Mr. Henry Schneider sat at a pine-board table in the Chinaman’s in Charleston and ate his breakfast in silence. Mr. Schneider was the chief engineer at the stamp mill of the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company. He could see through the front window of the restaurant the big plant on the other side of the San Pedro just across the bridge, its stacks pouring out a steady stream of smoke that went drifting over the hills. The January morning was cold; a heavy frost still covered the ground; the current of the narrow river looked almost black between the snowy ice sheets projecting from the banks, and the tracks of teams were still visible in the white rime on the plank flooring of the bridge. Mr. Schneider was an engineer of some note and a high-salaried employee at the stamp mill, which was kept busy day and night reducing ore from the Tombstone mines. He was a rather haughty, aloof man whose morning mood was usually morose and disagreeable and who required a good strong cup of coffee and several hours of sunlight to thaw him out into ordinary business urbanity.

At a nearby table Mr. Robert Petty, the village blacksmith, and Mr. John O’Rourke were devouring ham and eggs with some gusto. Mr. O’Rourke especially seemed in a mood of cheerfulness.

“I didn’t make no killing last night,” Mr. O’Rourke was saying. “But I done pretty good. The deuce stood by me. That card is certainly good to me.”

Mr. O’Rourke was a gambler of the variety sometimes referred to as tin-horn. He was what might be termed, if one wished to be brutally frank, an insignificant little runt, wizened, undersized, colourless, with a prominent nose and huge ears that stood out from his head. He hung around Charleston gambling houses and saloons and dealt stud or monte when he had a chance and played faro if he happened to be in funds. The card on the faro layout for which Mr. O’Rourke showed a particular predilection was the deuce. He stacked up his chips on the deuce; he was never known to copper it, always played it open, and the deuce rewarded his blind faith by winning for him with startling frequency. Few people had ever been sufficiently interested in him to learn his real name, and because of his mania for backing his favourite card, he had become commonly known among the gamblers of Charleston and Tombstone as Johnny Behind-the-Deuce.

It happened that Mr. Schneider, Mr. Petty, and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce arose from breakfast at the same time and, having paid their bills at the front counter to Hop Sing, stood for a few moments warming themselves about the stove in the corner of the restaurant. To the engineer, Johnny remarked pleasantly that it was a cold day. Schneider gave him a sour look and did not reply.

“I say it’s a cold day,” Johnny repeated, on the chance that the engineer had failed to hear his shrewd observation.

Mr. Schneider preserved a scowling silence.

“Go to hell!” snarled Johnny. “I wonder if you are too deaf to hear that?”

Mr. Schneider heard that quite distinctly and, flaring into a rage, snorted out profane abuse. Mr. Petty pulled Johnny by the sleeve out the door into the street. But the cold air outside had no effect on Johnny’s anger, which grew hotter.

“I guess that feller thinks he’s too big to talk to the likes of me,” he growled.

“What do you care?” soothed Mr. Petty. “Leave him alone.”

The two men stopped near the end of the bridge. While Mr. Petty was still trying to calm Johnny, Mr. Schneider came bustling along on his way to his office at the mill across the river.

“I got a notion to learn you some manners,” snapped Johnny as the engineer passed.

Mr. Schneider halted and, glaring furiously, reached into his trousers pocket. Johnny jerked out a revolver and killed him. An unopened pocketknife was found in the dead man’s hand.

Constable George McKelvey placed Johnny under arrest. As he started for the calaboose with his prisoner, the mill whistle burst into a long-continued roar. The mill hands began to pour from the buildings. “I guess they’ve heard about it over there,” said McKelvey, and began to revolve emergency plans. The crowd at the mill started toward town. McKelvey headed for a livery stable instead of the calaboose. The mob stormed into the streets. “Get a rope,” was the cry. “Hang him to the bridge.” McKelvey smuggled his prisoner out of the livery stable by the back way into a buckboard to which a span of mules had been hastily hitched.

“This is a pretty mess,” remarked McKelvey as the two men settled themselves into the buggy. “Tombstone is nine miles away, but I’ll get you there if I can.”

