Pulp Fiction, 1934 · page 90 of 148
Western Story Magazine, May 12, 1934 — page 90: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 88 of Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine This page contains story prose from a Western pulp fiction narrative. The text depicts an action sequence in which a character named Jade rides urgently to a cabin after hearing a woman's screams, discovers a man attacking a girl named Miss Ellen, and engages in a violent hand-to-hand fight with the assailant. The passage emphasizes Jade's heroic intervention and the brutal struggle that ensues, including gunfire and physical combat as the two men roll across the cabin floor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
88 Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine of lamplight through a windowpane. Seams, Jade told himself, was old and sick. At best, he couldn’t have much longer, now, to live. The girl would be alone—and Jade, while these scars of his made him no pretty sight to offer any woman, could make her a good home, if she could be persuaded. No harm, at least, to just drop in, neighborly like, and set the ball to rolling. He struck a casual heel into his pony’s flank and started down the slope—started, then pulled up short. That sound he’d heard, dis- tant but faint, was unmistakably a woman’s scream. Instant as a gun’s report follows the fingers pressure on the trigger, Jade’s mount was leaping down the trail, little rills and rivulets of rock and dirt racing its flashing hoofs, while Jade, leaned forward on the creature’s neck, urged yet more speed. Again the woman’s terror-stricken ery shredded the dark—and then again. At first, though his head- long haste and the grim peril of the going left little time for speculation, Jade had the notion that old Seams had had some sort of stroke, and the girl, alone with him, had cried for help. But there was something much more poignant in those cries, he realized, as he drew nearer— something that made him urge every last ounce of speed from the flying mount beneath him. As Jade pounded up before the lighted cabin and flung in running dismount from his saddle,- another horse called shrilly from the dark- ness of the dooryard. Yet Jade was unprepared, as he flung the shack door open, for the sight of a man’s form, black and burly against the lamplight, while clasped tight in his arms, a girl’s tense figure struggled. As she pulled back from the kiss the burly ruffian would force upon her, she screamed again, a wild, a pan- icked note of sheerest terror. Jade was through the door in one long leap. “All right, Miss Ellen, ma’am,” he ealled; “I got him. This skunk won't trouble you no more.” The girl’s eyes, black with fear, flashed toward him, as suddenly re- leased from her assailant’s hold, she staggered backward. The man, himself, black-visaged, snarling- mouthed, flung right about. Jade heard the hiss of a gun on holster leather, and ducked just in the nick of time to miss the bullet that bored | the air a scant half inch above his shoulder. And then Jade, crouch- ing, was across the room in two great strides and grappling with the fellow before his finger could squeeze the trigger a second time. The man snarled like some half- mad beast, and brought down his gun. The impact of it on Jade’s head was stunning, and yet he man- aged to complete the hard pile-driv- ing thrust of his own right fist which took the fellow square beneath the chin. The two went down together, rolling as one man, fighting for breath. HE burly scoundrél with whom Jade grappled was the first to get his wind. Snarl- ing, spitting like a coyote in a trap, he forced the gun up again to a place where he could bring it into action on Jade’s head. Jade, senses still reeling, tried to twist it from the fellow’s grip, and failed. He grasped the hairy wrist, however, and held it while the two of them rolled back and forth, first one on top and then the other, crashing against the wall, upturning chairs and tables, setting..the. stove. lids.