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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?"
And so they knew just how he died; and young Billy Breckenbridge, who came over into no-man's-land a day or two later, was able to piece out the story by backtracking along that trail through the sands; able to read those signs from the foot of the Dragoons on across the valley; and able also because he had seen that letter to realize the torture of memories which had come along with the torture of thirst to goad John Ringo on to self-destruction.
John Ringo was alone, a speck in the middle of the shimmering plain, and there was no water for miles. He started walking eastward toward the pass which leads over into the San Simon.
The outlaw leaders were dead: John Ringo, Curly Bill, the Clantons, and others who had swaggered where they willed, had met violent ends. With their passing the courts were trying to administer the statutes, but the courts were impotent. The statutes were mere printed words.
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.
Johnny Behind the Deuce was tried before the district court, and as was to be expected he was acquitted. Time went on and dissensions came among the followers of the Earp brothers. Curly Bill and John Ringo were among the first to fall out with the leaders, and they took the path of previous exiles to Charleston.
There are other of these delightful crabs or apples to be enjoyed Ringo, Kaido, Toringo nearly all of Japanese origin, all of distinct beauty, and all continuing that beauty in handsome but inedible fruits that hang most of the summer.
The under-sheriff detailed Breckenbridge on the case and drafted a posse of three men to help him. "No, sir," the former said when the young deputy remonstrated against the presence of these aides. "This ain't a case of talking John Ringo into coming over and putting up a bond. This here's murder and those lads are going to show fight." Orders were orders; there was no use arguing further.
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.
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.
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