In the preface to Brothers of the Gun — Mark Lee Gardner’s tenth book, all histories — the author asks whether anything remains to be written about Wyatt Earp and John “Doc” Holliday. He claims that “the answer, maybe surprisingly, is yes.” After reading this book, I am convinced: He is a most scrupulous researcher. Moreover, Brothers of the Gun is a terrific read. It should even satisfy readers with little interest in the Old West (or, as Gardner calls the era he puts under scrutiny, the New West: “young towns and [mining] camps, . . . where money flowed through gambling, prostitution, and rampant speculation”).
“Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday,” Gardner maintains, “like anyone else then and now, have their fair share of contradictions and failings.” So true! “A onetime pimp and horse thief” — Wyatt — “could become an upstanding peace officer.” He was born on March 19, 1848, in Monmouth, a village in Illinois. The family — Wyatt had five brothers and a sister — moved around the West a lot. Wyatt married in 1869 at the age of 21, but his wife died soon after. (He would marry again. Wyatt’s — and Doc’s — relationships with women were complicated.) Also in 1869, Wyatt was appointed town constable in Lamar, Ill. It was his first of many law enforcement positions. However: In 1870, he was accused of robbing tax money; in 1871, he helped steal two horses, and he escaped after he was arrested and jailed; in 1872, he and his brother Morgan were arrested for running a brothel in Peoria and working on a boat brothel. One newspaper referred to Wyatt as “the Peoria bummer.” All in all, inauspicious details for a man who would become renowned as a distinguished lawman.
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