Wyatt Earp Trial: 1881

On December 28, hidden gunmen tried to assassinate Virgil Earp. They didn't succeed, but they crippled the ex-marshal for life. Wyatt Earp gathered a posse of hard-cases and shot up Charlestown, a Cochise County town a short distance from Tombstone on the San Pedro River. Charlestown, rather than unfriendly Tombstone, was where the cowboys met to drink. On March 18, 1882, someone killed Morgan Earp by shooting him in the back as he was playing billiards.

Wyatt and his posse went out again and killed two men, one in Pima County. Pima County's sheriff swore out a murder warrant for Wyatt Earp. Earp disappeared. He reappeared in Trinidad, Colorado, where his friend, Bat Masterson, was city marshal.

Eventually, everyone forgot about the murders in Arizona. Wyatt Earp traveled all over the West, from Alaska to California, where he married Josie Marcus. (The deserted Mattie Earp had become a prostitute and later committed suicide.) Wyatt, who died in 1929, outlived most of his contemporaries and found writers who eagerly swallowed his tall tales.

An American legend was born.