And now while Lewis was combing down the gullies between those broken ridges for the ore body—he slew himself from disappointment later on—and while Jim Shea was meditating an expedition after the riches of which he had got trace down in the dry wash, Ed Schiefflin came to the Bruncknow house to embark on the adventure which was to give the town of Tombstone its name.

The Bronco house, men call it now, but Bruncknow was the man who built it and the new term is a corruption. Its ruins still stand on the side-hill a few miles from the dry wash, a rifle-shot or so from the spot where the two prospectors met their deaths. In those days it was a lonely outpost of the white man in the Apache's land. The summer of 1877 was drawing to a close, its showers were already a distant memory, and all southeastern Arizona was glowing under the white-hot sun-rays when Schiefflin rode his mule up from the San Pedro to seek the protection of its thick adobe walls.

The flat lands of the valley stretched away and away behind him to the foot of the Huachucas in the west. They unfolded their long reaches to the southward until they melted into the hot sky between spectral mountain ranges down in Mexico. He came up out of that wide landscape, a tall wild figure, lonesome as the setting sun.

His long beard and the steady patience in his eyes—the patience which comes to the prospector during his solitary wanderings in search of rich ore—gave him the appearance of a man past middle age although he had not seen his thirtieth year. His curling hair reached his broad shoulders. Wind and sun had tanned his features so deeply that his blue eyes stood out in strange contrast to the dark skin. His garments were sadly torn, and he had patched them in many places with buckskin. Such men still come and go in the remote places among the mountain ranges and deserts of the West. They were almost the first to penetrate the wilderness and they will roam over it so long as any patch of it remains unfenced.

Schiefflin had left his father's house in Oregon ten years before. He searched the Coeur d'Alenes for riches, and, finding none, struck out from Idaho for Nevada. There he remained through two blazing summers traveling afoot from the sage-brush hills in the north across the silent deserts east of Death Valley. He wandered on to Colorado, where he toiled in the new mining camps between prospecting trips into the great plateaus along the western slope of the Rockies. From Colorado he went southward into New Mexico; thence westward to Arizona. He accompanied a troop of cavalry from Prescott down to the foot of the Huachucas where they established a new post. During the last leg of that journey he saw these foot-hills of the Mule Mountains in passing, and in spite of warnings from the soldiers, he was now returning to prospect the district.

He had spent some days at the Herrick ranch down in the valley, and the men about the place had strongly advised him against traveling into the hills. They cited various gruesome examples of the fate which overtook solitary wanderers in this savage land. They might as well have saved their breath; Schiefflin had seen some mineral stains on a rock outcropping when he passed through the country with the cavalry earlier in the season.

So now he came on toward the Bruncknow house, where he could make his camp closer to the hills upon whose exploration his mind was set.

There were several men lounging about the adobe when he reached it. Even in those days, when the most peaceful border-dweller carried his rifle almost everywhere except to his meals and was as likely as not to have slain one or two fellow-creatures,—days when the leading citizens of that isolated region presented a sinister front with their long-barreled revolvers slung beside their thighs,—the members of the group showed up hard.

A lean and seasoned crew, dust-stained from many a wild ride, burned by the border sun, they watched the new-comer with eyes half-curtained, like the eyes of peering eagles, by straight lids. They welcomed him with a few terse questions as to where he had come from and what the troops were doing over at the new post. Of themselves they said nothing nor offered any information of their business in this lonely spot.

But when Schiefflin had made his camp close to the shelter of those thick adobe walls he learned more of his hosts. There was a mine hard by, at least it went by the name of a mine, and it was a sort of common understanding that the owners were doing assessment work. The fragments on the dump, however, were only country rock. In later years gorgeous tales of rich ore at the bottom of the shallow shaft resulted in a series of claim-jumpings which in their turn netted no less than eleven murders, but the slayers only wasted their powder, for the ground here never yielded anything more interesting than dead men's bones. And at the time when Schiefflin was abiding at the Bruncknow house the inmates were letting their mining tools rust, the while they kept their firearms well oiled.

For the mine was nothing more nor less than a blind, and the adobe was simply a rendezvous for Mexican smugglers.

In that era, when a man practised pistol-shooting from the hip,—as a man practises his morning calisthenics in this peaceful age, for the sake of his body's health,—the written statutes were one thing and local conceptions of proper conduct another. Here, where the San Pedro valley came straight northward across the boundary, affording a good route for pack-trains, smuggling American wares into the southern republic was nearly a recognized industry. As long as a man could bring his contraband to market past marauding Apaches and the bands of renegade whites who had drifted to the border, he was entitled to the profit he made—and no questions asked.

So the men at the Bruncknow house accepted Schiefflin's presence without any fear of ill consequences. Had their calling been more stealthy they would not have worried about him; prospectors went unquestioned among all sorts of law breakers then, owning something of the same immunity which simple-minded persons always got from the Indians. He came in at evening and rolled up in his blankets after cooking his supper; and in the morning he went forth again into the hills. No one minded him.

Now and again a cavalcade came out of the flaming desert to the south, appearing first as a thin dust-cloud down on the flat, as it drew nearer resolving itself into pack burros and men on mule-back; then jingling and clattering up the stony slope and into the corral. And when they had dismounted, the swarthy riders in their serapes and steep-crowned sombreros trooped into the adobe, their enormous spurs tinkling in a faint chorus upon the hard earthen floor.

Then the men of the house got out the calicoes and hardware which they had brought over the hot hills and through the forests of giant cacti from Tucson. The smugglers spread blankets, unbuckled broad money-belts from their waists, and stripped out the dobie dollars, letting them fall in clinking heaps upon the cloth. The bargaining began.

And when the last wares had been disposed of and the last huge silver coin had been stowed away by the hard-eyed merchants, the Mexicans opened little round kegs of mescal, the fiery liquor which is distilled from the juice of the cactus plant.

They gambled at monte, quien con, and other games of chance. They drank together. The night came on.

Sometimes pistols flamed under those adobe walls and knives gleamed in the shadows.

Then, when the hot dawn came on, the burros were packed and the whole troop filed down the hill; the seraped Mexicans riding along the flanks of the train, their rifles athwart their saddles. The dust rose about them, enwrapped them, and hid them from sight. Finally it vanished where the flat lands reached away into the south.

But Schiefflin was indifferent to these wild goings on. To him the Bruncknow house meant shelter from the Apaches; that was all. He could roll up in his blankets here at night knowing that he would waken in the morning without any likelihood of looking up into the grinning faces of savages who had tracked him to his camp.

He minded his own business. As a matter of fact his own business was the only thing he deemed worth minding. It was the one affair of importance in the whole world. The more he saw of those hills the surer he became that they contained minerals. Somewhere among them, he fervently believed, an ore body of great richness lay hidden from the world. And he had been devoting the years of his manhood to seeking just such a secret. In those long years of constant search a longing mightier than the lust for riches had grown within him. Explorers know that longing and some great scientists; once it owns a man he becomes oblivious to all else.

Every day Schiefflin set forth on his mule from the adobe house. He rode out into the hills. All day he hunted through the winding gullies for some bits of float which would betray the presence of an outcropping on the higher levels. Once he cut the fresh trail of a band of Apaches and once he caught sight of two mounted savages riding along a slope a mile away. Several times he picked up specimens of rock which bore traces of silver. But he found no ore worth assaying.

The men at the Bruncknow house saw him departing every morning and shook their heads. They had seen other men ride out alone into the hills and they had afterward found some of those travelers—what the Apaches had left of them. It was no affair of theirs—but they fell into the habit of watching the tawny slopes every afternoon when the shadows began to lengthen and speculating among themselves whether the bearded rider was going to return this time. Which was as close to solicitude as they could come.

One of their number—he had lost two or three small bets by Schiefflin's appearing safe and sound on various evenings—took it upon himself to give their visitor a bit of advice.

"What for," he asked, "do yo'-all go a-takin' them pasears that-a-way?"

Schiefflin smiled good-naturedly at the questioner.

"Just looking for stones," he said.

"Well," the other told him, "all I got to say is this. Yo'-all keep on and yo'll sure find yo'r tombstone out there some day."

He never dreamed that he had named a town.

