HE Arizona Rangers was a picked body of peace officers, selected for that superlative degree of bravery that men call sand. The business of this company was to carry the statutes into places where there was no law, and to force their recognition at the hands of those who hitherto had laughed at them. The members did it in that Southwest land, where Apaches and cattle-wars and the baked desert itself had tried out every one until the very thieves had yawned in situations that spelled death. For eight years after 1900 they smoothed off the territory's rougher edges; they made man's law a mighty thing.
There were usually twenty-odd names on the company's roster; and the desert is wide in Arizona. 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.
"He's as good as ten," was the standard toward which the captains aimed. To secure the nine-man ally with each new member of the band, they placed all candidates under surveillance; they demanded a long list of stern virtues which, in its entirety, amounted to temperance in words and repression in deeds. On that, they reasoned, was based this fine thing called sand.
In some instances the captains fell down. As a rule, however, they swore in such men as William Sparks. He was a quiet citizen, the sort who rolls his cigarettes unnoticed in a group. In time he rose to the rank of sergeant, which he held when he ran afoul of the Sheriff of Chiricahua.
The Sheriff was of the old type, the type whose names ring loud in Tombstone's lurid history; the iron men who, when the acrid smoke-wreaths lifted, filed the notches on their guns. He ran his county, and he ran it on the old theory—the theory of the pastoral days—that might was law because the statutes were remote.
That theory had come from necessity in a day when cattle-rustling had a dignity akin to border-raiding. In that day the law's machinery was simply an ally at the service of the strongest man. The cowtowns, holding as they did the bulk of the voting population, were usually tough. Many of the so-called cattle-wars on which elections hinged were but quarrels of their gamblers, saloonmen and stockthieves, in which the ranchers had to cast lots with one or the other faction in order to get protection when victory came. Sheriffs were leaders; their followers did pretty much as they pleased; while the henchmen of rival candidates avoided service of warrants or, at best, walked with circumspection.
On this theory, and in its day, the Sheriff of Chiricahua had fought his way to power among loud-sounding deeds of arms. Seated, he ruled the county; he was his own legislature and often his own court. When the years narrowed the ranges and brought more complicated conditions he hung to the tenets of yesterday. He stood fast in the way of progress.
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 still kept his following, and he continued to run the town. He protected his adherents even when these were wanted for felonies.
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. Gradually the Sheriff showed his attitude more openly. These two came at length into the position of antagonists; as issues do—it narrowed down to a man- to-man affair.
A score of circumstances helped to bring this about. 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; they came to look upon it as a certainty. Such was the situation when a cloudburst swept away a portion of the town, and brought the issue to a head.