Pulp Fiction, 1934 · page 75 of 148
Western Story Magazine, May 12, 1934 — page 75: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is **story prose with an accompanying illustration** from a pulp fiction magazine. The illustration at the top depicts a man in action, appearing to run or move urgently through a street scene. The story, titled "Quick Sixes" by E. B. Mann, is a Western crime narrative set in the town of Tascosa. The text describes Jim Vestry, who observes five armed men approaching the Tascosa Bank during the noon hour. The protagonist notices the leader wears distinctive "half-breed holsters"—modified gun holsters with the bottom cut away, designed to allow faster weapon deployment. The passage establishes tension as Vestry watches what appears to be an imminent bank robbery unfold.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HE dinner bell jangled brazenly in the open doorway of the Tascosa Hotel, and the main street’ emptied swiftly, taking on its usual noontime hush. In the shadow between two build- ings, Jim Vestry stood motionless and unseen, staring at the front of the Tascosa Bank across the street. This was the time. unimportant things, or the few min- utes just to come would see swift drama played upon that peaceful stage out there. Five men walked into Vestry’s range of sight, coming from some- where to his left and angling out to- ward the bank. Vestry stiffened to sudden attention. The leader was a tall, steop-shouldered man with a Either he was — a fool, reading crazy meanings into - QUICK SIXES coarse, unpleasant face, darkly masked by a stubbly, week-old beard. Vestry had seen that face a while ago through the glass parti- tion that closed off the office of Franklin Dean, president of the Tascosa Bank, from the bank’s main lobby. He saw now that the stran- ger wore two guns in holsters from which the bottom half had been cut away. *“Half-breed holsters.” Vestry had never seen them used before, but he knew the trick. With a hol- ster like that, a man need not draw his weapon at all. A hand dropped to the jutting butt would tilt the gun on the pivot of its thong sup- port—save a precious part of a sec- ond in time of need. That was the . theory of it, at least. The method had its drawbacks in actral nractice