Nor did Schiefflin think much of it at the moment: he had received other warnings, just as strong, before. But none of them had been put as neatly as this. So the words abode in his memory although they did not affect his comings and goings in the least.

Only a few days later he left the Bruncknow house for a longer trip than usual. He rode his mule down the San Pedro toward the mouth of the dry wash in which the two prospectors had found that silver ore the day before they died.

And the luck that guides a man's steps toward good or ill, as the whim seizes it, saw to it that he came into the old camp where the Apaches had enjoyed their morning murder months before.

Some one had buried both bodies but whoever had done this—possibly it was one of the self-styled miners at the Bruncknow house—had not enough interest in minerals to disturb the little heap of specimens. It lay there near the graves, just as the Apaches had left it, just as its original owners had piled it up before they sought their blankets; to dream perhaps of their big strike while death waited for the coming of the dawn, to cheat them out of their discovery.

The story was as plain as printed words on a page: the nameless graves among the tall clumps of bear-grass proclaimed the penalty for venturing into this neighborhood. The little handful of dark-colored stones betrayed the secret of the riches in the hills. The dry wash came down between the ridges half a mile ahead to show the way to other float like this.

It was as though, after the years of long and constant search he found himself faced by a grim challenge, to attain the consummation of his hopes on pain of death.

When he had examined the bits of rock he mounted his mule and struck out for the mouth of the dry wash.

After he had ridden for some distance up the stony bed of the arroyo he dismounted and came on slowly leading the patient animal. He searched the rocks for fragments of float. At times he left the mule and crept to the summit of a near-by ridge where he remained for some minutes looking out over the country for some sign of Indians.

The day wore on and as he went further the hills to the south became loftier; the banks drew closer in on both sides of him; the boulders in the arid bed were larger. Cactus and Spanish bayonet harassed him like malignant creatures; skeleton ocatillas and bristling yuccas imposed thorny barriers before him. The sun poured its full flood of white-hot rays upon him. He wound his way in and out among the obstacles, keeping his intent eyes upon the glaring rocks, save only when he lifted them to look for lurking savages. The shadows of noonday lengthened into the shades of afternoon; they crept up the hillsides until only the higher peaks remained a-shine; evening came.

Schiefflin picked up a sharp fragment of blackish rock.

Horn silver. In those days when the great Comstock lode was lessening its yield and the metal was at a premium, such ore as this which he held meant millions—if one could but find the main ledge. He scanned the specimen closely, looked round for others and then, as his eyes roved up the hillside the exultation born of that discovery passed from him.

Dusk was creeping up from the valley. The time had passed when he could return by daylight to the Bruncknow house. He must make the most of the scant interval which remained before darkness, if he would find a hiding-place where he could camp.

He glanced about him to fix the landmarks in his memory, that he might return to this spot on the morrow. Then he led the mule away into the hills and picketed it out behind a ridge where it would be out of sight from passing Apaches.

He found his own hiding-place a mile away from where he had tethered the animal. Here three huge bare knolls of granite boulders rose beside the wash. From the summit of any one of these a man could survey the whole country; between its ragged rocks he would be invisible to any one below. He chose the highest one and crept to its crest.

The gray twilight was spreading over the land when he raised his head above one of the boulders. In that instant he dropped to earth as if he had been shot. An Indian was riding up to the bottom of the knoll.

The Apache's rifle lay across his lean bare thighs; his gaunt body bent forward as he scanned the rocks above him. He had been heading for the hill from this side while Schiefflin was climbing up the opposite slope. Evidently he was coming to the summit to look over the country for enemies. There must be others of the band close by.

Schiefflin found a narrow crack between two boulders and peeped out.

Another savage appeared at that moment on the summit of the next knoll. He was afoot; and now he stood there motionless searching the wide landscape for any moving form. He was so near that in the waning light the smear of war-paint across his ugly face was visible.

Schiefflin crooked his thumb over the hammer of his rifle and raised it slowly to the full cock, pressing the trigger with his finger to prevent the click.

The first Apache had dismounted and was climbing the hill. As he drew closer the clink of ponies' hoofs sounded down in the dry wash. A number of dirty turbans came into sight above the bank. More followed and still more, until thirty-odd were bobbing up and down to the movement of the horses.

A moment passed, one of those mighty moments when a man's life appears before him as a period which he has finished, when a man's thoughts rove swiftly over what portions of that period they choose. And Schiefflin's mind went to that talk with the man at the Bruncknow house.

"Yo'-all keep on and yo'll sure find yo'r tombstone out there some day."

He could hear the old-timer saying the words now. And, as he listened to the grim warning again, he felt—as perhaps those two prospectors felt in the moment of their awakening down by the river—that fate had sadly swindled him. He was stiffening his trigger-finger for the pull, peering across the sights at the Indian who had climbed to within a few yards of the weapon's muzzle, when—the warrior on the summit of the next knoll waved his hand. The Apache halted at the gesture and Schiefflin followed his gaze in time to see the lean brown arm of the sentinel sweep forward. Both of the savages turned and descended the knolls.

They caught up their ponies and rode on, following the course of the wash below them. The band down in the arroyo's bed were receding. The rattle of hoofs grew fainter. Schiefflin lowered the hammer of his rifle and took his first full breath.

A low outcry down the wash stopped his breathing again. The band had stopped their ponies; some of them were dismounting. He could see these gathering about the place where he had led his mule up the bank.

Two of them were pointing along the course he had taken with the animal. Several others were creeping up the slope on their bellies following the fresh trail. The murmur of their voices reached the white man where he lay watching them.

Then, as he was giving up hope for the second time, a mounted warrior—evidently he was their chief—called to the trackers. They rose, looked about and scurried back to their ponies like frightened quail. The whole band were hammering their heels against the flanks of their little mounts. The coming of the night had frightened them away.

The shadows deepened; stillness returned upon the land; the stars grew larger in the velvet sky. Schiefflin crouched among the boulders at the summit of the knoll and fought off sleep while the great constellations wheeled in their long courses. The dawn would come in its proper time, and it seemed as certain as that fact that they would return to hunt him out.

He dared not leave the place, for he might stray into some locality where they would find him without shelter when the day revealed his trail. So he waited for the sunrise and the beginning of the attack.

At last the color deepened in the east. The rocks below his hiding-place stood out more clearly. He could see no sign among them of creeping savages. The sun rose and still nothing moved.

He came forth finally in the full blaze of the hot morning and found the mule where he had picketed it behind the ridge. When he returned to the dry wash he saw the tracks where the band had passed the evening before. For some reason of their own they had found it best to keep on that course instead of coming back to murder him.

He resumed his search for float where he had left it off. It showed more frequently as he went on. He followed the bits of ore to a narrow stringer of blackish rock. He dug into it with his prospector's pick, chipped off specimens, and carefully covered up the hole. The danger of Apaches had passed, but a new fear had come to him, the dread that some rival prospector might happen upon his discovery before he could establish possession.

For his provisions were running low. He had no money. He needed a good grubstake—and companions to help him hold down the claim against jumpers—before he could begin development work.

He hurried back to the Bruncknow house. An attack of chills and fever, brought on by his night among the rocks, gave him a good excuse to leave the place. The climate, he said, did not agree with him.

While he was trying to think of one with whom to share his secret, one whom he could trust to take his full portion of the dangers which would attend the claim's development, he remembered his brother Al, who was working at the Signal mine way over in Mohave County, There was the man. So he made his way across the State of Arizona. He stopped at times to earn money for food to carry him through and it was December before he reached his destination.

Al Schiefflin had a friend, Dick Gird, who was an assayer. Gird saw the specimens, tested them, and was on fire at once. He joined forces with the brothers, helped them to procure a grubstake, and in January, 1878, the three men set forth from Williams Fork of the Colorado River in a light wagon drawn by two mules.

Spring was well on its way when they reached Tucson and made their camp in Bob Leatherwood's corral. The Apaches were raiding throughout the southeastern part of the territory and the little town of adobes was getting new reports of murders from that section every day.

They drove their mules on eastward up the long mesas leading to the San Pedro Divide. At the Pantano stage station they saw the fresh scars of Apache bullets on the adobe walls. The men had held the place against a large band of Geronimo's warriors only a few days before.

