Sunday, August 26, 2012

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Yet a provocative point emerges in the long denouement: Was Wyatt Earp psychic? Was there indeed a guardian angle hoveling over one of the West's most involved gunslingers? One brother was maimed, another assassinated in Tombstone. Yet in gunfight after gunfight from Wichita and Dodge city to Tombstone and after, Wyatt was never as much as nicked, though shot at plenty. Many time he wound up with bullet holes in his clothing.

For some reason, Flood concentrates on this particularly in the episode of the assassination of Morgan Earp. In several instances, Wyatt vividly recalls being warned away or urged to action by some presence around him—when he is on the street, when is is alone in his room in the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and later at Bob Hatch's Pool Hall, where he goes moments before his brother is gunned down.

Later, during the weeks of vendetta, Wyatt senses another warning out of the blue as his six-man posse approaches Iron prings, where Curly Bill Brocius is killed by Wyatt while cooking a meal. When most of Earp's posse deserts him, he and Texas Jack Vermillion take on the balance of Curly Bill's gang, a firefight that clearly exceeded the O.K. Corral in intensity and then some, according to Flood.

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