Western Story Magazine, May 12, 1934 — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

Outlaws Of Calico Hole 35° H L MUDO came from a tangle of boulders forty feet away. His instincts had warned him to watch the pair; his eyes had read the girl’s lips. He came over and caught her arm, and with a jerk of his huge head, ordered Dan to go. She struggled desperately, but El Mudo held her helpless. Dan walked over to the three burros he had saddled for his expedition. He mounted one and drove the other two ahead of him. He did not look back, but swung toward the big cabin. Sanchez was standing before an open window. “Don’t let Al follow,’ Dan re- quested. “No, I won’t let him follow,” San- chez replied. “Adios!” “S’long,”’ Dan answered. Slowly he rode down the trail, _ past the slope with its gruesome let- ters, then through the barbed wire and on to Calico Springs. The sun was up when he stopped at the Twin F Ranch. The Indian woman who had served Alice so long was sitting on the steps, silent, dejected. He wondered if she would recognize him, so said: “Hello! Where’s everybody?” She pointed toward the entrance to Calico Hole, then back to a no- tice on the front door. Dan read the copy of a lengthy legal docu- ment tacked to the panel. The im- port was plain. The man holding _ the mortgage had declared the ranch abandoned, and, to protect his in- terest, had foreclosed. Beasley had bought the place at a forced sale. “And you can bet he got it for a song,” Dan reflected. “That poor squaw don’t know what to do, either. I suppose she figured this would be her home as long as she lived.” | He prodded the burros into action = and continued on toward Wagon Gap, some thirty miles away. Dan stopped near the Geary ranch that afternoon and watered the bur- ros. Sally came down to the fence and watched him. She was thin and dispirited, and said nothing. A burly man, hard at work, Dan con- cluded was Chris Geary, her father. | Dan made one camp and arrived on the outskirts of Wagon Gap late the next afternoon. Dusk was fall- ing when he entered the town, and this suited his purpose. He put the burros up in an empty barn back of the bank, then spread his blankets on the bunk of an abandoned cabin. The throb of life came faintly from the main street. He opened the stove and brought out a quantity of gray wood ashes, which he rubbed thoroughly in his hair and beard. Unless one examined him _ too closely, he could pass in the dusk for a gray-headed man. “Not so bad,” he mused, examining his fea- tures in a cracked mirror. He was building a fire in the stove when the door opened suddenly. Sanchez had equipped him with a pair of old .45s, and instinctively his hands dropped to the butts of these untried guns. “Don’t shoot, Dan; it’s Al!” The door closed, and Al Ford stoed there, smiling and confident. “Sanchez let me come after I talked him into it,” he hastily explained. “Don’t get mad, now. This is too big for any one man to tackle alone.” “All right,” Dan answered briefly. “But suppose you’re recognized?” “I’ve got to take that chance. Now here’s what’s happened. Beas- ley, for no reason I can figure out, is headed this way. It’s no chance stroll,” Al went on hurriedly; “I’ve seen him walk too many times not to know when he means business. What do you wapt.me_to dor’...