The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] There was a saying in the West. It varied from place to place but it always went something like this: there is no Sunday past Junction City and no God past Abilene. At times, it seemed like there was some truth to that. But there were men who carried God in their hearts.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Shotgun Gibbs was Wyatt's Chief Deputy since his arrival in Tombstone. Gibbs, his mule Roscoe, and his ten-gauge greener were formidable allies. But as the war with outlaws grew more deadly, Wyatt had secretly wondered if he was asking too much of his friend from Wyoming. Any man who worked for Marshal Earp inherited Wyatt's enemies and the possibility of violent death.

Narrator:
The law-abiding element in Dodge City was ashamed of their town's reputation as the Gomorrah of the Western frontier. That's why they hired Wyatt Earp to be their Marshal in 1876. But it takes time and money to civilize a tough town. The city fathers were understandably alarmed when they heard a reporter for the great and influential New York Herald would be stopping by to write a story about conditions. As for Marshal Earp, it would be a cruel test of his efficiency as a peace officer. Dozens of penny shooters had spread the bad name of Dodge City throughout the land. But if a correspondent from the New York Herald could be impressed by one quiet day...

Narrator:
One of the toughest problems Wyatt Earp had to repeatedly contend with in taming the wild and lawless cow town of Wichita was mob rule, when otherwise respectable citizens, and some not so respectable, tried to take the law into their own hands.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] One of the legends of Arizona Indians told about Spanish explorers who found gold and silver and stored it in a cave till they could take it to Spain. When the explorers were killed in a battle between rival tribes, their gold remained for white men to try to find. On one occasion, the treasure caused trouble for Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt's brothers, Virgil and Morgan, came to Dodge City in the fall of 1879. They wanted Wyatt to return with them to Arizona territory, where opportunities in ranching or mining seemed to be almost fabulous. But neither Wyatt nor his brothers realized that Arizona at that time was ruled by a handful of corrupt officials in league with cattle thieves, stage robbers, and hoodlums. The Earps had ample warning of this situation when Old Man Clanton and his boys stopped off in Dodge.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] A certain story once told of three gunfighters bullying a Western town while the gallant Sheriff had to fight them alone. How the old timers of Wichita, Abilene and Dodge City must have laughed at such a yarn. Frontier towns in the 70s were settled by veterans of Union and Confederate battles, veterans who still knew how to fight. So in 1878, when a hoodlum outfit led by Dan Burden, tried to rob a bank in Dodge City while Marshal Wyatt Earl and his deputies were away.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The Ballad of Tex McKay, acclaimed in song as the drivingest hogger of the old Santa Fe Railroad, was like most of the fables about cowhand and railroad heroes had not much poetry and very little truth. But since Dodge City was both a cow town and a railroad town, Marshal Wyatt Earp occasionally became entangled with the lone cowhand from the Rio Grande or with a hero on the hoof, like Tex McKay, the bravest of the brave engineers. Marshal Earp likely died from it.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Bat Masterson, after a term as Sheriff in Ford County, started drifting in search of romance and excitement. From Texas cow towns, mining towns, and the Black Hills, Bat tried to live it up. Then he fell in love with a girl named Cora Watrous and returned to Dodge City full of big ideas, which he expected his old friend, Wyatt Earp, to share.

[instructing Bat Masterson on the art of gunfighting]

Wyatt Earp:
You lose a lot of time reachin' up to it. Now lower you holster until the girps just touch the palms of your hands as they hang naturally.

Wyatt Earp:
You're plenty fast enough, but you're telegraphing. A gunfighter who hasn't had too much experience usually starts the draw with his eyes. He either blinks 'em or narrows 'em and lets the order that his brain has given to his hand show in his face. And the shoulder muscles tense and his hand makes just a little move to get closer to that fun grip.

Wyatt Earp:
But your main fault is that you're watchin' my hand... Never mind his hand, just keep your eye on the spot you want your bullet to go.

Wyatt Earp:
A shoulder shot is aimed just a hand's length fromt he breast bone. You hit just below the collar bone. Now the bullet paralyzes the brachial plexus nerve and the impact spins you man off balance and he falls.

Wyatt Earp:
Your eyes stay focused on this spot as your gunsight comes up. The instant that gunsight reaches the lower portion of the spot, you fire - but not before.

Wyatt Earp:
Take your time. It's important to draw fast and get off the first shot, but it's much more important to have your bullet go where you want it to go.

Wyatt Earp:
If you're hit and you go down, you gotta kill him in the next instant or you'll be killed. It's your life or his - aim right at his heart.

Narrator:
The friendship between Wyatt Earp and young Bat Masterson began in Ellsworth, Kansas. It was interrupted when Bat went off to school and Wyatt became Marshal of Wichita. Earp's time as Marshal of Wichita was drawing to a close. In the meantime, Bat had grown up. But he still had the ambition to be a ladies' man and to wear a star in his own right. This had brought dangerous consequences. It brought young Masterson into conflict with the notorious Sergeant King, a former cavalryman and one of the meanest characters on the Western frontier.

Narrator:
The friendship between Wyatt Earp and young Bat Masterson was a rough and ready alliance of startlingly dissimilar characters. It began with Bat's hero worship of the older and wiser Wyatt Earp. It grew as Bat determined to follow Wyatt in the dangerous career of a Western peace officer. Wyatt had advised his young friend to go to school and choose some other business. Bat made a try of this while Wyatt was Marshal of Wichita, but when Wyatt moved onto Dodge City and gained fame as the first man who could hold his own with hoodlums of that rip-roaring cowhand capital, Bat was drawn to Dodge as if by an irresistible lure. What he felt, he would prove to Marshal Earp that he had the makings of a great Deputy.

Narrator:
Politics on the frontier of 1876 was often a brawling, conniving business. Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Dodge City, was appointed by the Mayor and the Council. He didn't have to run for election. But when Charlie Bassett, Sheriff of Ford County, decided not to seek election again, Wyatt was confronted with a difficult choice. He must either allow a bad choice backed by some cattlemen, to take over the Sheriff's Office or he must find a candidate with whom he could work in honest law enforcement. So Wyatt decided that young Bat Masterson should make the run for Sheriff. The big trouble was, neither Wyatt nor Bat knew how many guns were loaded and aimed at them.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt's refusal of a Citizens' Posse threatened to get him into serious trouble. No peace officer on the frontier could afford to let prisoners escape. Marshal Earp had to recapture four men guarded by one hundred. Wyatt must do it alone or lead a big posse into battle with the Clanton gang. And he couldn't know that the infamous Ten Percent Ring of Tucson had ideas of their own.

Narrator:
In Marshal Wyatt Earp's long struggle to tame Wichita, there were two points of controversy which historians of the Western frontier have argued since 1875. Was Marshal Earp justified in using famous city ordinance 27 to close crooked gambling joints and rowdy dancehalls? And why did he permit Ben Thompson, a notorious gunfighter and killer to operate a gambling game in Wichita while Marshal Earp's stormy cleanup campaign was racing to a murderous pitch of tensions and hatreds?

[This place is gonna be sanitary! As Ben Thompson proceeds to spit into a drinking glass and wipe it in his vest as if to clean it]

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp, in need of help, signed on his younger brother, Morgan Earp, as a Deputy. But a month later, it was a standoff. Was it help or a hindrance?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp had four brothers. His younger brother, Morgan, and older brother, Virgil, were now to play more active roles in his life. Later, in Tombstone, they fought side by side against hoodlums who called themselves cowboys. But to Virgil Earp, Wyatt was just his younger brother who had to be protected from bad men and bad women.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] A major problem for Wyatt Earp, now that he was the Marshal of the cattle-owning town of Ellsworth, Kansas, was the Thompson Brothers. They were gun slinging terrors of the frontier, and brother Bill was wanted for the murder of a Sheriff. Unless Wyatt Earp could rid Ellsworth of these killers, and alone, he faced complete loss of influence as a Marshal.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp, Marshal of Tombstone, Arizona during the turbulent 1880s, daily faced the problem of violence growing out of human greed for gold and silver. He often declared that, for sheer ruthlessness, no crime ever matched the one involving the celebrated Billy Buckett, Incorporated.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Not too long ago, we did the memory of Mr. James Kelley a grave injustice. We portrayed him as an ex-saloon keeper and the tragic lover of Dora Hand. We showed his return to Dodge City as a reformed hoodlum, sworn to uphold the fast hand of Wyatt Earp as Marshal. But we neglected to describe what happened when desperate citizens begged Jim Kelley to run for Mayor. Would he stand by his old friend, Wyatt Earp, or would the power and glory of being His Honor, the Mayor, go to Kelley's head? To be blunt about it, would Kelley sell out Wyatt Earp for a title in a high, silk hat?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the 1880s, there were many bandit gangs who plundered the Southwest. And among them were the very successful bank robbers called the Harlequins: five cunning killers who disguised themselves as clowns to conceal their identity - a device that enabled them to elude some of the most famous law officers of the West.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Of all the problems which faced the frontier Marshal, the matter of cattle stealing or rustling was the most dangerous. It was not a crime confined to hoodlums or fly-by-night cattle spreads; many of the biggest cattlemen of the day were involved. To Marshal Wyatt Earp, a rustler was a rustler - big or small. This belief plunged him into the notorious Rep Cantwell case. Dodge City erupted in bitter words and deadly gunfights.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Bank robbery in 1878 ranked with train robbery: they were big money crimes and only the most desperate men risked their lives attempting them. Thus, when Matt and his half brother Clint Dunbar got set to take the bank in a big cow town like Dodge City, Marshal Wyatt Earp was facing shrewd, clever operatives who would stop at nothing.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Like all the mining towns of the Western frontier, Tombstone was a magnet for men and women from all over the world. It had a large foreign population, a large segment of which was Chinese. Several hundred newly arrived from China did not speak English and found their frontier life doubly hard. It was inevitable that this might mean trouble for Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Emma Clanton was the one respectable member of the notorious Clanton outfit. The girl's determination to reform her father, Old Man Clanton, had aroused Wyatt's sympathy. But the way of accomplishing what she wanted confronted Marshal Earp with a perilous choice.

