Excerpt from Gunfighters of the Western Frontier
© 1999 ProofmarkWyatt Earp
I have known Wyatt Earp since early in the seventies, and have seen him tried out under circumstances which made the test of manhood supreme. He landed in Wichita, Kansas, in 1872, being then about twenty-six years old, and weighing in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty pounds, all of it muscle. He stood six feet in height, with light blue eyes, and a complexion bordering on the blonde. He was born at Monmouth, Illinois, of a clean strain of American breeding, and served in an Iowa regiment the last three years of the Civil War, although he was only a boy at the time. He always arrayed himself on the side of law and order, and on a great many occasions, at the risk of his life, rendered valuable service in upholding the majesty of the law in those communities in which he lived. In the spring of 1876 he was appointed Assistant City Marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, which was then the largest shipping point in the North for the immense herds of Texas cattle that were annually driven from Texas to the northern markets. Wyatt's reputation for courage and coolness was well-known to many of the citizens of Dodge City&emdash; in fact it was his reputation that secured for him the appointment of Assistant City Marshal.
He was not very long on the force before one of the aldermen of the city, presuming somewhat on the authority of his position gave him over a police officer, ordered Wyatt one night to perform some official act that did not look exactly right to him, and Wyatt refused point blank to obey the order. The alderman, regarded as something of a scrapper himself, walked up to Wyatt and attempted to tear his official shield from his vest front where it was pinned. When that alderman woke up he was a greatly changed man. Wyatt knocked him down as soon as he laid his hands on him, and then reached down and picked him up with one hand and slammed a few hooks and upper-cuts into his face, dragged his limp form over to the city calaboose, and chucked it in one of the cells, just the same as he would any other disturber of the peace. The alderman's friends tried to get him out on bail during the night, but Wyatt gave it out that it was the calaboose for the alderman until the police court opened up for business at nine o'clock the following morning, and it was. Wyatt was never bothered any more while he lived in Dodge City by aldermen.
While he invariably went armed, he seldom had occasion to do any shooting in Dodge City, and only once do I recall when he shot to kill, and that was at a drunken cowboy who rode up to a Variety Theater where Eddie Foy, the now-famous comedian, was playing an engagement. The cowboy rode right by Wyatt, who was standing outside the main entrance to the show shop, but evidently he did not notice him, else he would not in all probability have acted as he did.
An incident not on the program
The building in which the show was being given was one of those pine-board affairs that were in general use in frontier towns. A bullet fired from a Colt's .45 calibre pistol would go through a half-dozen such buildings, and this the cowboy knew. Whether it was Foy's act that angered him, or whether he had been jilted by one of the chorus we never learned; at any rate he commenced bombarding the side of the building directly opposite the stage upon which Eddy Foy was at that very moment reciting that beautifully pathetic poem entitled Kalamazoo in Michigan. The bullets tore through the side of the building, scattering pieces of the splintered pine boards in all directions. Foy evidently thought the cowboy was after him, for he did not tarry long in the line of fire. The cowboy succeeded in firing three shots before Wyatt got his pistol in action. Wyatt missed at his first shot, which was probably due to the fact that the horse the cowboy was riding kept continually plunging around, which made it rather a hard matter to get a bead on him. His second shot, however, did the work, and the cowboy rolled off his horse and was dead by the time the crowd reached him.
Wyatt's career in and around Tombstone, Arizona, in the early days of that bustling mining camp was perhaps the most thrilling and exciting of any he ever experienced in the thirty-five years he has lived on the lurid edge of civilization. He had four brothers besides himself who waggoned it into Tombstone as soon as it was announced that gold had been discovered in the camp.
Jim was the oldest of the brothers, Virgil came next, then Wyatt, then Morgan, and Warren, who was the kid of the family. Jim started in running a saloon as soon as one was built. Virgil was holding the position of Deputy U.S. Marshal. Wyatt operated a gambling house, and Morgan rode as a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger on the coach that ran between Tombstone and Benson, which was the nearest railroad point. Morgan's duty was to protect the Wells Fargo coach from the stage robbers with which the country at that time was infested.
