Tombstone by Walter Noble Burns — Read

The Earp-Clanton feud has passed into the melting pot of tradition in which so much frontier history has been changed into myth. The Southwest has a nebulous idea that in some way or other it grew out of the attempted robbery of the Benson stage, but it may be ventured that not a half-dozen persons in Tombstone or in all Arizona have any definite knowledge of its origin.

But the bloodstained facts of the old story are still memories strangely surcharged with bitterness. The opinions of the fathers have become the convictions of the children, and the hatreds that were quick with flaming life nearly a half century ago stalk grimly today as the ghosts of hatreds. The Earps are gone, the Clantons are dust these many years, but a new generation that knew neither is ready to do sentimental battle for the causes championed by its forbears. The cold ashes of the dead feud, under chemical analysis, would still show traces of venom.