SHOTGUNS AT MIDNIGHT: VIRGIL EARP VS UNKNOWN ASSAILANTS

SUSPICION POINTS TO IKE CLANTON, JOHNNY RINGO, CURLY BILL BROCIUS, HANK SWILLING AND FRANK STILWELL TAKE YOUR PICK!

- BOB BOZE BELL

Three days past Christmas, in the chilly night air, Virgil Earp steps from the Oriental Saloon, hobbling slightly from a calf wound he received during the Fremont Street fight.

As midnight approaches, Virgil crosses Fifth toward the Golden Eagle Brewery. When his silhouette lights up the saloon windows, multiple shotguns roar from across the street. The spraying buckshot splinters the windows, awning post and east wall of the saloon. One load hits Virgil above the left hip, and another shatters his left arm above the elbow.

Three assailants are seen fleeing a building under construction on the southeast corner of the Fifth and Allen intersection. They head south on foot and disappear into the gully south of Toughnut Street.

Incredible as it may seem, Virgil keeps his feet and staggers back across the street to the Oriental. He reaches his brother Wyatt, who was investigating the explosions he had heard. Virgil collapses in his brother’s arms.

Wyatt and others help Virgil to his room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

Two doctors are summoned.

Everyone fears the marshal has been mortally wounded.

Were the Shooters Upstairs or on the Roof?

A persistent Tombstone tale renders Virgil’s shooters as firing from a rooftop on the southeast corner (some versions add even more shooters on another roof). Most historians, however, believe the shooters were on the ground floor.

The confusion stems from a report that “five shots were fired in rapid succession by unknown men, who were standing in the old Palace saloon that is being rebuilt next door above Tasker & Pridham’s store, on the southwest corner of the same street.”