If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it was lost on 1880s Tombstone miner and wannabe big-shot William Floyd Claiborne.
The 22-year-old traveled from his native Mississippi via Texas to join the booming mining operations in Hereford and Charleston near Tombstone, and fell in with the Clanton and McLaury gang of the infamous O.K. Corral shootout. They drank hard, cooked up schemes and stirred trouble.
About the same time, notorious outlaw William Bonney, known as “Billy the Kid,” met his maker in Fort Sumner, N.M., after a five-year crime spree across the plains and Southwest. Tales of gun fights, a daring prison escape and life on the lam created a mystique so potent for Claiborne that he now insisted that the folks of Tombstone call him “Billy the Kid.”
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