Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell
by Tom Clavin
St. Martin’s Press

The American Wild West is forever symbolized in the iconic image of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday facing down the Clantons and McLaurys at the O.K. Corral in the windswept town of Tombstone in October 1881. It is a well-tread story that never seems to lose its fascinating appeal in its simple American charms: the good guys take on the bad guys, and the bad guys take it on the chin. With 30 shots in just as many seconds, the showdown signaled something far more significant than a grudge match between surly cowboys and testy lawmen, according to a new book.

In Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell, best-selling author and Western historian Tom Clavin pens a fitting conclusion to his self-described “Frontier Lawmen” trilogy. His previous two volumes, Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West and last year’s Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter, document in engaging detail the American frontier, its first gunfighters, and the lawmen who tried to tame the Wild West’s worst. In this coda, the author posits that the past and the future of the American West itself were on the line in Tombstone, going so far as to compare the events to Greek tragedy. As Clavin puts it:

I realized that the so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Earp ‘vendetta ride’ are our Iliad and Odyssey, two separate but connected events that are big parts of the foundation of our mythology.

The history of Tombstone, the gunfight, and the vendetta ride have all been glorified in books and movies over the past century, but perhaps it has not been told this personally before. In Tombstone, Clavin seeks “to tell my version of the Tombstone story, to have it refracted through my lens,” and to “gain a sense of completion” with his other books. Weighing in at a sturdy 400 pages, Tombstone tells a big story and tells it well. Replete with a rich repertoire of colorful characters, Clavin skillfully weaves multiple storylines into a taut thread that reaches its breaking point in late October 1881.

At the forefront of the story, of course, are the inimitable Earps. Clavin is his most entertaining when exploring the Earp family history and discussing the brothers’ interesting habit of not marrying their lady companions. Another fun fact: there were five Earp brothers (and one half-brother): Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren. Warren and James often backed up their brothers when it came to “lawing” in the rough and tumble town. We also come to know the rogue’s gallery of misfits known simply as “the cowboys”: Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Ringo, and countless others who fell in with the cowboys’ rustling and stagecoach robbing perfidies.

A refreshing aspect of Tombstone is the experience of the women who were impacted by the events just as much as the men. Through primary source material, Clavin introduces us to an eclectic and fiery set of women who threw their lot in with the Earps and Doc Holliday, as well as the female citizens of Tombstone longing for peace. Clavin shares the memories of Allie and Mattie Earp (Virgil’s and Wyatt’s common law wives), “Big Nose Kate” Elder (Holliday’s on again/off again relationship), and Clara Spalding Brown, a journalist whose letters describing her experiences living in Tombstone from 1880 to 1882 were published regularly in the San Diego Union newspaper.

Whereas Dodge City symbolized the Wild West and the fabled gunfighter at its apex, then Tombstone, indeed, represented its epitaph. A curtain was dropping on an old way of life as one lifted on a new day, illuminated by the introduction of electricity in 1881, as well as the novelty of hot and cold running water in some of the hotels. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral was merely the first death spasm of the old way, the wild way. After Morgan Earp’s retributive murder by the cowboys, Wyatt set out on his odyssey of vengeance, as Clavin calls it. When the last cowboy met final justice at Wyatt’s hands, a stillness seemed to descend on the American West.

Tombstone is a rousing tale of American Wild West mythology recounted by a raconteur par excellence. For those who enjoyed Dodge City and Wild Bill, Tom Clavin’s latest is a must for your bookshelf.

—Peggy Kurkowski holds a BA in History from American Public University and is a copywriter living in Denver, Colorado