Suppose, Suppose!

 October 3, 2026

   Let's say you were going to do a film on life in the last outlaw town. Here are a couple concepts to chew on.

Daily Whip Out: "Another Ghost In The Dust"

   A shady gambler is shacked up with a retired soiled dove in a seedy rental in a bad part of the last outlaw town. He is in failing health, still haunted by the murder of his brother and his efforts at revenge which virtually derailed his career in law enforcement. And now, as he is about to turn 80, he is being attacked for the few things he was actually proud of, and he realizes the past is even murkier than he thought. Every step he takes brings him closer to confronting the ghosts who have been stalking him his entire life.

Busted!

   He had abandoned his second wife and she ended up back on the line. Her demise became another embarrassing secret to hide. Her last words were that Wyatt Earp had ruined her life and she didn't want to live.

Mattie's Despair

Boy Howdy!

   In the Twenties, the Western movie star, Tom Mix and his friend, Wyatt Earp, decided to get culture, and Mix ordered a bunch of books on Shakespeare plays for them to read. Someone asked Earp what he thought of Shakespeare and his plays and the old frontiersman said, "That feller Hamlet was a talkative man. He wouldn't have lasted long in Kansas."

Wyatt Not All That Impressed

(In a related note: Wyatt also told Ike Clanton on the evening of October 25, 1881, "You talk too much for a fighting man."

  It was during this downward spiral that Wyatt asked cowboy star William S. Hart for one of the biggest favors of his life.

"I know I can't write and I wonder if I might come and talk the matter over with you?"

—Wyatt Earp, desperate to get his story told 

The Big Red Car

   While Wyatt stayed home, Sadie was obsessed with something else.

A Very Strange Woman

   "Wyatt was a kind man, very generous to my family. Very soft spoken, a very gentle sort of man. But he had to be gentle because Sadie was a bit of a demon. Very suspicious of everyone. She was quite a character. . .a very strange woman."

—Peggy Combs Greenberg, Sadie's niece

    What exactly was driving her?

"She was tough. There was nothing soft about her. She gambled on anything. . ."

—Pat Welch