Narrator:
Clay Allison was probably the most dangerous of all the killers who challenged Wyatt Earp's authority as Marshal of Dodge City in 1876. Modern doctors would have diagnosed Allison as an alcoholic psychopath, but to the men of the Western frontier, his character was baffling. Only a rough and ready psychologist like Wyatt Earp had any chance in personal conflict with Allison. And for Marshal Earp, there was the deadly risk of guessing wrong.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In Marshal Earp's time, there were Indian wars and cattle wars and the steady brawling with .45s of bad tempered cowhands. But the deadliest fight on the frontier of 1879 usually started between two towns with a dispute for the honor of being designated the county seat. Dodge City had been named capital of Ford County, Kansas, but Fort Dodge, located just six miles away, asked 'Why should a wicked town like Dodge be the county seat?' Besides, the residents of Fort Dodge were desperate for another reason.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] A cruel but necessary law of the old West decreed death for horse thieves. Steal a man's horse on the early frontier and you left him defenseless against buffalo stampedes, Indians on the warpath, or simple starvation. But in Dodge City of the late 1870s, the horse thief law had become out of date and just plain murderous.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Next to Doc Holliday, the outlaw Ben Thompson was probably the sorest trial to Marshal Wyatt Earp. Ben always insisted that he loved Wyatt like a brother. But according to Ben's curious code, this gave him the right to call on Wyatt for help on a personal matter not concerned with breaking the law. One day, in 1878, Wyatt found himself in a real mess with Ben Thompson, Doc Holliday, and two angry women.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Doctor Fabrique of Wichita had been an old and loyal friend to Marshal Earp. When Wyatt moved to Dodge City, he kept in touch with his doctor pal in Wichita. But friendship has its stresses and strains. Never did Doctor Fabrique imagine that he would become the storm center of a case that made medical history in Dodge. But then, Doctor Fabrique had not met Shotgun Gibbs and his mule, Roscoe.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dr. John H. Holiday was Wyatt Earp's friend. As Wyatt was to say in later years, Doc was a dentist whom lung disease made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life made a caustic wit. At the same time, the nerviest, speediest, deadliest with a six-gun that Wyatt ever knew. But this friendship was also a burden to the Marshal of Tombstone.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] One of the notorious rackets of the 1870s was the publishing of frontier town or accounting histories. Original settlers had to pay to have their life stories printed in one of these books. As Marshal Earl discovered, a prospective history of Dodge City led to bitterness, gun fighting, riot, and death.

Narrator:
When Marshal Wyatt Earp moved on to Dodge City after taming Wichita, he found that Dodge was a right mean little town. The phrase 'right mean little town' is frontier understatement. Dodge City, in 1876, was tougher than Ellsworth, Wichita, Hays, or Abilene at their worst. Two months was a long time for a Marshal to last in Dodge. In less than two years, 85 had been planted in the town cemetery, known as Boot Hill. It was called Boot Hill because residents died with their boots on. The gamblers, the painted ladies, and the gunslingers of Dodge were betting that Mr. Earp would be the next occupant of Boot Hill.

Morgan Earp:
Why should anyone hate Wyatt? He's only doin' his job.

Doc Holliday:
Well, no marshal ever won a popularity contest. Besides, Wyatt is a Northerner in a town full of Southerners and the Civil War is not long over. And, being from Georgia, it's a marvel I don't hate him myself.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp's decision to quit wearing a star and leave Dodge City provoked controversy which is still discussed to this day. Dodge City knew Marshal Earp was an honest peace officer who had helped change their town from a rowdy cow camp to a law-abiding small city. But the hoodlum element and some of their descendants used profanity in slandering Marshal Earp. Therefore, Dodge City's farewell was highly charged with emotion and suspense.

[first lines]

Narrator:
In 1879, Dodge City's day as rip-roaring town had dimmed into peaceful twilight. Under the stern law enforcement of Marshal Wyatt Earp, Judge Tobin and Mayor Kelly, Dodge was almost civilized. The chief remaining problem was that Wyatt had a number of friends like Bat Masterson and Ben Thompson, who couldn't understand that the era of saloon brawls and gunfighting in Kansas was at an end.

Wyatt Earp:
Mr. Mayor, we can keep law and order here in Dodge City, but what we can't do is turn our people into saints.

Mayor Jim Kelly:
My mind's made up!

Wyatt Earp:
Yeah. I was afraid of that.

Wyatt Earp:
[to Bat Masterson] When civilization does come to Dodge City, I hope you won't be the last heathen shaking your fist at it.

[last lines]

[Bat learns that Sweetie is moving to Denver]

Bat Masterson:
Denver is my kind of town.

Wyatt Earp:
Don't stay there too long. You'll find that civilization is crawling right up those mountains to Denver, too.

Bat Masterson:
Then I'll move west and keep on movin'. I'll see you in Arizona Territory, huh?

Wyatt Earp:
Could be. You know, I wish you could find some sweet little gal that could settle you down.

Bat Masterson:
Not me! So long, Wyatt.

Wyatt Earp:
So long, Mr. Masterson.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Captain David Rowland, retired Navy officer, was famous in Arizona territory. Living in the midst of Apaches and rustlers, the captain had a private army of tough gunfighters. He dispensed his own justice and he operated his own jail. Unfortunately, Marshal Wyatt Earp was obliged to investigate this private empire when Sheriff Johnny Behan ran afoul of Captain Rowland.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Historians have told as many lies about the American Indian as about any other minority group in the United States. Marshal Wyatt Earp, who knew Indians, did not agree with the Indian-haters who called them unprincipled savages. To Marshal Earp, they were people - some good, some bad - and their leaders were sometimes wrong and sometimes right. This was a dangerous opinion for a man to hold in 1878. It took the fabulous saga of Dull Knife and his fight for freedom to test whether Wyatt Earp's career as a peace officer would come to an end with a prison sentence.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Bitterness engendered by the Civil War had not yet faded in the Dodge City of 1879. Marshal Wyatt Earp was a Yankee from Illinois. Most of the cow hands and cattlemen who drove from Texas to the Kansas cow towns had been ruined by the war. Many of them were rightly angered by the bloody shirts who managed reconstruction in the South. Marshal Earp was determined to make peace. And on one occasion, he risked his own life in a strange agreement with the Johnny Rebs.

Narrator:
Wyatt Earp, the new Marshal of Dodge City, was trying to civilize the toughest town on the Western frontier. The hoodlums of Dodge knew that Earp had tamed Ellsworth and Wichita, but these were little cow towns compared to Dodge City, the cowhand capital. Marshal Earp had to start all over again and in the face of opposition which had run several peace officers out of Dodge. This Gomorrah of the Plains offered Wyatt Earp a hard choice: fight or run. And if he was to fight it out, Wyatt needed the help of city councilman Jim Kelley. Mr. 'Dog' Kelley they called him in the history books - ex-soldier, gambler, saloon keeper; an odd mixture of good and evil.

Wyatt Earp:
Say, did it ever occur to you that there are two Jim Kelley's? One that would sell me out in a flash of Irish temper and the other who'd weep and plant shamrocks on my grave. Pretty soon we're going to find out which Kelley will come out on top. Could be a pretty close fight.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The long feud between Texas cattlemen and the frontier Kansas cow towns was a projection of Civil War bitterness. The cattlemen hated Wyatt Earp because he was a Yankee from Illinois and because he was trying to tame Dodge City, the cowboy capital. Of all the schemes to get rid of Wyatt Earp, the one cooked up by Lon Ashby was the most subtle and deadly.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp had captured three of the four Dry Gulchers wanted for the slaying of Mr. Brother, his good Indian friend. The fourth and final man, Rufe Prentice, had eluded pursuit and fled to the protection of Crump Elliott, a notorious horse and cattle thief. Wyatt, with Sheriff Bat Masterson, faced a dangerous problem. Old Man Elliott's daughter, Blanche, was in love with Prentice. For the first time in the long chase after the Dry Gulch gang, a woman threatened to make matters complicated and deadly.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dr. George Goodfellow was a Civil War surgeon and a leading citizen of Tombstone. Unfortunately for Wyatt, the doctor was a man of medicine first and a law enforcer second. Although his code and Wyatt's seldom clashed, there was one time when they did.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Historians have written a great deal of nonsense about women on the Western frontier in the 1870s. Except for Indian raids, they were supposed to be protected by noble and chivalrous white men. Actually, the pioneer woman was in continual danger from bullies and hoodlums who joined the migration toward the West. The story of Martha Hildreth is a classic example of what it meant to be a pioneer woman.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] After several attempts to get rid of Marshal Earp had failed, his political enemies decided to go after Shotgun Gibbs, Wyatt's close friend and right-hand man. By killing Shotgun, the Ten Percent Ring hoped to sicken Wyatt of his job and drive him out of Tombstone.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The long struggle for law and order in Arizona exploded in thirty seconds of deadly gunfire at the O. K. Corral and placed Wyatt Earp among the great Marshals of the Western frontier. But the famous gunfight has been a matter of controversy ever since 1881. Witnesses from the outlaw element contradicted each other on so many vital points that no reputable historian has taken their version seriously. Marshal Earp's story of the fight was taken under oath and transcribed verbatim. This is Wyatt's own testimony of what happened that bloody day in Tombstone.

[first lines]

Narrator:
On the Kansas frontier in the late 1870s, what men called justice was often savage. Alleged rustlers and horse thieves were often hanged by their captors without trial. Judges like Roy Bean and Oklahoma Parker ordered men to the gallows for crimes that today would be punished by imprisonment. Wyatt Earp, as marshal of Dodge City, was one of many peace officer who stood against lynch law and the severity of so-called legal justice. When Dal Royal, a Texas cowhand was sentenced to be hanged for murder, Marshal Earp and Sheriff Bat Masterson staged a two-man fight against the cruel indifference of the public and the blood-lust of the gallows.

[Dal agrees to Wyatt's desperate plan over Bat's objections]

Bat Masterson:
Are you tired of livin'?

Dal Royal:
I ain't livin' this way!

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In 1881, treatment of the mentally ill was unheard of. The law seldom recognized insanity as an excuse for a defendant charged with a crime. Thus, when Wyatt Earp tried to help the outlaw Dray Brothers, he risked his job and his life.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Because he was opposed to brutality or vicious physical behavior as a matter of principle, Marshal Wyatt Earp had a long established rule that his Deputies must never use unnecessary force when making arrests. When he hired Tim Connell, Wyatt expected him to follow the rules.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wells Fargo had two undercover agents in Cochise County. One was J.D. Ayres, who operated a roadhouse and outlaw hangout in Charleston. Marshal Earl had a conviction that secret agents must be prevented from exposure at all costs. He sometimes found himself tangling with trouble that might cost several lives, including his own.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In a frontier society, like Dodge City, the sources of amusement were few and they were liable to be rough, disreputable, and overcrowded. Most of these could lead to trouble for somebody, and sometimes, one of them could lead to trouble for the whole community and for Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] It was a very difficult task for Marshal Wyatt Earp in 1881 to rid Tombstone of its rustlers, bandits, and killers because they were so numerous. But the job was made even more impossible by Sheriff John Behan, who allied himself with Wyatt's enemies and thwarted Wyatt whenever he could.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Bat Masterson and Charlie Bassett were known as fighting Sheriffs of Ford County, Kansas. They had moved on to other jobs. And Marshal Wyatt Earp, returning from a long chase westward after federal outlaws, found that Del Mathey had been elected Sheriff. Del had no qualifications for the job other than a family name and personal popularity.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp could never complain that life in Dodge City in 1877 was boring and routine. Most of the shootings, however, occurred south of the deadline and involved shady people. But the alleged killing of Dan Bolton by Reb Thomas was a noted event on the right side of the tracks. Bolton was the town's leading cattle buyer, a man of wealth and influence. When Marshal Earl reached the scene...

