“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. The erstwhile diplomat made the best of a bad matter and rode away with his three companions. It was evening when they left Tombstone and the Chandler ranch lay several hours distant. Those who saw them leave the camp spread the news. And now the old-timers settled down, certain that when Billy Breckenbridge returned they were going to know just what he was made of.
He came back the next evening, riding alongside a lumber-wagon. In those days the mining companies maintained a hospital at the edge of the town. The vehicle made one stop at this institution and unloaded three of its occupants. It made a second stop before the establishment of a local undertaker, where two bodies were removed. And then young Breckenbridge rode on alone to the court-house. Two outlaws and four men in the deputy sheriff’s party makes six altogether. Out of the six he was the only one left on his feet.
“And the hull thing didn’t last five minutes,” said “Bull” Lewis, the driver of the wagon. “I was asleep in the ranch-house along with these two outlaws when some one knocked on the door. Right away I heard a shot in the next room and I busted out with my hands up and yelling that I was a nootral. Before I’d gone twenty yards Hunt and Grounds had killed two of the posse and by the time I was over that rise behind the house they’d laid out the other. And then I watched this little deputy get the two of them.
“He was out in the open and they were inside, and both of ’em were sure burnin’ powder mighty fast. But he waited his chance and tore the top of Grounds’s 131 head off with a charge of buckshot when he stepped to the door to get a better shot. And a second or two later Zwing Hunt came out of the cabin, firing as he ran. The little fellow dropped him with a bullet from his forty-five before he’d come more ’n a half a dozen jumps.”
But Breckenbridge was a long way from being jubilant when Johnny Behan and the under-sheriff congratulated him on his behavior.
“If you hadn’t wished those three fellows on me I’d have brought both these boys back without firing a shot,” he told the under-sheriff. “The blamed posse made such a noise coming up to the cabin that the two of ’em thought ’t was a lynching-party and opened fire on us. Yes, sir. I could have talked them into coming––if I’d only been alone.”
And so when it did finally come to the show-down all hands learned of just what material young Breckenbridge was made.