Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

RIDE WITH ‘THE GUNSMOKE 5 UDAS THOMAS THOMPSON. To everyone but Ghet Wainsworth, Gunther was the greatest leader the nesters ever had. But Chet knew that both he and the sodbusters - could expect more mercy from the catitlemen’s guns than from the deadly °° jrianddstit Pp” O LOOK at them, no man could guess that they had started as farmers. They were bearded and dirty, armed with knife and-gun and rope, and one of them always stood near the camp, on guard, ready to kill if need be. They were wanted in a dozen places. And they were welcome in a hundred scattered dugouts and soddies. The leader of the band, Les Gunther, leaned back on his elbows with a grass straw . in his mouth, and his lizard eyes looked across the shimmering heat waves of the val- ley. He, was a long, thin man with an angu- lar jaw, the knots of his knuckles the only 12 : quietly, of their champion. remaining sign of the years he had spent grubbing in worthless soil. that had never raised a crop. His wife had left him for a man with money; there was a hideous scar on his neck where a cattleman had burned him with a rope. “That’s it, Chet,” he said looking out across the valley. “Here’s revenge, finally, and along with it a home for a lot of good people—and we re the ones that will get it for ’em.’ The man called Chet was young. the others he was bearded and dirty and had the furtive look of a hunted man about him, but there was also rebellion in his pale Coniicloooks.c© Like inn