Editing Johnny Ringo (section)

=== Joins posse pursuing Earps ===

Deputy U.S. Marshal [[Wyatt Earp]] and his posse killed [[Frank Stilwell]] in Tucson on March 20, 1882. After the shooting, the Earps and a federal posse set out on a [[Earp Vendetta Ride|vendetta]] to find and kill the others they held responsible for ambushing Virgil and Morgan. Cochise County Sheriff [[Johnny Behan]] received warrants from a Tucson judge for arrest of the Earps and Holliday. He deputized Ringo and 19 other men, many of them friends of Stilwell and the Cochise County Cowboys.<ref name=historynet/>

During the Earp Vendetta Ride, Wyatt Earp killed one of Ringo's closest friends, [[William Brocius|"Curly Bill" Brocius]], in a gunfight at [[Iron Springs (Cochise County, Arizona)|Iron Springs]] (later Mescal Springs) about {{convert|20|mi}} from Tombstone. Earp told his biographer, Stuart Lake, that a man named Florentino Cruz confessed to being the lookout at Morgan's murder and identified Ringo, Stilwell, Swilling, and Brocius as Morgan's killers,<ref>Lake, S. ''Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal''. Houghton Mifflin (1931), p. 277. {{ASIN|B00085IQ0I}}</ref> 
The local posse pursued and came close to the federal posse at [[Henry Hooker|Henry C. Hooker's]] ranch, but never faced the Earp lawmen.<ref name="historynet">{{cite web |url=http://www.historynet.com/wyatt-earps-vendetta-posse.htm |title=Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Posse |date=January 29, 2007 |publisher=HistoryNet.com |access-date=15 February 2013 |archive-date=5 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110405084114/http://www.historynet.com/wyatt-earps-vendetta-posse.htm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="legends">{{cite web |url=http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-earpvendetta.html |title=Earp Vendetta Ride |publisher=Legends of America |access-date=15 February 2013 |archive-date=26 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110426172425/http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-earpvendetta.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Roberts, Gary Boyd (2007). Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-12822-0</ref> Former Pima County Sheriff [[Robert H. Paul|Bob Paul]], who had been in Tombstone at the time and volunteered to ride with the Behan posse, wrote a letter to the ''Tucson Citizen'' on March&nbsp;3, 1898 in response to an earlier story he said was full of errors. He said the Earp posse had told Hooker to tell Behan and his posse where they were camped. Hooker told Behan where the Earps were camped but the posse left in the opposite direction.<ref name=historynet/>