Life After Tombstone
The gunfight in Tombstone lasted only 30 seconds, but it would end up defining Earp for the rest of his life. After Wyatt killed Frank Stilwell in Tucson, his movements received national press coverage and he became a known commodity in Western folklore.
After killing Curly Bill, the Earps left Arizona for Colorado. They stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they met Deputy U.S. Marshal Bat Masterson, Wyatt's friend. The Earps, Sherman McMasters, and Holliday rode with Masterson to Trinidad, Colorado where Masterson owned a saloon. Wyatt dealt Faro for several weeks before he, Warren, Holliday, and several others rode on to Gunnison, Colorado.
Holliday headed to Pueblo and then Denver. The Earps and Texas Jack set up camp on the outskirts of Gunnison, Colorado, where they remained quietly at first, rarely going into town for supplies. Eventually, Wyatt took over a faro game at a local saloon.
After Morgan Earp's assassination, Wyatt's former common-law wife, Celia Anne "Mattie" Blaylock, waited for him in Colton but eventually accepted that Wyatt was not coming back. Wyatt left Mattie their house when he left Tombstone. She moved to Pinal City, Arizona and resumed life as a prostitute. Wyatt instead went to San Francisco and joined Josephine, Warren and Virgil in late 1882. Josie, or Sadie as he called her, was his common-law wife for the next forty-six years. Mattie struggled with her addictions and committed "suicide by opium poisoning" on July 3, 1888.
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Famous quotes containing the words life and/or tombstone:
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)