This Day…

1882 – Wyatt Earp and friends gunned down Florentino Cruz at Pete Spence’s wood lot outside of Tombstone.  Cruz was innocent of any participation in the attacks on the Earp family.  Pete Spence and Indian Charlie were the men that the Earp posse were looking for, but they weren’t at the wood lot.  The Earp posse just killed Florentino because he was handy.

1882 – Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday gunned down Frank Stillwell at the train station in Tucson for his alleged part in the shoting of Virgil Earp.  Stillwell and Ike Clanton were both there to make yet another attempt on the Earp family.  Virgil was on the train escorting Morgan’s body to California for burial.  Clanton scamptered off into the night when he saw Wyatt.  It was the second time he fled from a fight with the Earps.

1882-Morgan Earp was shotgunned from an ambush and killed while playing pool in Campbell and Hatch’s Saloon in Tombstone.  Morgan liked to shoot pool about as much as like to shoot anyone.

1881-Budd Philpot, a luckless driver, and a passenger, Peter Roerig, were killed in a failed stage robbery outside of Contention City, Arizona, by Jim Crane and others of the “cowboy” stamp.  Robber Luther King was wounded and ratted out the others after he was caught.

1878 – Jesse Evans and Tom Hill were caught plundering a sheep camp at Alamo Springs, New Mexico.  After shooting the hereder, the herder killed Hill with one shot and wounded Evans in the wrist.  Evans then spurred off on a stolen horse.

1878 – Frank Baker and Billy Morton were in the custody of a regulator posse led by Dick Brewer for their participation in the murder of John Tunstall.  In an attempted escape at Steel Springs, New Mexico posseman William McCloskey was killed by Morton, but Morton and Baker  were both quickly shot to pieces by the remaining members of the posse.

1873-Bully Brooks prudently patched up his disputes with Kirk Jordan in Dodge City.

1896-The outlaw Red Buck George Weightman, was surrounded by a posse in a dugout near Cheyenne, Oklahoma.  He tried to shoot his way out and was killed with a rifle shot fired by Chris Madsen.

1898- A posse led by Valentine Hoy cornered escaped convicts Harry Tracy, Dave Lant, and Sweded Johnson in Browns Park, Colorado. As he approached them Hoy was shot through the heart by Tracy.

1871 – Surrounded by a posse in an outhouse in Wichita, Kansas suspected horse thief J.E. Ledford came out with guns blazing and badly wounded Marshal Jack Bridges.  Bridges survived by Ledfrod was killed.  1908 – On February 29 Pat Garrett had stopped to take a leak beside the road outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  When Wayne Brazel killed him from behind.

1897 – Respected lawman Les Dow was reading a letter in front of the post office in Carlsbad, New Mexico when Dave Kemp stepped up and shot him in the face.  He died the next morning.