7. He was a deputy marshal in Dodge City
Earp returned to Dodge City following his winter in the Black Hills, joining the town’s marshal office as a deputy in 1877. In the fall of that year, he was commissioned as a United States Deputy Marshal and dispatched in pursuit of a bank robber who had fled to Texas. In early 1878 he arrived at the Bee Hive Saloon in Clear Fork, Texas, where he met for the first time with Doc Holliday. He learned from the dentist and gambler that the subject of his pursuit had returned to Kansas, and Earp returned to Dodge City. By May of 1878 Earp was back in Dodge, serving as a town marshal, and supplementing his income by gambling in the saloons.