Hysterical Journey To Historic Places

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MIKE O'ROURKE



Somewhere along the line the youngster, Mike O’Rourke, picked up the moniker “Johnny-Behind-The–Deuce”. He was a bothersome young man still wet behind his ears when on January 14, 1881 Johnny-Behind-The-Deuce killed a man named W. P. Schneider in Charleston. Angry remarks were exchanged between the two men during lunch. They were innocent remarks about the weather but what fueled Schneider’s anger was the suspicion that O’Rourke had been involved in the robbery of Schneider’s cabin a few days previously. Schneider was the manager of the Tombstone Mine and Milling Company Concentrator in Charleston and was well respected. O’Rourke was promptly taken into custody, but the killing of Schneider evoked the anger of townsmen and O’Rourkeand the constable had to flee for their lives from an angry lynch mob. He was taken into custody by Ben Sippy, the newly elected town marshal in Tombstone, and quickly spirited off to the safety of Tucson. Stories about Wyatt Earp’s involvement in saving O’Rourke from the mob are highly exaggerated. None of the Earp brothers had official standing as lawmen at that time. The streets were full of Tombstone miners, but it was normal shift change. They were hardly an angry mob bent on a lynching. The angry men were back in Charleston. The Earp's were such liars. Within a couple of months O’Rourke escaped from custodyin Tucson and scampered off into obscurity. To be heard from in Arizona nevermore again. The photo shows remnants of some adobe walls found in Charleston.

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