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.
