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He looked across the street at the members of the Earp party, who were regarding the desperadoes in ominous silence. The idea grew more powerful, until it owned him. He stepped down from the sidewalk’s edge into the roadway, crossed it, and came to a halt within a few feet of his enemies. Addressing Wyatt Earp by name–so goes the story–

“This sort of thing,” John Ringo said, “has been going on for a long time now. Pretty soon there’s bound to be a big killing if it keeps up. Now I’ve got a proposition. You, or Doc Holliday if you’d rather have him, step into the street here with me, and the two of us will shoot it out, and, if you’re game, why we’ll do it holding the opposite corner of a handkerchief in our teeth. I give my word, my gang will stand by the result.”

Wyatt Earp made no answer. What temptation that offer held to him one can judge only by the fact that he was a bold man who had a long record of large deeds to his credit. But also he was the recognized head of a movement for law and order, a movement which had already stopped indiscriminate street-shooting in Tombstone; just at this time he was being groomed in certain quarters as a candidate for sheriff, and the banner of his party was emblazoned with the word Reform.

It is easy enough to see how John Ringo was behind the times when he made that proposition on Tombstone’s main street. It is easy also to imagine his feelings when without a word by way of answer or acknowledgment the members of the Earp faction stood regarding him. He turned his back upon them and he recrossed the street, and when he had gained the opposite sidewalk they were gone within Bob Hatch’s saloon.

Johnny Behan was sheriff then, politically an enemy of the Earps and politically friendly to the outlaws. He was sitting in his office with young William Breckenbridge, his diplomatic deputy, when some one brought word 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.