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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. Deputy Sheriff Breckenbridge on his way back to Tombstone from some errand in the eastern end of the county was riding through Middle Pass in the Dragoons.

As he came forth against the flaring sky-line at the summit he saw a rider coming toward him from the west. He turned to one side where the lay of the land gave him a vantage-point, loosened his revolver in its holster, and awaited the traveler’s closer approach.

Some moments passed; the pony drew nearer, and the deputy withdrew the hand which was resting on his weapon’s butt. His face relaxed.

“Hello there, John,” he called, and Ringo rode up to him in silence. “Hot day,” Breckenbridge announced cheerfully.

The desperado swore at the sun in the drawling monotone wherein your artist at profanity intones his curses when he means them. His face was a good shade darker than usual; his eyes were satanic. He reached to his hip and brought forth a flask of whisky.

“Have a drink.” He uttered it rather as a demand than an offer.

The deputy took the bottle and made pretense of swallowing some of the lukewarm liquor. The outlaw laughed sourly, snatched it from him, and drained it.

“Got another quart,” he announced as he flung the empty flask against a boulder.

“Better hit it mighty light,” Breckenbridge advised. “The sun’s bad when you get down there in the valley.”

He waved his hand toward the wide flat lands which lay shimmering like an enormous lake a thousand feet below them. Ringo raised his somber face toward the blazing heavens and launched another volley of curses upon them before he rode away. And that was the last time young Breckenbridge saw him alive.

The thing which took place afterward no man beheld save John Ringo, and his lips were sealed for all time when others came upon him. But the desert holds tracks well, and the men of southeastern Arizona were able to read trails as you or I would read plain print. So they picked the details of that final chapter from the hot sands of the Sulphur Springs Valley as they are set down here.

Morning was drawing on toward noon when John Ringo’s pony bore him downward from the living granite pinnacles to the glaring plain. Noon was passing as he jogged onward across the Sulphur Springs Valley.

To this day, when ranchers have drawn floods of limpid water from the bowels of the earth, the place sees long periods whose heat is punishing. At that time the whole land was a desert; a flat floor, patched in spots by alkali deposits, girded round by steep-walled mountain ranges. Cacti grew there, and huge tufts of Spanish bayonets.