00:26In 1861,
00:28the Civil War broke out, ripping America apart.
00:55White Earp had just turned 13.
00:59But with his father absent most of the time,
01:02and Virgil off fighting,
01:04it was left to Wyatt to protect his family,
01:07including his younger brother, Morgan.
01:14During the Civil War,
01:15Virgil enlisted in the Union Army.
01:18Wyatt, of course, was too young at the time, as was Morgan.
01:22But the brothers were very, very close,
01:24and that bond is critical in understanding
01:27Wyatt Earp's character.
01:32Wyatt was scared of Confederate attacks.
01:37And he practiced endlessly with a gun.
01:44It was an enormous responsibility for someone so young.
01:47It was a bad thing.
01:50It was a bad thing.
01:53It was a bad thing.
01:57It was a bad thing.
02:00Don't worry, Morgan.
02:01I'll protect you.
02:05You're there.
02:05No.
02:06No.
02:06.
02:10I don't know.
02:37Don't worry, Morgan. I'll protect you.
03:03Morgan Earp was only 30 when he died.
03:07Gunned down in cold blood.
03:21I know who'll kill Morgan.
03:29The night before, two assassins came for the Earps.
03:50That guy there with Ike?
03:53That's Frank Stilwell, a gunslinger with a reputation as a sharpshooter.
03:59There you go.
04:02Once, he was a lawman.
04:04Then he crossed the line and joined Ike's gang.
04:08That was the thing about the Wild West.
04:11It was easy to go from lawman to outlaw.
04:19When the assassins came for Morgan Earp, they could look through the windows and they aimed
04:25at two targets.
04:26One was Morgan Earp leaning over the table to play pool.
04:30The other was Wyatt Earp watching the pool game.
04:44The two rifle shots went off.
04:48One hit Morgan Earp in the back.
04:50One barely went over Wyatt Earp's head and missed hitting him.
05:02How do you know it was Frank?
05:05Someone heard the son of a bitch bragging about it.
05:23Frank Stilwell was full of himself, and it wasn't long before he was telling his friends
05:29about the killing.
05:36One person even wrote about it.
05:40One of our important sources for events in Tombstone is a diarist named George Parsons.
05:47And he has an entry about this incident and the killing of Morgan Earp, and he tells us
05:52it was quite evident Frank Stilwell was the guilty party.
06:13And he tells us it was the guilty party of Morgan Earp, and he tells us it was the guilty
06:15Wyatt Earp was profoundly affected by the murder of Morgan.
06:21He felt he should have been protecting his younger brother.
06:27And at that point, Wyatt Earp was seeking revenge in any way he could get it.
06:53Wyatt says to Virgil Earp, I'm going to get the guys that have done this to us, but I
06:58can't protect you at the same time, so I'm going to have to get you to safety.
07:03Take it.
07:07Wyatt arranged for Virgil, his family, and Josephine to go to California, where he knew they'd be
07:13safe.
07:29Wyatt's plan was to escort them to Tucson, where they'd catch the train to San Francisco.
07:53Good night out.
08:22I'm with us.
08:25As soon as this is over.
08:33It'll be okay.
08:40You ready?
08:41Wait.
08:42This woman's in the way.
08:54Get down!
08:56Shit, they've seen us.
09:03They're here!
09:04On the tracks!
09:12They're here!
09:22They're here!
09:27They're here!
09:41Hey!
09:58Whoa.
10:00Who got me?
10:06Why?
10:10Why?
10:12Please.
10:23With a blast of his shotgun,
10:26Wyatt Earp had taken out Frank Stilwell,
10:29one of his brother's killers.
10:32The incident at the Tucson train station
10:35is the real point of change in Wyatt Earp.
10:39It's the moment where the lawman
10:42becomes the killer.
10:44Wyatt gave him both barrels.
10:47Cold-blooded murder.
10:48No question about it.
10:52But Wyatt wasn't done.
10:57He went looking for Ike Clanton.
11:02But he wouldn't find him.
11:07Crazy Ike apparently runs faster than Frank Stilwell.
11:10I don't know how he avoided Wyatt Earp,
11:12but he was able to escape.
