Although the feud was originally fought between the Tewksburys and the Grahams against the well-established cattleman James Stinson, it soon involved other cattlemen associations, sheepmen, hired guns, cowboys and Arizona lawmen.

[3] The Pleasant Valley War had the highest number of fatalities of such range conflicts in United States history, with an estimated total of 35 to 50 deaths, and the near annihilation of the males of the two feuding families.

The family was composed of sons John, Jim, Ed and Frank and one daughter and owned a great number of horses and cattle as they started out their ranching business.

Tom Graham and John D. Tewksbury started out as friends but things changed when a big cattleman named James Stinson came into Pleasant Valley.

His large herd quickly started to occupy many areas of grazing land, dominating the ranches built by the two families.

Ed Tewksbury drew his revolver and fired at the same time as Gilliland's second shot, which tore open John Graham's hat.

[9] The Tewksburys were forced to face the charges in Prescott, but the case against them was thrown out of court for lack of evidence after the judge discovered the deal between Stinson and the Grahams.

[11] They were met by the ranch foremen, Marion McCann, and five other cowhands, and the former asked the Tewksburys to leave except for Ed Rose, whom they knew was neutral in the conflict.

[12] The Grahams found themselves in a tight spot in 1885, after losing a significant number of their herd and subsequently being caught driving cattle that were not theirs.

Local newspapers such as the Arizona Silver Belt reported that the feud was caused primarily by the Tewksburys' other occupation as sheepmen, which many cattlemen such as Stinson disliked due to the sheep's destructive eating habits in the open ranges.

One of the principal factions in the Pleasant Valley War was the Hashknife Outfit, a branch of the Aztec Land and Cattle Company in Arizona and Colorado.

The buckaroos of the outfit quickly gained the unsavory reputation of being the "thievinist, fightinest bunch of cowboys" in the United States.

The cowboys fought what they perceived as rustlers and thieves preying on the company's cattle, but they also targeted and harassed local ranches and farms that competed with the outfit.

Individually and as partners they had business interests in ranching, real estate, land development, mining, a butcher shop, an ice plant, railroads, and banking.

Fred Wells, another local cattleman, had borrowed a lot of money in Globe, Arizona, to build back his cattle herd and hire more cowboys after some reverses.

For the Wells outfit, it became a sheer waste of human life in a struggle without honor or profit in another man's feud, seemingly without end.

His faction was losing, and at the age of nineteen he faced a grim future as a gunman whose only "crime" had been to stand by his friends, the Wellses.

Burnham went to Globe, where he sought help from an older friend, Judge Aaron H. Hackney, the editor of the Arizona Silver Belt newspaper.

I saw that my sentimental siding with the young herder's cause [Ed note: John Wells] was all wrong; that avenging only led to more vengeance and to even greater injustice than that suffered through the often unjustly administered laws of the land.

The young man managed to ride away back to his home but his wound was so severe that when he arrived his intestines were hanging from his belly.

[32] A few days later, Andy Blevins, one of the leaders of the Graham faction, was overheard in a store in Holbrook, bragging that he had shot and killed both John Tewksbury and William Jacobs.

[35] After the murder of a Graham sympathizer named Henry Middleton, Sheriff William Mulvenon of Prescott, Arizona, led a posse in an attempt to finally quell the war.

During the grand jury hearing concerning the events at the Perkins Store, Mulvenon said that Graham and Blevins tried to reach for their guns, forcing him and his posse to shoot them.

A grand jury indicted Mulvenon for the murders, but he was found not guilty despite persuasive testimony from posse members Fairchild, McKinney and Weatherford.

[28] Horn also participated with Glenn Reynolds in the lynching of three suspected rustlers of the Graham faction, Scott, Stott and Wilson, in August 1888.

With almost all of his clan and allies lost, Tom Graham gave up his residence in Prescott and fled to the Salt River Valley.

Defended by well-known Arizona attorney Thomas Fitch, the first trial ended in a mistrial due to a legal technicality.

During the trial, Tom's widow, Annie, attempted to assassinate Ed with a pistol, but it got caught in her dress, and she was promptly removed from the court.

Soon after Tom's murder, a young man named Yost was assassinated while traveling through Reno Pass in the Tonto Basin road.

[30] In total 35 to 50 individuals were killed, with some participation from local vigilantes, hired hands and cowboys from both sides; and arrests by law enforcement were rare.