Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

WHILE THE GALLOWS WAIT— 75 lead. 50 I wouldn’t throw stones, if I were you.” _ The old man shrugged. He took tobacco. and papers from a pocket of his frayed shirt and tossed them across to Toby. | “Don’t get riled, younker,” he said. ‘“You don’t want to palaver, it’s all the same to me. Otherwise, you can call me Bonner, ev- erybody does.” Toby sifted tobacco dust into a paper, spilling a little on the sweat-soured blanket beneath him. “‘What the hell,” he said bit- terly. “You’d know soon enough anyway.” He lit the cigarette and sucked the harsh, dry smoke deep into his lungs. “A ranny was sleeping behind the livery. I tried to lift his gun. He woke up and let out a holler like a stuck pig.” Bonner’s teeth were yellow in the candle light. “And what would a kid like you be needing with a hogleg?” Toby let his eyes narrow. He was loose- skinned and big-boned, grown hard and tall for his age. “T figured it was a thing I’d need,” he said. ‘Unless I wanted to be a dirt farmer’s flunky the rest of my life. I had egough of that, mister—back on Pa’s place near Con- norsville. I cut out two weeks ago, and I’m never going back. Tonight was just a bad break.” Bonner’s eyes , showed nothing. to hit the owlhoot, eh?” he said softly. can tell.” Toby took a final drag on the cigarette, flipped it across the cell. “Something like that, old-timer.” He lay back, and the sud- den movement brought another wave of sickness flooding through him. He was thinking now of the “Wanted”’ dodger in the pocket of his levis. There was no need to examine the dodger again; the face of Cole Mallory was engraved in Toby’s memory. Mallory—the man the whole terri- “Aiming wid" tory feared and envied. The man who had | robbed a score of banks; killed almost a dozen men. The man who had savvy enough to use his brain arid a Colt—i pitchfork and a plow. | Bonner slid off his bunk and moved across the dirt floor slowly to the high, barred win- dow. | “Getting sort of red in the east,” he said. “Sun will be busting up over them moun- tains any minute now. Daylight comes mighty fast in these parts.” “Fine,” Toby said. “Maybe they’ll feed - us.” ONNER laughed tonelessly. “Maybe.” He grasped the bars in wide hands and stood there, rigid, a tall man with narrow, sloping shoulders and thinning iron-gray hair. He said, “A man can just begin to make out the shape of things now. Funny, how you can see so many thousand mornings come and go, and never pay them no notice.”’ Toby glanced at him sharply. ‘‘What’s so different about this one?” Bonner edged closer to the bars. the morning they let me out.” “TI wish it was me,” Toby said. “They won’t be too hard on you, son— seeing as how you ain’t much more than a button.” _ “Cut that, friend!” Toby told him. ‘Cole Mallory started even younger than me!”’ Bonner laughed drily. ‘Pull in your horns,” he said. He was silent a full minute. Then, “You know what I’d do when I got out, if I was you?” “Go back to a damn manure fork, I sup- pose,’ Toby said. ‘Beats a lot of other things I could name.” Bonner pressed his face against the bars. ‘“Yonder’s a creek and a lot of nice rolling land. Good land for farming. A lad like you could work somebody else’s place until he saved enough for one of his own. He could—” “This is “Save it,” Toby said. “You're talking to: the wrong gent, Bonner.” ‘“Maybe so. I’m just saying that if a man put his mind to it, he could have himself a right nice place hereabouts. Next thing he’d want would be a little somebody to brighten it up for him. Men ain’t built to go it single saddle.” _ Toby Miles said nothing. Bonner was loco; that was for damn sure. He wondered how ‘long a man had to be penned up before he got that way. He changed his position slightly. The “Wanted” dodger rustled soft- ly in his pocket. He thought again of Cole Mallory. Bonner made a soft sound im his throat. “Mighty strange I never thought out things, myself, when I was your age. ‘‘A man works hard and stays honest, he can sleep nights. He don’t have to grab his shut-eve a few minutes at a time, with his comiclboooks CO