Narrator:
The greatest factor in Wyatt Earp's career as a Western Marshal was his intelligence. He could shoot quick but he could think faster. Earp was a rough and ready psychologist who studied his adversaries while other frontier Marshals had no idea but to shoot them down. Unfortunately, the gunfighters, cowboys and outlaws of Wichita in 1875 seldom appreciated Marshal Earp's intellectual methods, and his friends warned him that it was much safer to shoot first and think afterwards. In the case of young Turner Ashby, it looked as if they were right.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marriages between white men and Indian girls happened rarely, even on the Kansas frontier of 1877. Despite the sentimental guff written about 'squaw men', the strongest barriers in such marriages was the sacrifice demanded on any Indian who dared to marry a white man. Fighting tribes like the Apaches, the Sioux and the Cheyenne greeted such romances with deadly anger. Marshal Earp would rather face a great gunman than become involved with a white husband and an Indian wife.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp had lived through fifty gunfights in Dodge City and Wichita without killing a man. Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday and many other friends warned Wyatt that shooting to disable rather than to kill was quixotic nonsense. Gunfighters began to count on Wyatt's determination to spare their lives. And Bat, who was devoted, made one last attempt to change Wyatt's thinking.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] John P. Clum, Mayor of Tombstone and editor of one of its newspapers, paid in many ways for his support of Marshal Wyatt Earp and his courageous stand against Sheriff Behan and the outlaw faction. Present day newspapermen have little understanding of what it took to run an honest newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881. Powerful politicians were determined to ruin Clum, force him to sell his paper, and if these tactics failed - kill him.

Narrator:
When Wyatt Earp as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas, ran Mannen Clemens out of town, he overlooked one dangerous fact: Clemens, a notorious killer in his own right, was first cousin to John Wesley Hardin. In the West of 1875, Hardin was known as the deadliest gunslinger of them all. And Wes Hardin was now on his way to Wichita.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp's struggle to prove that Sheriff John Behan was hand-in-glove with the Clanton outlaws and the corrupt Ten Percent Ring took a strange new turn when Miss Minna Marlin arrived in Tombstone. Miss Marlin was the star of a dramatic company playing at the Bird Cage Theatre, but she became the central figure of a real life drama - a drama which had the whole town talking.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Johnny Behind-the-Deuce had fallen under the spell of Doc Holliday, one of the most controversial figures in Tombstone. Men feared Doc, respected him for his skill as a gambler and speed with a .45. But a hero-worshipping kid trying to imitate these qualities spelled trouble for all concerned and especially for Doc's best friend, Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral had its inception in the holdup of a Sandy Bob Stage. After the death of Old Man Clanton, Marshal Earp thought he saw another chance to split the Clanton outfit by tricking the outlaws into gunning each other down. Wyatt knew that if this failed, there would be a fight to the finish between the John Laws of Tombstone and the Clanton gunfighters.

Wyatt Earp:
[Closing Narration] The forces of law and order in Tombstone were left with no choice but a showdown. A stable yard called the O.K. Corral would be the scene of the most famous gunfight in the history of the old west. Thirty four shots would be fired with deadly intent. It would take just thirty seconds to determine whether the Clanton outlaws were to run Arizona or whether Wyatt Earp's long struggle to uphold the law would continue.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] They had a juvenile-delinquent problem in 1878, too. Kids from the small towns and cities of the East and Middle West headed for the frontier in search of excitement and reputations as outlaws. Dodge City had a plague of these brats and Marshal Wyatt Earp didn't have a child guidance expert or a psychiatrist to tell him just what to do. Marshal Wyatt Earp used plain common horse sense.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narratoin] The Honorable James 'Dog' Kelley has his place in the annals of Dodge City. Starting as a saloonkeeper from the wrong side of the tracks, Kelley made his choice for law and order by hiring Wyatt Earp as town Marshal. He backed Wyatt many times when political expediency urged him to find a less uncompromising peace officer. But Kelley was a politician. As Dodge became civilized in 1878, he could indulge his hot temper by forcing Marshal Earp to resign.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Modern newspapermen dislike to see the good old days portrayed by editors and reporters who were drunkards, incompetents, and scoundrels. The men who work on today's newspapers have such strict standards that they cannot understand conditions which existed in towns like Dodge City on the frontier in 1878. But Marshal Wyatt Earp testified in his biography as to the truth. Frontier journalism was a bitter struggle between lawless men who used horsewhips, fists, and guns to keep the facts from being printed.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] When cowboys were robbed and murdered for money won at the Keno House, Wichita's popular cow town casino, they became suspicious of the owner and his gamblers. To find out who was trailing and robbing the cowboys, Wyatt Earp began making the Keno House his special beat.

Narrator:
One of the high spots of Wyatt Earp's career as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas, was his conflict with 'Shanghai' Pierce. Abel H. Pierce was a New England ship owner turned cattle baron. In 1875, Pierce was probably the richest and most influential and certainly the most vivid character in all the Western country. Shortly before he tangled with Wyatt Earp, Old Shanghai was a guest of honor at a remarkable ceremony.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Among the friends who invariably got Wyatt Earp into trouble was Ned Buntline, popular author of dime novels about the Western frontier. Mr. Buntline admired Wyatt to the point of idolatry. This was a pleasant and embarrassing attitude and Wyatt's sense of humor enabled him to forgive the mild bragging of the writer. But when Buntline made Wyatt the hero of a new novel titled 'King of the Frontier'...

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] As late as 1879, frontiersmen would not believe that the great herds of buffalo had vanished for all time. The truth was that they had been slaughtered after twenty years of ruthless hunting. But both white men and Indians clung to the myth that the buffalo were hiding in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana and they would move back to the prairie some day. Realists, like Marshal Earp, knew that this was nonsense. But men are seldom proof against wishful thinking and the folly of a cherished dream.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp had dealt with Curly Bill Brocius many times when that notorious gunman had visited Dodge City. Although he robbed and rustled cattle and was a brutal thug to whom murder was routine, in his leisure hours, he could be good natured.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Against his better judgment, Wyatt made his decision to serve as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Tombstone. In fact, as historians have pointed out, Wyatt was trapped into it by the threat of Old Man Clanton to bush whack him as he left Tombstone - and by his own stubborn bravery.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp's little brother, Morgan, was a charming, devil-may-care buckaroo. When he came under the influence of Dr. John H. Holliday, Wyatt had a problem. Although Wyatt and Doc were friends, Marshal Earp knew Doc for what he was - an embittered adventurer with a strange code. If a youngster like Morgan Earp started hero-worshipping Doc Holliday, he was mighty apt to play for it with his life.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The persistent dream of Wyatt Earp's life was to own a cattle spread and find peace far from the Marshal's job and a tough town on the frontier. Now that Dodge City was changing to a County seat, townsman and sod busters wanted no more of the rip-snorting past. Marshal Earp was ready to move to a ranch of his own. But he hadn't been able to save much money and the intervention of Dr. John H. Holliday seemed to be almost providential.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The story of Susan Leonard, a child known as Little Pistol, is a legend of Western folklore. Except for the intervention of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Susan might have vanished into a nameless grave. As it happened, Little Pistol became a central character in an episode which started tongues wagging from Dodge to the New Mexico border. Gossip established Susan Leonard as the first female outlaw in the Western country. But the truth about Little Pistol, as truth often turns out to be, was stranger than fiction.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Preventing a train robbery when you have a straight tip on the time and place should have been no problem for Marshal Wyatt Earp. Any competent peace officer would nab the robbers before it started or trap them at the scene. But Wyatt first had to deal with Shotgun Gibbs, his mule Roscoe, and a lady known as Phronsie LaTour.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp was the only true friend Doc Holliday had in the cruel and wicked world of the American frontier. People who knew both Wyatt and Doc wondered how long Marshal Earp could tolerate a man who drank so much, was a gambler, and a nasty tempered killer. Residents of Tombstone waited for the day when Wyatt's patience would run out.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Though the war ended in 1865, there were still sections of the land where passions were still flaming in '74. Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas, finds himself embroiled with cowmen who still hold strong, strong views about that war.

Narrator:
For many months, Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas, had managed to stay clear of feminine entanglements. This took some doing since numerous young women had set their caps for the handsome Mr. Earp. But Miss Mamie Perkins, a church organist, had that mysterious charm that appealed mightily to Marshal Earp, and almost succeeded in proving the frontier adage that stated, "For most men, women are slow, but to a peace officer, they can be a quick death."

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Among the desperate men with whom Wyatt Earp had to deal with as Marshal of Tombstone, Arizona, some of the most dangerous were professional bank robbers. In 1881, bank robbery attracted Western criminals who ranked themselves with Qunitrell, the James Boys, and the Youngers. And a few of them were just as shrewd and deadly as Cole Younger or Jessie James.

