A man could get by, as the saying has it, if he played the part of a neutral; but if, on the one hand, you started in at stealing cattle or if, on the other hand, you pinned on a star--why then, sooner or later, the big issue was going to come to a head; you were going to find yourself faced by a foe or foes, armed like yourself, and like yourself prepared to shoot it out. Then when the show-down came you would comport yourself according to the stuff that you were made of--the material which was hidden away deep down under your skin--and according to your conduct the world would judge you. So naturally enough in those days men asked this question and waited for events to bring its answer. And those among them who were not gifted with the faculty of reading character but needed to see a man for themselves when the guns were blazing--those individuals had to wait a long time. As for the others, what they said to themselves as one adventure followed another now in the career of Billy Breckenbridge you who read these words can judge, if you be blessed with ordinary perspicacity. For many things took place and many months went by before he reached down along his lean right thigh toward the butt of his forty-five single-action revolver. It is quite likely that Johnny Behan was among those who wanted the new deputy to give a demonstration of the stuff he was made of. Perhaps that was the reason the sheriff sent young Breckenbridge over into the eastern end of the county to collect the taxes before the latter had worn his star long enough to get used to it. In those days the sheriff's office levied assessments and did the collecting on personal property at the same time. Payments were made in cash; bank-checks were virtually unknown in Cochise County. And thus far the country east of the Dragoon Mountains had yielded no revenues for the simple reason that it looked as if nothing short of a troop of cavalry could go forth into that region and return again with the money. Beyond those rocky peaks which frowned across the mesquite flat at Tombstone lay other ragged mountain ranges; the Chiracahuas, the Dos Cabezas, the Swiss-helms, and the Grahams. Between their towering walls the valleys of the Sulphur Springs and the San Simon stretched away and away southward across the Mexican border great tawny plains pulsating under the hot sun. Upon their level floors the heat-devils danced all the long days like armies of phantom dervishes gone mad with their interminable leapings and whirlings. And strange grotesque mirages climbed up into the glaring heavens. A savage land wherein savage men rode, as packs of gray wolves range in the wintertime when meat is scarce, searching the distant sky-line for some sign of life on which to prey.