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The bearer of the weapon uttered a single word, a word which is not found in any dictionary although it has come down from the time when the first Englishman took to the highway to seek his daily meat.

“Hanzup!”

They obeyed and the ensuing silence was broken by the pleasant chink of money as John Ringo’s left hand raked the winnings into his pocket. There was no pursuit as he rode away down Galeyville’s main street; but he spurred his pony hard, for self-righteousness was boiling within him and he had to find relief some way.

“Damn bunch of robbers!” he told the horse.

Ordinarily the incident would have closed then and there; but fate so willed it that Kettle-Belly Johnson came to Tombstone a few days later and voiced his plaint in Bob Hatch’s saloon, where he found himself suddenly surrounded by sympathizers. He did not know–and if he had he would not have cared one way or the other–that the new law-and-order party had grown to a point where it wanted to get action in the courts; that its members were looking for an opportunity to swear out a warrant against some of the bigger outlaws in order to “show up” Johnny Behan, who–so men said–was unwilling to arrest any of the cow-boy faction. The grand jury was in session; they got Kettle-Belly Johnson sober enough to face star-chamber inquisition and led him to the court-house in the morning.

So it came that young Billy Breckenbridge, whose business was serving warrants and not bothering over the whys and wherefores of their issuance, knocked at the door of John Ringo’s cabin in Galeyville a few days later; and then, being a prudent man, stepped to one side where he would be beyond the zone of fire.

“Got a warrant for you,” he announced when the desperado had demanded to know who was there. “Highway robbery.”

There was a bit of parleying through the closed door and finally–

“Man by the name of Johnson is the complaining witness,” young Breckenbridge elucidated. “According to what I hear, the play came up along of a poker game.”

John Ringo swore lightly.

“Come in,” he bade the deputy. “I’ll get my clothes on in a minute.”

He laughed sourly as he was pulling on his boots some moments later.

“Looks as if the grand jury’s hard up for something to do,” he observed.

He rose and belted on his gun, a proceeding about which his custodian, being unburdened with any desire to burn powder over such hair-splitting technicalities as a man’s right to wear weapons on his way to jail, made no comment.

“We’ll go down the street,” the prisoner suggested as they were leaving the cabin, “and I’ll fix it up to get bail.”

But the accommodating cattle-buyer who arranged such matters for the bigger outlaws was out of town and would not be back until evening. Breckenbridge’s horse was jaded, and if he wanted to reach Tombstone in good time he should be setting forth at once.

“You go ahead,” John Ringo bade him. “I’ll catch up with you before you pass Sulphur Springs ranch.”

Those were queer days, and if you judge things from our twentieth-century point of view you will probably find yourself bewildered.

John Ringo was known to be a cattle-rustler, stage-robber, and–according to the law–a murderer. And Breckenbridge, whose duty it was to enforce the statutes, set out for the county seat alone on the strength of that promise. Nor was he in the least surprised when his prisoner, who had ridden all night to make good his word, overtook him in the middle of the valley.

Queer days indeed! And the threads of some men’s lives were sadly tangled. Such desperadoes as Curly Bill were easy enough to read; just rough-and-tumble cow-boys who had taken to whisky and bad company. But behind the somber mask of John Ringo’s face there lurked a hidden history; something was there which he did not choose to reveal to the rest of the world.