All-night card games were hardly unusual at the Occidental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. But the game that broke up at 7 o’clock on the morning of October 26, 1881, was one the players would never forget — nor would America, because four of the five participants had roles later that day in the most celebrated shootout in the history of the American West.

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While the fifth man’s name has been lost to history, the others around the table that night were Virgil Earp, Tombstone’s chief of police (often referred to as city marshal); Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, believed to be an ally to the Cowboys, a group of rustlers; Ike Clanton, a rancher and rustler with a chip on his shoulder; and Ike’s Cowboy friend, Tom McLaury. One of those four would be unable to prevent the Gunfight at the O.K.

Corral, another would be wounded in the fight, a third would die in the fight and the fourth would unceremoniously run from the fight.

As the poker game wore on in the early morning hours of the 26th and his losses mounted, Clanton became irritated and obsessed about earlier run-ins with Doc Holliday and Virgil’s brother Wyatt Earp. When the game finally broke up and Ike found out that the chief of police had kept a six-shooter in his lap the whole game, he hit the ceiling. Clanton seemed to take it as a sign that Virgil was plotting to murder him in a conspiracy with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. Ike demanded that Virgil take a message to Holliday, insisting that ‘the damn son of a bitch has got to fight.’ Virgil refused and cautioned the hothead ‘not to raise any more disturbances.’ Ike didn’t appreciate the brush-off and warned Virgil, ‘You may have to fight before you know it.’ Since arriving in town with Tom McLaury the previous morning, Clanton had already threatened Doc Holliday and Wyatt

Earp. Now he had added Virgil Earp to his list.

A MAN WITH AN ATTITUDE
Acrimony between the Clantons and the Earps had been building for more than a year. Virgil Earp had risen to chief of police and it was not much of a secret in town that Wyatt was planning to run for Cochise County sheriff. The Earps had become a threat to the Clanton rustling operation.

In August, the Clanton gang lost its lender when Mexicans — possibly army irregulars, retaliating for the gang’s repeated rustling forays south of the border — killed Ike’s father, Newman Haynes ‘Old Man’ Clanton, in an ambush. It was more than a tragic event for the family; it threatened to end a profitable business for them.

Ike was in a state of panic over a secret deal he had made with Wyatt Earp to rat on friends of his who had robbed the Benson stage near Drew’s Station on March 15, 1881. Wyatt was hoping to crack the case to help get himself elected Cochise County sheriff, and he had promised Ike reward money for setting up his friends. Wells Fargo had offered $1,200 for each of the stage robbers, dead or alive. Ike suspected that the deal was unraveling and that Wyatt had leaked details of the plot to Doc Holliday.

A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN
Holliday was Wyatt Earp’s ally and long-time friend, but he was also close to Bill Leonard, one of the stage robbers that Ike was going to rat on. For all Holliday’s faults, he was loyal to his friends, especially Wyatt Earp. That Wyatt would be involved in pursuing Doc’s old friend, Leonard, would not be a problem for Holliday, as he knew of Wyatt’s ambition to be sheriff. But by his own code of ethics as a Southern gentleman, he would consider it a dishonorable and unacceptable act of betrayal if he knew that Clanton had fingered his own friends. If word of the plot got out, Ike’s life would be in danger.

Not sure whether Wyatt had leaked the deal to anyone, Ike had attempted to flush him out with a direct accusation early in October. Wyatt flatly denied it, but he knew he had a problem with his paranoid co-conspirator, and sent his brother Morgan to Tucson to find Holliday and bring him back to Tombstone. They were there at the Alhambra Saloon when Ike Clanton walked in on the evening of the 25th.

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