at 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. Deput