VII
Billy Breakenridge Makes Good
William M. Breakenridge had come to Tombstone half tenderfoot. When Sheriff Behan appointed him a deputy, folks in Tombstone had misgivings. Everybody liked Billy Breakenridge. He was a dapper, smiling, handsome young fellow, who looked upon the world with a pair of the friendliest eyes in it. He carried a six-shooter and a rifle, and was pretty expert with both, but his most effective weapon was his friendliness. The town people seemed to think it required more nerve than he possessed to ride deputy sheriff in that rough country. “He’ll never make good”—that was their prediction. Billy Breakenridge’s official career at the outset seemed darkened by the ominous shadow of his smile. But what Tombstone prophets failed to take into consideration was the daredevil courage behind the smile.
“Billy,” said Sheriff Behan one day, “I want you to go over into the San Simon and collect the taxes. You’ll have to make your own assessments and collect the money on the spot. That’s our way in Cochise County. When can you start?”
“Just as soon as I can saddle up,” replied Deputy Breakenridge without blinking an eye.
The sheriff had given his order as if he were telling the young deputy to drop into the Can Can for a dish of corned beef and cabbage. But Billy Breakenridge was in no way deceived. He knew all about the dangers he had to face. The San Simon was a no-man’s land, with Curly Bill its overlord and Galeyville its capital. No taxes had ever been collected there, for the reason that no sheriff’s deputies, single-handed or in posses, had ever had the nerve to invade this retreat of outlaws and murderers. Sheriff Behan had failed to mention these few simple facts, but Billy Breakenridge made up his mind that he would bring those taxes back in his saddlebags or come back himself nailed in a pine box.
He rode out of Tombstone alone, looking as unperturbed as if he were on his way to serve an innocuous subpoena. But he was thinking hard. If the people of the San Simon refused to pay their taxes, how was he going to make them pay? Suppose he succeeded in collecting a few dollars, how far would he ride before a gang of cutthroats robbed him? These questions were only some of the perplexing angles.
As he looked across Sulphur Springs Valley from the summit of the Dragoons, a big idea came to him. It was a daring idea, perhaps desperate and a little hopeless. But it was worth trying. By jingo, if he could only put it over! He headed straight for Galeyville.
The mining town on Turkey Creek was at the peak of its boom. His big idea was dependent on a certain man, and when he reached Galeyville he set out at once to find him. He stepped into a saloon. Some rough-looking customers were absorbed in a poker game; five or six cowboys were shooting pool. On a table a burly fellow with curly black hair and round, swarthy face lay sprawled, his head propped by his elbow. He seemed in philosophic meditation. Deputy Breakenridge had never seen him before, but it came to him in a subconscious flash—that this man was the fellow he was looking for.
Just then the saloon-keeper came in carrying a pail of water. He dipped up some water in a tin cup and laughed as he waved the cup aloft.
“Here’s fun, boys,” he shouted.
The burly man on the table stirred indolently, drew his six-shooter, and, without apparent aim, shot the tin cup out of the saloon-keeper’s hand.
“You’ll git away with no sech low-down skullduggery as drinkin’ water,” he drawled.
Deputy Breakenridge required no further enlightenment. He stepped up to the six-shooter adept.
“Curly Bill,” he said, “I want to introduce myself to you. Sheriff Behan has sent me over to the San Simon to collect the taxes, and I want you to help me do the job.”
That was Deputy Billy Breakenridge’s big idea.
Curly Bill looked for a moment flabbergasted. Soon he began to smile. Then he laughed. At last he roared.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’ve got guts, young feller. But, by gosh, I’ll do it. Come on and take a drink. Me and you are deputy sheriffs together from right now.”
Curly Bill thumped on the bar.
“Line up, boys,” he called out. “Nominate yer pizen. I’m gittin’ into politics. Here’s a young he-wolf from Johnny Behan’s office, and me and him are goin’ to collect the taxes in this end of the county. Ef any gent holds out a cent on us, I’ll shoot him full of holes, and don’t you fergit it.”
For weeks the chief of the outlaws and the young deputy sheriff rode together from one end of the San Simon to the other. They shared crusts beside camp fires, they drank from the same canteen, they exchanged confidences as they lay on their blankets side by side under the stars, and they got on terms of intimate friendship. And they collected the taxes. Nobody said a bitter word or made a hostile gesture. Everybody paid with a smile. Curly Bill, sitting in his saddle with rifle and six-shooter, was better than a Fourth of July oration in convincing the people of the importance of fulfilling the obligations of good citizenship.
