Though sometimes labeled as such,
“Cochise
County Cowboys” were nothing close to an
early example of organized crime.
They were an amorphous, ragtag assortment of
rovers whose actual number varied but was
never close to the excited estimates of news
accounts at the time.
Nearby Mexico
offered a prime target for Cowboy crimes,
smuggling goods like liquor, tobacco,
blankets, and jewelry or often just robbing
other smugglers. They rustled regularly from
the large cattle herds just across the
border at
a time when stealing from Mexico wasn’t
regarded as stealing at all.
When they had money, in the words of one
contemporary, “they ride into town, drink,
gamble, and fight. They spend their money as
free as water in the salons, dancehouses, or
faro banks.”
In 1880, Mexico cracked
down on the Cowboys with a string of forts
to patrol the smuggling/rustling routes.
This forced some Cowboys to operate closer
to home in a broader range of crimes, and a
pair of stage coach robberies in the months
preceding the “Gunfight” escalated tensions
and increased headlines demanding something
be done about “the Cowboy Menace.”
None of
the characteristics used to identify
“Cowboys” fits the Clantons and most
definitely not the McLaurys.
To be sure, they often had contact with
“Cowboys,” but most everyone in the
Territory did at one time or another. We’ll
refer to those occasional dealings as we
look more closely at these two doomed
ranching families.