15 Western Short Stories — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 along to the spring; pulled the reluc- tant head away after a few great thirsty gulps. Men who twisted to look, incredulously, at the open target his tall figure made, twisted quickly back again, almost to a man at the same instant; making sure this wasn’t the Kid’s trick, to draw their attention momentarily from himself. “T will be damned,” one man solemnly declared to the next along the knoll’s skirt. ‘The Sheepfaced Kid settin’ himself afoot for fear his mount might lockjaw! Funny things in this old world, hunh?” “Yeh—funny things!” the second agreed, never taking his gaze froma certain chink in the cabin’s wall, seen through the dense leaves of a sagebush. “And Jess Hardy, riskin’ his hide on the Kid’s say-so. Horse- lover, Jess; but that’s carryin’ it a little far. And here’s another funny one for your catalog: Jess a horse- lover, when his dad was a plumb brute with ’em.” “Ree’lar Balaam, Old Jeb was,” an- other voice joined in from the next shelter, relieving tension with this small] talk. “I’ve knowed Jeb to carry a stay chain fer a quirt. Never seen him on a horse, or drivin’ one in harness, that wasn’t afraid of him.” oe PaEeee a story he knocked the eye outen a horse fer this same Sheepfaced Kid, one time. ‘Fore the Kid went bad.” “Yeh. I was there, that day. Half accident—the horse got into a grain sack, and old Jeb throwed a stick end over end.” “And wasn’t a month till the Kid killed Jeb in the hills, and robbed him —and from there, went plumb bad,” the other summed up. “Spite, I reckon —-mebby the Kid does have one decent soft spot. Fer a horse. Not fer a hu- man, though. That girl at the old Jar- vis ranch—” Jess Hardy was remembering that old story, too, while he picketed the horse near their own, its worst thirst quenched. It had been Jess who found his father’s wagon that day almost two years ago, the team gone and a one-eyed horse grazing nearby, Jeb Hardy’s body a stiff angle over the dashboard. Jess had trailed the Kid, WESTERN SHORT STORIES spreading the word when he passed a wood camp; a hastily formed posse helped chase the Kid into the hills, corner him only to have him leave two more men dead shooting his way out. From that day the Sheepfaced Kid had been a fearful phantom of the mountain and desert country across three states, his broad long nose and sloping chin, hair-thatched anima! brow and washblue eyes a visage of terror to the denizens of many a lonely ranch or small hamlet. It had been dark an hour when the Kid made his break. Not black dark; stars twinkled to pick out for sharp eyes movement, major objects. But there would be full moon presently, and the Kid chanced it while he might. | He came like a ghost, as one man had predicted; crawling flatly, halt- way down the naked slope before a posseman glimpsed shadowy move- ment along the ground and yelled and fired—and staggered three steps then with the Kid’s bullet in his heart, and fell. The Kid came to his feet in a tight crouch then, a Colt in each hand spitting fire and lead and death; ringed in by ten weapons worked at frantic speed. He broke Clem Henley’s shoulder with a bullet from his righthand gun, and almost in the same instant with his left one knocked the aimed rifle from the hands of Harvy Johnston. Then he was down, the posse search- ing for him with a hail of bullets but only endangering each other because the Kid was flat on the ground, inert. The sheriff's yell stopped. that, in time, and there was a long wary mo- ment of suspense, suspicion. Then someone hung his jacket on the end of a rifle, “walked” it in the ghostly light. The Izid stayed quiet, a bundle of rags and bones on the ground. Jess Hardy and Joe Carlin pounced and plucked away his weapons and felt his clothes for hidden ones; and finding life still in the scrawny body held him fast while Sheriff Taney’s two pairs of handcuffs were brought, snapping @ pair on bony wrists, the other on ankles from which the boots were dragged off over dirty sox. They made fire for light then, and Sheriff Taney hobbled on his makeshift ECOMmicloo mM Ss CO