Narrator:
In 1875 while Wyatt Earp was Marshal of Wichita, Indian tribes, like the Comanches, Apaches, and the Sioux, had refused to make peace with the United States Government. This warfare was to reach its climax a year later when the Sioux and their allies massacred General George Custer and his men in the battle of the Little Big Horn. But for many months prior to this tragedy, renegades were selling contraband rifles to the unpacified tribes.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp, against his will, is Marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas. The year is 1874. Ellsworth is one of the wild cow towns of the Western frontier. Bill Thompson had killed Earp's close friend, Sheriff Whitney and Earp had arrested Bill, who escaped. This pursuit of Bill Thompson was Wyatt's key to success in Ellsworth.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Johnny Behan was appointed Sheriff of Cochise County through the influence of the Ten Percent Ring, for whom he performed many favors. This brought him into conflict with Marshal Wyatt Earp and many people in Tombstone. Wyatt was often tempted to kill Behan, but killing for any reason was against Wyatt's deep principles. Behan knew this and as a result became one of Wyatt's most dangerous enemies.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The friendship between Marshal Wyatt Earp and Dr. John H. Holliday was one of the mysteries of Dodge City. Why Marshal Earp, a deacon in the church, could tolerate Doc Holliday was a mighty puzzle to Wyatt's friends. Doc Holliday, gambler, gunfighter, killer, had a mean disposition and a caustic tongue. That two men, so different in character, could even associate on friendly terms, would seem preposterous. And Wyatt's insistence on making a friend of Doc Holliday finally came to a crisis between Wyatt and the men who hired him to civilize Dodge City.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp, as Marshal in Wichita and now Dodge City, had met some of the top guns of the Western frontier. He had outfought the notorious Mannen Clemens; he had outfought John Wesley Hardin in a final showdown; he had persuaded Clay Allison to run from Dodge City rather than face a duel with .45s man-to-man. But the case of Dutch Henry, cattle thief and killer, presented a new problem. Not much was known about him, and he chose to await a battle with the law on his own grounds in the rocky wilderness known as the Salt Bend.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Violence in the West took many forms. The friction between soldiers and settlers was one of them. With the Fort just outside the town, Dodge City became an arena for such violence more than once. All it took was the appearance of one old man full of an ancient hatred.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp faced the hatred and gunfire of many men in the towns of Wichita, Dodge City, and Tombstone. But none hated him more than the Ten Percent Ring and the head of all the outlaws, Old Man Clanton.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp's good friends were Mr. Cousin and Mr. Brother, Cheyenne Indians who had left their tribal group to serve as scouts for the Army and valued advisors for Marshal Earp. Wyatt has been much criticized for his wide variety of friends and his absolute loyalty to them. But friendship with Indians was beyond the pale. As Dodge City said in 1879, 'Injuns' weren't even people.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opning Narration] The killing of Skinner Smith - loan shark, skinflint, and the most disliked man in Dodge City - presented Marshal Earp with the strangest murder case of his career. Public opinion was on the side of the murderer. People thought that Smith deserved killing and Wyatt found himself almost alone in his determination to solve the case.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The bitterness between Texas cattlemen and the cow town Marshals of Kansas was an aftermath of the Civil War. There were those in the South that never fired a shot to help the Confederacy but who were now determined to aggravate the Yank Johnny Laws who tried to keep order in Kansas. Marshal Wyatt Earp was a shining target for all manner of schemes to assassinate him or run him out of Dodge. Perhaps the shrewdest of Wyatt's enemies was Drum Denman, owner of the R.E.B. cattle spread. Big Drum had at least an original idea.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The quarrel between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, which all of Wyatt's friends had long predicted, began as a rough-and-ready frontier joke. Dodge City in 1878 had growing pains and had wanted to tax the residents of Pinkytown, a hamlet of shacks and shanties beyond the city limits. Pinkytown resisted and Doc Holliday, noted for his cantankerous humor, joined the Pinkytown citizens in their rebellion. This brought Doc into conflict with Marshal Earp. It seemed inevitable that the two fastest guns on the western prairie meet in a showdown with .45s.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Frontier communities like Dodge City had a lot of problems. One of the worst was scarcity of goods and men - the right kind of men for the jobs that needed to be done. And sometimes the pressing needs were a problem for the law - and for Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The West was a gathering ground for men of every type - for derelicts as well as heroes. One of the strangest, perhaps, is a man they called a "remittance man" - a man who was paid to stay away from home.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The relations between Marshal Earp and Old Man Clanton, who was the outlaw chieftain of southeastern Arizona, were marked by cold hostilities. But Wyatt dreaded the day when Clanton would reach the end of every outlaw's trail because he knew that leadership of Clanton's gang would pass to Curley Brocius and John Ringo - a bloodthirsty murderer and an alcoholic psychopath - or to the McLowery Brothers, another pair of deadly killers.

Wyatt Earp:
[Closing Narration] The death of Old Man Clanton would not end the desperate struggle between Marshal Earp and the Clanton outlaws. Bad as he was, the old man had exercised a moderating influence. Wyatt knew that the command would now pass to Curley Brocius and John Ringo, more unrelenting and ambitious than Clanton's disappointing sons. The law could not reason with such men. So the law would be forced to speak with guns as the looming battle of the O.K. Corral dawned on Tombstone's grim horizon.

Narrator:
When Wyatt Earp was Marshal of Wichita, Kansas in 1875, one of the serious problems which he had to deal with was the runaway boy from the East. Hundreds of such youngsters, incited by the lurid, dime novels about cowboys, Indians, and outlaws, left their homes in Eastern towns and cities for the wild, exiting life on the Western frontier. If today's comic books have a bad effect on many juvenile readers, they are mild compared to the bloody sensationalism of paperback thrillers, which lured the youth of earlier times to seek adventure in the brawling violence of cattle trails and cow towns.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the opinion of mule owners, a mule is more intelligent than a horse. In the opinion of Shotgun Gibbs, his mule, Roscoe, was smarter than all other mules and most human beings. Thus, when a consignment of Army remounts was stolen from a livery stable in Tombstone, Roscoe happened to be the only eye witness. What could Roscoe do about it?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Many bitter things have been written about the Western railroads and some of their tactics in the 70s were questionable. What is now known as the Santa Fe War or the Finney County War was started by corrupt land speculators in Finney County who tried to drive honest farmers off the land they had bought from the Santa Fe Railroad. Dodge City was a Santa Fe town - and still is. Wyatt Earp had many friends among the railroad men. But Wyatt had to know the truth - and the truth was obscured in violence and blood.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Ever since Bat Masterson had been elected as Sheriff of Ford County, Wyatt had known he must appoint a Chief Deputy to replace Masterson. Bat had proven himself with guns and fists. In Wyatt's absence, the hoodlums of Dodge City respected Bat. Any other man named Chief Deputy would have it tough.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The 1870s were a time of Victorian decorum and chivalry. Men like Marshal Wyatt Earp held to a code which we smile at today as stuffy and sentimental. Where women were concerned, Wyatt felt obligations which often moved him to be a friend and protector. Historians of the period agreed that life in frontier settlements was heaven for cattle but hard for women, as Cathy Prentice can testify to.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] For three years, while Wyatt Earp was Marshal at Ellsworth, Wichita and Dodge City, he had risked his life many times by shooting to disable hoodlums rather than kill them. These hoodlums began to trade on Wyatt's compassion. Now in Dodge City, the McAlester Brothers were to force Wyatt with the hard choice of shooting to kill or be killed.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Despite all that Marshal Earp and his Deputies could do, the lawless elements continued to terrorize Arizona until finally the scandalous conditions were reported to Washington. President Chester Arthur forced the resignation of Governor Fremont and issued stern orders to Acting Governor Gosper. He and Chief US Marshal Crawley Dake asked Wyatt Earp to come to Tucson to what amounted to a conference of war.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Women on the frontier when Wyatt Earp was Marshal of Dodge City in 1876 had long been accustomed to scenes of violence and gunplay. But aside from tough showoffs like Calamity Jane, Belle Starr, and Pearl Hart, women rarely carried a gun or used one, and then only in desperation. The circumstances that turned Mrs. Jane McGill into a shooting woman were unusual and she became one of the most serious problems Marshal Earp tried to handle.

Narrator:
Wyatt Earp's relations with the Wells Fargo Bank and Express Company began when he was young sprout in California, riding shotgun for Wells Fargo on a dangerous line from the gold fields. Not a single stage under Wyatt's guard was ever held up. Long after Wyatt had left the company's employ, he was remembered by Wells Fargo and often asked to help with special agents on a tough case. As Marshal of Dodge City, Wyatt was appealed to by Wells Fargo with word that a gang of outlaws, led by Curley Bill Brocius, was holding up its stages at a desolate station called the Little Alamo.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Critics of Marshal Wyatt Earp remarked that he was implacable when faced with bad men but much too soft and trusting when it came to women. Alas! The saga of a young lady known as Silver Dollar presented a mystery which numerous men had failed to solve. Was Silver Dollar an innocent child adrift in Tombstone or was she a calculating and dangerous little hussy.

Narrator:
Perhaps the main reason his enemies hated Marshal Wyatt Earp was Wyatt's profound loyalty to his friends. Then there's such characters as Jim Kelley and Dora Hand, the Queen of Dodge City's night life. Jim Kelley, the saloon keeper who backed Wyatt's struggles to civilize roaring, snorting Dodge City. Dora Hand whose romance with Kelley and friendship with Wyatt caused the lifting of eyebrows among the respectable citizens of Dodge City. But Wyatt Earp, having once gained a friend, was loyal to that friend to the last ditch.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Johnny Behan, Sheriff of Cochise County, had long been a threat and a danger to Tombstone because his interests were tied in with the empire Old Man Clanton had built in the territory. Then one day, Behan made the mistake of tangling with Clanton, his boss and paymaster.

Narrator:
The Western frontier town of 1876 could take tornados, blizzards, and even Indian raids in stride. But there was one catastrophe which even the bravest townsman feared. This was the invasion by hoodlum gunfighters bent on punishing the town for trying to maintain strict law and order. Along with the turbulent annals in Dodge City, the day George Morris and his men captured Dodge is rated as the most terrifying experience in the memory of its citizens.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Yuma Prison in the 1880s was a notorious hole of misery. Convicts inside and prisoners being transported there desperately risked their lives to escape, and when they did, territorial authorities hired Apache renegades to track them down. The Apaches, however, did not capture them - they killed to collect the reward money. This state of affairs was brought forcibly to the attention of Marshal Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dodge City was primitive in many ways. Entertainment was usually of the roughest sort. Culture was a word almost unknown. Still, the thirst for beauty existed even here. And when beauty came to town, it excited strong emotions and meant trouble for Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
Wyatt Earp often was charged by his enemies with hating cowhands and bearing a grudge against them. Historians of the frontier have refuted this accusation, but it was a serious matter to Marshal Earp in 1876. Hundreds of cowhands made the town what R.M. Wright, a local diarist, called 'The Cowboy Capital.' Marshal Earp and a handful of Deputies had a tough job keeping the peace in Dodge City. This meant daily clashes with cowhands, determined to celebrate their brief vacations from the hard work, the perils, and the loneliness of cattle raising.

Wyatt Earp:
The Ten Percent Ring, a political gang who ran Arizona territory in the 80s, decided to operate a big lottery for the ostensible purpose of raising money for new schools. The lottery was supposed to pay $380,000, but it paid off in murder, thievery, and trouble for Marshal Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
In the year 1975, bank robbery was the most profitable of crimes and it attracted the elite of Western criminals. They ranked themselves with Quantrill, the James Boys, and the Youngers. A few of them were just as shrewd and deadly as Cole Younger or Jesse James.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The frontier doctor in Kansas cow towns of 1877 had to handle a lot of bad-tempered and dangerous patients. Perhaps the most celebrated cases in the early annals of Dodge City medicine was the time Mr. Shanghai Pierce, millionaire Texas cattle baron, got a severe stomach ache. Marshal Wyatt Earp and his old friend, Doctor Fabrique of Wichita, did not ask to become involved with Shanghai's medical emergency. It was thrust upon them by a dozen Texas gunfighters standing by to see that their boss survived - or else.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Miss Nellie Cashman, the ministering angel of Tombstone, had occasionally been an embarrassment to Wyatt. Nellie was liked and respected by all kinds and conditions of men. But when she sought to make peace between the Welsh and Irish miners at the diggings called the Total Wreck Mine, Marshal Earp knew he had big trouble.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] As Wyatt Earp's fame as a peace officer in Dodge City spread across the Western country, men remembered that he was also a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Thus, when his old friend, Colonel Benteen of the 7th Cavalry at Fort Lewis, Colorado, found himself facing the problem of a mysterious killer who shot only from ambush, Colonel Benteen could think of but one solution.

