Earp Vendetta Ride by Bud Bradshaw.
John “Turkey Creek Jack” Johnson was a lawyer, cowboy gunfighter, and lawman who rode on the Earp Vendetta Ride.
Born around 1852, Johnson was thought to have worked as a bookkeeper and lawyer in Missouri before heading West. He spent some time in Deadwood, South Dakota, where he got into a gunfight with two men at 30 yards. Some say the men were his gold mining partners. Later, he was known to have been in Dodge City, Kansas, where he may have first met Wyatt Earp. Next, he turned up in Tombstone, Arizona, where he worked alongside the Earps as a deputy marshal. After Morgan Earp was killed on March 18, 1882, Virgil and the Earp women boarded a train, along with Morgan’s body, for California.
Along the way, they were protected by Wyatt and his friends, including Jack Johnson. They ran into Frank Stillwell, whom they suspected of being one of Morgan’s killers, in Tucson on March 20. Stillwell’s bullet-ridden body was found the next morning. Meanwhile, Johnson returned with the others to Tombstone and, the next day, joined by Texas Jack Vermillion, began the Earp Vendetta Ride. In the meantime, Johnson, along with Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Warren Earp, and Sherman McMasters, were indicted in absentia for Stillwell’s killing. After the Earp Vendetta Ride, Johnson first escaped to Colorado, then moved to Texas and then to Salt Lake City, Utah. He died in Salt Lake City in 1887 of tuberculosis.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Also See:
Tombstone – The Town Too Tough to Die
Wyatt Earp – Frontier Lawman of the American West
See Sources.