At 10:50 p.m. on Saturday, March 18, 1882, after returning from a
musical at
Schieffelin Hall, Morgan was ambushed. He was playing a late round of
billiards at the Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor against owner Bob Hatch. Dan Tipton, Sherman McMaster, and Wyatt watched, having received threats that same day.
The assailant shot Morgan through the upper half of a four-pane windowed door. The bottom two windows had been painted over. The door opened onto a dark alley that ran through the block between Allen and Fremont Streets. Morgan, about 10 feet (3.0 m) from the door, was struck by a bullet in the back which injured his spine then exited his front and entered the thigh of mining foreman George A. B. Berry. Another bullet lodged in the wall near the ceiling over Wyatt's head. Several men rushed into the alley but found the shooter had fled.
After Morgan was shot, his brothers tried to help him stand, but Morgan said "Don't, I can't stand it. This is the last game of pool I'll ever play." They moved him to the floor near the card room door. Dr. William Miller arrived first, followed by Drs. Matthews and
George Goodfellow. They all examined Morgan. Goodfellow, who would earn recognition in the United States as the nation's leading expert at treating abdominal gunshot wounds, concluded that Morgan's wounds were fatal.
Goodfellow described Morgan's wounds:
He was in a state of collapse resulting from a gunshot, or pistol wound, entering the body just to the left of the spinal column in the region of the left kidney emerging on the right side of the body in the region of the gall bladder. It certainly injured the great vessels of the body causing hemorrhage which, undoubtedly, causes death. It also involved the spinal column. It passed through the left kidney and also through the loin.
In the book
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, author
Stuart Lake wrote that Wyatt said that Morgan, before dying, whispered to Wyatt, "I can't see a damned thing." Wyatt said that they had promised each other to report visions of the next world when at the point of death. They moved him to a lounge and Morgan's family—Wyatt, Virgil, and James, along with Allie and Bessie—gathered around him. Morgan's wife Louisa was in Colton with his parents, and Warren Earp was out of town. Morgan died less than an hour after he was shot.
, photographed in her retirement following the war. Reckless was a chestnut (light red) mare of Mongolian and race horse ancestry, who was purchased in 1952 by members of the United States Marine Corps to serve as a pack animal Recoilless Rifle Platoon, Anti-Tank Company, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. Reports indicate she was purchased for $250 from a Seoul racetrack stableboy who needed the money to buy an artificial leg for his sister. The boy, named Moon, was reluctant to sell Reckless, who was then named "Ah Chim Hai" (Flame of the Morning), and cried when she left.
