Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

38 FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES Jack Tolman threw a sack onto the middle of the table. As he did so Cole said: “A hun- dred dollars, Harder.” Jesse looked at the sack and then at the man’s face. It wasn’t a decent price; not what he was used to. He shouldn’t have shown Cole and Jack Tolman that he was out of tobacco. But they were no dummies. One look at him had told them he was hard up. He sighed heavily, moved his hand slowly across the table, and picked up the bag of tobacco. He rolled the smoke deftly but carefully and when he was about to lick the paper down, he looked up suddenly at the two brothers. They were watching him patiently, but there was a flicker of amuse-, ment in their eyes. Jesse licked the paper down, twisted the end and put it in his mouth. He scratched a match under the table with a long, sweeping motion and looked up at the men again. ‘A hundred dollars,” he said disgustedly. “Fine, fine,’ Cole said, leaning across the table. He spoke in a lower voice now. “The name’s Mark Clayburn. We don’t care how you do it, as long as we’re not figured up with it. Beeker’s Gulch is about fifty miles north of here. We'll ride up with you to- morrow as far as The Forks and make a camp. You got all the next day to make your move. We'll meet you again that night. On the east side of town there’s a cotton- wood grove, near the river. There’s an old broken-down fence that some nester put up once. You can’t miss it. wen pay you off there.” Jesse sat up straighter in his chair and stared reflectively at a spot somewhat above Cole Tolman’s head. His eyes narrowed a little and a thin smile came on his face. “Vou'll be there, Mister Tolman?” he said. The Mexican came up out of his chair. His hand rested on his pant leg, in front of the tooled gun holster, poised and ready to draw. “Sit down,” Cole T sigian snapped. Jesse smiled broadly at the Mexican but there was no humor in his eyes. Ramos hesitated for a moment and sat down again, but his body remained tense and rigid. The two brothers stood up then. “We'll be there,” Cole Tolman said. “T know you will,” Jesse said without looking up at them. | “But remember,” Cole said, ‘‘this is your show. If anything goes wrong, don’t look to us.” “Did I ask?” Jesse said, and met the stare of the other man. Cole Tolman watched him for a moment, a sure unfriendliness showing in his eyes, then nodded his head and the three men moved away. Jesse watched them thread their way through the tables and go out the door of the saloon. For a split second, he wondered why the Tolman. brothers wanted the old sheriff of Beeker’s Gulch killed, but he pushed the thought back. He didn’t want to know. That was the only code that ha had, if he could call it a code. It was a simple thing to kill a man, and knowing why it had to be done only complicated the matter. It made you think, and in his business he had de- cided long ago that to think was a thing to be avoided. He got up slowly, took the sack of tobacco from the table, and went out of the saloon. HEY rode out the next day and that eve- ning made camp at The Forks, in the low foothills where the Maria fanned out into three smaller, more sluggish streams. The next morning he had taken his time in cover- ing the remaining ten miles to the little town of Beeker’s Gulch. He had ridden into it that afternoon, down the only street, indif- ferent to the houses and buildings and the few people that he saw. Even now in the saloon, while he waited for old Mark Clayburn, the sheriff, there was a manner of total indifference about him. He seemed oblivious even to the‘barkeep and the hidden shotgun. It had taken him many years to develop this indifference, but he had done it well, so that now, they hardly seemed like people to him, but more like the stray cow that he passed on the trail, an unknown, cardboard figure on the landscape. He had learned long ago that the less he knew, the less he would care. But’ still, sitting in this saloon, in this town that he didn’t know, and where he was not yet known, a faint curiosity was working at the back of his brain. He thought of the man that he was going to kill, old Mark Clayburn and that all he knew about him was that he was an old man with a fondness for sleeping in the afternoon. There was more to a man than that. And what had he done that Cole and Jack Tolman and that CoOMmiclbhoo (CO