When the West Was Young Part 15

"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 Pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed; the pony drew nearer, and the deputy withdrew the hand which was resting on his weapon's b.u.t.t. His face relaxed.

"h.e.l.lo 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 pa.s.sing 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 punis.h.i.+ng. 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 pa.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 s.h.i.+mmering plain, and there was no water for miles. He started walking eastward toward the pa.s.s which leads over into the San Simon. The cactus did its work; the alkali sands scalded his bleeding feet; he took off his s.h.i.+rt, tore it into strips and bound them round his ankles for footgear; and when the strips were cut through he used his unders.h.i.+rt, 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sing 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 ent.i.tled 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. n.o.body 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 embarra.s.sment 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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.

n.i.g.g.e.r Jim walked up to the bad man, his hand on his revolver-b.u.t.t.

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.