James Baquet

Ask most people familiar with the name “Wyatt Earp,” and they’ll tell you something like this: He was a “lawman” and the hero of the famous shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. The event was built up through the publication of “dime novels,” cheap pamphlets read by daydreaming boys. Later in life, Earp actively participated in the forging of his “legend.”

The truth is a little seamier. Aside from his occasional work as a “lawman” — usually as an assistant to someone else — Earp derived much of his income from gambling and the operation of “bordellos” — houses of prostitution. He moved from one boomtown to another, seeking jobs without much concern for which side of the law he was on.

Even the details of his most famous battle are shrouded in misunderstanding.

Wyatt was not the leader of the forces of “law and order” that day. The Clanton gang, a group of outlaw “cowboys” who rustled Mexican cattle — the Arizona town of Tombstone is only 48 kilometers from the border — had caught the attention of city marshal Virgil Earp, Wyatt’s brother.

At 3 p.m. on Oct. 26, 1881, after months of tension, three of the Earps (Wyatt and brother Morgan had been deputized) along with Wyatt’s friend, a gambler and dentist named John Henry “Doc” Holiday, faced five or six members of the gang. There are conflicting reports of what happened during and after the fight. After 30 seconds of shooting near (but not at) the famed Corral, three of the Cowboys were dead, and Morgan and Virgil were wounded. Doc Holliday was grazed by a bullet, but Wyatt was unharmed.

This set off a vendetta in which, two months later, Virgil was ambushed, shot and crippled by unknown attackers. Nearly three months after that, in March 1882, Morgan was fatally shot through the glass door of a saloon.

Wyatt was now a newly-minted deputy marshal, and set out to even the score. In the end, all the Clanton members were dead — and Wyatt was fleeing from a warrant on charges of murder. Leaving Tombstone for good, he continued his wandering life until settling down in Los Angeles, California, where he died at home at the age of 80 in January 1929.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. hidden in, covered by

2. sex trade

3. stole (cows, horses, etc.)

4. appointed as a kind of assistant

5. recently created

6. creation

7. campaign of revenge

8. more sordid, of lower morals

9. incapacitated, disabled

10. scraped lightly