Cavalcade of Ask the Marshall

Lessons I have learned during more than a quarter century of "Ask the Marshall"

- BY MARSHALL TRIMBLE

What are your thoughts on Stuart Lake's book Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal?

Josh Taylor Austin, Texas

Much of Lake's book comes from the fertile mind of Lake, but to his credit, it made a Western legend out of Wyatt. Lake also had to deal with Sadie Earp, who was a constant thorn in his side while he was writing Frontier Marshal. She was hellbent on making Wyatt a legend, forbidding Lake from writing anything about his jaded past (or her own shady story). He also had a difficult job in interviewing Wyatt, who left him to fill in many of the missing parts of his life. So, Lake had to be creative.

How factual are the books The Earp Brothers of Tombstone and I Married Wyat Earp?

Joe Manriquez Whittier, California

I would donate them to some charity raffle. Authors Frank Waters (Earp Brothers...) and Glenn Boyer (I Married...) made up a lot of the content of those books. Frankly, the same is true of the other Tombstone writers of the 1920s, Stuart Lake, Walter Noble Burns and Billy Breakenridge. There's a lot of hearsay and legend in all of them. That's how it was done with the first generation of authors of the Wild West.