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 152 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.