A moment later the mob, yelling and shaking fists in disappointed rage, saw Constable McKelvey and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce thundering across the bridge and pointing out on the road for Tombstone, the team of mules at a dead run.

The flight of the prisoner presented a problem, but the workmen whose engineer had been so ruthlessly shot down were in earnest and were not to be so easily cheated. They hurriedly prepared for pursuit. They searched Charleston for saddle horses; they commandeered buggies and spring wagons; they armed themselves with six-shooters and rifles. This cost time, and the two fugitives were laying the miles behind them. But at length the crowd was ready. Fifty men on horseback set out on the trail at breakneck speed. Others in wagons, clattering far behind in a straggling procession, hoped at least to be in at the death.

Constable McKelvey and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce had passed quickly out of sight through a gap in the hills that border the San Pedro. From a height near the old Brunckow mine, Johnny Behind-the-Deuce had a last distant glimpse of Charleston. He could detect no great stir or confusion; the town seemed quiet enough.

“Maybe they gave it up,” he said.

“Maybe,” replied McKelvey.

McKelvey pulled his tired mules to a trot. He would conserve their stamina. He might have to call on them yet for all the speed they had to give. The Tombstone road was no boulevard. All the way it wound with a thousand crooks and turns through a roughly broken country covered with cactus and mesquite. It climbed over high hills, skirted the edges of ravines, came down abruptly into sandy arroyos and climbed steeply out again.

When the buckboard had clambered out of Twin Gulches past Robbers’ Roost, Johnny Behind-the-Deuce saw far back a long, trailing veil of dust sweeping up from behind a ridge in filmy whorls against the sky. He watched it with the fixity of fascination. A horseman galloped out of the dust over the crest of the road. A swarm of others came riding hard after him. Small in the distance, they looked like menacing goblins to his frightened eyes. He half rose from his seat, his hand clutching McKelvey’s shoulders.

“Here they come!” he yelled in McKelvey’s ear.

McKelvey lashed his mules into a run. Of a sudden came a soft tiny noise like the smothered popping of a cork. A sharper metallic ping like the vibration of a taut, mile-long wire. Then the distinct and unmistakable thin whine of a bullet. Spouts of dust shot into the air beside the wheels. The road behind began to dance with dusty puffs as under a thunder shower. The faint clatter of hoofs grew into a rushing storm of sound. McKelvey and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce bent forward in their seats with white, tense faces. Around the flanks of the plunging mules McKelvey wrapped his rawhide whip. Down the slopes, up the grades flew the swaying buckboard, taking the curves on two wheels. The pursuers were gaining rapidly, firing at every jump, yelling like savages. For Johnny Behind-the-Deuce it looked like cases in a losing deal; a skeleton hand seemed reaching out for his last stack of chips.

Two miles out of Tombstone stood Jack McCann’s Last Chance saloon. McKelvey and Johnny saw the long adobe roadhouse looming ahead with one last flicker of hope.

“Guess McCann’s is our last chance all right,” said McKelvey between clenched teeth. “We’ll never beat ’em into Tombstone.”

“If we get inside, maybe we can stand ’em off,” replied Johnny desperately.

McCann had just mounted a race mare that stood saddled in front of his saloon. This filly was a thoroughbred named Molly McCarthy and had won local fame by showing her heels to the best horses around Tombstone. McCann had her entered for a race over at the Watervale track on the Contention road and was preparing to give her an exercise gallop to tune her up for this event. A slim, spirited beauty was Molly McCarthy, and her satin skin sparkled as she champed the bit and pranced about on her clean, antelope legs in her eagerness for the run. McCann had turned her head to the road, when he caught sight of the pell-mell chase bearing down upon him. He stared in amazement. Well, what the devil?

“Take this lad behind you quick and get him into Tombstone before those fellows lynch him,” shouted McKelvey as he brought his mules back on their haunches.

McCann didn’t know Johnny Behind-the-Deuce, but he numbered many outlaws among his friends and had a lurking sympathy for fellows in trouble with the law. Many an all-night carouse Curly Bill and his merry men had had in the Last Chance saloon. And here was a sporting proposition that might stir the blood of any sporting man. McCann wasted no time in questions, but brought Molly McCarthy alongside the buckboard.

