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Updated: May 31, 2025
As the sun set blood red, a thick white fog crept westward, and the miserable fever-stricken wretches that lay gasping and dying on the decks of the transport Breckenbridge knew that another day of calm and horror waited them with the coming of the dawn on the morrow.
And sometimes other riders came toward them out of the desert to pass on and to vanish in the hazy distance; men who spoke but few words and watched the right hands of the two riders as they talked. But none attacked them or made a show toward hostility. Now and again the pair stopped at a ranch-house or a mine where Breckenbridge added to the county's money in his saddle-bags.
Now all hands settled down to make a long race of it, and it was not until he was climbing the first slopes toward South Pass in the Dragoon Mountains that Breckenbridge looked back for the last time and saw the shapes of those six horsemen diminishing in the distance as they jogged back toward the McLowery ranch.
When Breckenbridge had complied with the last part of the invitation he found the bare room filled with men. The McLowery boys were there, two of them, and the Clantons. Half a dozen other outlaws were lounging about, and Curly Bill himself was looking none too pleasant as he nodded to the visitor.
Some men might have felt uneasy in dropping off to sleep under the circumstances, but Breckenbridge understood his hosts well enough to be certain that, so long as he was on the ranch, the sacred rites of hospitality were going to be observed. So he closed his eyes and the last thing he heard was the snoring of outlaws and murderers.
At last the chase was abandoned, and my father wrote officially to Sydney and said that 'Thomas May, No. 3614, Breckenbridge, was supposed to have either died of starvation in the bush or have been killed by the natives. My mother, of course, thought she knew better.
"'Twas when I shot that cup from Shorty's hand." He shrugged his big shoulders and, with a grin "Plenty more good ponies in the valley and the nights are moonlight now." When they were back facing the battered bar young Breckenbridge explained, his business in no-man's-land. "And this end of the county," he wound up, "is sort of rough.
The boys of whom Curly Bill had spoken were there all right, ten of them, and none of the number but was known at the time over in Tombstone either as a rustler or a stage-robber. His guide introduced Breckenbridge with the usual terseness of such ceremonies among his kind.
Breckenbridge had been out of sight behind the wagons just a little too long to suit them and they were cutting in toward the road now at top speed. From the beginning it was a stern chase and they had only one hope of winning. Nothing less swift than a bullet could ever catch that thoroughbred. They pulled up at once and began shooting.
Among those who were sitting back and waiting for the big show-down there was a little stir of anticipation when young Breckenbridge rode forth armed with a warrant for John Ringo. For Ringo was a bad man of larger caliber than even Curly Bill. He was the brains of the outlaws, and the warrant charged highway robbery.
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