page_title: Earp Vendetta Ride
section_title: Killing of Florentino Cruz
hierarchical_section_title: Earp Vendetta Ride / Earp posse pursues Outlaw Cowboys / Killing of Florentino Cruz
caption_attribution_description: English: Dragoon Mountains, Arizona, from the south.
context_page_description: The Earp Vendetta Ride was a deadly search by a federal posse led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp for a loose confederation of outlaw "Cowboys" they believed had ambushed his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, maiming the former and killing the latter. The two Earp brothers had been attacked in retaliation for the deaths of three Cowboys in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881. From March 20 to April 15, 1882, the federal posse searched southeast Cochise County, Arizona Territory for the men they believed were responsible for the attacks on Virgil and Morgan. Several suspects had been identified and were charged, but were soon released by the court, owing in some cases to legal technicalities and in others to the strength of alibis provided by Cowboy confederates. Wyatt hoped that the legal system would bring the Cowboys to justice, but after suspects in both ambushes were freed, Wyatt resolved to take matters into his own hands.
  On March 20, two days after Morgan's murder, Wyatt, his brothers Warren and James, Doc Holliday, and two other deputies were escorting Virgil and his wife Allie to a California-bound train in Tucson.
context_section_description: On the morning of March 22, a portion of the Earp posse including Wyatt, Warren, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster and "Turkey Creek" Johnson rode about 10 miles (16 km) east to  Pete Spence's ranch and woodcutting camp off the Chiricahua Road, below the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains.
  According to Theodore Judah, who witnessed events at the wood camp, the Earp posse arrived around 11:00 am and asked him about the location of Pete Spence and Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz. He told them Spence was in jail in Tombstone and that Cruz was cutting wood nearby. They followed the direction Judah indicated and Judah soon heard ten or twelve shots fired. Judah looked for Cruz that night without success. The next morning he went looking for him again and found his body full of bullet holes.
  One apocryphal account says that after the party recognized Cruz, they chased him down and a gunfight ensued. The party managed to capture a fatally wounded Cruz and he confessed to have taken part in Morgan's murder, and that he identified Stilwell, Hank Swilling, Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo as the others who killed Morgan. During that time, in Wyatt's own account, he allowed Cruz to keep his revolver in his holster to "give him a chance to fight like a man". After Cruz's confession, Wyatt gave him the permission to draw his revolver, which Cruz did, but Wyatt managed to draw his gun first and killed him with one shot. Wyatt's account of him killing Cruz in a duel is contradicted by Cruz' fatal wounds, one to the temple and the second through his right side.
caption: The Dragoon Mountains, from the south.
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