What with the murders by the savages and these affrays--together with such natural hazards of disease and accident as accompany any new mining camp--the boot-hill graveyard out beyond the north end of the wide main street was booming like the town. And now there came a more potent factor in stimulating mortuary statistics. The bad men took possession of Tombstone. They came from all over the West. For railroads and telegraph lines were bringing a new order of things from the Missouri to the Rio Grande, and those who would live by the forty-five hastened to ride away from sight of jails and churches, seeking this new haven down by the border. One by one they drifted across the flaring Southwestern deserts; from California, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico, with their grim mouths tight shut against all questions and their big revolvers dangling beside their thighs. The hair of some of them was gray from many winters and their faces deeply lined; and some were boys with down on their smooth cheeks. But once his hand started moving toward his pistol, every man of them was deadlier than a bull rattlesnake in rutting time. No man challenged them on their arrival. The town was too busy to heed their presence. The one-story buildings which lined the wide streets were packed to the doors with customers; saloons, dance-halls, and gambling-houses roared on through day and night; the stores were open at all hours. The wide sidewalks under the wooden awnings which ran the length of every block, were crowded from wall to gutter with men intent on getting wealth or spending it. The bad men mingled with the sidewalk throngs; they dropped into the Bird-Cage Opera House, where painted women sang in voices that clanged like brazen gongs; they took their places before the gambling-tables of the Crystal Palace, where girls were oftentimes to be found dealing faro; they joined the long lines before the bars and drank the stinging whisky which the wagon-trains had brought from Tucson. And they 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.