Frederick R. Bechdolt

“ The Sheriff's eyes never wavered from the Sergeant's eyes. He fought his battle with himself, within himself, as he stood there.
He had his pride, and pride is a mighty thing. An iron man, he struggled to proceed into the place that his imagination now pictured to him. There is a limit for the very good ”

“ At first the opposition was widespread and vague, the Sheriff's followers against Rangers in general. Members of the company came to Chiricahua many times; now it was a horsethief, now a murderer, again a brawler, who departed with one of them. Often the Ranger went away alone, chagrined at failure that could always be traced to the tacit hindrance of the Sheriff. In time Sparks came to be the man who was most frequently detailed to the place. ”

“ Their eyes showed curiosity.
He came back to his Rangers and nodded to them. The eight of them went to the wall opposite the sixteen; they halted there. Through the grimness that hung upon his features like a mask the Sheriff of Chiricahua allowed to creep a single flicker of his admiration, as he bent his eyes upon that short line. It died; the mask resumed its heavy immobility.
The room was silent now. The court, leaning a little forward, motionless in his elevated seat. The row of dark-faced prisoners, cowering, heads bent. The two lines: sixteen men girt with their sagging pistol-belts ”

“ The Rangers were bringing the law into other places. Cattle-rustling ceased to be a political privilege; shooting-up of towns became a misdemeanor, no matter whether the gunwielder was a republican or a democrat. Gambler and bandit went; the mists of other years slowly enwrapped them and made them fine to look upon. Carrying the statutes into Chiricahua, the Rangers found the Sheriff opposing the change. ”

“ He was too busy getting into his clothes to talk, When he had dressed he hurried to the Justice of the Peace before whom he had sworn out the warrants for his prisoners. The Justice was an old citizen and he had been elected on the Sheriff's ticket; but he was progressive in his ideas of administration of statute law. He liked the Hangers as an institution. He explained the situation to Sergeant Sparks.
"You see," he said, "the Sheriff looks at it that you're interfering. He says you've gone too strong here for a long time. ”

“ The time, he said, had come to see whether he or this man Sparks administered the law in Chiricahua.
The pair of Rangers arrived on the morning train, on the day following the disaster. They went straight from the depot to the water-swept ravine. Before noon they caught twelve Mexicans, some of them in the very act of robbery, others with damning evidence against them. They took the prisoners to the Chiricahua jail, then went back to the scene of devastation. They busied themselves in bringing order and in caring for the refugees and the sick. ”

“ Most potent among them was the element of personality; strong men, adherents of opposite beliefs that now clashed, the pair became, of themselves, pitted against each other. There was also the crowd's invariable desire to see a fight. Outsiders did their best to smooth the path toward the encounter ”

“ Therefore the men worked nearly always against odds; and the odds came from a population that has made the region's name a synonym for hard-eyed, thin-lipped fearlessness. This shows that, in recruiting, the captains surely picked the choice ones from the crowd. ”