In 1882, a Tombstone constable stopped a gunslinger from killing Wyatt Earp; coincidentally, Earp himself was a former constable. Here are the facts; convicted murderer Johnny Ringo, a friend of the infamous John Wesley Hardin (who was later shot by Texas Constable John Selman) was accused of a stage coach hold-up in Cochise County.

Ringo was also a cousin to the Younger Brothers; and even more interestingly, he was a cousin to the James Brothers (outlaw Jesse James) as well. After the OK Corral gunfight in Tombstone, in which William Clanton and the McLaury brothers were killed on October 26, 1881, Ringo was a leader of the anti-Earp forces. On January 17, 1882, he challenged Wyatt Earp, gunman John H. (Doc) Holliday, and other members of the Earp gang to a street fight.

When Ringo met Wyatt Earp and his gang on the dusty streets of Tombstone, he immediately wanted to fight. He was only stopped by a quick-acting Tombstone Constable who grabbed him from behind and thus preventing bloodshed. Oddly, constables figured prominently in the lives of the Earp gang. Wyatt Earp had been elected constable in Lamar, Missouri before he left there for Tombstone; and Wyatt’s brother, Virgil Earp, was the Constable in Prescott. Source: “No Rest for the Wicked” by Troy Taylor (2001); Jack Burrows, John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987).