Narrator:
Every hoodlum in Wichita, Kansas wanted to get rid of Marshal Wyatt Earp. Men were hired to shoot him and failed. Earp had been out of town and a crooked gambler named Keeno McGee had taken advantage of his absence to achieve some very profitable results. When the cat's away, the mice will play.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp thought he knew Old Man Clanton and all his tribe. But he had forgotten Billy Clanton, the youngest son away in Texas at school. Billy's sister, Emma, had high hopes that Billy would be different from the other Clantons; and Wyatt, when he was forced to remember about Billy, understood Emma's problem - could the boy be saved from the life of an outlaw family as notorious as the Clantons?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Tombstone lay near the border of old Mexico. Many times that fact meant trouble for Marshal Wyatt Earp. The border was a convenient escape route for criminals, a very tempting sanctuary for raiding Apaches, and the home of a people who had very little love for the Americanos north of them.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] One of the many mysteries of the old West to amateur historians was how so many top gunslingers lived so long. The answer, as Wyatt Earp said, was simple: They seldom fought one another. When men of equal speed and skill got into a gunfight, it meant death to both of them. When Curley Brocius and Johnny Ringo rode into Tombstone to settle a quarrel, it looked as if Wyatt would be rid of two animals.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the West, a name was only a name and it might be a mask to hide many things. One didn't inquire into it too closely unless it became necessary, as it often did for Wyatt Earp. For behind the masking names were people and their problems.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] One of the oldest clich?s in stories about law enforcement is that all ex-convicts eventually return to prison. This notion disgusted Marshal Wyatt Earp and, in later years, Wyatt used to cite the case of Jed Lorimer as a story which contradicted fiction with the violence and heartbreak of real life.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt had been warned so often about his friendship with Doc Holliday that the warnings merely bored him or increased his loyalty to Doc. But when the Wells Fargo office in Tombstone was robbed of $40,000 and witnesses identified Holliday as one of the robbers, Wyatt's already difficult position in Tombstone became more impossible.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dodge City on a bright September morning in 1878 awoke to what its residents thought was just another start of a heat wave - a scorcher. To Marshal Wyatt Earp and his Deputies, a very hot day meant more than a usual run of trouble.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Wichita in 1875, had gone against hardened killers, like Mannen Clemens and John Wesley Hardin, mature men with a lust for blood and a quick hand on the grip of a Colt .45. But there was a group of desperadoes, most of them 18 to 20 years old, who styled themselves Billy the Kid, the Pecos Kid, or the Comanche Kid. A few of them, like young Lonnie McVey, known as the Kansas Kid, found himself hounded by a reputation and drilled towards death at the end of a posse's rope.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the early West, men suffered from almost every disease that flesh is heir to and there were few doctors to treat them. One of the worst afflictions and most virulent was one no doctor could treat: gold fever. More often the cure of the disease called for the services of Marshal Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
Cowhands on a hoo-rah weren't the only troublemakers for Wyatt Earp when he was Marshal of Dodge City. There were tough buffalo hunters who went on sprees in Dodge and there were railroad construction gangs of the Sant? Fe who tried to make good their boast that Dodge was hell on wheels. In 1876, these two groups of hoodlums fought each other for possession of the dance hall run by Dora Hand, the queen of Dodge City night life. Dora Hand, a beautiful and mysterious young woman who was a legend in her own lifetime. Men shot and maimed one another in fights over Dora and the girls of her dance hall.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp's greatest distinction as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas was based on a fact that in a hundred showdowns with armed lawbreakers, he preferred to disable an opponent rather than shoot to kill. But George Peschauer, a renegade of such villainy that he was expelled from the Thompson gang of outlaws, managed to anger Wyatt into a killing temper. On the Western frontier of 1875, Marshal Earp was considered reckless and foolishly quixotic to spare outlaws' lives at the risk of his own. And in the case of George Peschauer...

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] It is estimated that Wyatt Earp took part in more than a hundred gunfights during his career as a Western Marshal. He was fast because he had to be, but he shot only in the line of duty and he always tried to disable his man, rather than kill him. Marshal Earp had no relish for gunfights and he scorned the drink-crazed amateurs or criminal psychopaths that glorified shooting it out with .45s. They made his job as Marshal of Dodge City the most dangerous on the frontier. Thus, when Wyatt met up with Guns McCallum, he thought he knew what kind of trouble was heading his way.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the frontier West, men fought over things: differences monetary and romantic, political, racial, and religious. Both good men and bad were caught in this violence and sometimes brought to doom. And often, their quarrels became the problem of Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
The frontier theater, in 1875, was almost as rough and tough as the frontier saloon. Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Wichita, found himself saddled with the job of keeping order at the town's music hall where all kinds of shows and all sorts of characters bid for popular favor. Usually, the shows were pretty good, but usually the cowboy customers were full of liquor and bad temper. Their reaction to the drama was simple and primitive - if they liked the show, they threw money on the stage; if they didn't like it, they started a riot. But in the case of Jeff Pruitt and his carnival honky tonk...

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Tombstone lay in a country that had been Mexican long before it was American. Many an old family ranch was nestled near the best water of the surrounding valley. But changes of allegiance are not made easily and sometimes there is friction and the kind of trouble that involved Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
Wyatt Earp, in his first few months as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas, had done many things. And now he was faced with the recurring problem of the crooked gambling houses and their untiring efforts to separate the cowboy from his money.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] There were four Gatling guns with the infantry column supporting Custer's 7th Cavalry. But Custer didn't think the Gatling gun important. Had he waited, the Battle of the Little Big Horn might have turned into a massacre of Sitting Bull and his Indian forces. And it was ironic that Chief Joseph, a brilliant, young leader of the Nez Perce tribe, thought better of the Gatling gun than the white men who invented it.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] General George Armstrong Custer led the Seventh Cavalry against an overwhelming force of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Little Big Horn in 1876. Custer and 264 officers and men were slaughtered. Two years later, the American press and public were still arguing about the Custer tragedy. The General's enemies called him a glory hunter who unknowingly led the Seventh Cavalry into a massacre. The General's friends said he was betrayed by subordinate officers. Time has proven both theories false. But in the bitterness of the dispute, General Custer had only one ardent champion - his widow.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The friendship between Marshal Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday was born of gratitude on Wyatt's part. Doc had saved his life. But why Doc Holliday chose to like Wyatt and be loyal to him was mighty puzzling to the citizens of Dodge City in 1877. And since Wyatt stood for everything that Doc cynically derided, a lot of folks were betting that the two would soon come to an open break.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] There were two newspapers in Tombstone. Mayor John P. Clum's paper supported Wyatt Earp. But the Nugget in the frontier days of 1881 was controlled by Wyatt's enemies - the Ten Percent Ring, Sheriff Behan, and the Clanton outlaws, who used the paper to discredit Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dr. John H. Holliday, gambler, gunfighter and, by the oddity of circumstance, a friend of Wyatt Earp, was living on borrowed time. Long ill, Doc's idea of taking care of himself was to drink a quart of whiskey a day. But that a small boy named Benny Burkett could exercise a good influence on Doc Holliday was one of those improbable happenings of which no one in Dodge City would have bet a nickel.

Narrator:
Most of the Judges with whom Wyatt Earp had to deal were honest, strong, and fair-minded men. But when Judge Tobin was assigned to ride a circuit that included Dodge City, Wyatt came up against a strange character. Tobin had set out to make a reputation for himself as a 'hanging judge.' Men called him 'Rope Tobin' and compared him with the notorious Judge Parker who hanged 88 men in Oklahoma Territory. But in the case of Judge Tobin...

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] A great hiding place for Western outlaws was the Brown Hole. As historian Charles Kelly remarked in his book 'Outlaw Trail', it was the toughest outlaw hideout in the West. It covered the corner where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming joined. Not only was the hole a natural fortress, the outlaws who camped there were the scum of all the cow towns and gold diggings from Texas to Oregon.

Wyatt Earp:
[Narration] That outlaw trail ran from Robber's Roost in the south to Hole in the Wall up north. In the 70s and 80s, many a long rider with a price on his head and the shadow of a hangman's rope on his face joined other desperate men in what they called the Last Hideout.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The toughest decision Wyatt Earp ever had to make as a peace officer in Dodge was what to do about Rocky Griswold and his gang of saddle tramps. Hank Drew, Deputy U.S. Marshal, posing as an outlaw, had lured Rocky into the attempted robbery of a Santa Fe gold shipment. Under the law, this would be a plain case of entrapment and a legal trick to capture outlaws for a reward. But on the frontier of 1878, many believed that a John Law should use any method to halt a robbery.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The 1870s on the Western frontier were noted for sentimentality. The fable of a woman outlaw flourished. People really believed that Pauline Cushman, Belle Starr and Calamity Jane were female Robin Hoods, robbing the rich and giving to the poor. Dodge City, Kansas in 1877 had its own heroine. Her name was Lillian Reeve and folks called her 'The Kansas Lily.' But Marshal Earp could not afford to be sentimental, even about woman outlaws. A good peace officer assumed that a woman could shoot you just as dead as any drunken cowhand.

Narrator:
Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Wichita, Kansas in 1875, has yet to face the most dangerous threat which can confront a western cow town. Rebellious cowboys need only a leader like Mannen Clemens, the deadliest gunfighter on the brawling Chisholm Trail, to become an invading band of outlaws, determined to kill every peace officer and citizen who stands in their way.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp's insistence that the law must be fair placed him at a disadvantage in the fight to hold Tombstone against the Clantons. Typical of Wyatt's refusal to use unfair methods was his clash with Tom and Frank McLowery, a strict adherence to the law that was to lead sometime in the future to the famous battle of the O.K. Corral.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] The code of the frontier peace officer was a simple and unwritten law: you gave any man a chance to surrender. If he reached for a gun, you hit him on the head with the barrel of a .45 or you shoot to disable him. Wyatt Earp, as Marshal of Ellsworth, Wichita and Dodge City, followed this code to the letter, often at the risk of his own life. But young Bat Masterson, his new Deputy Marshal, had a lot to learn. Despite Wyatt's instructions, Bat was apt to get excited or trigger happy.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The notorious Dr. John H. Holliday had a running feud with Dodge City. In fact, Doc had a running feud with the world and life itself. The only man to whom he acknowledged the slightest loyalty was Wyatt Earp. But when Holliday decided to back Milton G. Durkin in a dispute with some very tough men, it appeared that Doc and Wyatt would clash in a standup gunfight.

