title: Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City
author:  Robert Rebein 
description: Rebein was born in 1964 in Dodge City, Kansas. His gritty parents raised seven sons: a contractor, a day-trader, four lawyers, and an English professor. This books good Dodge City history includes clarifying details on Wyatt Earp: a blonde, teetotaling, Republican deputy, who often pistol-whippedbut rarely shotthe mainly Rebel cowpokes of Dodge. The Wyatt Earp of the title, however, is a boulevard. Dragging means to cruise. This memoir feels desperate for weighty experiences or quirky characters to fill pages, and the essay format intensifies that lack of cohesion. We find scattered nuggets of interest, a carrying page, or even a decent chapter. Auto body men are like hairdressers that bounce from salon to salon. Religious connection often is less about faith than about not questioning origins. As he horsebacks a corporate cattle feedlot, we do empathize with a rural-raised professor who struggles to see the wrong his vegan colleagues would. Even the most ordinary life can rivet, but this diluted book lacks the insight, perspective, or other trick to pull us totally in. --Dane Carr
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  ## Nine
  
  Tikil at night, or at least during the early hours of the night, was more
  crowded than by day. Horan called an accommodation flitter for his crosstown
  journey to the Hunter Headquarters, but he decided to use the roll walk on his
  return. He was going toward it when Harse hailed him, just in front of the
  building.
  
  "You seek Rerne?"
  
  "I brought the fussel, by Merchant Kyger's orders." Troy was put on the
  defensive by the other's attitude. During their brief time together Rerne had
  never made him conscious of the Dipple. With the other rangers Horan was ever
  aware of his knifeless belt and the fact he was a planetless man.
  
  "There is a message," Harse replied aloofly. "Rerne wishes to speak with
  you--"
  
  "But I was just told he is not here."
  
  "So he is elsewhere. Come!"
  
  Troy was tempted to reply "no" to that curt order. After all, he was not under
  contract to Rerne. Yet he could not deny that 