Ringo. The name has (forgive me) a certain “ring” that has echoed throughout the twentieth century. It hardly echoed through the nineteenth century, the time when Johnny Ringo actually lived, because he was simply not that famous. The legend of the alcoholic, educated gunslinger was invented in 1927 by writer Walter Noble Burns in his colorful fable Tombstone, An Illiad of the Southwest. Burns added Ringo to his blood and thunder epic about Wyatt Earp to give a dash of mysterious menace to the cowboy faction of Cochise County that the Earp brothers battled in Tombstone, a sort of counterbalance to the story of Doc Holiday, another alcoholic, educated gunslinger. As a result, both men became legends long after their own time, and the number of bad guys in western movies named Ringo are almost beyond counting. One of the best cinematic portrayals of this legend was turned in by actor Michael Biehn in the 1994 film Tombstone. (The title of this essay comes from the exchange of threats in Latin between Biehn and Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday in that movie. It translates as "Youth is the teacher of fools.")
But the real John Ringo was not a gunfighter, accoring to his biographer John Burrows, but instead a vicious drunk who may (or may not) have shot a couple of men in the back during his short tenure on earth. Burrows biography sifts through what little is known of Ringo from primary sources, and devotes a chapter to the man’s mysterious death on the banks of Turkey Creek
Jayne and I went camping in the Chiricahua Mountains last week, a beautiful spot along the splashing brook that is Turkey Creek. Although we were a bit on edge pondering the very real twenty-first century danger of drug mules known to traverse this area, we enjoyed our time immensely, and finished our trip by stopping at the gravesite of the “gunfighter who never was.” Requiescet in pace, Johnny.