Deputy Breakenridge’s saddlebags were bulging with tax money when he and Curly Bill arrived at the crest of the Dragoons. Tombstone was in sight.
“I reckon I’ll be turnin’ back here,” said Curly Bill. “Ain’t no danger of yer gittin’ robbed now. Ef I can ever do anything more fer you, let me know. So long.”
So Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge made good, received his accolade as a hero, and assumed an honoured place at the Round Table of Tombstone’s knighthood.
Deputy Breakenridge, sitting on his horse in the darkness, lifted a loud halloo. The door of the McLowery ranch house at Soldier Holes in Sulphur Springs Valley opened warily; a kerosene lamp shone through the narrow slit. A challenging voice came from within. The deputy recognized that voice.
“It’s me, all right, Curly,” he said.
The big front room was filled with men—Frank and Tom McLowery, the Clanton boys, and half a dozen other members of the Curly Bill federation. Deputy Breakenridge was friendly with them all. But his cheery greeting met cool reception. The outlaws were suspicious of this unexpected night visit, and a little guilt perhaps was mingled with the suspicion. They sat puffing at cigarettes in sullen silence. The deputy’s attempts at familiar small talk fell flat. Curly Bill drew him into another room.
“What’s the trouble?” asked Curly.
“Well, it’s this way,” began Deputy Breakenridge. “A horse belonging to the superintendent of the Contention mines has been stolen; fine animal; racing blood; Kentucky bred. I’ve traced the horse here.”
Curly nodded.
“I’d like to find this horse.”
Again Curly nodded.
“And I’d like to take it back to Tombstone in the morning.”
“That all?” said Curly. “Well, I can’t see no speshul reason for givin’ up this hoss. What fer? A hoss thief is a business man. He aims to make money. No good hoss thief steals a hoss fer the fun of givin’ it back.”
“But,” argued Deputy Breakenridge, “Sheriff Behan is very anxious to recover this animal. It would set him in right with the Contention people, and they control a lot of votes. It might help put him over at the next election.”
Curly ruminated for a while.
“You’re invitin’ me to bite off a purty big chaw,” he said. “But, to help Johnny out, I reckon I’ll see what I kin do. But it’s goin’ to kick up a hell of a fuss.”
Deputy Breakenridge saw Curly Bill and Frank McLowery in the kitchen arguing by candlelight across a table. Curly talked coldly and with an air of decisiveness. McLowery looked ugly, scowling, shaking his head and snapping out his words viciously.
When bedtime came, Deputy Breakenridge curled up on some blankets on the floor and slept peacefully; the law of hospitality was sacred; an enemy would have been safe under the outlaws’ roof. After breakfast next morning, Frank McLowery touched him on the arm.
“You’ll find the horse you’re after,” said McLowery with a wry smile, “hitched out at the corral.”
Deputy Breakenridge saddled his own horse and, leading the stolen thoroughbred, set out on his return to Tombstone. He had not gone far when, off at the side of the road a half mile or so, he saw six outlaws on horseback. They were riding slowly, but this meant nothing unless confidence that they had him trapped. If he continued to follow the road, they would run into him on their angling course a mile or two farther on. He jogged along, pretending to have no suspicion of danger. But he knew he must do something pretty quickly if he was to escape. No law of hospitality would protect him now.
A wagon train coming over from the Chiricahuas turned into the trail a little ahead of him. The wagons, piled high with lumber, were almost broadside to the outlaws. He rode unhurriedly behind the train. But as soon as he had disappeared from the view of the outlaws, he was suddenly transformed into a dynamo. He dismounted. Keeping both his horses at a walk he performed the difficult task of transferring his saddle from his pony to the thoroughbred. Throwing his pony’s halter rope to a teamster and telling him to lead the animal to Tombstone, he sprang on the clean-limbed racer and took it on the run. He shot into the clear past the head of the wagon train, and the dumbfounded outlaws saw him flashing across the valley like an antelope.
