Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

‘70 FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES en TD rope like twisted roots of some giant tree. He felt the great backward surge of power driving out of his unflexing legs. The wagon was inching forward. _ The dust steadily thickened as thirty pairs of boots stabbed at the slope, but the men coutinued driving their weight back down- hill, dragging the wagon with painful slow- ness up toward the pulley and the rock. The sun burned down hot on their backs and sweat was stinging in their eyes, but, still, no one, faltered. The pulling men were down behind the | wagon now. It hadn’t more than twenty feet to go and the polers were yelling excit- edly and preparing to jam the pole through. They used oak timbers from a wagon that had fallen off a ridge and smashed up for Shawn did not trust green poles to hold the wheels. Up at the lead, he struggled, and they worked like demons to keep pace. “Git on it, you boys,” Shawn bellowed. “Git back there away from Oregon, back away from Oregon, so the waggns can go ahead!” His muscles bunched powerful, but his legs held firm and he chanted in the rhythm of his work, ‘Git away from Ore- | gon, Oregon!” They took up his chant until suddenly, the spell was broken by frightened yells be- hind. In an instant, Bill Shawn felt the rope in his hands come alive and jerk away from him. He felt the rope dance and heard rocks clattering, and saw the yellow dust thicken around him as men below rolled it up. Then somebody yelled, “They ain’t holdin’ ahind!” The dust, whirled up from behind, and then a great swath of it rolled down the slope. It was all a yellow nightmare, and Bill Shawn’s iron grip on the rope was as secure as a man’s hold on a fistful of water. The rope tail whipped his back in passing and ripping through his hands, was greased by his own blood. Then the pulley shrieked and the hurtling wagon crashed down past Shawn and into the yellow cloud of dust from out of which men were ai with frantic haste. Shawn watched a poler jam his wagon tongue into a wheel on the far side, and held his breath so it caught. But then the tip of the pole rammed the wagon bed, the pole smashing out at the struggling poler with a hundred times his own: strength. It caught his knee and threw him as if he were a mouse flung by a catapult. He went screaming off into the dust that hid him from Bill’s view. “Jump clear, jump clear!” Shawn heard himself yelling, but he knew it was too late. Only those who had jumped by instinct could get out of the way. He watched open mouthed while the - wagon careened down the slope, visible as only an occasional spinning wheel jutted out of the booming dust down toward the ant- like forms crawling up from below. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if that spinning hell reached the women and children. He just stood and watched and praved. . Beyond. the dust cloud loomed a giant, wind-twisted pine. The wagon took a sud- den swerve and smashed against it and the tree shook like a twanged bowstring as wheels and wagon timbers seemed to spurt in every direction. Then, slowly, the pine tree bent, then wavered for a moment, and crashed to earth. . ' A damp wind came along and eased the dust away, to show the shattered wagon and tree lying in a crumpled heap far down the trail... . “Your fault, hairbrained idea! Shawn! What a damn, Why, dragging wagons up a sheer cliff, could have killed us all!” Bill Shawn did not reply. He stood by the fire with his thumbs tucked into the waistband of his buckskin breeches. There " was no use to reply. The speaker was Joel Kalder. He was schooled in talking and thoroughly pleased when he got an audience. He could talk rings around Shawn, and Shawn knew it. So he kept his silence. A reply could only give Kalder something to rip apart. “Here we are eighty miles south of the main pass,’ Kalder went on. “With just barely time to make it: safely across to Oregon before snow comes. You call your- self a wagon master? We'll spend weeks here getting half the wagons across, and Ill bet it’s your own freight wagon you’ll want to take over first. Shorter route, you say, but by the Lord above, man, you'll maroon us here for the winter!”’ HAWN looked around the campfire. Most of the eighty people in the train were present listening to Kalder. Shawn stood with feet braced and took their stares. Kalder on the other side of the fire, stood in front of a wagon wheel and gestured with oO cCoMmicbooks CO