\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>here\u2019s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: \u201cWhen the legend becomes fact, print the legend.\u201d Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn\u2019t like Ford\u2019s line.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery historian uses it, they just beat it to death,\u201d Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s really not true. I wrote a narrative. I want people to be immersed in the time, but I just get so tired of that line. The legend is legend. It never becomes fact. People can repeat the legend but it doesn\u2019t make it fact. It\u2019s just a catchy thing that people have caught on to for decades now. And you\u2019ll notice that I did not use it. I referred to it, but I did not use it.\u201d<\/p>\n Brothers of the Gun is scholarly, engaging, the story of two unlikely but lasting friends, Earp the complicated but upstanding lawman, Holliday the reckless gambler, stricken by tuberculosis.<\/p>\n In Tombstone, Arizona, on 26 October 1881, Earp and Holliday were involved in a shootout that came to be known as the Gunfight at the OK Corral. With Earp\u2019s brothers, the pair confronted the Cowboys, gang members wanted for robbery and rustling. In less than a minute, three Cowboys were dead and Holliday was wounded, as were Virgil and Morgan Earp.<\/p>\n It was one of countless frontier scraps between lawmen and outlaws and yet it entered legend, not least thanks to classic movies including My Darling Clementine, made by Ford in 1946 and starring Henry Fonda as Earp and Victor Mature as Holliday, and Gunfight at the OK Corral, directed by John Sturges in 1957, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the leading roles.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what we know about it is verifiable,\u201d Gardner said of the actual fight and sequels, including killings on both sides. \u201cBut I always go back to one of the best quotes, and it\u2019s a very simple quote. Addie Borland, who is the dressmaker across the street who witnessed the fight. People were asking for details, and she goes: \u2018I don\u2019t know. All was confusion.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/span>Doc Holliday.<\/span> Photograph: Random House<\/p>\n \u201cEven the people there had different stories. I cite often the testimony from what we call the Spicer hearing, and it\u2019s also confusing. You\u2019ve got people that are friends of the Cowboys, so they\u2019re actually lying, and every account is slightly different. It\u2019s rare when somebody agrees on anything. And so I think of Borland\u2019s quote, \u2018All was confusion.\u2019 Even the people involved were confused. So it\u2019s really hard to get at it, and it happened in 30 seconds.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd here\u2019s the hilarious part. I just crack up every time I think of this. You wouldn\u2019t believe how many books have all these massive diagrams of the gunfight. They\u2019ll show each stage. You know, \u2018Doc was standing here, Wyatt was over here, and here\u2019s their movement, from Allen Street,\u2019 all the way, they\u2019re tracing with dotted lines. And then they got diagrams where people were, you know, for that 30 seconds \u2026 People are so fixated. They want to see \u2018exactly what happened\u2019. Well, I\u2019m sorry. I mean, I think I know, pretty close, but I can\u2019t give you a frame-by-frame every second of what\u2019s going on, because even those guys, their stories kind of differ.\u201d<\/p>\n This is America. Stories have always been hard currency. Wyatt Earp lived into the Hollywood age, dying in 1929, aged 80, after plenty of fights over his story, who got to tell it and how. First depicted on a silent movie screen in 1923, then the subject of those two great mid-century westerns, in relatively recent years he\u2019s been played by Kurt Russell (Tombstone, Val Kilmer as Holliday, 1993) and Kevin Costner (Wyatt Earp, with Dennis Quaid, 1994). On the small screen, Wyatt and Morgan Earp appeared in the great HBO series Deadwood, bit parts based on their brief stay in the gold rush town.<\/p>\n Gardner drills through such myth-making to find the men beneath. His books cover the span of the old west. A devotee since childhood, as an adult he first wrote \u201cthe definitive study of wagons on the Santa Fe Trail, and in fact the only study on those wagons\u201d. He has since written about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, Jesse James, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, and, most recently, The Earth Is All That Lasts, an award-winning story of \u201cCrazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation\u201d. His next book will turn back to James, the Missouri outlaw famously played by Brad Pitt, and his time as a civil war bushwhacker.<\/p>\n Gardner refuses to romanticize such figures. Earp and Holliday spent time on either side of the law, in a world of violence and greed.