11:14Frank Stilwell didn't.
11:39That telegram was an arrest warrant for Wyatt Earp.
11:44That telegram was an arrest warrant for Wyatt Earp.
11:49That telegram was an arrest warrant for him.
11:49Get down!
11:52You see, no one actually witnessed
11:54Ike and Frank trying to kill Wyatt.
11:57But there were plenty of witnesses
11:58who'd seen Wyatt and Doc guns drawn
12:01hunting someone down at Tucson Station.
12:05And people heard the gunshots.
12:12And then they found the bullet-riddled body of Frank Stilwell.
12:21With a warrant now out for Wyatt's arrest,
12:25Ike decided to give local reporters even more ammunition.
12:29I bumped into Frank in the morning.
12:32Ike gives an interview and she claims
12:34he just happened to be in Tucson.
12:36He told me he was terrified.
12:37And they bumped into Frank Stilwell,
12:39and Stilwell was scared because Wyatt was after him.
12:42Later, I was returned from an evening stroll
12:46and I heard shots, and Frank was dead.
12:50Once again, Ike Clanton is changing the story,
12:54presenting himself as this innocent victim
12:56who just happened to be in the wrong place
12:58at the wrong time,
12:59and the Earps are out to get him.
13:03As far as I'm concerned, nobody's safe.
13:08For the second time in less than five months,
13:12Wyatt Earp was being accused of murder.
13:17But this time,
13:18Wyatt wasn't going to let himself be arrested.
13:29He was going on the run
13:32so he could get his revenge on Ike Clanton.
13:42Wyatt Earp desperately wanted revenge
13:44for the murder of Morgan Earp
13:48and the attempted murder of Virgil.
13:50He recognized that it was going to be very difficult
13:54to obtain justice in the Arizona courts,
13:57and he decided that he was going to take law
13:59into his own hands.
14:05Wyatt had a tip-off of where Ike was hiding out.
14:11But when he got there,
14:13the only thing he found was this guy,
14:16Florentino Cruz.
14:19Florentino Cruz is a Texas cattle wrestler
14:21who is said to be a member of Ike's gang
14:23and who was rumored to be the lookout
14:25on the evening of Morgan's assassination.
14:38Ike's not here.
14:52I only held the horses.
14:54I only held the horses.
14:55I only held the horses.
14:56I swear.
14:56Okay.
15:21How much?
15:27How much did they pay you?
15:32$25.
15:45$25.
15:46$25.
16:16$6.
16:17$25.
16:18Thè…¹ wasn't.
16:18Th mucho.
16:27$2.
16:32$75.
16:43$5.
16:57By the time Wyatt Earp killed Florentino Cruz, he had decided, just as the Cowboys had,
17:04that the law could no longer provide justice.
17:07He appointed himself as justice, and he killed a man when he did not have to do it.
17:23The word of Cruz's murder made headlines the next day.
17:28A witness was able to place Wyatt at the scene of the crime.
17:32With two murders in two days, local papers started to refer to Wyatt's actions as the Earp Vendetta.
17:40In the San Francisco papers, it became the Arizona Vendetta.
17:45Then the story went nationwide, and eventually became known as the Vendetta Ride.
17:53When Wyatt Earp and his posse head out on his so-called Vendetta Ride, it receives enormous media coverage.
17:59He is now going rogue. He is becoming a vigilante.
18:03He's not going to wait for justice to be served. He's going to serve it himself.
18:07Well, it's at this point that the newspapers turn on Wyatt.
18:11No longer is he seen as a frontier force of justice.
18:15Now they actually refer to him as a highwayman, as if he is now contributing to the chaos in the
18:21West.
18:26But amongst this onslaught, there was one newspaper article that painted a very different picture.
18:35On the same day that Wyatt killed Cruz, executives at Wells Fargo gave an interview to a San Francisco newspaper,
18:45saying that the press had gotten it all wrong, that the Earps were the heroes, and the Cowboys were the
18:53villains.
18:55Now, why would they do that?
18:58Well, it had to do with money.
19:04Don't forget that the Cowboys had been robbing their stagecoaches.
