THE REAL WYATT EARP

Expert to examine the legend for Old West aficionados

Senator and scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once declared, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.”

Diligent historical researcher and unofficial Wyatt Earp expert Scott Dyke agrees that Old West characters such as Earp have both benefited and been unfairly maligned by myth created through misinformation, which is why the former private investigator and Wall Street stockbroker retired to the Quail Creek community to continue to get as close to the real truth as he can about one of the most fascinating and studied men to ever live in Southern Arizona.

Tombstone, “The Town Too Tough to Die,” will be the focal point of an intriguing look into Old West lore when Dyke offers a six-week “Wild West Series” to GVR members in January, outlining some of his research about the Earps, Doc Holliday, the Clantons, Big Nose Kate, and “all the ranchers, outlaws, gamblers, peace officers, and soiled doves who make Tombstone the most infamous town of the Old West.”

Two field trips

The seminar includes five weekly lectures and two field trips, beginning with a chronological examination of the area where Apaches once roamed and silver discovery turned Tombstone — originally called Goose Flats and Waterville — and its surrounding little towns into a booming Wild West wonder with outlaws, rustlers, and stage robbers mixing with gamblers and investors, hookers and ranchers.

The highlight in the final week will be a town tour, led by renowned author and Tombstone’s official historian, Ben Traywick, whom Dyke believes is one of “probably only two other people who know more about Earp than I do.”

The other, he states, is Tucson’s Glen Boyer, “the consummate researcher,” a controversial figure among Earp experts who knew his widow Josephine and who spent 50 years of his life gleaning information from his connections with members of the Earp family.

Going it alone (since wife and best friend Alice — an accomplished swimmer and golfer — admits to no interest at all), Dyke has spent the last six years trying to authenticate information here in the area, spending hundreds of hours with Boyer and his files, he says.

“People all over the world are fascinated by the gunfight,” he says of the storied battle at the O.K. Corral.

“I’ve researched it top to bottom, and I wish I could tell you exactly what happened, but I can’t. Nobody knows for sure.”

Traywick believes Doc started it all.

Interesting details

Dyke can relate a plethora of interesting details about the gun battle, such as the fact that it occurred in front of a dress shop and not in the corral. Local newspapers with their own loyalties inaccurately reported much of it.

As a teen in upstate New York, Dyke never forgot the stories of the West from his grandmother, a frontier plainswoman who remembered, for example, when the notorious James Gang robbed a bank near her Oklahoma farm.

After visiting virtually every site with connections to Earp and examining hundreds of documents, manuscripts, articles, diaries and correspondences related to the famous lawman’s life, Dyke can see through the lies and legends because he’s gathered facts and interviewed the experts, basing his own thoughts on how people really lived in those days.

Even Wyatt himself, he says, was upset in his later years with attempts to write about him. Dyke specifically cites Stuart Lake’s book, “Frontier Marshal,” which he says, though displaying good research, exaggerated and lionized Earp.

“The truth always lies somewhere in between,” Dyke said, though it’s obvious he has a pretty good handle himself on what the man was really like.

He describes him as a gambler and entrepreneur more than a lawman, involved in a variety of business ventures throughout his life.

“He was a lawman to earn extra money,” he said.

He was fiercely devoted to his five brothers, especially Virgil and Morgan who, like Wyatt, were blond and rangy six-footers who married hookers and looked very much alike. They were both ambushed after the famous gun battle. Wyatt, who never suffered a scratch, was a womanizer, yet a very quiet and private man.

Not a drinker, he had a weakness for ice cream.

Virgil called him “ape,” because of his long arms, which made him a great boxer. Close friend Bat Masterson said he was the best man he’d ever seen with his fists.

“He used his pistol as a club,” Dyke said. Earp first earned a reputation as a Kansas lawman, good with firearms, though he purportedly killed only one man before coming to Tombstone.

“These guys were all pretty tough hombres,” Dyke declared, as he explained why they were all very good at law enforcement, often bound by the bidding of big investors like Wells Fargo, who wanted their stage lines, banks, and other interests protected.

“Wells Fargo might say to one of them, ‘Hey, here’s a bonus; go takes these guys out.’”

Like most men, Doc Holliday — an alcoholic, tuberculosis-suffering Georgia dentist — was attracted to Wyatt’s strength and values, and though he was a little crazy and didn’t care, he wasn’t much of a fighter, Dyke says.

Wyatt wanted corrupt Sheriff Johnny Behan’s job in Tombstone, so he convinced Ike Clanton to give up some of his buddies who had robbed a stage, but when a Wells Fargo agent exposed that “deal,” Ike feared retaliation, so began drunkenly threatening the Earps.

After arresting Ike, Town Marshal Virgil deputized Morgan, Doc, and Wyatt to look for the others and the famous fight became a foregone conclusion.

The greatest tension from the feud, and resulting violence, Dyke relates, came in the months following the gunfight, especially after an inquest exonerated the Earps.

Dyke, who says, “I grew up with hayfields, horses, and Holsteins,” can draw on a lot of his own life experiences as a race horse groomer, deputy sheriff, private eye, private security officer, bank director and stock broker, lumber mill owner, mortician’s aide, county appraiser, substitute teacher, and even a member of the board of trustees for a mental hospital, to help him in relating his love of those tumultuous years in the Old West.

“I guess I transform myself back to those times.”

Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.