Pulp Fiction, 1955 · page 35 of 101
15 Western Short Stories — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Content Analysis This page contains story prose from a pulp-fiction western narrative titled "Way of Dying." The text depicts a tense night scene where Sheriff Taney and his deputy Jess Hardy guard the captured "Sheepfaced Kid"—a dangerous outlaw—to prevent a lynching. The passage shows Jess relieving the sheriff from watch duty, then offering water to the shackled prisoner. Despite his restraints, the Kid hints at desperation and his hatred for his captors, refusing to show fear of hanging, only shame at dying before a crowd of "yaller dogs." The narrative emphasizes psychological tension and frontier justice themes typical of early-twentieth-century pulp westerns.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
WAY CF DYING crutch to explore with expert fingers. “Just creased,” he announced. “All them bullets!—and just one failed by ’steenth of an inch to miss him; the Kid’s luck. Well, he'll cause no more trouble” “You bet he won't,’ a posseman predicted. “I noticed the ridgepole on that cabin sticks out a yard or so—’” “Be none of that,’ the sheriff snapped. “I deputized you gents to help me arrest the Kid. Lawful and legal. Any jury’ll see he hangs fast enough—but there’ll be no lynching.” Tee WAS muttering. The brother of Hi Tully, dead with the Kid’s bullet in his heart, let off steam with lurid cursing, till he ran out of breath. But these men were fagged from long hard riding and tense vigil. Six of them besides Taney bore wounds that ached, nagged at weary bodies. None found spirit to quite out-and-out defy the sheriff. The Kid stirred, came suddenly and instantly to full awareness, like any wild crea- ture. He tried his bindings first, and then sat up silent, defiant, hating them all out of his washblue eyes. Sheriff Taney drew Jess aside. “T reckon I can trust you, Jess— about this lynching business? Well, then. If let, the rest of them ’ll sleep straight through. So you and me, we'll guard the Kid. I'll take the first trick—say, three hours.” How the sheriff kept himself awake and alert for those three hours he never said, but the moon was high when he shook Jess Hardy. “F’r gawd’s sake don’t catnap—that Kid ’ld be dangerous if he was in a straitjacket,’ he muttered admonish- ment, and was almost instantly snor- ing on the spot of warmed earth where Jess had lain. Not a man of the posse stirred under the light disturbance. Yet the Sheepfaced Kid, with a right to be weariest of all, was awake when jess approached; lying on his side with ‘cuffed wrists behind, shivering a little in the chill of desert night, washblue eyes alert and hating. Moonlight showed the animal-like thick lips parched and cracked, yet the Kid did not ask for that simplest, most elemental of favors—a drink of water. ond) Jess considered that, reflected that Sheriff Taney was not likely to have risked hobbling painfully to the spring to bring water here. He said tonelessly, “Stay quiet, Kid—Til be watching,” and walked swiftly to the spring and dipped a canteen and drank himself, and returned with the filled canteen. A scant ninety seconds spent, his gaze turned from the Kid for less than half that—yet something in the Kid’s pose, a tenseness, perhaps a glint of triumph behind the hate in washblue eyes, nagged at Jess as he returned with the water. He leaned to look; the ’cuffs still held bony wrists behind the Kid’s arched, skinny back, apparently secure. I’m just keyed up, he thought, and held the canteen toward thirsty, reaching lips. But even now the Sheepfaced Kid held back long enough to mutter: “Won’t make no difference, feller— not if I git me a chance. I hate your guts, same as them others.” “Sure, Kid.” Jess did not withdraw the proffered canteen. The Kid’s lips met the mouthpiece and he drank, “chewing” the water as most desert men learn to do. Drank and rested, drank and rested, slowly, carefully. “Thanks, feller,’ the harsh voice grudged. “Thanks fer the horse too, ‘safternoon. But—I11 still kill you if I can. To keep from...bein’ hung.” te WAS a desperation about those last words, not lost on Jess Hardy. Jess said, carefully: “Scared of hangin’, eh?” The Kid shook his shaggy head. “Not scared. But—hangin’ on a rope— a bunch of yaller dogs a-watchin’, glad—” Jess thought he understood. A sort of defiant pride, the Kid had. A will that dreaded, above all things, being helpless in the hands of his enemies; to die publicly and ineptly, swinging at the end of a rope. Jess said, care- fully again: “Kid. A thing I’d like to know. That day three years ago—you hadn't got into any other trouble then. Weren’t—desperate. Why’d you shoot my dad?” “Fer the hell of it—like you’d step CO Oo MICOO© SS CO