"Ringo!" he managed to gasp. "Why, he's gone. I thought----"
Perfervid language followed. Johnny Behan had been a cow-boy in his
time, and the court had--in his unofficial capacity--a rather large
vocabulary of his own. In the end certain facts began to outline
themselves through the sulphuric haze: the district attorney had
offered objections to the proffered bail.
"I'll take this matter up," the judge told the stricken sheriff,
"to-morrow morning, and I'll hold you responsible for the appearance
of the defendant in court at that time."
The news flew fast, and when the posse returned from Charleston they
found the town of Tombstone discussing Johnny Behan's predicament.
Being wise politicians, the leaders of the law-and-order party kept to
themselves the information as to John Ringo's whereabouts. That
evening they called a meeting of their followers, and a second posse
set forth through the darkness for Charleston.
There were some fifty-odd of them, well armed and enthusiastic. Their
purpose was to bring the outlaw to the court-house the next morning.
Thereby the reform movement should gain much prestige--and the sheriff
lose standing.
But Charleston was full of stock-rustlers and bad men that night, and
when the members of the law-and-order party rode into the place they
found themselves surrounded by a half a hundred of the worst men in
the Territory of Arizona. John Ringo had been looking for further
trouble, and his forces were so well disposed that the invaders had
their choice between surrender and being massacred.
They yielded to necessity like wise men and gave over their arms to
their captors, who forthwith took them to the nearest saloon and
bought them many drinks. It was during this portion of the proceedings
that Curly Bill, who had led the ambushing-party, learned whom the
prisoners were seeking. He brought the news to John Ringo.
"So it's me they're after," the outlaw said.
"And it looks," said Curly Bill, "like Johnny Behan is in a mighty
tight box, the way things has turned out."
Knowing the grudge which his friend held against the sheriff, he was
not surprised to see John Ringo's face grow darker and the light in
his eyes more devilish.
"I tell you what," the latter bade him after some moments of thinking.
"You keep those fellows here to-night. Don't let one of them leave
Charleston."
And Curly Bill departed to see that the command was obeyed. They say
that the celebration which attended the holding of the captives was
one of the large events in the tumultuous history of the cow-town by
the San Pedro, and those who witnessed it are unanimous in stating
that the Tombstone contingent upheld the reputation of their camp when
it came to whisky-drinking. It was late the next day before the last
of them rode back through the foot-hills of the Mule Mountains to
their homes. But all of this is apart from the story.
The point is that John Ringo saddled up that very night and journeyed
to Tombstone, where he sought out young Billy Breckenbridge.
"Heard there was some trouble about my being turned loose," he
announced when he had roused the deputy from his slumbers, "and I
didn't know but what maybe you'd lose your job if Johnny Behan got
turned out of office."
Wherefore it came about that when court convened in the morning and
the matter of John Ringo's bail was brought up the prisoner was
produced to the utter astonishment of all concerned--except himself
and the man who had allowed him to recover his confiscated revolvers.
Within the hour John Ringo walked out of the court-house under bond to
insure his appearance at the trial. And no one expected the case to
come to anything. In short, the situation was unchanged, and the head
men of the reform movement settled down to bide their opportunity of
killing off the bigger desperadoes, which was apparently the only way
of settling the issue.
So John Ringo went his way, a marked man, and many a trigger-finger
itched when he appeared in Tombstone; many a bold spirit longed to
take a shot at him. But the knowledge of his deadliness kept him from
being made a target.
He went his way, and it was a bad way. Dark deeds piled up to fill the
debit pages of his life's ledger.
If he was influenced by those letters, which came regularly to remind
him of gentle womanhood disgraced by his wild career, it was only to
make him drink harder. And the more he drank the blacker his mood
became. Those who rode with him have said so. A bad man, there is no
doubt about it; and big in his badness, which made it all the worse.
There came a blazing day in the late summer, one of those days when
the Arizona sun flays the wide, arid valleys without surcease, when
the naked rock on the mountain heights is cloaked in trembling
heat-waves and the rattlesnakes seek the darkest crevices among the
cliffs. Deputy Sheriff Breckenbridge on his way back to Tombstone from
some errand in the eastern end of the county was riding through Middle
Pass in the Dragoons.
As he came forth against the flaring sky-line at the summit he saw a
rider coming toward him from the west. He turned to one side where the
lay of the land gave him a vantage-point, loosened his revolver in its
holster, and awaited the traveler's closer approach.
Some moments passed; the pony drew nearer, and the deputy withdrew the
hand which was resting on his weapon's butt. His face relaxed.
"Hello there, John," he called, and Ringo rode up to him in silence.
"Hot day," Breckenbridge announced cheerfully.