“Pile on,” he said.

As Johnny Behind-the-Deuce wrapped his arms around McCann’s waist, the mare broke at a bound into racing speed as if at the drop of a starter’s flag and went skimming over the road with long, frictionless strides. Drawing his jaded mules off to the side of the road, McKelvey watched McCann and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce dwindle in the distance. As the lynching party roared past, McKelvey rubbed his chin and grinned.

“You’ll play hell catching him now,” he yelled cheerfully.

As McCann and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce rode into Tombstone, the mine whistles on the hill began to boom. News of the murder of the engineer had been telegraphed ahead from Charleston. Miners flocked from the shafts and streamed down the hill toward town.

Wyatt Earp was dealing faro in the Oriental. Doc Holliday lolled in the lookout chair. Virgil Earp lounged against the bar. Business was dull. The place was as quiet as a prayer meeting. McCann and Johnny Behind-the-Deuce burst in upon the peaceful scene.

“Mob coming,” McCann broke out breathlessly. “Going to lynch this boy. Hurry up. Do something, for Christ’s sake. No time to lose.”

Wyatt Earp slid one card off the deck and then another. He took in a bet or two. He paid a few winning wagers. With the skill of old habit, he levelled off the tops of the stacks of chips in the check-rack and carefully evened them along the sides with the backs of his fingers. He overlooked no detail of customary routine. Then he turned up his box. The game, for the present, was over.

“Hold on to your chips, boys,” he said to the players. “I’ll cash ’em as soon as I’ve finished with this little business matter.”

As a gambler, he pushed back his chair. He rose as an officer of the law. Stepping to the front door, he saw a block west, at Fifth and Tough Nut streets, an excited crowd gathered about the newly arrived horsemen from Charleston. On beyond, the hill was swarming with miners. The situation impressed him as having possibilities. But the Oriental, facing on two streets and with great doors and windows, was no place in which to stand off a mob. There was a bowling alley across Allen Street in the next block to the north, narrow and wedged between stores and with doors only at front and rear. A handful of determined men might hold it against a multitude. Wyatt Earp escorted Johnny Behind-the-Deuce to the bowling alley. He posted Virgil Earp at the rear and Doc Holliday behind the locked front door. He was ready now.

He had never met Johnny Behind-the-Deuce before. He had seen him a few times around Tombstone gambling houses and had chuckled over his strange nickname and the origin of it. He knew nothing of the right or wrong of the killing of the Charleston engineer. But now this little shrimp of a fellow had been placed in his custody; it was his duty as an officer to protect him. This sense of official duty⁠—nothing else⁠—actuated him. If he had to die in performance of his duty, he would die.

An ominous confused murmur rose from the direction of the hill, a deep moaning bellow like that of brutes stirring to fury, the note of menace unmistakable. The mob was starting. Here it came in a rushing, crushing mass eastward through Fifth Street. It surrounded the Oriental. A yell went up like a rocket⁠—“He’s in the bowling alley.” With a roar, the mob turned for the rush to the bowling alley. As it changed front, it came face to face with Wyatt Earp at a distance of twenty paces. He stood alone in the middle of Allen Street, a double-barrelled shotgun resting in the crook of his elbow.

“Hold on, boys.” Wyatt Earp raised his hand and for a moment kept it poised in air. “Don’t make any fool play. There ain’t no sense in this.”

The mob halted in its forward sweep.

“Where’ve you got that murdering rat hid?”

“He’s right in there.” Wyatt Earp jerked his thumb at the bowling alley. “And he’s going to stay in there. He’s my prisoner now, and you fellers ain’t goin’ to get him.”

“The hell we ain’t.”

“You boys better disperse.” Wyatt Earp said it as calmly as he might have said “Tut-tut” to naughty urchins in school. “Go on home. Go on back to work. I’m here to take care of this prisoner. And I’m going to take care of him.”

The silence was shattered by sudden fierce yells.

“Ki-yi-ki-yi-yip!”

“Wa-wa-wa-wa⁠—wa-hoo!”

The shrieks were broken into wild staccato by tapping the mouth with the hand. There were old Apache fighters in that crowd. The front ranks began to stamp up and down like savages doing a war dance.

