The Mexican
answered. The pair shook hands. When they had talked for some moments,
Curly Bill turned and rode back up the canyon beside the smuggler. The
pack-train followed and the men on the flanks eased their rifles back
into the sheaths. They traveled until the lead mule had passed the
last hidden rustler.

Curly Bill's right hand swept to his revolver holster and came on
upward clutching the weapon's butt. The movement was so quick that
before those who were looking at him really grasped its meaning the
hot rocks were bandying echoes of the report. The Mexican was sliding
from his saddle, quite dead. The outlaw was spurring his pony up the
mountain-side.

Now the outriders dragged their rifles from the sheaths but while they
were seeking to line their sights on the murderer the rustlers opened
fire on them. Those cow-thieves of the Animas were good shots; the
range was brief. The flat explosions of the Winchesters, the scuffling
of hoofs, the voices of dark-skinned riders calling upon their saints
as they pitched forward from their frenzied horses, dying; the
squealing of a hit burro; these things the arid cliffs heard and
repeated to one another. And then the rat-tat-tat of hoofbeats as the
surviving smugglers fled westward.

That is the way the rustlers told the story in Galeyville amid grim
laughter; and the voices of the narrators were raised to carry
above the staccato pounding of the painos, the scuffling of boot
heels on the dance-hall floors, the shrill mirthless outcries of
rouge-bedizened women, and the resonant slapping of dobie dollars
on the unpainted pine bars. Now and again the recitals were
interrupted by the roaring of forty-five revolvers as the more
fervid celebrants showed their expertness at marksmanship by shooting
the French heels from the shoes of the dance-hall girls.

John Ringo, the king of the outlaws, got wind of what was going on and
rode over from Tombstone, silent as usual, and with that saturninity
of expression which grew darker as the whisky began to work within
him. He took no part in the celebration but sat through one day and
two blazing nights, dumbly sardonic, at a round table. Save for his
dark countenance, the faces which ringed that table were changing
constantly. Men came noisily, sat down for a time, and departed at
length in chastened silence as the poker-game which he had organized
went on and on--until a large share of those dobie dollars passed unto
him. Then,