Sources
Bound volumes of old files of the Tombstone Epitaph, Tombstone Nugget, and Tucson Star fill certain shelves in the rooms of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society in Tucson. In these old newspapers, yellow with age, is to be found, if you take the time to dig it out—and it may take you weeks on end—a full history of Tombstone. The stories were news in their day and are as vivid now as when the ink on the type was still wet. These files constitute a full and authentic record of Tombstone, and they are the source of most of the tales told in this book. The bibliography of Tombstone is meagre. McClintock, in his History of Arizona, has sketched the town’s development, and Frederick Bechdolt, as a literary pioneer in the romantic field, has done some brilliant work in When the West Was Young; but nothing has been written or ever will be written of early days in southeastern Arizona of such intimate interest as the day-by-day history set forth in these old files.
My account of the origin of the Earp-Clanton feud and the street battle in which it culminated is based on testimony from the witness stand. At his trial after the fight in which Tom and Frank McLowery and Billy Clanton were killed, Wyatt Earp read a long and carefully prepared paper which gave in detail the Earp side of the vendetta, and Ike Clanton gave the Clanton side. The Tombstone Epitaph published this testimony in full and that of many other eyewitnesses to the battle from stenographic notes. From these authentic records I have presented both sides of the case. For my version of the assassination of Morgan Earp and the subsequent killing of Frank Stilwell and Florentino Cruz, or Indian Charlie, I have depended on the evidence brought out at the coroner’s inquests.
My Schieffelin chapter is based on the manuscript written by Schieffelin himself and now in the archives of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society; my stories of Billy Breakenridge among the Curly Bill outlaws are based on the reminiscences of the adventurer himself, now Col. William P. Breakenridge of Tucson; my chronicles of John Slaughter are based on the recollections of Mrs. John Slaughter of Douglas, on the clippings treasured in her scrapbook and on the manuscript memoirs of the famous sheriff written by Mrs. W. E. Hankin of Bisbee, a lifelong friend of the Slaughter family.
My research into the printed records of Tombstone’s past has been supplemented by interviews with pioneers, and for information on many subjects dealt with in the book I am under obligations to William Lutley, C. L. Cummings, Porter McDonald, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Macia, James Marr, A. H. Gardner, and Frank Vaughan of Tombstone; Jeff Milton of Fairbank; Leonard Redfield of Benson; United States Marshal George A. Mauk, and State Historian George H. Kelly of Phoenix; Edward Vail, Mrs. George F. Kitt, George R. Roskruge, L. D. Walters, and Melvin Jones of Tucson; Ross Sloan of Skeleton Canyon; James C. Hancock and Rube Hadden of Paradise; Henry Smith, Mrs. B. F. Smith, and Bill Sanders of Turkey Creek Canyon; and half a hundred other old-timers who knew Tombstone in its roaring days.