The State - News from March 22, 1988

An antique Winchester rifle stolen five years ago was returned to its owner, Hobart Earp of Grass Valley, a relative of the legendary old West lawman Wyatt Earp. Earp, 72, said he acquired the Model 1873 lever-action, short-barrel carbine in 1958 in a trade with the 94-year-old son of Pete Kitchen, the Arizona pioneer whose exploits were heralded in the television series “High Chaparral.” A spokesman for the Nevada County Sheriff’s Department said the gun turned up when someone sold it in February to a local gun shop, whose owner checked the serial number with police and discovered that it was stolen. Earp--a retired electrical engineer, actor and world fast-draw champion--said he is a first cousin three times removed from Wyatt Earp, who with his brother Virgil battled the Clanton brothers at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1881.