Arizona Gunfighters
Early Arizona was a magnet for tough, restless men who came to build a fortune or take what others had built. They were quick to anger and quick with a gun, and many found themselves face to face with eternity after an alcohol-fueled night of women and cards. Others were killed robbing stagecoaches or rustling cattle, while some fell victim to the range wars that marked Arizona as one of the most dangerous places in the country.  The authors, relying on transcripts, newspaper accounts, contemporary diary entries, and memoirs, tell a vivid story of the history and legend in those untamed days when Arizona was as wild as any place in the Old West and a good deal bloodier. From the real stories behind Wyatt Earp's gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Pleasant Valley War to the rise and fall of the Arizona Rangers, the authors separate the fact from the fiction surrounding the territory's lethal gunfighters. Laurence J. Yadon is general counsel of a power marketing administration with operations in a six-state area and serves as a federal adjunct settlement judge.   Dan Anderson is an award-winning former newspaper journalist and photographer. He and Yadon coauthored 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen: 1839-1939; 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen: 1835-1935; and Ten Deadly Texans, all published by Pelican.  Robert Barr Smith, the author of numerous books and magazine articles on the history of the West, edited and contributed four chapters to Arizona Gunfighters.