Now as they drove on they kept constant lookout and their rifles were nearly always in their hands. Every morning they rose long before the dawn, and two of them would climb the ridges near the camp to watch the country as the light came over it, while the other caught up the mules and harnessed them.

They turned southward up the San Pedro, avoiding the stage station at the crossing of the river lest some other party of prospectors might follow them. They made a circuit around the Mormon settlement at St. Davids and came on to the Bruncknow house, to find two more fresh graves of Apache victims under the adobe walls.

They made their permanent camp here, and Schiefflin took his two companions up the dry wash. They found the outcropping undisturbed. Gird and Al Schiefflin dug away at the dark rock with their prospector's picks. Less than three feet below the surface the stringer pinched out. The claim was not worth staking.

Beside the little strip of ore, whose false promises of riches had lured them into this land of death, they held a conference. The hills opened to a low swale which led up toward the loftier summits in the south. They decided to follow that depression in search of another ledge.

They made their daily journeys along its course, returning with evening to the Bruncknow house, whose inmates were away at the time on some expedition of their own. Sometimes they saw the smoke of signal-fires over in the Dragoons; sometimes the slender columns rose from the summit of the Whetstone Mountains in the north. One morning—they had spent the previous night out here in the hills—they awoke to find a fresh trail in the bear-grass within a hundred yards of where they had been sleeping, and in the middle of the track Dick Gird picked up one of the rawhide wristlets which Apaches wore to protect their arms from the bowstring.

That day Ed Schiefflin discovered a new outcropping. Gird assayed the specimens in a rude furnace which he had fashioned from the fireplace at the Bruncknow house. Some of them yielded as high as $2,200 to the ton. Exploration work showed every evidence of a great ore body. Two or three of the fragments which they had chipped from it below the surface assayed $9,000 a ton. They had made their big strike. They staked the claim, and when they came to fixing on a name Ed Schiefflin remembered once more those words of the old-timer at the Bruncknow house.

"We'll call it the Tombstone," he said, and told the story.

It was recorded in Tucson as the Tombstone. And when the big rush came, Ed Schiefflin, then a figure of importance in the new camp, recited the tale to some of the men who had risked their lives in traveling to these hills. And so they in turn retold the tale.

That is the way the town got its name.

In after years when men had learned the fulness of that secret which the Apaches had guarded so well from the world—when Bisbee and Nacosari and Cananea were yielding their enormous stores of metal and Tombstone's mines had given forth many millions of dollars in silver, Ed Schiefflin remained a wealthy man. But the habit of prospecting abided with him and he used to spend long months alone in the wilderness searching for the pure love of search.

Just before one of these expeditions he was driving out of Tombstone with Gus Barron, another old-timer and a close friend, and as they went down the Fairbank road they reached the spot where the three great boulder knolls rise beside the dry wash. Schiefflin drew rein.

"This," he said to Barron, "is the place where I camped that night when the Apaches almost got me, the night before I found the stringer on the hill. And when I die I want to be buried here with my canteen and my prospector's pick beside me."

So when he died up in canyon City, Oregon, just about twenty years after he had made that discovery, they brought his body back and buried it on the summit of the knoll. And they erected a great pyramid of granite boulders on the spot for his monument.

And within sight of that lonely tomb the town stands out on the sky-line, commemorating by its name the steadfastness of Ed Schiefflin, prospector.



TOMBSTONE'S WILD OATS

In the good old days of Indians and bad men the roaring town of Tombstone had a man for breakfast every morning. And there were mornings when the number ran as high as half a dozen.

That is the way the old-timers speak of it, and there is a fond pride in their voices when they allude to the subject; the same sort of pride one betrays when he tells of the wild oats sowed by a gray-haired friend during his lusty youth. For Tombstone has settled down to middle-aged conventionality and is peaceable enough to-day for any man.

But in the early eighties!

Apaches were raiding; claim-jumpers were battling; road-agents were robbing stages; bad men were slaying one another in the streets; and, taking it altogether, life was stepping to a lively tune.

Geronimo's naked warriors were industrious. Now they would steal upon a pair of miners doing assessment work within sight of town. Now they would bag a teamster on the road from Tucson, or raid a ranch, or attack the laborers who were laying the water company's pipe-line to the Huachucas. Hardly a week passed but a party of hard-eyed horsemen rode out from Tombstone with their rifles across their saddle-bows, escorting a wagon which had been sent to bring in the bodies of the latest victims.

In the two years after the first rush from Tucson to the rich silver district which Ed Schiefflin had discovered, there was much claim-jumping. And claim-jumping in those days always meant shooting. Some properties were taken and retaken several times, each occasion being accompanied by bloodshed. Surveying parties marched into the foot-hills of the Mule Mountains under escort of companies of riflemen; in more than one instance they laid out boundary lines and established corner monuments after pitched battles, each with its own formidable casualty list.

What with the murders by the savages and these affrays—together with such natural hazards of disease and accident as accompany any new mining camp—the boot-hill graveyard out beyond the north end of the wide main street was booming like the town. And now there came a more potent factor in stimulating mortuary statistics.

The bad men took possession of Tombstone.

They came from all over the West. For railroads and telegraph lines were bringing a new order of things from the Missouri to the Rio Grande, and those who would live by the forty-five hastened to ride away from sight of jails and churches, seeking this new haven down by the border.

One by one they drifted across the flaring Southwestern deserts; from California, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico, with their grim mouths tight shut against all questions and their big revolvers dangling beside their thighs. The hair of some of them was gray from many winters and their faces deeply lined; and some were boys with down on their smooth cheeks. But once his hand started moving toward his pistol, every man of them was deadlier than a bull rattlesnake in rutting time.

No man challenged them on their arrival. The town was too busy to heed their presence. The one-story buildings which lined the wide streets were packed to the doors with customers; saloons, dance-halls, and gambling-houses roared on through day and night; the stores were open at all hours. The wide sidewalks under the wooden awnings which ran the length of every block, were crowded from wall to gutter with men intent on getting wealth or spending it.

The bad men mingled with the sidewalk throngs; they dropped into the Bird-Cage Opera House, where painted women sang in voices that clanged like brazen gongs; they took their places before the gambling-tables of the Crystal Palace, where girls were oftentimes to be found dealing faro; they joined the long lines before the bars and drank the stinging whisky which the wagon-trains had brought from Tucson. And they met one another.

It was like the meeting of strange dogs, who bristle on sight, and often fly at one another's throats to settle the question of supremacy. Their big-caliber revolvers spat streams of fire in the roadways and bellowed in the dance-halls. And gradually among the ranks of the survivors there came a gradation in their badness.

Several loomed far above the others: John Ringo, Prank Stilwell, Zwing Hunt, the Clanton brothers, and Billy Grounds. They were "He Wolves." And there was Curly Bill, the worst of all. He might be said to rule them.

They settled down to business, which is to say they started to do the best they could for themselves according to their separate capacities for doing evil unto others.

They rustled stock. They drove whole herds over the boundary from Mexico. They pillaged the ranches, which were now coming into the adjacent country, stealing horses, altering brands, and slaying whoever interfered with them, all with the boldness of medieval raiders. They took a hand in the claim-jumping. They robbed the stage.

Hardly a day passed without a hold-up on the Tucson road—and, when the railway went through, on the road to Benson. Shotgun guards and drivers were killed; occasionally a passenger or two got a bullet. And the bad men spent the money openly over the bars in Tombstone.

Then the Earp brothers came upon the scene. From this time their figures loom large in the foreground. Whatever else may be said of them they were bold men and there was something Homeric in their violence. Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Jim, the first three were active in the wild events which followed their incumbency to power. California knew them in their boyhood, and during their manhood years they wandered over the West, from mining camp to cow-town, until they came to Tombstone from Dodge City, Kansas.

