Key Takeaways
Who Was Wyatt Earp?
Wyatt Earpwas a lawman , a risk taker , a buff of prostitute , abuffalo hunter , a saloon custodian , a miner , a pugilism referee , maybe a bordello steward and , most famously , a hit man of international fame .
But the absolute , without - a - incertitude , hands - down , fastest accelerator pedal in the West ? Probably not . Though , in the end that does n’t read a smudge on Earp ’s reputation as thequintessential American gunfighter .
" His draw was only fairly fast , " Earp ’s assistant , Arthur King , tell dead on target West magazine in 1959 , relayed in " Wyatt Earp ’s moo-cow - boy movement , " by Chuck Hornung , " but his truth was uncanny . "
Earp , as any Wild West buff hump , was in the center field of the most famous street fighting in American story . That 30 - sec throwdown , which come to be know as theGunfight at the O.K. Corral(though it was n’t really in a corral at all ) , cement Earp ’s report as a nimble and deadly draw .
How Did Wyatt Earp Die?
A little closer look , though , reveals that Earp — who never was wounded in a shootout and conk at old age 80 of natural causes — maybe wasn’tthatfast . And it really did n’t weigh .
The Myth Behind Those Gunfights
The well - fag out delineation we have of a Wild West gunplay — a tenseness - fill up standoff in the middle of a dusty street , often at gamey noon , won invariably by the valet who unholsters his gun more quickly than his opponent — is mostly fiction . It ’s Hollywood . It ’s " High Noon . " It ’s " Gunfight at the O.K. Corral . "
Gunfights pass , for sure . But they were just as apt to be like the O.K. Corral , with a bunch of men unloading at each other all at once , than a mano - a - mano encounter in the middle of town .
And in a close - range free - for - all , f number is not all it ’s crack up to be .
" Anything that has created this myth of the fast draw is a byproduct of amusement , " says Jim Dunham , the director of special undertaking and historian at theBooth Western Art Museumin Cartersville , Georgia . " Having said that , there was this sense of a reputation of life-threatening men with a gun . But they would not have understood if you ’d have said , ' Who ’s fast with a gun ? '
" When it comes to gunfights , the idea is to stay alive , not needs pull out fast . In fact , the quicker draw in general Miss , and therefore gets killed . "
Wyatt Earp & Bat Masterson
Earp ’s fellow peace officer and cosmopolitan Old West badassBat Mastersononce said that upper in a gunfight is probably the least important cistron in winning . Even accuracy is scurvy on the list .
Tops , Masterson said , is a steely will and the power to employ that to your vantage .
" He called it slowness , " says Dunham , who also serve as chair of theWild West History Association . " What I say is it ’s the ability to make good decisions under stress . And you do n’t get much more stress than when somebody ’s blast at you . "
Wyatt Earp and His Gun
Earp , as historians long have recognized , possessed an almost preternatural iciness under attack . " He is a human being who never smiled or laughed . He was at the time the most fearless man I ever saw , and Satan and all his imp could not scare Wyatt Earp , " Richard Codgell , a Wichita clerk , wrote in his memoirs , as detailed in Hornung ’s book .
" Wyatt Earp,“Masterson wrotein his later career as a journalist , " is one of the few man I personally knew in the West in the early days , whom I regard as absolutely destitute of strong-arm concern . "
Nothing prove Earp ’s heart more than the troubled gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone , Arizona , on Oct. 26 , 1881 . And on that day , Earp was not the fast hit man in town .
That good afternoon , Earp , his brothers Virgil and Morgan , and Wyatt ’s friend John Henry"Doc " Hollidayfaced off against a raucous group of outlaws known as the Cowboys ; Billy Claiborne , buddy Ike and Billy Clanton , and buddy Frank and Tom McLaury .
The Earps were n’t really carry a gunfight . They had ordered the Cowboys to give up their accelerator pedal to begin with in the day , warning them with a pistol - whipping at the hands of Wyatt . So when they went to arrest the Cowboys at about 3 p.m. , they bear the Cowboys to be unarmed .
They were n’t . And that ’s when Wyatt Earp ill-use into westerly traditional knowledge .
" His mind calculated — he was kind of like a quarterback when the defense proceed on you , and you have to calculate , ' What ’s my backup program , here ? ' — and not everybody really can do that , especially when there ’s hot rounds coming at you , " saysMarshall Trimble , Arizona ’s prescribed DoS historiographer .
While Earp was doing his split - second assessing , young Billy Clanton — he was only 18 or 19 at the time — take in what he intend was an opening night and took his shot .
" Wyatt thought , ' I advantageously take Frank [ McLaury ] , because he ’s more dangerous . He ’s honest-to-goodness , and he ’s in all probability not travel to rush his shot , ' " Trimble says . " In the lag , Billy Clanton catch off the first gibe … and Frank gets dart in the belly . He ’s a dead man walking . But Billy rushes his gibe and misses . "
In the remainder — the combat lasted only 30 seconds or so , with at least 20 shot being burn down — Billy Clanton and both McLaury brother drop dead . Virgil , Morgan and Holliday were wounded but reclaim .
And Wyatt Earp , though he was n’t the fastest gun in the fight , make out out without a simoleons .
