Blaylock left Tombstone with other Earp family members for Colton, California. She apparently expected to receive a telegram from Earp telling her where to meet him, but it never arrived. Instead, Earp went to San Francisco in late 1882 and began a relationship with Josephine "Sadie" Marcus, who was the common-law wife of Johnny Behan in Tombstone. Blaylock left Colton for Pinal City, Arizona Territory, a town that Blaylock and Earp lived in for two months in 1879 on their way to Tombstone. When the couple was there three years earlier, it was a booming silver town. Upon Mattie's return, however, the silver boom had died down and the bulk of the town's population moved on. Blaylock planned to return to prostitution in Pinal City, but with most of the prospective clientele gone with the silver, making a living there proved difficult.