Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown by Jason Hawes & Grant Wilson

Author:Jason Hawes & Grant Wilson [Hawes, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: JUV001000
ISBN: 9780316192620
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2011-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Lyssa sat in the front seat of the TAPS van as Jason drove through the Arizona desert. Living in Rhode Island, she was used to seeing water. The scrubby brush and mountains were new to her, but she liked the change of scenery. The air was crisp and clean. But she didn’t like the extreme heat. The air-conditioning in the van wasn’t working, so they all had opened their windows. With the wind blowing in her face, she could barely hear Mark talking to her over the walkie-talkie from the other van.

“Can you refresh my memory on what happened at the O.K. Corral?” she asked. “Everyone knows there was a gunfight, but…”

“Sure,” Mark said. “Back in the old West, there really was no law. Well, there was law. But there weren’t that many police officers to make sure people followed it. It was a very wild and violent time. Tombstone was the wildest town of all. That’s where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday settled and became peace officers—what we now call the police.

“Back then, Tombstone was a boomtown. A lot of people came out there to try to make their fortune mining silver. And there was also lots of money to be made selling cattle. Unfortunately, plenty of dishonest people came to Tombstone, too. Gambling cheats, train robbers, bank robbers. But the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral was about cattle thieves. People would drive other people’s cattle away from pastures and then sell them for a lot of money. The worst of these cattle thieves was the Clanton gang, run by a man named Ike Clanton. The cattle-robbing problem was so bad that ranchers had to hire watchmen to try to protect their cattle. But even that didn’t stop the Clanton gang. They were tough. Few people could stand up to them.”

“Get to the exciting stuff!” Jen chimed in. “Why did the shoot-out happen?”

“Oh, right… the shoot-out. Well, one day Ike Clanton rode into town with his gang. Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday ordered them to give up their guns. They lined up across from each other. Much closer than you would think. They were only a handful of feet apart. But the gang refused to give up their weapons. And that’s when the shoot-out happened. The whole fight lasted under a minute, and at the end, three members of the gang were dead. Three of the lawmen were shot, but not badly hurt.”

“But the violence didn’t stop there,” Mike added. “A few weeks after the gunfight, Virgil Earp was attacked by a hidden shooter. He lost his arm because of it. And then, three months later, Morgan Earp was shot in the back by men hiding out in an alley. And within a year, two of the surviving Clanton gang members were also shot dead—one in another gunfight and one while stealing cattle. Those old cowboy movies don’t exaggerate all that much. It really was a very violent period of history.”

Lyssa looked ahead of her. At first she thought she was seeing a mirage.

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