Jeff Guinn's "The Last Gunfight" hits a bump -- two bumps, actually -- on the cover. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (in fact, the gunfight in back of the O.K. Corral) was far from the last gunfight of the Old West. And the subtitle promises to tell "how it changed the American West," though there is no evidence that it changed the West at all, unless one means by its depiction in Hollywood films.
Guinn, author of a highly readable account of Bonnie and Clyde, "Go Down Together," is good at understanding the thankless lot of the frontier lawman. Of the Earps -- Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt -- he writes, "Few frontier lawmen had clean records; the idea was that men who'd broken laws themselves would understand best how to prevent others from doing the same."
But when the brothers arrive in Tombstone, the vast amount of historical material about the politics, economics and personal feuds that led to the famous gunfight and its bloody aftermath seems to overwhelm Guinn. He relies too heavily on interviews with other authors instead of going back to original documents, undermining the originality of the book and making it difficult to discern the author's voice. Phrases are carelessly repeated; both the Clantons and McLaurys, the cattle rustlers who clashed with the Earps at the gunfight, are described as "pragmatic businessmen" -- which might be true if stealing and fencing stolen property can be regarded as business.
More serious, perhaps, is that Guinn often rests his key arguments on unsubstantiated assertions. In his chapter notes he tells us, "This should be made clear: no one living knows exactly what happened during the fabled gunfight." But when the bullets start flying, he seems to have a definite idea as to who fired which bullet and when.
Guinn places the relationship between Wyatt and Josephine Marcus, the Jewish girl from San Francisco who was mistress to Wyatt's rival, Sheriff John Behan, at the center of the story. When Josephine finally leaves Tombstone, she goes "with Wyatt's blessing and promise that they would see each other again." It would be interesting to know what this conclusion is based on since there isn't a shred of known evidence that Wyatt and Josephine (though they were later married for 47 years) ever spoke a word to each other while in Tombstone.
"The Last Gunfight" ends up irritating those who know something about the Earp/Tombstone story, and confusing those who don't.
Allen Barra wrote "Inventing Wyatt Earp, His Life and Many Legends," published by the University of Nebraska Press.