They brought a record with them. Back in the seventies, in the time of the trail herds, Dodge was a howling cow-town. There was a period of its existence when the punchers used to indulge in the pastime of shooting up the place; but there were a great many of these frolicsome riders, and too much wanton revolver shooting is sure to breed trouble if it is combined with hard liquor, gambling, and a tough floating population. The prominent business men of Dodge watched the hectic consequences of this lawlessness over their faro layouts with speculative eyes and came to the conclusion that killings were becoming altogether too promiscuous. The town, they said, needed a business administration; and forthwith they selected Bat Masterson as marshal. He established, and enforced, a rule which amounted to this:

If a man pulled his gun he did it at his own peril. Whoever fired a shot within the town limits, whether he did it for sport or murder, faced arrest.

Resistance followed. There were nights when the main street echoed with the roaring of firearms. But, by the force of his personality and by his remarkable ability at the quick draw, Bat Masterson subdued the rebels. It came about that of what killing was done he did his full share, which greatly diminished the death list.

Wyatt and Virgil Earp succeeded Bat Masterson in this office and carried on its administration with a boldness which left them famous. With the coroner behind them they were lords of the high justice, the middle, and the low; and they sustained their positions by good straight shooting.

At such times as they were not performing their functions as peace officers they were dealing faro; and when the imminence of a less interesting era was made apparent in the dwindling of the trail herds and the increase of dry farmers, they left the good old cow-town along with many other professional gamblers.

They arrived in Tombstone in the days when the outlaws were rampant, and they began dealing faro in Oriental. They found many a friend—and some enemies—from those years in western Kansas among the more adventurous element in the new town. Former buffalo-hunters, teamsters, quiet-spoken gamblers, and two-gun men sat down before their layouts and talked over bygones with them. There was an election at about this time. Virgil was chosen town marshal, and Wyatt got the appointment of deputy United States marshal soon afterward.

Old friends and new rallied around them. Of the former was Doc Holliday, a tubercular gunman with the irascible disposition which some invalids own, who had drifted hither from Colorado. Among the latter were the Clanton brothers and Frank Stilwell, who robbed the stage and rustled cattle for a living. John Ringo, who was really the brains of the outlaws, and Curly Bill, who often led them, are listed by many old-timers among the henchmen in the beginning.

It was a time when the old spoils system was recognized in its pristine simplicity. If you trained with the victorious political faction you either wore a star or had some one else who did wear a star backing you. If you trained with the minority you were rather sure, sooner or later, to have your name engrossed on a warrant. In such an era it was as well to vote wisely; else, in the vernacular, you were "short" in your home town, which meant you could not go back there.

How much the Earps knew of what their henchmen did is beyond the telling in this story. An official history of Arizona published under the auspices of the State legislature and written by Major McClintock, an old Westerner, states that first and last they were accused of about 50 per cent. of the robberies which took place in the town. It is, however, altogether possible that their cognizance of such matters was no greater than many a city official to-day holds of crimes committed in his bailiwick. When one comes to analyze police politics he finds they have not changed much since the time of the Crusades: desire for power has always blinded reformers to the misdeeds of their followers. One thing is certain; the Earps did protect their friends, and some of those friends were using very much the same methods which the Apaches employed in making a living.

To a certain extent this was necessary. What one might call the highly respectable element of the town was busy at its own affairs. Mine-owners and merchants were deeply engrossed in getting rich. And unless he liked gun-fighting, a man would have to be a good deal of a busybody to give the town marshal anything more tangible than his best wishes in the way of support. It was up to that official to look out for himself. At any time when complications followed his attempt to arrest a lawbreaker he could depend upon the average citizen—to get outside the line of fire.

And the gun-fighters were eager to get into the game. They were right on hand, to make a stand in front of the enemy if need be—but preferably to murder the foe from behind. Which was ever the way with the Western bad man.

There were determined men of another breed in Tombstone and the surrounding country, men who had outfought Apaches and desperadoes on many an occasion; dead shots who owned high moral courage. Such a man was John Slaughter, who had established his ranch down on the Mexican line and had driven the savages away from his neighborhood. But these old-timers were not enlisted under the Earp banner and the town's new rulers had only the other element for retainers.

So now Frank Stilwell robbed stages on the Bisbee road until the drivers got to know his voice quite well; and he swaggered through the Tombstone dance-halls bestowing the rings which he had stripped from the fingers of women passengers upon his latest favorite. Ike and Billy Clanton enlarged their herds with cattle and horses from other men's ranges, and sold beef with other men's brands to Tombstone butchers. And taking it altogether, the whole crew, from Doe Holliday down, did what they could to bring popular disfavor upon the heads of the new peace officers.

But if their followers were lacking in the quality of moral courage, that cannot be said of the Earp brothers. And not long after they took the reins in their strong hands, an occasion arose wherein they proved their caliber. Wyatt in particular showed that he was made of stern stuff.

It came about as a result of the reforms under the new regime. After the manner of their Dodge City administration the brothers ruled in Tombstone. They forbade the practice of shooting up the town. He who sought to take possession of a dance-hall according to the old custom, which consisted of driving out the inmates with drawn revolvers and extinguishing the lights with forty-five caliber slugs, was forthwith arrested. To ride a horse into a saloon and order drinks for all hands meant jail and a heavy fine. To slay a gambler, or make a gun-play in a gambling-house, when luck was running badly, resulted in prosecution.

Virgil Earp attended to these matters, and after several incidents wherein he disarmed ugly men whose friends stood by eager to let daylight into the new marshal, he owned a certain amount of prestige. It is only fair to remark in passing that he had a disposition—in ticklish cases—to shoot first and ask questions afterward; but that was recognized as an officer's inalienable right in those rude days.

Now this new order of things did not meet universal popular favor in Tombstone. There were always three or four hundred miners off shift on the streets, and while a large percentage of them were peaceable men, there was a boisterous element. This element, and the cow-boys who had been in the habit of celebrating their town comings after the good old fashion, felt resentful. An occasional killing of one of their number with the invariable verdict from a carefully picked coroner's jury, "met his death while resisting an officer in performance of his duty," made the resentment more general. The recalcitrants said that Tombstone was being run by a gang of murderers in the interest of the gamblers.

Opposition to the administration began to crystallize. Things reached the point where in a twentieth century community reformers would be preparing to circulate recall petitions. But in the early eighties they did things more directly, and instead of the recall they had the "show-down." The malcontents eagerly awaited its coming.

It came. And its origin was in Charleston.

Charleston was eleven miles across the hills from Tombstone down by the San Pedro River. There was a mill there, and the cow-boys from the country around came in to spend their money. Jim Burnett was justice of the peace. Early in the town's history he had seceded from the county of Pima because the supervisors over in Tucson refused to allow him certain fees. "Hereafter," so he wrote the board, "the justice court in Charleston will look after itself." Which it did. Once the court dragged Jack Harker from his horse, when that enthusiastic stockman was celebrating his arrival by bombarding the town, and fined the prisoner fifty head of three-year-old steers. And once—it is a matter of record—a coroner's jury under his instruction rendered the verdict: "Served the Mexican right for getting in front of the gun."

Things always moved swiftly in Charleston. There is a tale of a saloon-keeper who buried his wife in the morning, killed a man at high noon, and took unto himself a new bride before evening. If that story is not true—and old-timers vouch for it—it is at least indicative of the trend of life in the town.

And to Charleston came those followers of John Ringo and Curly Bill who did not get on with the Earps. Several of them became men of influence down here on the San Pedro. Hither flocked those boisterous spirits who craved more freedom of action on pay-day than the mining town afforded.

Guns blazed in Charleston whenever the spirit moved. The young fellow who was ditch-tender for the company had to give up his lantern when he made his nightly trip of inspection, because, as surely as that light showed up on the side hill, there was certain to be some one down in the street who could not resist taking a shot at it. So while dissatisfaction was crystallizing among the miners of Tombstone a keen rancor against the Earps was developing over by the San Pedro.

This was the state of affairs when Johnny Behind the Deuce brought matters to a crisis by killing an engineer from the mill.

Johnny Behind the Deuce was an undersized, scrawny specimen of the genus which is popularly known as "tinhorn," a sort of free-lance gambler, usually to be found sitting in at a poker-game. The engineer was a big man and abusive.

