Wyatt Earp - Frontier Lawman of the American West

Wyatt Earp - Frontier Lawman

One night, while Doc was dealing Faro in the Long Branch Saloon a number of Texas cowboys arrived with a herd of cattle. After many weeks on the trail, the rowdy cowboys were ready to “let loose.”

Leading the cowboy mob was a man named Ed Morrison, whom Wyatt had humiliated in Wichita, Kansas, and a man named Tobe Driskill. The cowboys rushed the town, galloping down Front Street with guns blazing, and blowing out shop windows. Entering the Long Branch Saloon, they began harassing the customers.

When Wyatt came through the front door, he came face to face with several awaiting gun barrels. Stepping forward, Morrison sneered “Pray and jerk your gun! Your time has come Earp!”

Suddenly, a voice sounded behind Morrison. “No, friend, you draw – or throw your hands up!” It was Doc, his revolver to Morrison’s temple. Doc had been in the back room, his card game interrupted by the havoc out front.

Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp were best "pards" for a lot

of years, photo 1881.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Mattie Blalock Earp “Any of you bastards pulls a gun and your leader here loses what’s left of his brains!" The cowboys dropped their arms. Wyatt rapped Morrison over the head with his long barrel Colt, then relieving Driskill and Morrison of their arms, he ushered them to the Dodge City Jail. Wyatt never forgot the fact that Doc Holliday saved his life that night in Dodge City. Responding later, Wyatt said. "The only way anyone could have appreciated the feeling I had for Doc after the Driskill-Morrison business would have been to have stood in my boots at the time Doc came through the Long Branch doorway."

While in Dodge City, Wyatt met a saloon girl named Celia Anne Blalock, whom he affectionately called "Mattie.” Though the two never married, they lived as husband and wife. At first, the couple was happy, but Mattie had acquired a laudanum dependency due to a prior illness, and this would soon put a strain on their relationship.

Later, Big Nose Kate and Doc Holliday, in their constant love-hate relationship, had one of their frequent, violent quarrels. Holliday soon saddled his horse and headed out to Colorado, leaving Big Nose Kate behind.

An often written about event was the 1878 "showdown" between Wyatt Earp and Clay Allison, the self-proclaimed "shootist" from New Mexico. According to the stories, Allison planned to protest the treatment of his men by the Dodge City marshals and was willing to back his arguments with gun smoke. The Dodge City lawmen had gained a reputation for being hard on visiting cattle herders, with stories circulating that cattlemen had been robbed, shot, and beaten over the head with revolvers. George Hoyt, who had, at one time, worked for Clay Allison, had been shot to death while shooting a pistol in the air in the streets of Dodge City.

Clay Allison at 45 years-old.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

There are several versions of the story of the showdown. Some say that Allison and his men terrorized Dodge City, while Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson fled in fear. Others say that Wyatt Earp pressured Allison into leaving. And yet others say that Allison was talked into leaving by a saloon keeper and another cattleman, with little or no contact with Wyatt Earp at all. In any case, there is no evidence of any serious altercation ever having happened. Historians basically surmise that Allison might have come to Dodge City looking for trouble, but nothing really happened. While Allison and his men went from saloon to saloon fortifying themselves with whiskey, Earp and his marshals began to assemble their forces. But in the end, Dick McNulty, owner of a large cattle outfit and Chalk Beeson, co-owner of the Long Branch Saloon, intervened on behalf of the town, talking the gang into giving up their guns.

By 1879, Dodge City had been tamed and Wyatt was spending more time at the gaming tables than he was marshalling. So, when brother Virgil wrote him about the new city of Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt, along with brothers James and Morgan, and common-law wife, Mattie headed West. Big Nose Kate would follow and when Doc Holliday returned to Dodge City and found everyone gone, he too headed to Arizona.

Tombstone

When Wyatt arrived in Tombstone in December of 1879, he planned to establish a stage line but soon discovered there were already two in the town. Instead, he acquired the gambling concession at the Oriental Saloon for a quarter percentage of the proceeds. He also took a side job as a shotgun rider on the stage lines for Wells Fargo shipments. James established a saloon on Allen Street. Virgil was already deputy marshal of Tombstone and Morgan went to with work with his brother as a lawman. Doc Holliday met up with Big Nose Kate in Prescott, Arizona, and the pair soon joined the Earps in Tombstone.

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Tombstone, Arizona, 1882

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