after Morgan's murder, Wyatt Earp and his brothers Warren and James along with Doc Holliday, and two other deputies were escorting Virgil and his wife Allie to a California-bound train in Tucson. They learned that suspects Ike Clanton and Frank Stilwell were already waiting there. After Virgil, Allie, and James boarded the train, Wyatt spotted two men near the train that he thought were Clanton and Stilwell. He and several men chased down and killed Stilwell, but lost the other. After Stilwell's body was found the next morning, the Tucson Justice of the Peace issued arrest warrants for the five lawmen suspected of the extra-judicial murder. When the men returned to Tombstone, Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan had received a telegram notifying him of the Tucson warrants, and attempted to detain the five members of Earp's federal posse named in the warrants, but they ignored him. Still carrying arrest warrants for Curly Bill Brocius and others, they left Tombstone to pursue further Cowboys implicated in the attacks.

Behan formed a Cochise County sheriff's posse consisting of deputies Phineas Clanton, Johnny Ringo, and about twenty other Cowboys and Arizona ranchers. Based on the local warrants, they followed the Earp posse and set out to arrest them. The large sheriff's posse came close to, but never engaged, the much smaller Earp posse, which received help from local businessmen and ranchers (and at one point, published a letter in a Tombstone newspaper taunting Behan and his men). The federal posse ultimately killed four men, starting with Stilwell and ending with Brocius. About April 15 the Earps and some of their associates rode out of Arizona Territory, headed for New Mexico Territory.