As 1880 wound down, Harris may have imported at least two gunmen to protect his interest. This could explain the nature of the initial altercation between Holliday and Tyler on October 10, which took place outside the Oriental but only came to a head when the two met face to face inside the saloon: Tyler had defied Holliday’s warning to steer clear of Harris and Rickabaugh, to cease and desist from intimidating them and their patrons. But even the formidable duo of Holliday and Short failed to drive off the Slopers, at least according to Wyatt Earp’s account. Events forced him to intervene.

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Misled by an article published in the San Francisco Examiner on August 2, 1896, in which Wyatt (his words penned by a staff writer) describes how Lou Rickabaugh offered him a partnership in the Oriental gaming tables after he’d been working for Wells Fargo as a shotgun messenger for eight months, some writers have dated Wyatt’s entry into the gamblers’ fray as August 1880. However, Wells Fargo payroll records do not show Wyatt as a paid employee until June 1880. Eight months later would be early in 1881. And it was during January and February that the Citizens League, a vigilante organization, held secret meetings to discuss how to halt excess violence in Tombstone.

Earp biographer Stuart Lake has Rickabaugh tell Wyatt he hired him because he was impressed by how Wyatt handled ‘that lynch mob.’ To Rickabaugh’s practiced eye, Wyatt Earp was just the man to strong-arm a gang trying to cut into the take at the Oriental. In speaking of ‘that lynch mob,’ Rickabaugh could only have been referring to the Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce affair of January 14, 1881, in which Wyatt and other citizens helped local lawmen protect a young gambler from a vengeful throng after he had shot and killed a mining engineer in nearby Charleston. And when Wyatt accepted Rickabaugh’s proposition in Lake’s version, it was after Bat Masterson had arrived in Tombstone, since Rickabaugh mentioned that Short, Harris and Masterson had filled him in on Wyatt’s prowess. Masterson did not leave Dodge City for Tombstone until February 8, 1881.

The showdown came shortly thereafter. John Tyler made a bold play to take over the Oriental by jabbing his six-shooter at Lou Rickabaugh as the stocky faro dealer sat behind a pile of chips. Wyatt Earp was on the spot in a flash and, clamping down on Tyler’s ear, dragged the surprised gunman out the front door of the saloon and deposited him in the dusty street, while Holliday kept Tyler’s henchmen lined up at the bar, staring down the barrel of a nickel-plated Colt revolver. Throughout his life, Wyatt was handy with his mitts, and it would be completely in character for him to prefer manhandling Tyler to shooting his lights out.

The Earp-Tyler encounter must have occurred sometime in mid-February 1881, and within days of it a veteran gunman named Charles Storms rode into Tombstone from El Paso. On February 25, he and Luke Short tangled inside the Oriental. Bat Masterson stepped in and persuaded Storms to return to his room at the San Jose House. All seemed calm, but later in the day Storms reappeared and met Short outside the saloon to settle their differences. Short beat Storms to the draw and put a bullet through his heart. Indefatigable diarist George Parsons dashed to the scene:

Quite peaceable times lately, but today the monotony was broken by the shooting of Chas. Storms by Luke Short. Shots — the first two were so deliberate I didn’t think anything much was out of the way, but at next shot I seized hat and ran out into the street just in time to see Storms die — shot through the heart. Both gamblers. L.S. running game at the Oriental. Trouble brewing during night and morning and S probable aggressor through [sic] very drunk. He was game to the last and after being shot through the heart by a desperate effort steadying revolver with both hands fired — four shots in all….Short very unconcerned after shooting–probably a case of kill or be killed…the faro games went on right as though nothing had happened….

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