I think it does both: it indicates Doc Holliday's death (literally and more metaphorically as an icon of the 'wild' west) but also the idea of a nation in the making. It could've just as easily been recited by Ethan in The Searchers.
The building of a church in Tombstone might at 1st seem to contradict the thesis but the rowdy dance they have suggests a West that's becoming civilised, but on its own terms. And Wyatt's brother Morgan suggests a frontier logic to the law at the OK Corral, when he kills the father of the Clantons after Wyatt tells him he can live but must leave Tombstone.
|