There was a game in which these two participated; and when he had lost his wages to Johnny Behind the Deuce, the engineer sought solace first in vituperation, then in physical maltreatment. Whereat Johnny Behind the Deuce shot him. Charleston's constable took the slayer into custody. The rustlers and other exiles from Tombstone knew the prisoner for a friend of the Earps, and so they decided to lynch him. They sent one of their number to get a reata for that purpose.

The constable learned what was going on. He commandeered a buckboard and a team of mules, put Johnny Behind the Deuce aboard, and drove the animals on the dead run for Tombstone.

When the man who had been sent for the reata returned, the rustlers set out after the prisoner and found they were five minutes too late. They saddled up and started in pursuit.

The road wound along the lower levels between the foot-hills of the Mule Mountains; there were two or three dry washes to cross, some sharp grades to negotiate, and several fine stretches which were nearly level,—a rough road, admirably suited for making a wild race wilder.

And this was a wild race. The constable and the prisoner were just getting their team nicely warmed up when they heard a fusillade of revolver-shots behind them. They glanced over their shoulders and saw more than fifty horsemen coming on at that gait which is so well described in the vernacular as "burning the wind." From time to time one of these riders would lean forward and "throw down" his six-shooter; then the occupants of the buckboard would hear the whine of a forty-five slug, and a moment later the report of the distant weapon would reach their ears.

The mules heard these things too. What with the noise of the firearms and the whoops of the pursuers they were in a frenzy; they threw their long ears flat back and entered into the spirit of the occasion by running away. The constable, who was a cool man and a good driver, centered his energies on guiding them around the turns and let it go at that.

Now as the miles of tawny landscape flashed behind them the two fugitives saw that they were being overhauled. And the pursuers found that they were gaining; their yells came louder down the wind; they roweled their lathered cow-ponies. And they drew closer to the buckboard.

The constable negotiated the dry wash near Robbers Rock on two wheels, and as the light vehicle was reeling along the easy grade beyond, the prisoner took another look behind. He told his captor that the wild riders were not much more than four hundred yards away.

They came to a stretch of level road. The mules were doing a little better now, and they clattered down into the next dry wash with an abandon which all but ended matters; the outer wheels went over the high cut bank, but by the grace of good luck and marvelous driving the buckboard was kept right side up. And now the lynching party, who had made a short cut, appeared between the rolling hills not more than two hundred yards behind.

Johnny Behind the Deuce reported the state of affairs. The constable answered without turning his head.

"Looks like we're up against it, kid," said he, "but we'll play it out 's long as we got chips left."

Three miles outside of Tombstone stood an adobe building wherein a venturesome saloon-keeper had installed himself, a barrel of that remarkable whisky known as "Kill Me Quick," and sufficient arms to maintain possession against road-agents. The sign on this establishment's front wall said:

LAST CHANCE

It was a lucky chance for Johnny Behind the Deuce. For Jack McCann, who owned a fast mare, was exercising her out here this afternoon preparatory for a race against some cow-ponies over on the San Pedro next week. He had trotted her down the road and was about to head her back toward the saloon for her burst of speed when he saw the buckboard coming over a rise.

The mules were fagged. The constable was lashing them with might and main. The lynching party were within a hundred yards.

As Jack McCann surveyed this spectacle which was so rapidly approaching him the constable waved his hand. The situation was too tight to permit wasting time. McCann ranged his mare alongside the buckboard as soon as it drew up; and before the breathless driver had begun to explain, he cried.

"Jump on, kid."

Johnny Behind the Deuce leaped on the mare's back. The constable pulled off the road as the lynching party came thundering by with a whoop and halloo. He peered through the dust which the ponies' hoofs had stirred up and saw the mare fading away in the direction of Tombstone with her two riders.

* * * * *

It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. That hour was the dullest of the twenty-four in the gambling-houses, for the evening shift was on its way to work and the day shift had not yet come off. The Earps were dealing faro in the Oriental.

To the onlooker who does not know its hazards faro is a funereal game. The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a button or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above them, all the lookout leans back with every external sign of world-weary indifference. And the players settle a little lower on their stools. There was about as much animation in the Oriental that afternoon as there is in a country church on a hot Sunday morning; less in fact, for there was no preacher present.

Into this peaceful quiet came the sound of hoofbeats from the street. It stopped abruptly. Two men burst through the front door on a run. The players looked around and the faro-dealers dropped their right hands toward the open drawers where they kept their loaded pistols. Jack McCann and Johnny Behind the Deuce had arrived.

But before the prisoner finished his story, to which he did not devote more than twenty words or so, a man ran into the Oriental with the tidings that the miners who were coming off shift were arming themselves as fast as they left the cages. The rustlers had ridden up the hill and were gathering reinforcements.

Wyatt Earp at once took charge of the affair. He was a medium-sized man with a drooping sandy mustache.

"We'll close up, boys," he said.

The show-down had come.

Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Jim took counsel. Doc Holliday advised with them. A handful of their supporters stood by awaiting their decision. All others left; the neighborhood was no healthy place for non-combatants.

The Oriental gambling-house stood on Tombstone's main street at the intersection of a cross street. Because of its size it would be a hard place to defend against so formidable a mob as this which was now moving down the hill. Several doors north on the main street and on the opposite side, there was a bowling-alley. Its narrowness gave that building a strategic value. They took Johnny Behind the Deuce there and set guards at both ends.

Wyatt Earp remained alone out in the middle of the main street just below the corner. He held a double-barreled shotgun over the crook of his arm.

The ugly sound which rises from a mob came into the deserted thoroughfare; the swift tramp of many feet, the growl of many voices. More than three hundred miners, the majority of whom were armed with rifles from the company's arsenal, and the fifty-odd members of the Charleston lynching party swept into Toughnut Street, turned the corner, and rushed down the cross street toward the Oriental.

They reached the intersection of the main street, and as they faced the closed doors of the Oriental their left flank was toward Wyatt Earp. They filled the roadway and the front ranks surged upon the sidewalk toward the portals of the gambling-house.

Then some one who had seen the prisoner taken to the bowling-alley shouted the tidings. The throng changed front in the instant and faced the solitary man who stood there a few yards before them.

Wyatt Earp shifted his shotgun into his two hands and held it as a trap-shooter who is waiting for the clay pigeons to rise.

In the moment of discovery the mob had checked itself, confronting him as one man confronts another when the two are bitter enemies and the meeting is entirely unexpected. There followed a brief, sharp surge forward; it emanated from the rear ranks and moved in a wave toward the front. There it stopped. And there passed a flash of time during which the man and the mob eyed each other.

That was no ordinary lynching party such as some communities see in these days. Its numbers included men who had outfought Apaches, highwaymen, and posses; men who were accustomed to killing their fellow beings and inured to facing death. And the hatred of the Earp brothers, which had been brewing during all these months, was white-hot now within them.

"Come on," called Wyatt Earp, and added an epithet.

Above the mass of tossing heads the muzzles of rifles were bobbing up and down. The trampling of feet and the shuffling of packed bodies made a dull under-note. Shouts arose from many quarters.

"Go on!" "Get him!" "Now, boys!"

Wyatt Earp threw back his head and repeated his challenge.

"Come on!" He flung an oath at them. "Sure you can get me. But"—he gave them the supreme insult of that wild period's profanity—"the first one makes a move, I'll get him. Who's the man?"

Those who saw him that afternoon say that his face was white; so white that his drooping mustache seemed dark in contrast. His eyes gleamed like ice when the sun is shining on it. He had the look of a man who has put his life behind him; a man who is waiting for just one thing before he dies—to select the ones whom he will take with him.

The cries behind redoubled, and the crowding increased in the rear. Some leaped on the backs of those before them. But the men in the front ranks—some of them were bold men and deadly—withstood the pressure. They held their eyes on that grim, white face, or watched the two muzzles of that shotgun which he swept back and forth across their gaze with hypnotic effect.

It was a fine, large moment. Any one of them could have got him at the first shot. There was no chance of missing. And scores yearned to get him. Undoubtedly he had attained that pitch where he yearned for them to do it. And being thus to all intents a dead man,—save only that he retained the faculty of killing,—he was mightier than all of them.

Those in the front ranks were beginning to slip back; and as these escaped his presence the others, who had become exposed to it, struggled against the pressure of their fellows who would keep them in that position. Some of the cooler spirits were stealing away. The contagion of indifference spread. The mob was melting.