The desperado swore at the sun in the drawling monotone wherein your
artist at profanity intones his curses when he means them. His face
was a good shade darker than usual; his eyes were satanic. He reached
to his hip and brought forth a flask of whisky.
"Have a drink." He uttered it rather as a demand than an offer.
The deputy took the bottle and made pretense of swallowing some of the
lukewarm liquor. The outlaw laughed sourly, snatched it from him, and
drained it.
"Got another quart," he announced as he flung the empty flask against
a boulder.
"Better hit it mighty light," Breckenbridge advised. "The sun's bad
when you get down there in the valley."
He waved his hand toward the wide flat lands which lay shimmering like
an enormous lake a thousand feet below them. Ringo raised his somber
face toward the blazing heavens and launched another volley of curses
upon them before he rode away. And that was the last time young
Breckenbridge saw him alive.
The thing which took place afterward no man beheld save John Ringo,
and his lips were sealed for all time when others came upon him. But
the desert holds tracks well, and the men of southeastern Arizona were
able to read trails as you or I would read plain print. So they picked
the details of that final chapter from the hot sands of the Sulphur
Springs Valley as they are set down here.
Morning was drawing on toward noon when John Ringo's pony bore him
downward from the living granite pinnacles to the glaring plain. Noon
was passing as he jogged onward across the Sulphur Springs Valley.
To this day, when ranchers have drawn floods of limpid water from the
bowels of the earth, the place sees long periods whose heat is
punishing. At that time the whole land was a desert; a flat floor,
patched in spots by alkali deposits, girded round by steep-walled
mountain ranges. Cacti grew there, and huge tufts of Spanish
bayonets.
John Ringo's pony jogged on and on; the fine dust rose from its hoofs,
surrounding animal and rider like a moving wraith of fog, settling
down upon their sweating skins in a whitish-gray film which stung like
fire. Before them the mirage wavered like an enormous, vague tapestry
stirring in a breeze.
But of breeze there was none, nor was there any sign of water save
that phantom of a lake--dead now for ages--which kept its distance
always ahead. And the sun climbed higher; its scourgings grew ever
fiercer.
Scourged also by thoughts and memories which he had never revealed to
men--save only as he had hinted at them on that other afternoon to
Breckenbridge--the bad man drank the lukewarm whisky as he rode. And
the liquor did its work until when he had gone two hours from the foot
of the pass he realized that it was overcoming him.
He drew rein, dismounted, and sought the shade of a clump of
soto-bushes. But before he flung himself upon the baking sands he took
off his boots and, tying their tops together, hung them over his
saddle-horn. The pony he turned loose with the reins down cow-boy
fashion. After which he yielded to the whisky and knew no more.
The sun was still glaring in the cloudless sky when he came back to
his senses; and the torture of that thirst which comes after heavy
drinking was upon him. He got to his feet. The pony had gone.
Afterward the searchers tracked the animal to the Sulphur Springs
ranch, where it had come with the boots hanging to the saddle-horn.
John Ringo was alone, a speck in the middle of the shimmering plain,
and there was no water for miles. He started walking eastward toward
the pass which leads over into the San Simon. The cactus did its work;
the alkali sands scalded his bleeding feet; he took off his shirt,
tore it into strips and bound them round his ankles for footgear; and
when the strips were cut through he used his undershirt, until finally
he walked barefooted and the blood-drops showed beside his tracks.
Toward the end the same blindness which comes to thirst-maddened
cattle seized upon him. When they found him he was within a stone's
throw of water and the sound of the stream must have been in his ears,
for his footprints showed where he had circled and zigzagged, striving
to reach the spot whence that limpid murmuring came. Among the
cartridges in his belt were two whose lead was deeply dented by his
teeth as he chewed upon them in the vain hope of moistening his lips.
He was seated on a boulder between two dwarf live-oaks and his big
forty-five revolver lay beside him, with one empty shell. The
bullet-hole was fairly between his eyes, all powder-marked.
And so they knew just how he died; and young Billy Breckenbridge, who
came over into no-man's-land a day or two later, was able to piece out
the story by backtracking along that trail through the sands; able to
read those signs from the foot of the Dragoons on across the valley;
and able also--because he had seen that letter--to realize the torture
of memories which had come along with the torture of thirst to goad
John Ringo on to self-destruction.
In this manner it came about that the outlaws of Cochise County lost
their leader; and now that the man of brains was gone it became
possible for events to shape up, as they did soon afterward, toward
the big Earp-Clanton gun-fight.
The old-timers are unanimous in saying that had John Ringo been alive
that battle wherein the leaders of the Earp faction slew several of
the biggest desperadoes would never have taken place as it did. The
forces would have been differently disposed than they were on that
bloody morning when Billy Clanton and the McLowery boys died in
Tombstone's street by the O.K. corral; the chances are the victory
would have gone the other way. To this day they tell how Ringo's
passing was the beginning of the end; how Curly Bill vanished soon
afterward; how the stage-robbers and rustlers became disorganized and
were no longer any match for the law-and-order faction.
