Tombstone by Walter Noble Burns — Read

Curly Bill, most famous outlaw in Arizona's history, came from Texas, but when or how or why is one of several mysteries in his life, his end being as enigmatic as his beginning. He was a medieval robber baron in the blue flannel shirt and white sombrero of a cowboy. He rode at times with thirty or forty tall fellows at his back, and it was said he could gather a hundred men-at-arms within a day if needful occasion arose. All the outlaws of southeastern Arizona owned some sort of allegiance to him. He lived boldly and jovially. After the dangers and hardships of a cattle-stealing raid or an attack upon a Mexican smuggler train in some mountain defile, he took his ease in his strongholds, with wassail and high revel and his merry men around him.

He was, to the eye, a good-natured, rollicking chap, heavyset, black-eyed, with a shock of curly black hair. But for all his roly-poly look and the dimples that showed in his round, swarthy face when he laughed, he was a powerful fellow and as quick and tricky and dangerous as a panther. Though his career is a tale of romance, he was strictly a business man with no romance in him. He planned shrewdly, and murder was a routine detail in his trade of adventure. Some might tell you that John Ringo was his brains. This is not true. Curly Bill had brains of his own, and sharp, resourceful brains they were, amply sufficient for all the generalship necessary in the life he led. Moreover, Curly Bill had the decisiveness in action that Ringo lacked. Curly Bill led, Ringo followed.