Narrator:
The Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876 was the worst defeat suffered by the white man in his long fight with the Indians. The news of this disaster had repercussions in Dodge City and other frontier towns. Custer's bitter critics were a handful of civilians who worked for the Indian Bureau. But the hoodlum element had an old score to settle with the Army, for it was the Army that tried to stop them from cheating their Indian wards.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Many women had unsuccessfully set their caps for Marshal Wyatt Earp. But when his friend, Shotgun Gibbs, got the idea that Wyatt should marry, things looked very bad indeed. Dan Cupid himself never rigged a better trap. Tombstone's most eligible bachelor and Nellie Cashman, the most sought after maiden lady, would seem an ideal match.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Many of the men and women who peopled the early West were unschooled and unlettered - primitive in their thoughts and passions. Such people could be warm friends or deadly enemies. And often, too often, they brought trouble to Dodge City and Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The murder of Nate Strathearn, relative and U.S. Marshal, brought to Wyatt Earp a personal challenge. Later on in his career, men nearer and dearer to Wyatt were to be killed or wounded. But not since the slaying of his friend, Mr. Brother, had Wyatt been so emotionally involved. It did not make for clear thinking.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The deadly business of gun fighting has never know a more enabling exponent than Marshal Wyatt Earp. In Ellsworth and Wichita, Dodge City and Tombstone, Wyatt was forced into more than a hundred gun battles. But it was his shrewd understanding of men which made him the master of so many hoodlums and outlaws. Wyatt's ability to judge the precise moment a bad man had determined to go for his gun was more important than his ability to draw faster. Wyatt had taught Bat Masterson the secret of staying alive in frontier towns. And then Bat's brother, Ed, came to Dodge City.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Ned Buntline, originator of the dime novel portraying life in the wild and wooly West, was a great trial to Marshal Wyatt Earp. Every time the author left New York to gather more material for a new book, he expected Wyatt to cooperate with his fantastic ideas. But when Wyatt moved from Dodge City to Tombstone, he thought he had gotten rid of Buntline. Alas, alas.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Tombstone had two newspapers - the Nugget and the Epitaph. The Nugget was a tool of the Ten Percent Ring and hated Wyatt. But the Epitaph printed the truth and made journalistic history. Wyatt had assumed that even though it opposed him, the Nugget would be fair in routine dealings. But he learned that very few people in Tombstone were fair about anything.

Doc Holliday:
Have you any idea how we can cheat the gallows, deacon?

Wyatt Earp:
Well, if I was talkin' to a newspaperman now, I'd say it looks pretty bad, sir. But we aren't dead yet.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Within just a few hours of the O. K. Corral shootout, the enemies of Wyatt Earp were in full cry, led by Editor Dameron of the Nugget and Sheriff John Behan. The outlaws of Cochise County were determined to assassinate Wyatt, his brothers, and Doc Holliday. They would do this with bullets or the trumped up charge of First Degree Murder. Many correspondents from big city papers gathered for what they thought might be a mass lynching - legal or illegal.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] When Wyatt had come to Arizona territory, it was wild and raw. Civilization was represented by the city of Tucson, a few turbulent mining town, like Tombstone, and a scattering of Army camps. Since the Apaches were a constant menace, travel was precarious, even for Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp had left Dodge City to arrest a murderer in the Brown Hole country. Wyatt had hoped to get back before cow trail hoodlums organized an attack on the town. But he underestimated Curley Brocius and Johnny Ringgold, killers with a grudge against him and Dodge City.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp helped John Clum start the Tombstone Epitaph because he wanted an honest newspaper. His next move was to try to elect an honest judge. Wells Spicer, lately arrived from the East, was chosen to run against Judge Griscom. Griscom was allied with the Clantons and the infamous Ten Percent Ring. Beating him at the polls would not be easy. It would be a battle with fists and guns, for which the term 'dirty politics' was too mild a name.

Narrator:
The great Allen Pinkerton won fame as Chief of secret services for Union armies during the Civil War. After that, the detective organization he headed became the scourge of outlaw gangs on the Western frontier. But sometimes, the Pinkertons failed to notify local peace officers of their activities and it was this neglect that brought Pinkerton into conflict with Wyatt Earp. Their mutual enemy was the Crummy Newton gang of train robbers and neither Earp nor Pinkerton would afford to quarrel. Not with Crummy Newton and his men riding toward Wichita.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp disliked working with a posse and avoided it when he could. But news this time that the San Berdue gang had crossed from California into Arizona territory and were heading toward Old Mexico left him with no choice. It would take many extra men to cover canyons and trails and make a fight against the San Berduers.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Dr. John H. Holliday, close friend of Wyatt Earp, had been living on borrowed time. In a last, desperate effort to save her husband, Katie Holliday appealed to Dr. McCarty, a man of medicine in Dodge City.

Narrator:
The job of Marshal in a Western cow town of the 1870s had a brief life experience. Wyatt Earp had lived through the taming of Ellsworth and Wichita by the speed of his guns and the skill of his fists. But Dodge City was bigger and tougher. Hoodlums, drunken cowhands and a few businessmen who wanted a wide open town had determined to get rid of Marshal Earp by killing him. Thus far, alertness and luck had been with the Marshal. It had been with Wild Bill Hickok, too, until an assassin's bullet had crashed into his head. In the early autumn of 1876, Marshal Earl was closer to death than he had ever been before. What his enemies had planned for him was no face-to-face showdown with a hired gunslinger. It was a plot far more subtle and deadly.

Limey Parkhamp:
Marshal Earp, them Tucson boys, they shoot for keeps!

Wyatt Earp:
Well, sir, so do I - if I have to.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Many attempts were made to kill Wyatt Earp. But Dan Priddy, with his Ten Percent Ring in Tucson, was a big time operator. When Priddy wanted a man out of his way, he acted with a scheming subtlety that not even Wyatt could penetrate. A plan to murder Earp, whose career had already exasperated the Tucson politicians, seemed foolproof and deadly.

[Stake enters a hotel room and shoots at an Navaho rug handing on the wall]

Bones Brandon:
Quit shooting holes in that rug!

Stake Brown:
I keep on living, Bones because I don't trust anybody.

Bones Brandon:
You're still alive because Dan Priddy doesn't want you dead.

[Doc is traveling to Tucson to enter a high-stakes poker game]

Wyatt Earp:
Oh and Doc, promise me one thing - don't rob a bank.

Doc Holliday:
You're the only man in the world I'd make that promise to. All right, I give you my word.

Wyatt Earp:
Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your sacrifice.

Bones Brandon:
You backin' out, Stake?

Stake Brown:
No. No, if it has to be Earp or me, I'd rather let it be Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Friends as well as critics of Marshal Wyatt Earp were agreed on one point: his abhorrence of shooting to kill gave his enemies an unfair advantage. While it required more speed and courage to buffalo a hoodlum, gunfighters traded on the fact that Marshal Wyatt Earp would only wound them. But the appearance of Gringo Hawkby brought Wyatt closer to the point of killing as the only way to preserve his own life.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] For the most part, law enforcement in the West was pretty open and uncomplicated. With a gun at his hip, every man was a potential criminal. But a good peace officer like Wyatt Earp could usually tell who were the troublemakers. But sometimes, appearances deceived even Wyatt.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] By 1880 throughout the West, the Indian was a defeated man. But in Arizona territory, the toughest, deadliest of all - the Apaches - were far from conquered. Some lived on the reservation, in what was, at best, an uneasy truce; others, in renegade bands, roamed the desert around Tombstone and brought trouble for ranchers, townspeople, and sometimes for Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
When George Morris raided Dodge City and was temporarily crippled in a gunfight with Marshal Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, it was generally believed that George would make no more trouble. But in his lust for vengeance, Morris hired a sharpshooter with a buffalo gun to kill Wyatt from a distant ambush. Wyatt's enemies had often hired gunfighters to pick a quarrel with him and face-to-face kill the Marshal in a showdown with .45s. But Morris' scheme was new and deadly and presented Wyatt with an assassin hiding beyond six-gun range. An unknown stranger, skilled at stalking buffalo and men.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The citizens of Tombstone expected Marshal Wyatt Earp to keep the peace with a minimum of violence. Wyatt himself tried to avoid rough stuff whenever he could. But when Lou Rickabaugh's niece, Edith, came to work at the Oriental Saloon as a lady elocutionist, war erupted between the town's rival gamblers and in Wyatt's efforts to suppress the violence, Miss Edith was no help at all.

Narrator:
In the Wichita, Kansas of 1875, there was one subject more deadly than the raids of outlaws or the gunfights between cowhands: Should women be allowed to vote? Yes, we smile now, but this was a controversy that erupted in violence along the frontier. And when the suffragette movement hit Wichita like a tornado, Marshal Wyatt Earp found himself caught between the two warring factions, with his life and his job at stake.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Of all the tough cattle outfits with whom Wyatt Earp tangled in Dodge City, the Big T gave Marshal Earp the most trouble. And of all the attempts to ambush Wyatt, the shrewdest was that concocted by Rance Purcell, owner of the Big T, and Gus Andrews, his foreman. Hired gunmen had failed and a concealed sharpshooter had missed. But the Big T'ers knew of Marshal Earp's one reckless habit. This was his desire to go it alone when he investigated reports of certain crimes. And one day at Stony Wells near the Washita River crossing...

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] In the Tombstone of 1881, murder was not one of the subtle arts. The usual murder victim was either shot or stabbed in the back. But Tombstone had one killer who devised a different technique and it was up to Marshal Earp to catch this wily criminal before he himself became a victim.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Judge Wells Spicer of Tombstone was generally regarded as the most fearless judge in Arizona territory. He backed Marshal Earp and the forces of law and order with complete disregard of his own safety. Although hoodlums seldom dared to threatened a judge, the Clanton killer Johnny Ringo was capable of anything. When Spicer clashed with Ringo in the Charlie Parks trouble, Wyatt had good reason to fear the worst.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] When Wyatt Earp left Dodge City for the Arizona territory, he believed that his career as a peace officer was finished. He wanted to hang up his guns and earn a modest income as a rancher or a miner. Wyatt and his brothers were soon to learn that Arizona had become the last stronghold of the outlaw - a terrifying wilderness to which Sheriffs and Marshals were open allies of cattle thieves and stage robbers.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] So long as Old Man Clanton confined his rustling and outlawing to the empire in southeast Arizona, he had only Wyatt Earp and the Tombstone Vigilantes to oppose him. But when the gang started raiding Mexico for cattle and silver, it became an international matter for Washington to deal with. And Washington promptly passed the buck to Arizona's Governor Gosper who, in turn, passed it on to Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Earp thought he had Dr. John H. Holliday safely established as a patient in a Colorado sanitarium. Doc needed a rest to cure his lung trouble and Wyatt needed a rest from Doc and his cantankerous warfare against the respectable citizens of Dodge City. But a greenhorn by the name of Hurley Abbott caused a new battle in the war between Holliday and Dodge with Wyatt in the middle.

Narrator:
On the Western frontier of 1875, a tragic phase of lawlessness was the range war. A range war started when two owners of large cattle outfits had a personal dispute. Then it spread to cowhand retainers of the cattle barons with professional gunfighters hired by both sides, making the war hot and deadly. Thus, when the Fentresses and the Wades invaded Wichita, Marshal Wyatt Earp had no choice. He must break up the fight or the city streets would become their battleground, and every citizen might suffer the fate of the innocent bystander.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp had to deal with the women of the frontier as well as the men. Most of the women he met in Dodge City were realists. They knew that life was rough and men were often violent. But the '70s were a sentimental decade in American history and Myra Malone was a sentimentalist. Dodge City called her 'the wicked widow' but it was her sentimentality, not her wickedness, which made her a deadly peril to Marshal Earp.