And when the old-timers, who witnessed these wild doings, recount the
history of the wind-up, laying the cause as has been stated, they give
the credit to the man whom they believe entitled to it; which brings
us back to Buckskin Frank.
On that blazing day when John Ringo rode out into no-man's-land
Buckskin Frank was away from Tombstone. And this time there were more
urgent reasons for his departure from the camp than the mere seeking
after plunder. He was, as has been said, a bad man; a bad man of the
type who can kill from in front but relishes best that opportunity
which offers the back of his enemy as a target.
During the long period while the outlaws were swaggering down
Tombstone's streets, defying the leaders of the law-and-order
movement, the two-gun man managed to cling to the good graces of the
Earp faction; just as in these days you may have seen a crooked
ward-heeler hanging to the skirts of a good-government crusade. Nobody
loved him, but there were those who thought he might be useful. He
traded on their names and--when there was dirty business to be done,
as there always has been since politics began--he was there to do it.
Also he was right there to ask favors in return.
So it came that the knowledge of his killings spread abroad; men told
how he had slain one victim who was drinking in a dance-hall when the
bullet entered his back; how another had fallen, shot from behind in a
dark alley. But prosecutions never followed, and the buckskin-clad
figure with its bad, handsome face became a sinister object in
Tombstone's streets.
However, a man can not keep up this sort of thing forever without
getting an ill name, and the time came when Buckskin Frank was
beginning to be a source of embarrassment to those who had thus far
tolerated him. On top of which his prestige was suddenly threatened.
There was, in the camp, a fellow by the name of Nigger Jim, one of
those black negroes whose blood is undiluted by the white man's; a
former slave; more than six feet tall and--to this very day--as
straight as a ramrod. He had fought Apaches and on more than one
occasion held his own against outlaws; and the early settlers, of whom
he was one, treated him as an equal.
This Nigger Jim had staked a silver claim over Contention way, and one
day Buckskin Frank jumped the property. The owner heard that the bad
man had put up new location notices in place of his own and hastened
to the place to investigate. He found Frank camped on the ground, well
armed and ready to maintain possession.
What followed does not amount to much when it comes to action with
which to adorn a tale.
Nigger Jim walked up to the bad man, his hand on his revolver-butt.
The luck which sometimes looks out for the righteous party in a
quarrel was with him to the extent of seeing to it that the meeting
took place out in the open where there was no chance for ambush.
The break was even. And the black man was determined to see the issue
through, willing to abide by whatever consequences might follow.
Moreover he had earned his reputation with a six-shooter. So, as has
been said, he came walking up to Buckskin Frank--from in front.
And Buckskin Frank allowed him to approach until the two stood facing
each other out there among the rocks and Spanish bayonets. Then the
two-gun man spoke, holding forth his right hand.
"I heard some parties were jumping your claim, Jim," said he, "and,
being near, I thought I'd come over and look out for you."
"Thanky," said Nigger Jim, but made no offer to take the extended
hand; nor did he turn his back upon the bad man, who evidently did not
think the claim worth the hazards of an honest gun-fight, for he left
soon afterward.
In Tombstone Nigger Jim kept silent regarding the incident, but the
news leaked out within a week or two when Buckskin Frank tried to slay
the black man from behind and was prevented by a woman who threw her
arms over him and held him until the prospective victim turned his
head and took in the situation. With the spread of the story Frank saw
that Tombstone was no place for him at present and he left the camp.
Whereby it happened that he was over in the San Simon on that hot day
when John Ringo came across the Dragoon Mountains. And on the morning
when the body was discovered he was riding through the pass on some
dubious errand or other.
News traveled slowly in those days. Frequently it came to its
destination sadly garbled. On this occasion young Billy Breckenbridge
was the only man who brought the facts back to Tombstone; and he
arrived there long after Buckskin Frank.
For the two-gun man had seen his opportunity to make men forget that
incident wherein he had figured so poorly against Nigger Jim, and had
spurred his pony all the way to the county seat, where he told his
story--how he had seen the desperado sitting under the dwarf
live-oaks, had stalked him as a man stalks big game, and shot him
through the head. And just to give his tale versimilitude he said he
had done the killing from behind.
The times were brisk; one shooting came so fast on the heels of its
predecessor that every affair in its turn swiftly passed from public
attention. By the time that Deputy Sheriff Breckenbridge arrived with
the facts people were turning their minds to the big Benson stage
hold-up. And so Buckskin Frank's story lived, and to this day in
speaking of that bad man the old-timers give him grudging credit for
having slain the big "He Wolf."