TOMBSTONE - The infamous OK Corral gunfight, an accident?
"Had to be," says Tombstone historian Ben Traywick.
The gunfight, the culmination of a feud rooted in politics and love, took place Oct. 26, 1881.
As for the politics, the Cochise County sheriff in those days also served as tax collector - positions that, combined, could fetch an astounding $40,000 a year.
John Behan had the jobs; Wyatt Earp wanted them.
As for the love, Earp had the voluptuous 18-year-old Josephine Sarah Marcus, who moved in with the handsome six-footer after deserting Behan.
Earp had any number of allies in town, including brother Virgil, Tombstone's town marshal, and their hot-headed younger sibling, Morgan.
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Also in the Earp camp was John H. "Doc" Holliday, a notorious drinker, gambler and killer.
Behan needed allies of his own to stand up to Wyatt, whom he feared would win his job in the 1882 election.
He turned to a gang of outlaw cowboys for help. They included brothers Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury, who were also brothers.
Tension between the factions built for months before gunfire erupted in what would come to be known as the Gunfight at OK Corral.
What actually took place has been hotly debated by historians almost since the first shot was fired.
When the smoke had cleared 30 seconds later, the two McLaurys and Billy Clanton lay dead, and Morgan and Virgil Earp were wounded.
Ike Clanton, who ran when the shooting started, and Wyatt and Doc escaped unscathed.
Why does historian Traywick believe the gunfight was an accident?
"Nobody in the entire world is going to convince me that eight men with two horses are stupid enough to start a gunfight in a narrow, 15-foot-wide vacant lot between two buildings, when one of them, 'Doc" Holliday, is a drunk killer with a double-barrel shotgun."
Among the other reasons Traywick cites are these:
"The McLaury brothers - reportedly the finest pistol and rifle shots in the county - could have killed the Earps as they approached the corral.
"Virgil Earp would have been legally justified in shooting Ike Clanton that morning when Clanton was brandishing a Winchester in the street and threatened to kill Earps. Instead, Virgil hit him over the head and took him to court.
"Wyatt also was challenged that morning by Tom McLaury, but he merely pistol-whipped the cowboy and left him lying in the street.
"Holliday, who had just finished his customary afternoon breakfast, apparently encountered the Earps by accident as they strode toward the corral. He was handed Virgil's shotgun in exchange for his cane.
"Virgil, when the group confronted the cowboys, shook Doc's cane at them.
"Does that sound like a man ready to defend his life at a close-range gunright?" Traywick asks.
He says Ike Clanton's "big mouth" was in action, prepared apparently for a war of words only. He appeared to have been unarmed and would have been a sitting duck in a gunfight.
"I think Doc Holliday jammed Tom McLaury in the belly with that shotgun," Traywick says.
"I think he actually punched him with it and said, 'We're going to kill you, you sons of bitches,' and they believed him.
"And they went for their guns."
Judge Wells Spicer held a hearing, exonerating the Earps and Holliday on Nov. 30, 1881.
A longer version of this article, by Paul L. Allen and Peter M. Pegnam, originally appeared in the Citizen in 1990.
