Cowboy Short Stories, November 1939 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

NOVEMBER ISSUE NOW ON SALE 98 THE WONDER DOG! appears every month in BLUE RIBBON COMICS Also DAN HASTINGS FOXY GRANDPA LITTLE NEMO and others COWBOY SHORT STORIES (Continued from Page 97) whether the man facing him believed him or not. Then he threw back his head and laughed. It was a deep belly laugh. It made his round cheeks shake and his pale blue eyes twinkle beneath their white, bushy eyebrows. ~Deader’n a toad, ye say. Well, maybe you're right and maybe ye ain't. Wanted to see if you had gumption to talk back to me. Yes, sir, if it hadn’t been for you Gus Wilkins wouldn’t be running for dis- trict judge, sure ‘nough. How ye votin’, by the way?” Wilkins’ hands moved so quickly the kid could hardly see them move, dropping his guns back into the holsters, then jabbing jout again. The kid blinked when he saw the old fellow was holding a cigar and an election placard in his right hand. Drifter took the cigar. “Don’t know as I’m votin’.” Drifter hastily bit into the cigar before Wilkins had time to snatch it back, then transferred it to his vest pocket. Wilkins laughed again, “Good cigar that is, sir. Five for a nickel. Nothing’s too good for my constituents. But now, sir, you’re either votin’ for me and law and order, or you're on the side of Trude Lyman, sir.” | “Trude Lyman.’ The kid’s memory was creeping back over those ten years of hell he had put in. Somewhere, way back in the past, the name of Lyman awakened a memory. Bill Edmo used to be afraid of Lyman, he remembered rather hazily. “Wouldn’t say this Lyman feller was kind of thin-faced without much hair and smarter’n hell, would you?” he asked. “Just so, just so,’ Wilkins boomed. ‘“Smarter’n hell and twice as crooked. Now as I was tellin’ ye—” ‘“‘Never mind.” The kid jerked his fin- get toward the sandy-haired man lying in the center of the road. ‘What you going to do with that?” “I?” Wilkins looked grieved. “I do with that? I’m no undertaker. It strikes me he’s yours.”’ The kid lit into swearing again. Wil- kins was pretty smart, he reckoned pro- fanely, running for district judge against Trude Lyman and not wanting to get sad- dled down with a shooting. Things were shaping just about as the kid figured they might. Here he was loaded with a killing before he even got to Halfway. “What about this Lyman?” he demanded. Wilkins motioned to the man in the toad. ‘Gregor there was his man. Lyman Connicloookxs (C@