In the meantime one or two members of the Earp faction had procured a team and wagon. As soon as the lynchers had dispersed they stowed the prisoner in the vehicle, and set out for Tucson with a heavy guard. But there was no pursuit. The reaction which follows perfervid enthusiasm of this sort had settled down upon the miners and cow-boys. Johnny Behind the Deuce was tried before the district court, and—as was to be expected—he was acquitted.

Time went on and dissensions came among the followers of the Earp brothers. Curly Bill and John Ringo were among the first to fall out with the leaders, and they took the path of previous exiles to Charleston. But the country by the San Pedro was being settled up, and not long afterward they emigrated to Galeyville over in the San Simon valley. Thenceforth this little smelter town became the metropolis of the outlaws. Ringo spent most of his time here with occasional trips to Tombstone, where, on more than one occasion, he dared the Earps to try to take him. They did not accept his challenges. Finally he died by his own hand and his friend Curly Bill left the country.

In the meantime new secessions were taking place in the Earp following. The county of Cochise had been established. Tombstone was made the county seat. Johnny Behan, an old-timer and an Indian fighter, was the first sheriff. He was hostile to the city administration from the beginning. Nor was that all. Lawyers came into the town and henceforth—provided a dead man's friends had money—killing an opponent no longer settled a dispute. There remained such complications as indictment, sworn testimony, and the jury. The good old days were passing.

Sheriff Johnny Behan charged the Earps with participation in robberies and wilful cognizance of murders.

It was about as far as he did go as a public official. The brothers issued profane and pointed defiance and went on dealing faro.

About this time Frank Stilwell quarreled with the Earps and hastily departed from Tombstone And henceforth, until the wind-up of the ugly affairs that followed, he remained at large, awaiting his opportunity for revenge.

Sheriff Behan was trying to get some good charge to bring against the brothers, and various lawyers—some of them widely known throughout the Southwest—were anxiously awaiting opportunity to appear as special prosecutors when the Benson stage was held up.

The Benson stage had been robbed often enough before, but this time the crime brought far-reaching consequences. Bud Philpots was driver and Bob Paul, afterward United States marshal, was shotgun messenger. There was a large currency shipment—some eighty thousand dollars—in the express-box. The stage was full inside and one passenger, a Mexican, was riding on top. For some reason or other Bob Paul had taken the reins and Philpots was sitting in his place. As the vehicle came to the top of a hill the robbers showed themselves.

The old-timers speak of the conduct of the highwaymen with profane contempt for instead of shooting a horse or two, they opened fire on Bud Philpots, whom they believed from his position to be the messenger. They killed him and the Mexican passenger who was seated behind him. But the team took fright at the noise and ran away and the eighty thousand dollars went on up the road in a cloud of dust.

Johnny Behan, the sheriff, said that the Earp brothers sent Doc Holliday out with the Clanton brothers to commit the crime.

Ike Clanton said that he was rustling cattle at the time down in Mexico, and accused the Earps of sole responsibility.

The Earps in turn stated that the Clanton boys were the bandits.

And that began the Earp-Clanton feud.

It did not last long, but there was much happening while it was going on.

The Clanton brothers, Ike and Billy, betook themselves to their ranch and gathered their friends around them. Frank and Tom McLowrey were prominent among these allies. And now the statement was made in Tombstone that the members of this faction had promised to shoot the Earps on sight.

One October evening Ike Clanton came to town with Tom McLowery, and Virgil Earp arrested the two on the charge of disturbing the peace. He did it on the main street and disarmed them easily enough. The justice of the peace, whose name was Spicer, fined the prisoners fifty dollars.

The next morning these two defendants went to the 0. K. corral on Fremont Street, where they had put up their horses the night before. And there they met Bill Clanton and Frank McLowery. All four were leading their ponies out of the gate when Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp, together with Doc Holliday, confronted them.

"Hands up!" Wyatt ordered.

The shooting began at once. Holliday killed Tom McLowery, who was unarmed, at the first volley. Billy Clanton fell mortally wounded but continued shooting up to his last gasp. Frank McLowery got a bullet through his pistol hand but shifted his weapon to the other and kept on firing until Morgan Earp, who had fallen with a ball through his shoulder, killed him from where he lay. Ike Clanton jumped a high fence and fled.

Justice of the Peace Spicer held an examination and exonerated the slayers on the ground that they had done the thing in performance of their duty as officers, but friends of the Clantons had money. Some one retained lawyers to assist in prosecuting the Earps. The sheriff saw his opportunity and became active getting testimony.

And then, while the town was seething with gossip concerning the coming trial, Frank Stilwell stole into Tombstone with a half-breed and slew Morgan Earp, who was playing billiards at the time. The murder accomplished, Stilwell took a fast horse and rode to Tucson. The half-breed fled to the Dragoon Mountains.

The next day the three surviving Earp brothers and Doc Holliday started for California with Morgan's body. At dusk that evening the train reached Tucson. Now Ike Clanton was in the town, out on bail awaiting trial for a stage-robbery. And Frank Stilwell was there. It was no more than natural that the Earps should keep a sharp lookout when the locomotive stopped at the station.

Their vigilance was rewarded. Stilwell came slipping through the shadows just as the train was pulling out. The passengers in the Pullman were startled by a crackling of revolver shots from the rear platform. Directly afterward the Earps came back inside and took their seats. And Tucson was given something to talk about that evening by the discovery of Frank Stilwell's body riddled with bullets beside the track.

The Earp party held council in the Pullman and determined to return to Tombstone. Leaving Virgil to complete the journey with Morgan's body, the other two brothers and Doc Holliday left the train at a way station and flagged a freight which took them back to Benson. Here they procured horses and rode to the county seat.

Sheriff Johnny Behan received telegraphic advices from Tucson to arrest them. He found the trio sometime in the afternoon. They had got their effects together and sent them ahead on a wagon. They were themselves on horseback, about to set forth for Colorado.

Wyatt glanced down upon the sheriff as the latter came up.

"Listen," he said. "Don't you even look as if you wanted to arrest us."

And with that the three rode down the main street. They passed the saloons and gambling-houses, and men came flocking to the doors to see them go by.

At the running walk the horses came on, three abreast; the faces of the riders were set; their eyes swept the crowds on the sidewalks. They went on by. They turned the corner into the road that leads to the Dragoons. That was the last that Tombstone ever saw of them.

They stopped at Pete Spence's ranch, where the half-breed was working who had been with Frank Stilwell on the evening of Morgan's murder, and a cow-boy found the man's body the next morning.

They rode across wide flats and through great dark mountain ranges, eastward and to the north, until they came into Colorado.

After the departure of these bold men outlawry took on a new lease of life in southeastern Arizona. Cattle-rustling, stage-robbery, and murder went on throughout Cochise County. And at last the people found a strong man, to whom the law stood for something more than a means of personal power. They chose for sheriff John Slaughter, who had been waging war for years on his own account against Apaches and bad men. But the story of how he brought the enforcement of the statutes into Tombstone is too long to tell here, although it is a stirring tale and colorful.

Tombstone to-day stands just as it was back in those wild days of the early eighties; just as it was—the buildings are unchanged. You may see them all, and see the streets as they looked when pistols flamed and men died hard out in the roadway.

But other crowds walk those streets now. And sometimes on an evening you will see automobiles going down the block with family parties on their way for a spin along the Benson road where the Clanton boys, Frank Stilwell, John Bingo, and the other bad men used to rob the stages in daytime.

On such an evening, should you travel down that highway, you may see the leaping light of a bonfire by which a group of young people are toasting marshmallows on the summit of the knoll where Ed Schiefflin hid from the passing Apaches.

Tombstone is peaceable enough to-day for any man; so peaceable that one finds it hard to believe there was a time when the town had a man—or more—for breakfast every morning.



THE SHOW-DOWN

In the early days of Tombstone when miners and merchants and cow-men and faro-dealers and outlaws were drifting into Cochise County from all over the West, a young fellow by the name of William C. Breckenbridge came down from Colorado to the new camp. He was, so the old-timers say, one of those smallish men who can wear a flannel shirt and broad-brimmed hat so jauntily that, although their breeches be tucked into their boot-tops, they still look marvelously neat; but while he could come through a hard day's ride still suggesting a bandbox, there was nothing of the dandy about him.

