Curly Bill, the San Simon chief, owned a better courage, and Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday found him at the Whetstone Springs. There was a battle royal; Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday on the one side, with Curly Bill and a couple of his adherents on the other. Curly Bill was rubbed out, while Wyatt Earp, shaving eternity, had the cantle of his saddle torn away with a double handful of buckshot. The two adherents of Curly Bill, while somewhat shattered, escaped. “With Pete Spence in Mexico,” said Wyatt Earp to Mr. Holiday, as he changed his shattered saddle for the saddle of Curly Bill, “and Ike Clanton nowhere to be found, I take it we might as well quit and call it a day.” “There’s nothing else,” said Mr. Holiday. Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp rode back to Tombstone. They were in their rooms when a word of warning reached them. That recent blazing work in Tucson and in the San Simon had invoked the invidious admiration of a Sheriff who was lusting for fame. He was even then below with a posse brought from afar, equipped of warrants and weapons and ready to apprehend them. “What do you say, Doc?” asked Wyatt Earp. “For myself,” said Mr. Holiday, smothering a cough, “I think I shall shoot my way out. Considering the state of my lungs, it would endanger my health to be locked up.” They sent down quiet word, and had their horses saddled and brought around. Then Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp walked into the centre of that aspiring posse. There was a giving way; no one stretched his hand to stay their going. Only the ambitious Sheriff spoke. “Mr. Earp,” said he, sweetly, “I want to see you.” “My friend,” said Wyatt Earp, turning on the other a glance of warning, “you may see me once too often.” Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp, at a road-gait, took the trail for Tucson. In the blistering heat and whiteness of the summer dust, they disappeared; that was the last of their story in Tombstone. They didn’t see Tucson; at a fork in the trail they halted. “Well, _adios_, Doc,” said Wyatt Earp, extending his hand. “Write me in ’Frisco how the world goes with you.” “I will,” returned Mr. Holiday. “I shall try Colorado. I must consider my health, and I prefer the climate there. _Adios!_” It was a year later when the Arizona Sheriff, who stood aside that Tombstone day, broke into California Gulch, and the wisdom of Mr. Masterson became for Mr. Holiday a shield of thickness. “Your papers,” observed the Governor to him of Arizona, “are in proper form, and set clearly forth the death of one Stillwell at the hands of Mr. Holiday. But Mr. Holiday is under charges here for robbery on the highway. You cannot expect me to cheat justice of its due in Colorado, in order to send you a man whom you should never have let escape. The requisition must be refused.” Mr. Holiday lived on in California Gulch, sheltered by the charge of the Off Wheeler. It protected him to the end, which was not far away. When his sands were running low, Mr. Masterson was by his couch.