As soon as he arrived in town, Ike had checked his Colt .45 revolver and his Winchester rifle at the West End Corral to comply with local Ordinance No. 9, which required visitors to disarm while they were in town. When he spotted Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday at the Alhambra, Ike accused them of betraying him; he was careful to describe the payoff plot as a rumor not a fact, but Doc ignored the nuance. Calling Clanton a 'damned liar' and a'son of a bitch cowboy,' he accused him of threatening the Earp brothers. Then he told him to go for his gun. 'I have no gun,' said Ike, but Holliday challenged him again. 'Go to fighting,' he shouted, 'if there is any grit in you.' All the while, as Ike remembered it, Holliday had 'his hand to his bosom and I suppose on his pistol.'

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The conversation turned into a shouting match that spilled out into the street and was overheard by Virgil Earp inside the Occidental next door. When he came outside and threatened to arrest all of them if they didn't calm down, Ike and Doc went their separate ways. But neither of them went very far.

In the meantime, Wyatt had gone to the Golden Eagle Brewery to check on his faro concession. When he came out, Clanton was waiting for him. Wyatt waved him off, saying he wouldn't fight Ike because 'there's no money in it.' Ike didn't take that lying down. 'I will be ready for you in the morning,' he countered. And as he followed Wyatt into the Oriental, he repeated the challenge: 'You must not think I won't come after you all in the morning.' Unimpressed, Wyatt turned and left.

Ike wasn't ready to pack it in for the night, and he wandered over to the Occidental, where he dealt himself into that not-so-friendly poker game. At around dawn he was back on the street again, and near 8 a.m. he stopped at the West End Corral to pick up his guns. The law said he should be leaving town at that point, but Clanton had no intention of doing that. He had talked himself into a big day in Tombstone and, as he said later, 'I had those guns around my person for self-defense.' Showing his real intent, he added that he was 'expecting to meet Doc Holliday on the street.'

PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
Not long after picking up his guns, Ike ran into Ned Boyle, a bartender from the Oriental and friend of the Earps, and told him he was not going to bed. 'As soon as those damned Earps make their appearance on the street today, the ball will open,' Clanton boasted. 'We are here to make a fight. We are looking for the sons-of-bitches.' Not able to calm Ike down, Boyle roused Wyatt from his bed and delivered Ike's threatening message. Wyatt had heard such talk before and was in no rush, but eventually he strolled down to the Oriental.

At about 9 a.m., police officer A.G. ('Andy') Bronk of Virgil's force awakened the chief and warned him: 'There is likely to be hell! Ike Clanton has threatened to kill Holliday as soon as he gets up….He's counting you fellows in, too.' Virgil rolled over and went back to sleep. In the early afternoon, though, Virgil went downtown to see what all the fuss was about.

Sometime around 10 a.m., Ike Clanton was chatting with miner Joe Stump at Julius A. Kelly's Wine House. Kelly poured the drinks and listened. Ike informed him that he had been unarmed when insulted by the Earp crowd earlier. Now, Clanton said, he was 'heeled [armed]' and that 'we have come to fight on sight.' Clanton had told others pretty much the same thing that morning, but his ravings had fallen on deaf ears. Kelly took Ike's big talk more seriously. During the trial that followed the O.K. Corral shootout, he testified that he had 'cautioned [Ike] against having any trouble' as he 'believed the other side would fight if it came to that.'

Clanton's intoxicated wanderings led him, shortly after noon, into Hafford's Corner Saloon, a known Earp hangout. After hearing Ike's tale about how Holliday and the Earps had agreed to meet him at noon, Colonel Roderick Hafford told him that it was already past that hour and that he had better go home. 'There will be nothing of it,' the saloon owner added.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to