“Here we go, boys.”

“Smash in the bowling alley.”

“String the dirty varmint to a telegraph pole.”

Wyatt Earp cocked both barrels of his shotgun.

“Come on, then, you yellow curs. Let’s see you get him.”

His booming voice was like the roar of a lion at bay as he flung the challenge in the mob’s teeth. Again the crowd stood still in wavering indecision.

One foot advanced, his shotgun held tensely across his breast ready for instant action, Wyatt Earp stood, one man against five hundred. Grimly alone. Hopelessly isolated for the moment from all the rest of the world. No help to fall back on, no chance to run, no shelter, no place of refuge. Just a man out there in the middle of the street, all by himself with only his own strength to depend on and only his own courage to save him. Before him a mob thirsting for blood, closing in for the kill, its victim almost within reach. The front line, stretching across the street from wall to wall, bristled with six-shooters and rifles, every face twisted and flaming with passion. One solitary man blocked the road to vengeance.

“That fool’s bluffing.” The shout was vibrant with impatient resentment. “Call his bluff and watch him quit.”

Wyatt Earp brought his shotgun to his shoulder with a snap. At the level of a man’s heart, he swung its muzzle very slowly across the crowd from one side of the street to the other and very slowly back again.

“Don’t make any mistake,” he flung back. “I’ll blow the belly off of the first man that makes a move.”

The storm was working to the bursting point. This was ridiculous. One man hold back five hundred? Rush him, disarm him, brush him aside.

“What’s the matter out there in front?”

“Go on!”

The men behind began to push and shoulder forward. Flickering waves of movement told of gathering momentum for a fresh start. A powerful thrust made the front ranks bend and sway. It was like a ripple presaging the final rush.

“Kill him!”

Wyatt Earp’s jaws set. His eyes blazed. His face in that tense moment was so marble-white that his tawny moustache looked black against it. Again he swept the crowd with his levelled gun, and death lurked in the black depths of those twin muzzles.

“Kill me.” His voice had a conversational steadiness. “I’m ready. Ought to be easy; there are enough of you. But I’ll do a little killing myself. You can get me; but I’ll take a few of you to hell with me.”

The drama had rushed to crisis. Here was a proposition. They could take it or leave it. He was ready to die. If they were, too, all right. Yes, they could kill him. One shot would do the business. They couldn’t miss him. But he would take some of them to the grave with him. He might get two or three. Or half a dozen might crumple down under the scattering double charge of buckshot. It was sure death for some of them. Did they want to gamble? Were they willing to take the chance?

Well?

Silence fell. For a space the mob stood motionless, hesitating, undecided, weighing the odds. Then abruptly the tension snapped. Some men in front, looking a little sheepish, drew back into the crowd. Others followed. The front line grew ragged; it was breaking up. Not much sense, after all, in getting killed for a dirty little blackguard like Johnny Behind-the-Deuce. The law might hang him anyhow. This lynching business was pretty wild and crazy if you stopped to think about it. Just as well to let the law take its course. Men at the outer edges began to walk away. Gaps and lanes opened in the thinning ranks. Throngs began to bustle through the side streets like flood waters draining off through sluiceways. Soon all had disappeared except a few small groups that still hung about the corner. The storm had passed; peaceful sunlight once more bathed the empty streets. Wyatt Earp, leaning on his shotgun, stood in silence and watched the mob melt away. Then he stepped with an air of leisureliness over to the sidewalk.

“Go down to the O.K. corral, Doc,” he said to Holliday in the casual voice of one arranging a detail of business routine, “and see if Johnny Montgomery can let us have a spring wagon. I guess I’ll send Johnny Behind-the-Deuce over to Tucson.”

Johnny Behind-the-Deuce was taken in the spring wagon under strong guard to Tucson. Ten heavily armed men on horseback accompanied him as far as Dennis’s ranch but, as no attack developed, turned back to Tombstone. Johnny broke jail at Tucson before his trial, and though Papago Indian trailers were used to track him, he was not recaptured. He disappeared from the Southwest, and whatever became of the murderous little scalawag with the funny pseudonym no one in that country knows to this day.