Wyatt Earp and The Cowboy War (2024) s01e05 Episode Script

[distant gunfire]
[distant clamoring]
[Ed Hal] In 1861, the Civil War broke out,
ripping America apart.
[yells]
[gunshot]
[Ed] Wyatt Earp had just turned 13.
But with his father absent
most of the time
and Virgil off fighting,
it was left to Wyatt
to protect his family,
including his younger brother, Morgan.
[somber banjo music playing]
[boys laugh]
[John] During the Civil War,
Virgil enlisted in the Union Army.
Wyatt, of course,
was too young at the time, as was Morgan.
But the brothers were very, very close,
and that bond is critical
in understanding Wyatt Earp's character.
[tense music continues]
[Ed] Wyatt was scared
of Confederate attacks.
And he practiced endlessly with a gun.
[gunshots]
[Ed] It was an enormous responsibility
for someone so young.
[tense music playing]
[gun cocks]
[young Wyatt] Don't worry, Morgan.
I'll protect you.
[somber music playing]
[gunshot echoes]
[somber music continues]
[young Wyatt] Don't worry, Morgan.
I'll protect you.
[tense music playing]
[gunshot echoes]
[bell tolls]
[bell tolls]
[somber music playing]
[Ed] Morgan Earp was only 30 when he died.
Gunned down in cold blood.
[tense music playing]
I know who killed Morgan.
[tense music playing]
[Ed] The night before,
two assassins came for the Earps.
[tense music continues]
[Ed] That guy there with Ike,
that's Frank Stilwell,
a gunslinger
with a reputation as a sharpshooter.
[Ike] There you go. [laughs]
[Ed] Once, he was a lawman.
Then he crossed the line
and joined Ike's gang.
That was the thing about the Wild West.
It was easy to go from lawman
to outlaw.
[tense music playing]
[Casey] When the assassins
came for Morgan Earp,
they could look through the windows.
And they aimed at two targets.
One was Morgan Earp
leaning over the table to play pool.
The other was Wyatt Earp
watching the pool game.
[distant piano music playing]
- Now.
- [gunshots]
[screaming]
[Ike] Let's go.
[dramatic music playing]
[Casey] The two rifle shots went off.
One hit Morgan Earp in the back.
One barely went over Wyatt Earp's head
and missed hitting him.
And how do you know it was Frank?
Someone heard the son of a bitch
bragging about it.
[tense music playing]
[Ike panting]
- [Ike] Did anyone see us?
- No.
[Ed] Frank Stilwell was full of himself.
And it wasn't long before he was telling
his friends about the killing.
[tense music continues]
[laughter]
[Ed] One person even wrote about it.
[Mark] One of our important sources
for events in Tombstone
is a diarist named George Parsons.
And he has an entry about this incident,
the killing of Morgan Earp,
and he tells us it's it was quite evident
Frank Stilwell was the guilty party.
[tense music playing]
Wyatt Earp was profoundly affected
by the the murder of Morgan.
He felt he should have been protecting
his younger brother.
And at that point,
Wyatt Earp was seeking revenge
in any way he could get it.
[somber music playing]
[Mark] Wyatt says to Virgil Earp,
"I'm gonna get the guys
that have done this to us,
but I can't protect you at the same time."
"So I'm gonna have to get you to safety."
Take it.
[Ed] Wyatt arranged for Virgil,
his family, and Josephine
to go to California
where he knew they'd be safe.
[somber music continues]
- Let's go.
- Hyah!
[horse neighs]
[Ed] Wyatt's plan
was to escort them to Tucson
where they'd catch the train
to San Francisco.
[train horn blowing]
Keep an eye out.
[tense music playing]
Come with us.
As soon as this is over.
It'll be okay.
[tense music playing]
- [Ike] You ready?
- Wait.
His woman's in the way.
[blowing whistle]
- [Wyatt] Get down!
- [screaming]
[Ike] Shit. They've seen us.
[tense music playing]
[screaming]
[Wyatt] They're here! On the tracks.
[woman yelps]
[tense music continues]
[music fades]
[Ike panting]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Wyatt] Hey!
[suspenseful music continues]
[gunshot]
[gunshot]
[suspenseful music continues]
[Frank] Whoa.
You got me.
[suspenseful music crescendos]
Wyatt
[tense music playing]
[Frank] Wyatt
Please.
[tense music continues]
[gunshot]
[Ed] With a blast of his shotgun,
Wyatt Earp had taken out Frank Stilwell,
one of his brother's killers.
[Paul] The incident
at the Tucson train station
is is the real point of change
in Wyatt Earp.
It's the moment
where the lawman becomes the killer.
Wyatt gave him both barrels.
Cold-blooded murder. No question about it.
[somber music playing]
[Ed] But Wyatt wasn't done.
[tense music playing]
[Ed] He went looking for Ike Clanton.