Tricked but not yet defeated, the outlaws came thundering after him. As they saw the thoroughbred drawing rapidly away, bullets began to kick up dust around the deputy. Bending over in his saddle, he urged his horse to more desperate speed. The sound of the firing began to grow faint. As he climbed the southern slopes of the Dragoons, he looked back. The outlaws had given up the chase. They were riding slowly back to the McLowery ranch. He watched them until they disappeared in the distance in a dusty glare of sun.
When Deputy Breakenridge and Frank McLowery met on the street in Tombstone a week or so later, they greeted each other cordially. The affair of the stolen horse apparently was forgotten. Two good gamblers had played shrewd poker and the game was over. McLowery had lost. Billy Breakenridge had won. That was all.
Curly Bill’s friendship for Billy Breakenridge once came near costing the outlaw chief his life. Curly was carousing in Galeyville with some of his men, among whom was Jim Wallace. Wallace was a rough fellow himself and had been with the outlaws for five or six months. He was from the Pecos River country and was said formerly to have ridden with Billy the Kid, the famous New Mexico outlaw reputed to have killed twenty-one men when he was twenty-one years old. Deputy Breakenridge was in Galeyville on some civil business for Sheriff Behan. When he saw Breakenridge wearing his deputy’s star, Wallace made some slurring remark and drew his six-shooter. This threw Curly Bill into a fury, and he made Wallace apologize.
“No Lincoln County hoss thief kin come in here and abuse Breakenridge,” said Curly Bill. “Breakenridge is our deputy and he suits us.”
When a truce had been patched up, Curly, Wallace, and Breakenridge went into Phil McCarthy’s saloon where a band of cowboys was drinking. After a few rounds, Curly grew ugly. He pulled his gun from its holster.
“I reckon,” he said, glowering at Wallace, “I’ll jest kill you fer luck.”
The other boys interfered, and Wallace went across the street to a corral and saddled his pony. He brought the pony into the street in front of Babcock’s saloon. Standing behind his pony, Wallace was evidently waiting to kill Curly Bill. A henchman took word to Curly of these hostile preparations. Bursting out of McCarthy’s place, three fourths drunk and boiling with rage, Curly Bill caught sight of Wallace and, drawing his gun, started across the street toward him. Wallace rested his six-shooter coolly across his pony’s neck and fired. Curly Bill fell in the middle of the street with a bullet through his jaw. Wallace jumped on his pony, but the cowboys, pouring out of McCarthy’s, dragged him from the saddle and would have strung him up to the nearest live oak if it had not been for Harry Elliott, a Silver City lawyer, who managed to calm them. Then Wallace was taken before Justice Ellingwood and bound over. Curly Bill had a close call and was in bed for several weeks but he finally recovered. Wallace disappeared and was never tried.
The attempted robbery of the Charleston plant of the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company was a bunglingly murderous affair. Mr. Austin, mill manager, M. R. Peel, chief engineer, son of Judge B. L. Peel, George W. Cheney, and F. F. Hunt, assayer, were in the office at eight o’clock in the evening. Peel stood in front of a counter idly drawing a picture on a piece of paper. The others stood behind the counter watching him. Austin noticed the lever handle of the door turn.
“Well,” said he, “am I seeing things or are there ghosts about?”
As all four looked at the moving handle, a heavy rap, which might have been made with the butt of a gun, sounded on the door.
“Come in,” shouted Austin.
The door flew open. Two masked men entered with rifles. Without a word, one of them fired, killing Peel instantly. Austin, Hunt, and Cheney dodged below the counter as the bandit fired a second time, the bullet burying itself in the wall. Apparently seized with panic, the two intruders made no attempt at robbery, but rushed out and disappeared.
An alarm sounded by the mill whistle called Charleston citizens to the plant, but no trace of the bandits was found. Two rockets went up into the sky in the direction of Tombstone and were answered by a third in the direction of the Huachuca Mountains; the meaning of these signals was never solved. The two bandits, it was established later, were Zwing Hunt and Billy Grounds.
Late that same night, Hunt and Grounds arrived at the Stockton ranch near Antelope Springs nine miles southeast of Tombstone. The Stockton ranch, on the road between Tombstone and the Chiricahuas, was a favourite stopping place for the freighters hauling lumber and also for outlaws in their frequent trips between Tombstone and Galeyville. It was originally owned by Eugene Edmunds who, as one of the survivors of the Stockton Indian massacre, was known as Stockton Edmunds. It was now a dairy ranch owned by Jack Chandler. At the ranch were Bull Lewis, Jack Elliott, and a man named Caldwell. It was evident to these men that Hunt and Grounds were under great nervous tension. Keeping their horses saddled and bridled, the two outlaws went out on the hills the next morning and searched the country with field glasses.