His people had staked him to go out West and at their suggestion he had hunted up an older brother in Colorado. But two years in the wide reaches of the Platte country, where the monotony of teaming was varied by occasional brushes with the Indians, failed to satisfy his spirit. And so he came riding down into the flaring valleys of the Southwestern border along with the first influx of adventurers.

He was still in his early twenties and the world looked good to him; one of those quiet youths who preface most remarks with a smile because, all other things being equal, they like their fellow-men.

He knocked about the camp, trying this thing and that, and was starting in at mining engineering with an old marine compass as his only instrument when Johnny Behan, who was newly appointed sheriff by the governor, gave him a job as a deputy. Then straightaway the eyes of men were turned upon him, and the query arose:

"How's he going to stack up when it comes to a show-down?"

Those were the days, you understand, when—to indulge in a Scriptural figure—he who took up the sword must be prepared to perish by the sword. If you buckled on a gun you must be ready to draw it, and once you started to draw it, heaven help you if you did not reckon on going through with the play.

A man could get by, as the saying has it, if he played the part of a neutral; but if, on the one hand, you started in at stealing cattle or if, on the other hand, you pinned on a star—why then, sooner or later, the big issue was going to come to a head; you were going to find yourself faced by a foe or foes, armed like yourself, and like yourself prepared to shoot it out. Then when the show-down came you would comport yourself according to the stuff that you were made of—the material which was hidden away deep down under your skin—and according to your conduct the world would judge you.

So naturally enough in those days men asked this question and waited for events to bring its answer. And those among them who were not gifted with the faculty of reading character but needed to see a man for themselves when the guns were blazing—those individuals had to wait a long time.

As for the others, what they said to themselves as one adventure followed another now in the career of Billy Breckenbridge you who read these words can judge, if you be blessed with ordinary perspicacity. For many things took place and many months went by before he reached down along his lean right thigh toward the butt of his forty-five single-action revolver.

It is quite likely that Johnny Behan was among those who wanted the new deputy to give a demonstration of the stuff he was made of. Perhaps that was the reason the sheriff sent young Breckenbridge over into the eastern end of the county to collect the taxes before the latter had worn his star long enough to get used to it.

In those days the sheriff's office levied assessments and did the collecting on personal property at the same time. Payments were made in cash; bank-checks were virtually unknown in Cochise County. And thus far the country east of the Dragoon Mountains had yielded no revenues for the simple reason that it looked as if nothing short of a troop of cavalry could go forth into that region and return again with the money.

Beyond those rocky peaks which frowned across the mesquite flat at Tombstone lay other ragged mountain ranges; the Chiracahuas, the Dos Cabezas, the Swiss-helms, and the Grahams. Between their towering walls the valleys of the Sulphur Springs and the San Simon stretched away and away southward across the Mexican border great tawny plains pulsating under the hot sun.

Upon their level floors the heat-devils danced all the long days like armies of phantom dervishes gone mad with their interminable leapings and whirlings. And strange grotesque mirages climbed up into the glaring heavens. A savage land wherein savage men rode, as packs of gray wolves range in the wintertime when meat is scarce, searching the distant sky-line for some sign of life on which to prey.

For this was no-man's-land. Bands of renegade Apaches lurked among its empurpled peaks. Companies of Mexican smugglers came northward through its steep-walled border canyons driving their laden burros to lonely rendezvous where hard-eyed traders awaited them with pack-mules loaded down with dobie dollars. A few lonely ranch-houses where there was water in the lowlands; in the mountains a sawmill or two and some far-flung mines; here the habitations were like arsenals. Honest men must go armed to work and sleep with arms by their bedsides, and even then it was advisable for them to ask no questions of those who rode up to their cabins.

And it was best for them to make no protests at what such guests did unto their own or the property of others. For since the days when the first semblances of law had come to Tombstone this region had been the sanctuary of the bad men.

When you crossed the summits of the Dragoon Mountains you were beyond the pale. Hither the stage-robber came, riding hard when the list of his crimes had grown too long. The murderer, the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were traveling in formidable groups.

And then sooner or later they would slip away again to the wild passes and the long and lonely valley flats where there was no law excepting that which a man carried in his pistol-holster. One after another those who were "short" in other places had drifted before the winds of public opinion to gather in this eastern end of Cochise County where two whose qualities of deadliness surpassed those of all the rest were recognized, because of that superior ability at killing, as the big "He Wolves." These two were Curly Bill and John Ringo.

When they were not leading their followers in some raid against the herds of border cattlemen, or lying in wait to ambush one of the armed bands of smugglers, or standing up the stage, these two were usually to be found in Galeyville. You will not see Galeyville named nowadays on the map of Arizona and if you look ever so long through the San Simon country, combing down the banks of Turkey Creek ever so closely, you will not discover so much as a fragment of crumbling adobe wall to show that the town ever existed.

But it did exist during the early eighties and its life was noisy enough for any man. There came a day when the neighboring mines shut down and the little smelter which furnished a livelihood for the honest members of the population went out of business; later the Apaches erased everything that was combustible from the landscape and the elements finished the business.

But when John Ringo and Curly Bill held forth in Galeyville there was a cattle-buyer in the place who did a brisk business because he asked no embarrassing questions concerning brands. Which brought many a hard-eyed rustler thither and sent many a dollar spinning over the battered bars.

Such were the eastern end of Cochise County and its metropolis when Johnny Behan told young Billy Breckenbridge to cross the Dragoons and collect taxes throughout that section. If he expected a protest he was mistaken, for Breckenbridge took the bidding with his usual good-natured smile. And if the sheriff looked for a request for a posse he was disappointed. The new deputy saddled up his horse one morning and rode forth alone, trim and neat as usual and, for all that any one could see, without a care on his mind.

He rode up the wide main street which bisects Tombstone from end to end, descended the hill and started his horse across the flatlands toward the ragged pinnacles of Cochise's stronghold.

Eastward he rode through tall mesquite thickets, over rolling hills where clumps of bear-grass grew among spiked yuccas and needle-pointed tufts of Spanish bayonet, and climbed the pass beyond. From its summit he looked down upon the wide reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley, level as a floor, as tawny as a lion's skin.

Then he descended from the sky-lined pinnacles of granite to the plain. Under the blazing heavens pony and rider showed upon that glowing surface as a tiny dot; a dot that moved slowly on and on until the yellow-brown carpet of the bunch-grass came to an end and was replaced by a gleaming sheet of alkali. Before that crawling dot the mirage wavered and undulated like a weirdly painted back-drop stirring in the wind.

The dot crept on, took strange new shapes that changed phantasmally, then vanished behind the curtain of which for a passing moment it had been a part. Thus young Breckenbridge rode beyond the dominion of the written law and was swallowed up by no-man's-land.

When he had started forth from Tombstone he merely knew his errand; he owned no plan. Now as the splendid star-lit nights followed the long, blazing days he began, to see a course of action and this led him on, until one day he came down into the San Simon country and rode into the town of Galeyville.

The enterprising citizen whose cattle-buying business helped to keep dollars spinning across the bars of this outlaw metropolis was mildly curious when young Breckenbridge introduced himself that afternoon. The presence of a sheriff's deputy was enough to set any one to thinking in those days.

His curiosity gave way to unspoken wonder as the caller unfolded his mission and stated the name of the man whom he wanted to see. Anyhow, this meeting promised to be worth while witnessing; the cattle-buyer said as much.

"Reckon we'll find him up the street right now," he added, and led the way to a near-by saloon.

There were a number of men in the place when the pair entered; a quintet playing cards, and as many others scattered about a quiet pool-game. And one burly fellow was lying on a poker-table, curled up for all the world like a sleeping dog. Now and then one of the gamblers would lift his head to take a look at the new-comers, and for a brief instant young Breckenbridge would find himself gazing into a pair of hard, steady eyes. Then the eyes would be lowered and the player would go on with the game.