But he wouldn't find him.
[tense music continues]
[Mark] Crazy Ike apparently runs faster
than Frank Stilwell.
I don't know how he avoided Wyatt Earp,
but but he was able to escape.
Frank Stilwell didn't.
[tense music continues]
[music fades]
[door opens]
[somber music playing]
[Ed] That telegram
was an arrest warrant for Wyatt Earp.
[tense music playing]
[blows whistle]
[Wyatt] Get down!
[screaming]
[Ed] You see, no one actually witnessed
Ike and Frank trying to kill Wyatt.
But there were plenty of witnesses
who'd seen Wyatt and Doc, guns drawn,
hunting someone down at Tucson Station.
[screaming]
[Ed] And people heard the gunshots.
- [gunshot]
- [screaming]
[Ed] And then, they found
the bullet-riddled body of Frank Stilwell.
With a warrant now out for Wyatt's arrest,
Ike decided to give local reporters
even more ammunition.
[Ike] I bumped into Frank in the morning.
[David] Ike gives an interview in which he
claims he just happened to be in Tucson.
He told me he was terrified.
And he bumped into Frank Stilwell,
and Stilwell was scared
because Wyatt was after him.
Later, I was returning
from an evening stroll,
and I heard shots and
Frank was dead.
[David] Once again,
Ike Clanton is changing the story,
presenting himself
as this innocent victim,
who just happened to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and, uh, the Earps are out to get him.
As far as I'm concerned, nobody's safe.
[Ed] For the second time
in less than five months,
Wyatt Earp was being accused of murder.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Ed] But this time,
Wyatt wasn't going
to let himself be arrested.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Ed] He was going on the run,
so he could get
his revenge on Ike Clanton.
[suspenseful music continues]
[John] Wyatt Earp
desperately wanted revenge
for the murder of Morgan Earp
and the attempted murder of Virgil.
He recognized
that it was gonna be very difficult
to obtain justice in the Arizona courts,
and he decided that he was gonna
take the law into his own hands.
[music fades]
[Ed] Wyatt had a tip-off
of where Ike was hiding out.
But when he got there,
the only thing he found was this guy,
Florentino Cruz.
Florentino Cruz is a Texas cattle rustler,
who was said to be a member of Ike's gang,
and who was rumored to be the lookout
on the evening of Morgan's assassination.
[gunshot]
Ike's not here.
[Florentino groans]
[Florentino exhales]
[Florentino grunts]
[Wyatt] Get up!
[Florentino] I only held the horses.
I only held the horses, I swear.
[tense music playing]
How much?
[exhales]
How much did they pay you?
[exhales] Twenty-five dollars.
[tense music playing]
Twenty-five dollars.
[tense music continues]
[music fades]
Draw.
[bird squawks]
[somber operatic music playing]
[Jeff] By the time
Wyatt Earp killed Florentino Cruz,
he had decided, just as the Cowboys had,
that the law
could no longer provide justice.
He appointed himself as justice,
and he killed a man,
when he did not have to do it.
[somber operatic music continues]
[dramatic music playing]
[Ed] Word of Cruz's murder
made headlines the next day.
A witness was able to place Wyatt
at the scene of the crime.
With two murders in two days,
local papers started to refer
to Wyatt's actions as "The Earp Vendetta."
In the San Francisco papers,
it became "The Arizona Vendetta."
Then, the story went nationwide,
and eventually became known
as "The Vendetta Ride."
[dramatic music continues]
[Edward] When Wyatt Earp and his posse
head out on his so-called Vendetta Ride,
it receives enormous media coverage.
He is now going rogue.
He is becoming a vigilante.
He's not gonna wait for justice
to be served. He's gonna serve it himself.
[David] It was at this point
that the newspapers turn on Wyatt.
No longer is he seen
as a frontier force of justice.
Uh, now they actually refer to him
as a highwayman,
as if he is now contributing
to the chaos in the West.
[music fades]
[Ed] But amongst this onslaught,
there was one newspaper article
that painted a very different picture.
On the same day that Wyatt killed Cruz,
executives at Wells Fargo
gave an interview
to a San Francisco newspaper,
saying that the press
had gotten it all wrong.
That the Earps were the heroes
and the Cowboys were the villains.
Now, why would they do that?
Well, it had to do with money.
[adventurous music playing]
[Ed] Don't forget that the Cowboys
had been robbing their stagecoaches.
[Edward] Wells Fargo
has a seriously vested interest
in the safe transit of silver
out of that area to the east.
And the Cowboys that represent
this kind of violent gangland threat,
Wells Fargo sees this as a big threat
to their whole business model.
So the representatives
of the Wells Fargo Company
have a tremendous self-interest
in seeing people like Wyatt Earp
take on the Cowboys and defeat them.
[Ed] So when they saw
all the negative news about Wyatt,
Wells Fargo decided
to set the record straight.