Narrator:
Cattle wars and fights between railroad men and buffalo hunters were common in the lusty and brawling 1870s. But the great stage line fight known as the Tea-Woods Battle presented Marshal Wyatt Earp with something new in organized violence. Mike Teague and Dan Woodruff were bitter rivals in the stage line wagon and freight business. It was still a lucrative enterprise for short haul traffic which the railroads couldn't handle. The great network of short line steel, west of Kansas City, would not be built until the 1880s. Thus, Teague and Woodruff were rich men with a lot of money and the ruthlessness of old time ball whackers.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Historians credit Wyatt Earp with more than a hundred gunfights. Wyatt himself never kept count. Marshal Earp did not like gunfights and he avoided a showdown with .45s whenever he could. Thus, when his younger brother, Morgan, arrived in Dodge City, Wyatt was confronted with an emotional problem. Bat Masterson's brother, Ed, had been killed in a gunfight. Was young Morgan Earp to go the same way? Or how could Wyatt save this brother from the hoodlums of Dodge City, especially when Morgan was a brave but hot-headed young buckaroo full of romantic notions of becoming a Deputy Marshal?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp had caught two of the notorious Dry Gulchers who had murdered his Indian friend, Mr. Brother. But the other two, Sam Wilson and Rupe Prentice, had escaped across the Kansas line to a hideout in northern Texas. Wyatt now faced the problem of capturing these crafty fugitives and bringing them to justice.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] When Wyatt Earp headed for Tombstone, he was riding toward the toughest town in the American West - a town built on one of the richest silver deposits ever discovered. In Tombstone, a miner was shot in the back for a few bags of silver ore. Immigrant miners fought outlaw cowboys on Allen Street. Violence ruled Tombstone which had but one peace officer. An effort was made to blow up the city jail as a gesture of contempt for the dirty politics in Tombstone.

[last lines]

[Wyatt shoots the gun from the hand of a would-be assassin]

Dick Gird:
Well, you're Wyatt Earp, all right. I'll tell my boys the fighting's over.

Wyatt Earp:
[to the wounded man] Come on. You ain't hit that bad.

Doc Holliday:
[to Dick] Maybe it's just begun.

Dick Gird:
What makes you think so? We miners made a mistake about him, Mr. Holliday. We won't bother him again.

Doc Holliday:
Can you vouch for the Clantons, too?

Dick Gird:
They won't start anything without a reason.

Doc Holliday:
The Deacon has the miserable character of a man who can't turn his back on evil - and Tombstone is evil.

Wyatt Earp:
Well, Doc, I ain't gonna be here that long.

[first lines]

Doc Holliday:
Tombstone is four miles by the left fork... but I guess my poker game in Gaheyville could wait.

Wyatt Earp:
Well, I doubt that, Doctor. Anyway, I'm goin' into Tombstone alone.

Doc Holliday:
Takin' off your guns?

Wyatt Earp:
That's right. You hang on to 'em or me, will you?

Doc Holliday:
If you're goin' in alone, you better keep 'em.

Wyatt Earp:
No, sir. I'm goin' into Tombstone as the land agent of The Earp Brothers Incorporated. I'm not a marshal any more. Anyway, an unarmed stranger is a lot safer than a fellow totin' guns.

Doc Holliday:
Wyatt, in Tombstone, they don't care if a man is totin' guns or not - they just shoot 'em in the back, then they search his body and see what they can steal.

Wyatt Earp:
[handing Doc his rifle] Yeah. I almost forgot that. Hang on to that for me, will you? So long, Doc.

Doc Holliday:
You stubborn ox! You'll find out, and soon, when you meet up with the Clantons!

[Wyatt emerges from a mine shaft and nearly shoots Doc Holliday]

Doc Holliday:
Wyatt, what are you doin' - minin' or fighin'?

Wyatt Earp:
I've been fightin'. Where have you been and where are my guns?

Doc Holliday:
Got 'em right here. Is the fight still goin' on or did you get selfish?

Wyatt Earp:
What, with three thousand miners? If you want to do some fightin', there's still plenty left.

Narrator:
The summer of 1875 was Wyatt Earp's second year as Deputy Marshal of the trail's end town of Wichita, Kansas. During that first, violent summer, Wyatt had grabbed the town by the tail and held it on the ground while hundreds of armed and defiant cowboys from the cattle trail tried to keep it on the prod. But even though Wichita had learned to keep its hair slicked. Wyatt liked to spend his mornings near the cattle pens, watching what might have drifted in overnight.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] There's been much nonsense written about gun fighting on the frontier. Marshal Earp recognized only a few legitimate gun fighters. The rest, he commented, got their fame from shooting drunks and slowpoke amateurs. As the case of young Mitch Hallam proved, once a man reached the small company of top guns, other experts rarely challenged. There was no percentage in a shootout where men of equal speed would probably kill each other.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Four notorious outlaws known as the Dry Gulchers murdered Wyatt Earp's Indian friend, Mr. Brother, and wounded Mr. Cousins, his other Indian friend, in an ambush. Marshal Earp vowed to bring all four of these hoodlums to justice. He quickly caught one Dry Gulcher but the other three fled to an outlaw stronghold near the Cimarron River. Then Wyatt and Bat Masterson disagreed as to the best method of capturing the remaining three.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp had many enemies in Tombstone as well as friends. But when his friend Doc Holliday decided to help Wyatt get rid of an enemy - Sheriff Behan - it only added to the difficulty of the already burdened Marshal.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Following the Custer Battle in June of 1876, the Army organized a Service of Security and Information. In frontier times, men used the term Secret Service. The main objective of the Secret Service Office was to keep watch on the various Indian tribes to forestall an outbreak by angry red men, smoldering under the harsh injustices of the Indian Agent system. As Marshal of Dodge City, Wyatt Earp found himself caught in the cold war, which could, at any time, erupt under the shrieking of the rebels on the warpath.

[last lines]

Thacker:
You know, Wyatt, Wells Fargo should give you a gold watch.

Wyatt Earp:
No, I already have a watch. You tell Wells Fargo I know what time it is and now it's time I got back to my job in Tombstone.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] When Wells Fargo called on Marshal Earp to put an end to the stage robberies on the Charleston-to-Benson line, the company was putting Wyatt's reputation in peril. During the time when Wyatt rode shotgun for Wells Fargo, no road agent had ever gotten away with a dime of money shipments. But this was Arizona territory, where robbing stages was a highly organized business.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The friendship between Marshal Wyatt Earp and Dr. John H. Holliday, gambler, gunfighter and killer, was one of the enigmas of the Western frontier. Dr. Holliday was not popular with Wyatt's other friends, who predicted that eventually he would involve Wyatt serious trouble. The attack on a Wells Fargo stage in the summer of '78, provided these cassandras with what seemed to be iron-clad evidence that Doc Holliday had betrayed Wyatt.

[first lines]

Narrator:
William Tecumseh Sherman, general of the army, made his fame in the Civil War. But General Sherman also commanded the army when it fought the Indian Wars and opened up the Western frontier. In the period between 1866 and 1878, Uncle Billy paid a visit to every Western fort and every town of importance west of Kansas City. When word got out that General Sherman was on his way to board the steam cars of the Santa Fe, Marshal Earp was soon up to his chin in trouble.

General Sherman:
It's a big country with small people - all of us. I hope our Lord will be patient.

Wyatt Earp:
I don't care what he said. We don't take pokes at newspapermen. Oh, they can hit us, but we daren't strike back. No, you never fight a newspaper unless you own one yourself.

General Sherman:
You know, Chief Joseph will be rounded up soon and the West will be open all the way to the Pacific... but how do you open up the human mind and spirit.

Wyatt Earp:
Well, you pray, I guess, and keep on prayin'.

General Sherman:
I started that a long time ago. Looks like it will be a long job.

Narrator:
Wild and wooly Wichita died hard. In the spring of 1876, Marshal Wyatt Earp believed the town was civilized at last. If he could get by one more cattle drive, the cowhands would move on to Dodge City, which was the new Gomorrah of the Plains. But Wyatt discounted too much the forces of cowhand hatred and vengeance. A lot of men who Wyatt had buffaloed or thrown into jail were determined to have one last fling in Wichita, come rain or snow.

Marsh Murdock:
You want a fight?

Wyatt Earp:
No, I want peace, Mr. Murdock. Sometimes you can talk folks into being civilized; other times you gotta use a gun.

Marsh Murdock:
I'll pick one up.

[Wyatt brandishes a shotgun in front of a lynch mob]

Wyatt Earp:
I thought you wanted a civilized town! Well, you got on whether you want it or not. Maybe you're the last of the old Wichita Wild an Woolies. Maybe you' rather die than act decent. All right, all of you in favor of dyin', make your play.

[last lines]

Wyatt Earp:
Mannon said he'd pass the word. He has 37 cousins and they in turn will pass the word.

Marsh Murdock:
Well, Wyatt, I guess you can move on to Dodge City with a clear conscience.

Wyatt Earp:
He sai he couldn't guarantee they'll listen... If they don't listen, he'll gun 'em.

Marsh Murdock:
Well, that's one way to have peace.

Wyatt Earp:
Yeah.

[both laugh]

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Tombstone in the 1880s was a city where gambling flourished. Fortunes were won and lost on the turn of a card. While all this was legal, there were times when a gambler became a problem for Marshal Wyatt Earp.

Narrator:
The friendship between Wyatt Earp and Ben Thompson, outlaw, killer, and one of the fastest hands with a .45 in the Western country was a great trial for Marshal Earp. Wyatt had won Ben's gratitude by saving his drunken brother from the gallows. In return, Ben had saved Wyatt from being bushwhacked in Wichita. Now as Marshal of Dodge City, Wyatt would have been more than satisfied to call matters even.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Numerous young women set their caps for Wyatt Earp, the Marshal of Dodge City. But Wyatt, true to the memory of a youthful wife who died, was usually on guard against designing females. Then along came Miss Jenny Brand, and on the Kansas frontier, men like Wyatt Earp believed in a code of civility which rendered them vulnerable.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Ned Buntline was the celebrated author of dime novel thrillers. He was also a friend and admirer of Wyatt Earp, to whom he presented the long-barrel .45 known as the Buntline Special. But every time their paths crossed, Mr. Buntline got himself into trouble and dragged Wyatt Earp into it.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] This is the beginning of the story of Wyatt Earp, the greatest of the all-fighting Peace Officers - a real Western hero. So great was his character and so complete his skill of living with danger that he became a legend in his own lifetime. In the hard world of the Western frontier, with all its bad men and outlaws, Wyatt Earp became a peace maker. As a Marshal, he went up against the worst of them, and the stories they tell about him are doubly fabulous because they're true. This is Ellsworth, Kansas, 1873. Don't let the peacefulness deceive you. It was about an ornery little town as you'd find outside of Dodge City. It was run by the Thompsons, a notorious gang of frontier gamblers and killers. Most of the decent people had pulled stakes and the ones who remained were afraid. When Wyatt Earp first rode into Ellsworth, he was fresh from hunting buffalo on the Great Plains. He was just a peaceful young man looking for a place to wash up.