It was during this uncomfortable interval of general sizing-up that the proprietor entered, a red-faced man and short of stature. He had been out to get a bucket of water; he set the pail down by the end of the bar and filled a tin cup from it.

"Here's how, boys," he said with loud facetiousness, and lifted the cup.

The burly man, who had apparently been awakened by the words, uncoiled himself, came to crouch with one arm supporting his body on the table-top and—all in the same lithe movement—drew his big-caliber revolver from the holster.

"Don't drink that stuff. It's pizen," he shouted, and with the last word his weapon flamed.

The tin cup flew from the saloon man's hand. A shout of laughter rose from the crowd at the two games; then the pool-balls clicked again and—

"Raise you ten," a poker-player said.

Breckenbridge's guide beckoned to the man who had done the shooting. He came across the room, shoving his gun back into the holster, a rather thickly built man but well-knit and there was a soft spring in his slowest movements which suggested snake-like quickness. He was dark-eyed, and his hair was a mat of close black curls. The cattle-buyer nodded, to indicate the introduced one.

"This," he said, "is Mr. Breckenbridge, one of Johnny Behan's deputies."

And—

"This is Curly Bill."

Young Breckenbridge smiled as usual and stretched forth his right hand. But the eyes of Curly Bill were narrow and his hand came out slowly. There was that in his whole manner which said he was on guard, watching every movement of the deputy.

And for this there was good reason. It was not long since Curly Bill had stood in very much the same attitude on Tombstone's street facing Town Marshal White, the only difference being that his right hand on that occasion had been proffering his pistol, butt foremost, to the officer. And in the passing of the instant while Marshal White had touched the weapon with his fingertips the forty-five had swiftly reversed ends, to spit forth one leaden slug.

The officer had dropped in the dust of the roadway and Curly Bill had ridden out of town with a thousand dollars on his head. A thousand dollars was a thousand dollars and there was no telling what a man who wore a nickel-plated star might have up his sleeve.

"Mr. Breckenbridge," the cattle-buyer said as the two palms met, "is here on civil business."

The eyes of Curly Bill resumed their normal shape. His fingers tightened over the deputy's.

"Howdy," he said. "What yo' going to have?"

While the sting of the cow-town whisky was still rankling in their throats a man entered the front door.

"Oh, Bill," he called across the room, "your hoss is daid."

Deserting the bar to delve into this mystery, they found the outlaw's pony stretched out beside the hitching-rack near the rear of the building. The owner cast one glance at the dead animal; then his eyes went to a shattered window.

"'Twas when I shot that cup from Shorty's hand."

He shrugged his big shoulders and, with a grin—

"Plenty more good ponies in the valley—and the nights are moonlight now."

When they were back facing the battered bar young Breckenbridge explained, his business in no-man's-land.

"And this end of the county," he wound up, "is sort of rough. If I'd ride around alone, packing that money, somebody's liable to get the best of me when I'm not looking for it. I've got to have a good man along to help take care of that roll. And I'd admire to have you make the trip with me."

Curly Bill was a great deal slower at thinking than he was at drawing his gun and there was much food for thought in that bold proposition. He gazed at young Breckenbridge for some moments in silence. Gradually his lips relaxed. Smiling, he turned and addressed the occupants of the room.

"Boys," he cried, "line up."

And when the line was formed before the bar he waved his hand.

"This here's the deputy sheriff, come to collect the taxes in our end of the county; and I aim to help him do the job up right."

By what means Curly Bill supplied himself with a new pony this chronicler does not know. But it is a fact that the outlaw rode forth from Galeyville the next day along with Johnny Behan's deputy, to guide the latter through the Sulphur Springs valley and the San Simon—and to guard the county's funds.

Travel was slow in those days; accommodations were few and far between. Outlaw and deputy jogged down the long, glaring flats enshrouded in the dust-fog which rose from their ponies' hoofs; mile after mile of weary riding under a scorching sun. They climbed by winding trails through narrow canyons where the heat-waves jigged endlessly among the naked rocks. They camped by lonely water-holes and shared each other's blankets under the big yellow stars.

By day they watched the sky-line seeking the slightest sign of moving forms; by night they kept their weapons within easy reach and slept lightly, awakening to the smallest sound. They scanned the earth for tracks and, when they found them, read them with the suspicion born of knowledge of the country's savagery.

And sometimes other riders came toward them out of the desert to pass on and to vanish in the hazy distance; men who spoke but few words and watched the right hands of the two riders as they talked. But none attacked them or made a show toward hostility. Now and again the pair stopped at a ranch-house or a mine where Breckenbridge added to the county's money in his saddle-bags.

And as the days wore on, each with its own share of mutual hardship to bring these two to closer companionship, they began, as men will under such circumstances, to unfold their separate natures. Under the long trail's stern necessity they bared to each other those traits which would have remained hidden during years of acquaintance among a city's tight-walled streets.

A carelessly spoken word dropped at hot noontide when the water in the canteens had given out; a sincere oath, uttered by the fire at supper-time; a long, drowsy conversation as they lay in their blankets with the tang of the night breeze in their nostrils, gazing up at the splendor of the flaming stars; until they knew each other man to man—and Curly Bill began to feel something like devotion to his purposeful young companion. Thenceforth he talked freely of his deeds and misdeeds.

"Only one man that ever got the drop on me," the outlaw said one evening when they were lying on their blankets, enjoying the long inhalations from their after-supper cigarettes, "and that was ol' Jim Burnett over in Charleston, two years ago."

He paused a moment to roll another smoke. A coyote clamored shrilly beyond the next rise; a horse blew luxuriously feeding in the bunch-grass. Curly Bill launched into his tale.

"He was justice of the peace and used to hold co't in those days whenever he'd run on to a man he wanted. Always packed a double-barrel shotgun and he'd usually managed to throw it down on a fellow while he tried the case and named the fine.

"Well, me and some of the boys was in town this time and things was slack. Come a Sunday evenin' and I heard how some married folks had started up a church. I hadn't been inside of one since I could remember and we all made up our minds to go and see what it was like.

"Things had opened up when we come into the door and we took our seats as quiet as we could. But the jingle of our spurs made some people in the congregation—the' wasn't more'n a dozen of 'em—look around. And of co'se they knew us right away. So, pretty quick one or two gets up and leaves, and soon afterward some more, until first thing we knew our bunch was all the' was stickin' it out.

"Along about that time the preacher decided he'd quit too, and he was edging off to head for the back door when I got up and told him to stop. Folks said afterwards that I throwed down my fo'ty-five on him but that wasn't so. Wasn't any need of a gun-play. I only said that we'd come to see this deal out and we meant to have it to the turning of the last card and if he'd go ahead everything would be all right.

"So he did, and give out a hymn and the boys stood up and sang; and he preached a sermon, taking advantage of the chanc't to light into us pretty rough. Then it come time for passin' round the hat and I'll bet the reg'lar congregation never done half so well by the collection as we did.

"Well, sir, next mo'nin' I was sittin' in front of the hotel in the shade of those big cottonwoods, sort of dozing, having been up kind of late after the church-going; and the first thing I knew somebody was saying—

"'Hanzup.'

"I opened my eyes and here was ol' Jim Burnett with that double-barrel shotgun throwed down on me, I knew there was no use tryin' to get the play away from him, either; only a day or two before that he'd stuck up Johnny Harker and fined him a bunch of three-year-old steers for shootin' up the town. So I obeyed orders and—

"'Curly Bill,' says he, 'yo' 're tried herewith and found guilty of disturbin' the peace at the Baptis' Church last evenin'; and the sentence of this co't is twenty-five dollars' fine.'

"I shelled out then and there and glad to do it, too. Them two muzzles was lookin' me right between the eyes all the while."

Up in the San Simon country they ran short of grub and after going two days on scanty rations—

"The' 's a canyon fifteen miles south of here," the outlaw said. "I reckon some of the boys might be camping there now."

They rode hard that afternoon and reached the place some time before sundown. The boys of whom Curly Bill had spoken were there all right, ten of them, and none of the number but was known at the time over in Tombstone either as a rustler or a stage-robber. His guide introduced Breckenbridge with the usual terseness of such ceremonies among his kind.