19:10Wells Fargo has a seriously vested interest in the safe transit of silver out of that area to the East.
19:18And the Cowboys, that represent this kind of violent gangland threat,
19:22Wells Fargo sees this as a big threat to their whole business model.
19:26So the representatives of the Wells Fargo company have a tremendous self-interest
19:30in seeing people like Wyatt Earp take on the Cowboys and defeat them.
19:35So when they saw all the negative news about Wyatt, Wells Fargo decided to set the record straight.
19:42One of the leaders of Wells Fargo stated to a reporter that the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday
19:49were not stage robbers and cattle thieves, as their enemies had declared.
19:55It was just an outrageous false news.
19:58So Wells Fargo countered that by stating that the Earps were the good guys,
20:03and the Cowboys were the bad guys.
20:05Not only did the Wells Fargo bosses call out Ike Clanton as a leader of an outlaw gang,
20:11the Cowboys, but they also accused Sheriff Behan of being one of them.
20:18But that article caused even more problems.
20:24So when Wells Fargo issues this statement to a San Francisco newspaper,
20:30you can imagine how this confirmed all the suspicions of the Democrats in Arizona,
20:37the Cowboys, of those who believed still in the Southern cause,
20:41that it's these banking interests and these corporate interests
20:45that are coming and destroying our way of life, our freedom,
20:49and now they're doing it so blatantly that they're backing this cold-blooded killer.
20:54Not only that, but they were actually sending out messengers to deliver cash to him.
21:00$1,000 here, $1,000 there, to keep up his vendetta.
21:11Meanwhile, Ike was done with running.
21:16He'd come up with a plan to turn the tables on Wyatt.
21:20The hunter would become the hunted.
21:28You see, Ike had a big competitive advantage on Wyatt.
21:33He had the law on his side.
21:36We're ready.
21:40Send me word when you get him.
21:45No.
21:47A gang of cowboys went to kill Wyatt.
21:50But to make it seem legit,
21:54Behan led them.
21:55So they became known as Sheriff Behan's posse.
22:00Behan even deputized Curly Bill,
22:02one of Ike's top lieutenants.
22:09Part of what makes this story so odd is that during the vendetta,
22:15Wyatt Earp's posse is out chasing the murderers of Morgan.
22:19But at the same time,
22:21Behan has put together a posse to chase the Earps,
22:24made up of a number of members of the cowboy gang.
22:28So you've got this outlaw posse chasing the Earps,
22:31who are chasing the outlaws.
22:34It's crazy as you can imagine.
23:05It's crazy as you can imagine.
23:14It's crazy as you can imagine.
23:34We've got to Robins.
23:52The next 10 seconds will seal Wyatt's fate and become a turning point in the history
23:58of the West.
24:19Come on!
24:26Run!
24:27You damn coward!
24:28Come on!
24:32Come on!
26:09You layer on top of that the political divide between the North supporting the Earps versus
26:15the South supporting the Cowboys and you have this kind of clash of two Americas.
26:26But all this was the worst possible news for JP Morgan.
26:37Morgan saw how the vendetta was dividing America and he'd heard the same sort of rhetoric before
26:44the Civil War.
26:46Battle lines were again being drawn between North and South and it wasn't hard to see
26:52how this was going to end.
26:55You see, it wasn't just his railroad investment at stake.
26:58The future of America was at stake.
27:03Morgan's only hope was that the president would finally act.
27:15But all these events had happened so fast, just six days.
27:21President Arthur was still trying to figure out how to respond.
27:26President Arthur already asked Congress to send in the Army against the Cowboys.
27:30And they said, no way.
27:32And now things are getting worse.
27:34He really doesn't know which way to turn.
27:47Meanwhile, back in Tombstone, the Cowboy War was about to escalate.
28:07And nobody knew how it was going to end.
28:13But one thing was clear.
28:16Neither Wyatt nor Ike was going to stop.
28:25Until the other one was dead.
28:53But for the answer, we cannot do that.
28:53No, it's not.
29:01We'll be here.
29:01We'll be here.
29:01And we'll be here.
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