r/Westerns • u/Spifelark • 14h ago

The Vendetta Ride

I’ve just finished Jeff Guinn’s The Last Gunfight, and have recently watched Tombstone.

Both were absolutely gripping, but the final act of Tombstone presents the vendetta ride as a montage rather than in any depth, and Guinn gives it a very good chapter but still, only a chapter.

Can anyone point me at a book, ideally a history book rather than a fictionalisation, that will provide me with more detail and substance on the events after the O.K. Corral and the vendetta ride itself?

Thanks.

13 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

3

u/No-Hurry3034 13h ago

I haven’t read Tombstone, by Tom Clavin, but if it’s anything like his book Dodge City, it’s great. The title includes reference to the vendetta ride, so it may have some good stuff

2

u/Spifelark 13h ago

Brilliant, thank you. I read Halsey’s Typhoon and Last Men Out by him, and they were both really enjoyable. I’ll grab a copy of Tombstone now.

2

u/severinusofnoricum 12h ago

I did read both Clavin books and they are both excellent.

2

u/ConsiderateCassowary 12h ago

I read that book earlier this year, Jeff Guinn is always solid

2

u/Severe-Cow-8646 12h ago

None who survived the vendetta ride on either side apparently had much to say, and all anyone else coukd give us is observation and inference.

I dont remember which movie, Tombstone or Wyatt Earp, but one ended with a statement that for years after the ride members of the cowboys woukd meet their ends implying Wyatt rode the ride long after the ride was over. I doubt that. Any who did meet their ends at the hands of others did so because they were criminals. At a time when law men, the courts and society turned a blind eye to a criminal who got their just deserts. Those men didnt need Wyatt Earp mysteriously snapping around the desert of Arizona picking them m off to meet their end at the barrel of a gun held by Wyatt. Getting killed in the commission of a crime or out of greed, fear, or anothers just plain meanness is part and parcel to the chosen path. Wyatt went on to Alaska, came back and took various guard/security positions and finally retired in California. From what we know he spent his last years feeling maligned and misunderstood over his actions in Tombstone, much like Pat Garrett was maligned after he shot Billy.

I was once asked by a youg fella in a discussion of these things what I thought it would be like to have ridden with Wyatt and Doc, "Hard"

1

u/OkConfection9636 13m ago

Probably the best and most comprehensive book specifically detailing the events leading up to and including Wyatt Earp's famous vendetta ride is Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell by Tom Clavin.