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Cargando... And die in the West : the story of the O.K. Corral gunfight (1989)por Paula Mitchell Marks
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  RandyStafford | Oct 8, 2012 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral has excited the imaginations of Western enthusiasts ever since that chilly October afternoon in 1881 when Doc Holliday and the three fighting Earps strode along a Tombstone, Arizona, street to confront the Clanton and McLaury brothers. When they met, Billy Clanton and the two McLaurys were shot to death; the popular image of the Wild West was reinforced; and fuel was provided for countless arguments over the characters, motives, and actions of those involved. And Die in the West presents the first fully detailed, objective narrative of the celebrated gunfight, of the tensions leading up to it, and the bitter, bloody events that followed. Paula Mitchell Marks places the events surrounding the gunfight against a larger backdrop of a booming Tombstone and the fluid, frontier environment of greed, factions and violence. In the process, Marks strips away many of the myths associated with the famous gunfight and of the West in general. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)979.1History and Geography North America Great Basin and West Coast U.S. ArizonaClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.88)
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1
It’s hard to tell what happened October 26, 1881 in the vacant lot between Fly’s Boarding House and Harwood’s house.
There are many different versions.
I don’t think the Earps went to kill the McLaurey’s and Clantons. Ike Clanton’s story that the Earps were gunning for him isn’t backed up by the attention paid to killing Billy Clanton and Frank McLaurey and not him. I think Doc Holliday or Morgan Earp, both impetous and not as worried about their law enforcement futures as Virgil or Wyatt, opened fire first, or it very probably was an accidental shooting triggered by the unarmed Tom McLaurey opening his coat. Virgil seems to have been too calm and even-handed to have delibrately set out to kill the Clantons and McLaureys. Wyatt seems unlikely to have done so either. He seems to have preferred pistol whipping and slapping (things that show up again and again in his various jobs as law officer) to outright shooting, and his remark that shooting the cowboys wasn’t worth any money to him is revealing and truthful. There seems no denying, though, that Wyatt genuinely provoked Ike Clanton and Tom McLaurey -- who didn’t take the bait -- the morning of the fight. Perhaps he was just very angry at the threats Ike made against his friend Doc Holliday and brother Virgil.
Marks' narrative shows there may be truth behind those Western cliches of factional fighting. But here the truth is much more complicated than any movie or novel. The conflict was more than just between cowboys and townsmen. It was also between political parties, economic interests, gambler and cowboys and, ultimately, between those with different attitudes on private justice. Rustlers had an ambiguous relationship with the ranchers who supported them: part friendship, part extortion. I was amazed at the bloodbath unleashed by the gunfight: the Stilwell and Morgan shootings and John Ringo’s mysterious death and the unknown fate of Curly Bill Brocius who may have been killed by Wyatt..
The fate of all concerned was interesting and strange in a way only reality can be. Wyatt’s last years were both pathetic, in the rewriting of his past, and annoying . (