Wyatt Earp and Billy Clanton who threatened to kill the Earps on several occasions. The conflict escalated over the next year, culminating in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881 in which the Earps and Doc Holliday killed three of the Cowboys. In the next five months, Virgil was ambushed and maimed, and Morgan was assassinated. Wyatt, Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, and others formed a federal posse which killed three of the Cowboys whom they thought responsible. Wyatt was never wounded in any of the gunfights, unlike his brothers Virgil and Morgan or his friend Doc Holliday, which only
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral escape, was the beginning of increasingly bad feelings between the Earp brothers and Cowboy factions. Wyatt Earp and Cochise County sheriff Johnny Behan were interested in the same sheriff's position and also may have shared an interest in the same woman, Josephine Marcus, known as Sadie. Citizens of Tombstone believed that Behan and Marcus were married, but Behan was a known womanizer and had sex with prostitutes and other women. In early 1881, Marcus ended the relationship after she came home and found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend and kicked him out, although she used the