Narrator:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp moved to Wichita after a locally renowned career as Marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas. Wichita was the new capital of cow towns where the great cattle drives from Texas reached the railroad. Hoodlums boasted there was no law in Wichita. The year 1875 saw Wyatt Earp become Marshal of that turbulent city, fighting frontier gunslingers with his fists, his .45 Colts, and his sawed off shotgun.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt's old friend and former employer, Wells Fargo and Company, operated an important stage line connecting the Santa Fe at Dodge City with the Union Pacific at Hays, Kansas - a hundred miles of wilderness stretched between the two railroads. It was a natural hunting ground for the stage robbers, and in 1878, the Purvis Gang moved south to prey upon the shipments of money and bullion entrusted to Wells Fargo.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Since Marshal Wyatt Earp was heading to Tucson to see the Governor on business, there was nothing for him to do but take the infant he had found along with him.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] The principle recreations of Dodge City in 1877 were doubtful woman, strong drink, and day-and-night gambling. Dodge was a frontier cow town and it had passed laws against crime but not against sin. On the other hand, respectable citizens expected Marshal Wyatt Earp to keep both sin and crime away from the right side of the Santa Fe tracks. What is now known as the Battle of the Long Branch Saloon was a typical example of frontier hypocrisy. It threatened Wyatt's reputation and his job.

[Doc's quick thinking saves Wyatt from being shot in the back]

Wyatt Earp:
Your gun, sir.

Doc Holliday:
Thank you.

Wyatt Earp:
I should be thanking you, Doctor Holliday. You pulled me out of a kind of tight spot.

Doc Holliday:
You can't be a formal patient of mine.

Wyatt Earp:
No, sir.

Doc Holliday:
I thought not. My patients hate me.

Doc Holliday:
Hold on. What's your name?

Wyatt Earp:
Wyatt Earp.

Doc Holliday:
[chuckles] And all the time I thought it was a fluke shot you threw at Skunky. Handsome, fast with a gun and in the best of health. Get out of my sight, sir.

Doc Holliday:
I was talking to Bill Tilghman about you a couple of months ago. He called you, "Deacon Earp".

Wyatt Earp:
Well, they elected me deacon of the church to keep order.

Doc Holliday:
The law seems to be your religion.

[first lines]

Narrator:
A lot of historical nonsense has been written about the friendship between Wyatt Earp and Doctor John H. Holliday. Doc has been called everything from a horsethief to a bloody-minded killer. Many people criticized Wyatt Earp for associating with Doc Holliday, but none of them knew how this friendship began.

[last lines]

John Shanssey:
Now don't you have nothin' to do with him in Dodge, Wyatt.

Wyatt Earp:
Oh, I suspect I'll be seein' a lot of Doctor Holliday.

John Shanssey:
Mother of Heaven, why?

Wyatt Earp:
I think we'll be friends.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Marshal Wyatt Earp got along very well with most Indians, and he especially liked Chief Nachez, the son of Cochise. But there was one time the Apache Chief was off the San Carlos Reservation and became the prime suspect in an act of violence committed near Tombstone.

[first lines]

Narrator:
Wyatt's feud with Old Man Clanton and his cowboys had been standoff at best. The Clantons controlled Cochise County including its sheriff, John Behan. But Old Man Clanton, like most of his ilk, was corrupted by power and in what is known as "The Dice Box Canyon Mystery", Old Man Clanton let his foot slip.

Emma Clanton:
Where'd you get that?

Wyatt Earp:
From a dead rancher who had also accused Geronimo of stealing.

Emma Clanton:
Well, my father didn't accuse Geronimo of anything.

Wyatt Earp:
You better find out just what your father did do. You want your ranch raided by Apaches?

Emma Clanton:
No. Of course not.

Wyatt Earp:
Well, there isn't much time. You show this knife to your father. You remind him that Geronimo kills the men - makes the women slaves.

[last lines]

[the cavalry's timely arrival drives off the Clanton and his cowboys]

Shotgun Gibbs:
Whew! That was sure a close one.

Wyatt Earp:
Yeah, too close. They were late.

Shotgun Gibbs:
Who was?

Wyatt Earp:
The army. I thought sure they'd hear the shootin'.

Shotgun Gibbs:
You mean you had that figured out all the time?

Wyatt Earp:
Well, I hoped it would work out that way.

Shotgun Gibbs:
Well, I'd sure appreciate you lettin' me in on these things. I got too much gray hair as 'tis.

Wyatt Earp:
Makes you look more distinguished, Mr. Gibbs. Now lets go down and thank the boys, hmm?

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp rode into Dodge City one bright May morning in 1876 and was Chief Marshal by noon. One month later, General Custer rode in proud defiance to his death on the Little Big Horn. That same year came the close to the long and bloody campaign that drove the Plains Indians from the Dakotas from his last hunting grounds and his way of life. Battle weary troops were moved east and south to regroup and recover. Among them were men whose memories were scarred by too much cruelty and killing. For these men, violence became their way of life.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt Earp stayed alive in Wichita, Dodge City, and Tombstone because he was more intelligent than the gunslingers, outlaws, and hoodlums who hated him. But when Marshal Earp became an intolerable menace to the Clantons and the Ten Percent Ring assembling in Tombstone, the time had finally come to kill him

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] After the death of Old Man Clanton, titular head of the outlaws in southeastern Arizona, Doc Holliday realized there would be a contest for the leadership of the gang and that Sheriff Behan's vote would be a prize plum. He concocted a scheme to break up the gang by involving its factions in warfare over Behan. But like most of Doc's ideas, he ignored that fact that Marshal Earp was sworn to uphold the law.

Wyatt Earp:
[Closing Narration] Now the battle lines were clearly drawn. Wyatt, his brothers and Doc Holliday had to face the implacable hatred of Clanton outlaws and their allies. As Wyatt himself said, we could stay in Tombstone and shoot it out or we could turn in our stars and run. They determined to stay in Tombstone. The approaching battle of the OK Corral would become a great event in their lives. It was fast on its way.

Doc Holliday:
You know, I don't blame Jimmy Callum for being jealous of you. There are sensible women, and bad women. But a bad sensitive woman is a pearl of great price. A black pearl.

Narrator:
Wyatt's violent introduction to the mining camp of Tombstone and his discovery of the brutal lawlessness there convinced him that it was no place for his brothers or himself. The Earps would be outsiders in a town and county dominated by the corrupt political ring who were called The Insiders. Wyatt was sick to his soul of fighting and to wear a star in Tombstone would be, he foresaw, his own death warrant.

Horseman Betting on Earp:
Hey, Doc, fifty dollars on Earp that he lasts ten miles.

Hoodlum who Doc Shoots:
It's a sucker bet, Doc. The Clantons ain't even got word of it yet.

Doc Holliday:
I don't bet on a friend's life.

Horseman Betting on Earp:
He ain't our friend and we've already bet.

[the outlaws reach for their guns, but Doc shoots them both out of their saddles]

Wyatt Earp:
Well, Miss Clanton, you're a strange mixture. Your father is just about everything that's wrong with Tombstone and this part of Pima County. He's a rustler and a killer.

Emma Clanton:
Stop it!

Wyatt Earp:
You can't make up your mind if you're a sure enough Clanton and a you're just a girl who happened to be born a Clanton.

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
What do you think, Fred?

Marshal Fred White:
You give me Earp and then you ask me what I think?

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
He can't win. The Clantons and the Ten-Percent-Ring in Tucson can't afford to let him win.

Old Man Clanton:
[to Wyatt] Johnny Law, I'll give you until sundown to get out of Tombstone.

Judge Griskam:
And you, Deputy, you better just be a little more careful after this. Mr. Clanton and his cowboys are good, honest citizens. Just member that, sonny boy.

[Wyatt throws the contents of an ink well in Judge Griskam's face]

Judge Griskam:
Sheriff, I charge this man with bodily assault!

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
You arrest him, Judge.

Wyatt Earp:
I wish you'd do that.

Wyatt Earp:
Shouldn't the Clantons be arrested?

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
Not by Fred White, no. He's only a fair hand with a gun. Here's a deputy's star. If you want to arrest them, pin it on.

Wyatt Earp:
Sheriff, all I want to do is leave Tombstone.

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
All right. I'll get a posse and escort you to Benson.

Wyatt Earp:
No, sir. I don't need a posse.

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
That's the only way you'll get to the railroad alive.

Wyatt Earp:
I can't do that and you know it. Sheriff, you're dealin' from the bottom of the deck.

Sheriff Charlie Shibell:
Yes I am! The Citizens' Safety Counsel here needs good young peace officers. You're young and you're good.

[last lines]

Doc Holliday:
I'll help you, Wyatt, but I'll never wear a star.

Wyatt Earp:
You don't have to wear the star. I'll deputize you only when there's trouble.

Doc Holliday:
Me a Johnny Law?

Wyatt Earp:
That's right, but you don't have to wear the star. You can keep it in your pocket.

Doc Holliday:
If anybody called me Deputy Holliday, I'd kill him. Why the very sound of it just about...

Emma Clanton:
Marshal Earp! Papa wants to know if you're leavin' town by sundown.

Wyatt Earp:
Well, you tell him no, Miss Emma.

Emma Clanton:
You're a fool. Do you want to leave in a coffin?

Wyatt Earp:
I haven't ordered one.

Emma Clanton:
Oh. And as for you, Doctor Holliday, you keep associatin' with him and you'll get it, too.

Doc Holliday:
[to Wyatt] The star, please. You can just drop it in my pocket.

Miner:
He just walked with Emma Clanton up Allen Street.

Doc Holliday:
Is she still with him?

Miner:
No, she just left town - and mad.

Doc Holliday:
Couldn't set him up, huh? Is Wyatt still out there?

Miner:
Yeah.

Doc Holliday:
You go tell Dick Gird that Wyatt will be on one side of the street and I'll be on the other. You got the miners stationed in the shafts?

Miner:
Sure, but I thought you and Earp had a fight.

Doc Holliday:
Nothing unusual about that. Wyatt and I are always havin' fights.

[first lines]

Narrator:
You couldn't tame a town like Dodge City, Kansas in 1876 by preaching the Golden Rule alone. If Dodge was to be civilized, the only argument was a fast gun or a hard fist. Marshall Wyatt Earp knew this from bloody experience. And Marshal Earp should have known that his enemies were still out to get him - by assassination or by so discrediting him that he would have to quit.

Wyatt Earp:
[Opening Narration] Wyatt had only an honest judge, a good newspaper, the Epitaph, and the Citizens Safety Committee backing him in Tombstone. They were steadily outmaneuvered by a gang of political boodlers known as the Ten Percent Ring in Tucson. But Wyatt refused to believe the weight of the odds against him. You can't fight City Hall, as any politician will tell you. But Wyatt was going to fight if it cost him his life.

[first lines]

Narrator:
Before Wyatt Earp had been marshal of Dodge City for very long, his fame had spread throughout the West. But fame, as Wyatt found out, is a coin with two sides. It is both reward and a punishment. It bring trouble and carries responsibility. It was Wyatt Earp's fame that brought the boy Jimmy Craig to Dodge City.