met one another.

It was like the meeting of strange dogs, who bristle on sight, and
often fly at one another's throats to settle the question of
supremacy. Their big-caliber revolvers spat streams of fire in the
roadways and bellowed in the dance-halls. And gradually among the
ranks of the survivors there came a gradation in their badness.

Several loomed far above the others: John Ringo, Prank Stilwell, Zwing
Hunt, the Clanton brothers, and Billy Grounds. They were "He Wolves."
And there was Curly Bill, the worst of all. He might be said to rule
them.

They settled down to business, which is to say they started to do the
best they could for themselves according to their separate capacities
for doing evil unto others.

They rustled stock. They drove whole herds over the boundary from
Mexico. They pillaged the ranches, which were now coming into the
adjacent country, stealing horses, altering brands, and slaying
whoever interfered with them, all with the boldness of medieval
raiders. They took a hand in the claim-jumping. They robbed the
stage.

Hardly a day passed without a hold-up on the Tucson road--and, when
the railway went through, on the road to Benson. Shotgun guards and
drivers were killed; occasionally a passenger or two got a bullet. And
the bad men spent the money openly over the bars in Tombstone.

Then the Earp brothers came upon the scene. From this time their
figures loom large in the foreground. Whatever else may be said of
them they were bold men and there was something Homeric in their
violence. Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Jim, the first three were active
in the wild events which followed their incumbency to power.
California knew them in their boyhood, and during their manhood years
they wandered over the West, from mining camp to cow-town, until they
came to Tombstone from Dodge City, Kansas.

They brought a record with them. Back in the seventies, in the time of
the trail herds, Dodge was a howling cow-town. There was a period of
its existence when the punchers used to indulge in the pastime of
shooting up the place; but there were a great many of these frolicsome
riders, and too much wanton revolver shooting is sure to breed trouble
if it is combined with hard liquor, gambling, and a tough floating
population. The prominent business men of Dodge watched the hectic
consequences of this lawlessness over their faro layouts with
speculative eyes and came to the conclusion that killings were