Travel was slow in those days; accommodations were few and far between. Outlaw and deputy jogged down the long, glaring flats enshrouded in the dust-fog which rose from their ponies’ hoofs; mile after mile of weary riding under a scorching sun. They climbed by winding trails through narrow cañons where the heat-waves jigged endlessly among the naked rocks. They camped by lonely water-holes and shared each other’s blankets under the big yellow stars.
By day they watched the sky-line seeking the slightest sign of moving forms; by night they kept their weapons within easy reach and slept lightly, awakening to the smallest sound. They scanned the earth for tracks and, when they found them, read them with the suspicion born of knowledge of the country’s savagery.
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.
And as the days wore on, each with its own share of mutual hardship to bring these two to closer companionship, they began, as men will under such circumstances, to unfold their separate natures. Under the long trail’s stern necessity they bared to each other those traits which would have remained hidden during years of acquaintance among a city’s tight-walled streets.
A carelessly spoken word dropped at hot noontide when the water in the canteens had given out; a sincere oath, uttered by the fire at supper-time; a long, drowsy conversation as they lay in their blankets with the tang of the night breeze in their nostrils, gazing up at the splendor of the flaming stars; until they knew each other man to man––and Curly Bill began to feel something like devotion to his purposeful young companion. Thenceforth he talked freely of his deeds and misdeeds.
“Only one man that ever got the drop on me,” the outlaw said one evening when they were lying on their blankets, enjoying the long inhalations from their after-supper cigarettes, “and that was ol’ Jim Burnett over in Charleston, two years ago.”
He paused a moment to roll another smoke. A coyote clamored shrilly beyond the next rise; a horse blew luxuriously feeding in the bunch-grass. Curly Bill launched into his tale.
“He was justice of the peace and used to hold co’t in those days whenever he’d run on to a man he wanted. Always packed a double-barrel shotgun and he’d usually managed to throw it down on a fellow while he tried the case and named the fine.
“Well, me and some of the boys was in town this time and things was slack. Come a Sunday evenin’ and I heard how some married folks had started up a church. I hadn’t been inside of one since I could remember and we all made up our minds to go and see what it was like.