<\/p>\n <\/span>Wyatt Earp.<\/span> Photograph: Random House<\/p>\n Born in Monmouth, Illinois, in 1848, Earp was too young to fight in the civil war, though he tried to do so. When he was 20, \u201che became a constable in Lamar, Missouri, this little, tiny town, with no police academy or training. And mistakes were made. Wyatt has a tragedy in his life with the death of his wife\u201d \u2013 Urilla Sutherland, of typhoid in 1870 \u2013 after which, as constable, Earp kept for himself tax money he collected.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know why he kept it,\u201d Gardner says. \u201cHe runs, and ends up in Oklahoma. He\u2019s arrested for stealing a horse, and then he\u2019s in Illinois, and he\u2019s running a brothel. I mean, he is literally a pimp. His wife is a prostitute, or his common-law wife, significant other, whatever you call it. He finally heads back west, and he ends up in Wichita, Kansas, and he tries to help the law officer there. There\u2019s a horrible killing, and he impresses the chief of police, and he gets a job. And he excels in that.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, this is the irony: Wyatt Earp is a policeman in Wichita, his wife is working in a brothel, and so is his brother\u2019s wife, but he\u2019s an outstanding police officer. Everybody says so. The newspapers, you read the quotes. They\u2019re always praising him in the paper. There\u2019s one instance where he arrests a drunk and the drunk has $500 on him. Any other officer might have pocketed that money and said he didn\u2019t know what the drunk was talking about. But no, Earp holds the money for the drunk and gives it back when he releases him from jail. The same thing happened in Dodge City.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was praised over and over again as a law officer, and later, when Wyatt\u2019s in the [Spicer] hearing to decide whether he\u2019s going to face a trial for murder after the OK Corral, he gets these letters from Wichita and Dodge City, signed by all these citizens, and they praise him to the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n Brothers of the Gun illustrates this fascinating aspect of the old west: friction between law and lawlessness, authorities trying to exert control over newly forming societies, or those societies attempting to rule themselves. The amount of bureaucracy that follows a gunfight \u2013 hearings, affidavits, orders for compensation \u2013 might be surprising, at least to a reader raised on Clint Eastwood movies, men with no names brooding in vast and terrible lands.<\/p>\n <\/span> Photograph: Random House<\/p>\n Furthermore, as Gardner shows, Earp and Holliday were as entangled in hard politics as any prominent American from the dawn of the nation to now. Earp was a Republican. Tombstone sheriff Johnny Behan was a Democrat, a rival for influence and office.<\/p>\n Gardner\u2019s main characters were very different men. Holliday \u2013 born in Griffin, Georgia, in 1851, a dentist, hence \u201cDoc\u201d \u2013 was dissipated but not in general a thief.<\/p>\n \u201cWyatt, you know, at least attempted to be something different than he was as a youth,\u201d Gardner says. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to better himself. And in Tombstone, he builds a house, he\u2019s doing all the things that are right \u2026 I\u2019m kind of sympathetic.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, Doc Holliday, as Wyatt said, he was kind of his own worst enemy. I don\u2019t know if I buy into this fatalism thing\u201d \u2013 part of the enduring myth, Holliday\u2019s fatal sentence with tuberculosis supposed to have fueled a reckless streak. \u201cThere are instances where he didn\u2019t want to die \u2026 But unlike Wyatt, he doesn\u2019t buy a house. You don\u2019t see these signs that he\u2019s going to settle down. Doc just moves from one gambling place, one boomtown, to the next, and he never really changes. And part of that\u2019s his addiction to gambling. Part of that is tuberculosis, dealing with that and self-medicating, whether it\u2019s with alcohol or later laudanum. He doesn\u2019t seem to have this ambition Wyatt does.<\/p>\n \u201cWyatt is ambitious. He wants to be somebody, and he sees these different steps: deputy sheriff, but he wants to be county sheriff. He\u2019s trying to better himself. And I just don\u2019t see that with Doc Holliday. He just kind of stays the same throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: \u201cWhen the legend becomes fact, print the legend.\u201d Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3910,1001,5712,19051,19052,455,12854,19050],"class_list":{"0":"post-33213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-account","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-doc","11":"tag-earp","12":"tag-holliday","13":"tag-real","14":"tag-slightly","15":"tag-wyatt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}