[John] One of the leaders of Wells Fargo
stated to a reporter
that the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday
were not stage robbers and cattle thieves
as their enemies had declared.
It was just outrageous false news.
So Wells Fargo countered that by stating
that the Earps were the good guys
and the Cowboys were the bad guys.
[Ed] Not only did the Wells Fargo bosses
call out Ike Clanton
as the leader of an outlaw gang,
the Cowboys,
but they also accused Sheriff Behan
of being one of them.
But that article
caused even more problems.
[gentle music playing]
[David] So when Wells Fargo
issues this statement
to a San Francisco newspaper,
you can imagine how this confirmed
all the suspicions of the Democrats
in Arizona, of the Cowboys,
of those, uh, who believed still
in the Southern cause,
that it's these banking interests
and these corporate interests
that are coming and destroying
our way of life, our freedom.
And now they're doing it so blatantly
that they're backing
this cold-blooded killer.
Not only that,
but they were actually sending out
messengers to deliver cash to him,
a thousand dollars here,
a thousand dollars there,
uh, to keep up his vendetta.
[Ed] Meanwhile, Ike was done with running.
He'd come up with a plan
to turn the tables on Wyatt.
The hunter would become the hunted.
You see, Ike had
a big competitive advantage on Wyatt.
He had the law on his side.
We're ready.
Send me word when you get him.
Let's go.
[Ed] A gang of Cowboys went to kill Wyatt.
But to make it seem legit,
Behan led them.
So they became known
as Sheriff Behan's posse.
Behan even deputized Curly Bill,
one of Ike's top lieutenants.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Casey] Part of what makes this story
so odd is that during the vendetta,
Wyatt Earps's posse is out chasing
the murderers of Morgan,
but at the same time,
Behan has put together
a posse to chase the Earps,
made up of a number
of members of the Cowboy gang.
So you've got this outlaw posse
chasing the Earps,
who are chasing the outlaws.
It's crazy as you can imagine.
[suspenseful music continues]
[music fades]
[tense music playing]
[music fades]
[Behan] Now!
- [gunshots]
- [horse squeals]
[Ed] The next ten seconds
will seal Wyatt's fate
and become a turning point
in the history of the West.
[gunshots]
[groans]
[gunshots continue]
[Wyatt grunts]
[man groans]
[gunshots continue]
[Wyatt] Come on!
[Wyatt] Run! You damn coward.
[operatic music playing]
[Yohuru] The death of Curly Bill
was the stuff of legend.
Wyatt had ridden into a trap
and was vastly outnumbered.
And not only did he survive
without a scratch,
he managed to kill
one of the Cowboys responsible
for the shooting of his brother Virgil.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Ed] When the story came out
of how Wyatt Earp single-handedly
took on a gang of Cowboys,
the American public couldn't get enough.
[dramatic music playing]
[David] It's got all the elements
of a great story, right?
It's got violence. It's got family.
It's got the romance of the Wild West.
And every day, there's a new incident
in this, almost like episodic television,
where there's a new episode of violence
and everybody on the edge of their seats
wondering what's gonna happen.
[Ed] But two versions
of the story got reported.
Northern newspapers
celebrated Wyatt's victory
and the death of Curly Bill.
Some even gloated,
saying the Cowboys had scored only one,
while the Earps had scored six.
But Southern newspapers
condemned Wyatt's killing of Curly Bill
as another ruthless murder.
This time, against a sheriff's deputy.
[David] The whole country was riveted.
And then you layer on top of that
the political divide
between the North supporting the Earps
versus the South supporting the Cowboys
and you have this kind of clash
of two Americas.
[Ed] But all this was
the worst possible news for J.P. Morgan.
[tense music playing]
[Ed] Morgan saw how the vendetta
was dividing America.
And he'd heard the same sort of rhetoric
before the Civil War.
Battle lines were again being drawn
between North and South.
And it wasn't hard to see
how this was going to end.
You see, it wasn't just
his railroad investment at stake.
The future of America was at stake.
Morgan's only hope
was that the president would finally act.
[tense music continues]
[Ed] But all these events
had happened so fast.
Just six days.
President Arthur was still trying
to figure out how to respond.
President Arthur already asked Congress
to send in the Army against the Cowboys,
and they said, "No way."
And now things are getting worse.
He really doesn't know which way to turn.
[tense music continues]
[rooster crows]
[Ed] Meanwhile, back in Tombstone
[somber music playing]
- [gunshot]
- [screaming]
[gunshots]
the Cowboy War
was about to escalate.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ed] And nobody knew
how it was going to end.
But one thing was clear.
Neither Wyatt nor Ike was going to stop
[dramatic music continues]
[gunshot]
until the other one
was dead.
[gunshot]
[dramatic music continues]
[gunshot]
[suspenseful music playing]
[music fades]