[2] The Cowboys were a large group of loosely associated American outlaws based in Pima and Cochise counties in Arizona.
The Mexican government at the time placed high tariffs on goods transported across the border, resulting in smuggling being a profitable enterprise.
[3][4] In July 1881, several Mexican smugglers heading for Tucson or Tombstone and carrying silver were ambushed and killed in an area called Skeleton Canyon.
A ranch owned by "Old Man" Clanton in the Animas Valley in New Mexico was used at times by the Cowboys as a way station for selling the stolen cattle.
The dead included Old Man Clanton; Charley Snow, a ranch hand who heard a noise and was the first killed; Jim Crane, who was wanted for a March 1881 stagecoach robbery near Tombstone, during which two men had been murdered; Dick Gray, son of Col. Mike Gray; and Billy Lang, a cattle rancher.
[1]: 97–98 [7][8] Ernshaw found his way to the ranch of John Pleasant Gray (Dick's brother), who enlisted help from a mining camp 20 miles (32 km) away.
[9] In 1882 Ike and Phin Clanton exhumed their father's body and moved it to the Boot Hill cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona.
McLaury was passionately convinced that the Earps and Doc Holliday had murdered his younger brothers Frank and Tom during the Gunfight at the O.K.
He was a member of the prosecution team that was presenting evidence during the preliminary hearing on the event before Judge Wells Spicer that month.