How Anyone Could Miss at this Range.... (Part 5 of 6)

The curious thing about the gunfight at the O. K. Corral is that it wasn’t fought at the O. K. Corral.  Rather it occurred at that vacant lot between C. S. Fly’s boarding house and the Harwood house on Fremont Street, a good half block away from the rear of the corral that fronted on Allen Street.  Apparently, a local newspaper published an article titled "Gunfight at the O. K. Corral” a short time after and the name became as much a part of the legend as the gunfight itself.

Had the adversaries been standing any closer to each other it could have been a fist fight or a knife fight.  They were said to be standing no more than six to twelve feet apart when the shooting began, point blank range by any definition.  How anyone could miss at that range, how anyone could survive the scuffle without so much as a scratch, that more of them weren’t killed is anyone’s guess.

Coming face to face with the Clanton and McLaury brothers, Claiborne and Fuller was Marshall Virgil Earp, brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holiday, four against six.  Supposedly a seventh individual, possibly a man named Calico Jones, had stopped to talk briefly to the men loitering in the vacant lot, a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It isn’t clear whether Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury were armed, likely not.  Claiborne and Fuller were likely not armed either.  Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were definitely armed with both revolvers and rifles, though the rifles were in scabbards on their horses and never came into play in what followed.  The Earp brothers were all armed with revolvers; Doc Holiday had a revolver and a scattergun.  So, it was more like two against four, not very good odds if you were one of the two.

There wasn’t much said.  Virgil made a demand for the boys to give up their guns and Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury were said to both draw and cock their revolvers, Virgil instantly exclaiming something to the effect of “Hold on, I don’t want that!”  Witnesses said that the first two shots were almost simultaneous, so close together that it was hard to distinguish that two shots had been fired, one from Billy Clanton’s revolver, the other from Wyatt Earp’s.  Earp apparently had drawn his revolver when he saw the two cowboys reaching for theirs.   His bullet found its mark, hitting Frank in the gut; Billy’s bullet sailed wide.

That was all it took for everyone who had a gun to start shooting, and at such close range it seemed impossible to miss.  It takes something that most of us lack to shoot a man standing a few paces away.  The horses got in the way, the panicked animals rearing, straining to get away from the thunderous reports reverberating between the two buildings.  Despite his bold talk, Ike Clanton scrambled out of the open lot and dove into the front door of Fly’s boarding house.  So too did Claiborne, Fuller, and Jones all run for cover.

The shooting didn’t last long, some say no more than thirty seconds, possibly less.  The gunfight spilled out into Fremont Street as Frank McLaury tried to lead his horse away using the animal as a shield, but to no avail.  When it was over, Billy Clanton and the two McLaurys were dead or dying, all buried in Boot Hill shortly afterward.  Virgil and Morgan were wounded but would survive; Doc Holiday had been grazed by a bullet.  At such close range, what was surprising was that Wyatt survived completely unscathed and that Ike and the other three got away unharmed.