Curly Bill had real character. He'd cut a man in two for a dollar, or, as they used to say, steal a Camp Rucker mule for a glass of whiskey. Curly Bill soon learned to hate the guts of Marshal Wyat Earp as he raised hell on Allen Street of nights with Frank Patterson, Frank and Tom McLowery, Ike and Billy Clanton, Pony Deal, John Ringo, and others. When Wyat told them to unbuckle their guns and store them behind the bar, they'd laugh in his face. Curly Bill liked this sort of play.

It was Curly Bill who, with Old Man Clanton, led his renegades into Skeleton Canyon where they robbed seventy-five thousand dollars from the mule-train and left slaughtered Mexicans scattered up the canyon toward the San Simon - a veritable massacre in Arizona history. this was nothing more than a big joke to Curly Bill. He had a dozen or more slugs in his big body from gunfights from Abilene and Texas to Tombstone and put no importance on them whatever. Money was what counted.