d that John Ringo had made a gun-play and was holding down
the main street with drawn revolvers.

"Go and fetch him in," the sheriff bade Breckenbridge.

The latter found the outlaw pacing up and down before the Grand
Central Hotel after the fashion of the cow-boy who has shot up a
saloon and driven all hands out of the place. The two had met months
before when the deputy was out in the eastern part of the county
collecting taxes with Curly Bill as his guide and protector.

"What's up?" the youthful officer demanded, and John Ringo recited his
version of the affair.

"Well," the other told him when he had finished, "the sheriff wants to
see you."

The desperado shrugged his shoulders, but went along quietly enough;
bail was easy to arrange in those days, and this was not a serious
matter.

In his office Johnny Behan heard the tale and frowned. There were
times when his cow-boy constituents became a source of embarrassment
to him; this was one of them.

"Guess you'll have to turn over those guns of yours," he bade the
prisoner.

Ringo handed the revolvers to him, and he put them into a desk drawer.
There followed several moments of awkward silence. At length Johnny
Behan arose and started to leave the room.

"Going to lock me up?" Ringo asked. "I'd like to fix it to get bail,
you know."

"No charge against you," the sheriff said in the doorway. "You can go
back downtown whenever you want to."

With which he passed out into the corridor and forgot all about the
matter. In the office Ringo stood scowling at the deputy.

"That's plain murder," he said at length. "Before I get a block away
from here without my guns those coyotes will kill me."

Breckenbridge had been doing some thinking on his own account during
the last few moments, and he realized the justice of this argument.
But the law was the law, and the sheriff was boss. It was not his
business to interfere. He looked Ringo in the eyes, got up from his
chair, opened the desk drawer--and left the room. And when he came
back the guns and their owner had departed.

In itself the incident wasn't much to talk about. In those times all
sorts of things were being done according to different standards from
those which rule now. But it brought its consequences.

The days went by. In Tombstone politics seethed; the law-and-order
party was making things hot for Johnny Behan, whose sympathies with
the cow-boys gave him the support of the desperadoes, a suppor