“I’d rather see my grave than the inside of Yuma penitentiary,” Hunt said.
Hunt dispatched Elliott to Tombstone with a note to Jack Chandler asking for $750 which Chandler owed Hunt. With this money, the two outlaws proposed to escape from the country.
When Elliott presented the note to Chandler in Tombstone and told of the suspicious actions of the two outlaws at the ranch, Chandler laid the facts before Deputy Sheriff E. A. Harley, in charge of the sheriff’s office in the absence of Sheriff Behan. Harley at once organized a posse which he placed in command of Deputy Sheriff Breakenridge and which comprised County Jailer E. H. Allen and Deputy Sheriffs Jack Young and John A. Gillespie. Deputy Breakenridge protested.
“Let me go out to Chandler’s ranch alone,” argued Breakenridge. “I know Hunt and Grounds well, and I can persuade them to surrender without bloodshed. If I take a posse out there, there is going to be a fight and several men may be killed.”
But Harley was unconvinced.
“Friendship will cut no figure with those boys now,” he said. “They have committed a murder. They won’t submit peaceably. They know, if they give up, they must swing or go to Yuma. It would be foolish to go alone and try to argue with them. Go with a posse at your back and bring them in dead or alive.”
Deputy Breakenridge and the three others of the posse started from Tombstone for the Stockton ranch at one o’clock in the morning. A bloodless capture was still in Breakenridge’s mind. He planned to surround the place in the darkness and wait until morning, when he hoped to arrest the outlaws as they came outside to feed their horses or get wood for the breakfast fire. Near the ranch, the four posseman hitched their horses in the mesquite brush and closed in on foot. The first white streaks of dawn were showing above the distant Chiricahuas, and the ranch house stood dark and silent. Breakenridge posted Gillespie and Young behind a wood pile commanding the back door with strict instructions to remain in their hiding place until daylight. Breakenridge and Allen started for the front of the house to go into ambush beneath the low bank of Shoot-’Em-Up Creek that ran among oak trees past the front door.
But Breakenridge’s careful plans went quickly to smash in anticlimax when Gillespie disobeyed orders. Breakenridge and Allen had not reached the creek bank when Gillespie thumped loudly on the back door.
“Who’s there?” asked a startled voice inside.
“The sheriff,” thundered Gillespie. “Open the door.”
There was silence for an instant. Breakenridge and Allen sprang behind oak trees in front of the house. The back door flew open and from the cavernous darkness Hunt fired twice. Gillespie fell dead. Young dropped with a bullet through his thigh. At the same moment the front door was flung wide. Bull Lewis came marching out holding his hands above his head.
“Don’t shoot me,” he shouted. “I’ve done nothing.”
From behind him Grounds fired. The bullet struck Allen in the shoulder and knocked him down the creek embankment. Grounds’ second bullet peeled the bark from the tree behind which Breakenridge was standing. Breakenridge returned the fire and Grounds fell lifeless in the doorway.
Hunt darted out the back door, leaping over Gillespie’s body, crying to Grounds, “Come on, Billy.” As he ran up the creek over a bit of rising ground, he came out in momentary black relief against the white dawn in the eastern sky. Breakenridge and Allen, who had clambered back up the bank, both fired at him. One bullet—Breakenridge’s, it was believed—struck Hunt between the shoulder blades and passed through the lungs, bringing him down. But the outlaw was up in a flash and, dashing on, was quickly lost to sight in the brush. The fight had lasted less than thirty seconds, according to Breakenridge, and two men had been killed and three wounded.
Breakenridge and Allen, accompanied by Bull Lewis, began a slow stalk up the creek on Hunt’s trail. They had gone a hundred yards when Breakenridge heard a rustle in the bear grass.
“Come out of there,” he cried, with his gun at level, though he saw no one. “And come with your hands in the air.”
“I’m dying,” a feeble voice answered. “Come and get me.”
Then, in the dim light, Breakenridge saw Hunt lying on the ground.
“Roll over on your face,” ordered Breakenridge, “and stretch your hands out beyond your head.”
