John Boessenecker

“In the end, Wyatt Earp and his brothers will be forever remembered as the mythical gunfighters who took on the Cowboys at the O.K. Corral. But in 1900, a journalist who knew them well provided their finest and most accurate epitaph. “The Earp boys always had a reputation for absolute fearlessness and a worse reputation that they do not deserve. They were not rustlers. They were sports, it is true, every one of them. They played high, rode hard, and shot quick, but they were open-hearted, generous and would go to the limit for a friend. Either for trailing Apaches, horse and cattle thieves, or stage robbers, they outstripped any posse. They were simply ‘men with the bark on.’” Rightly or wrongly, we will never see their like again.”
― John Boessenecker, Ride the Devil's Herd: Wyatt Earp's Epic Battle Against the West's Biggest Outlaw Gang