egion 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