This was a new way of making a man throw up his hands, but Breakenridge was taking no chances. Hunt did as he was told and Bull Lewis went up and disarmed him.
The dead and wounded were taken to Tombstone in a ranch wagon, Breakenridge, alone unscathed, riding alongside. Allen and Young soon recovered from their injuries. Hunt, dangerously hurt, was placed in a hospital. Several weeks later, when Hunt was convalescent, Billy Hughes, one of his old San Simon pals, drove up to the hospital in a buggy. He would, he said, take the invalid for a pleasant little ride for his health’s sake. Hunt was helped into the buggy, and the two drove off eastward. They never came back.
Much mystery enveloped Hunt from the time of his escape. A reward was offered for him. Buckskin Frank Leslie took the trail but returned to Tombstone in a day or two, and why this sleuth hound abandoned the pursuit was not known. A posse went out but came back, unable to trail an invalid who had to travel in a buggy, and the perfunctory chase was soon given over.
Billy Hughes and Hunt camped on a sugar-loaf hill above Antelope Springs for a day or two. Then Hughes and Coley Finley took Hunt in a covered spring wagon to Frank Buckles’s ranch in Pole Bridge Canyon in the Chiricahuas. Here Hunt was joined by his brother, Hugh Hunt, who came out from Texas. After Zwing Hunt had recuperated for three weeks at Buckles’s, the two brothers, mounted and with a pack horse, headed south, announcing they were going to Mexico. The next heard of them was when Hugh Hunt rode alone into Camp Price at the southern end of the Chiricahuas and told Lieutenant Clark that Zwing Hunt had been killed by Indians.
When the two brothers arrived at the Point of Mountains at the north end of the Swisshelms, according to Hugh Hunt’s story, Zwing Hunt was fagged out, and they went into camp beside a spring in a canyon. Five Apaches coming through the Narrows between the Chiricahuas and the Swisshelms, saw the smoke of the camp fire and crawled upon the camp. Hugh was cooking breakfast. Zwing was struck in the pit of the stomach by a bullet at the first fire.
“Are you badly hurt?” asked Hugh.
“Never mind me,” answered Zwing. “You fight.”
Zwing rolled over on his breast and with his rifle killed an Indian running toward him just before he himself was killed by a bullet through the head. Hugh leaped on his pony hobbled near camp and escaped with lead singing about his ears. For two miles Hugh rode his pony with the hobbles on, and for a great part of that distance the Indians running on foot were able to keep within range of the awkwardly plunging animal. When he was out of danger, Hugh took the hobbles off and made his way to Camp Price.
Jim Cook, in command of a party of scouts, rode back with Hugh to the scene of the fight. They found a dead man at the camp, not mutilated in the customary Apache way, and buried the body in a grave at the foot of a juniper tree and on the tree they cut with a knife Zwing Hunt’s name and the date of his death. The juniper tree still stands, the knife-carved epitaph still decipherable, and the canyon has been known ever since as Hunt’s Canyon.
Jim Cook and his scouts followed the trail of the Indians, and in Half-Moon Valley in the Pedragosa hills to the south they found the Indian Zwing Hunt was said to have killed. The Apaches had carried their dead comrade off and had covered the body with a mound of stones.
Hugh Hunt’s story of his brother’s death seemed plausible and was apparently corroborated by all the evidence. But a rumour spread that Zwing Hunt had not been killed but arrived safely in time at his old home in Texas. There was a story that the man buried at the foot of the juniper tree had been killed by Zwing Hunt himself, and another story that the body had been obtained from an undertaker in Tombstone. These rumours became so insistent that Sheriff Behan felt called on to make an investigation, and, under his orders, Deputy Sheriffs Billy Breakenridge and Phil Montague dug up the body in Hunt’s Canyon. Both these deputies had known Zwing Hunt, and both identified the body as his.
This, it might seem, should have settled the matter, but it did not, and years later, members of Hunt’s family declared that Zwing Hunt survived the alleged Indian attack and died in bed at his Texas home of the old wound Deputy Breakenridge had given him in the fight at the Stockton ranch. And on his deathbed, according to this story, Hunt drew a map showing the location of a cache in which he and Billy Grounds had hidden the rich loot of their robberies, and this map became the origin and inspiration of one of the most interesting buried-treasure hunts in the history of the Southwest.