Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 76: what you’re looking at

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

76 FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES fingers hooked around a gun, like Cole Mal- lory and the rest of his breed.” ~“Veah,” Toby said shortly. ‘And Mal- lery don’t work no sixteen hours a day-- like farmers.” “That’s right, son. But when honest folks get up, they can face anybody, and keep right on facing them all day.” Toby grunted. ‘‘You should rent a church and have yourself a revival.” From the corridor outside the cell came the elang of an iron door being epened, and — then the thud of approaching boots. Bonner took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Funny,” he said, ‘‘the things I can see out yonder. That creek there, free and pretty and running any place it pleases. And that good rolling land, just waiting to be made into something a man could be mighty proud of. Something a man wouldn’t ever have to run away from. But it’s only for them that’s smart enough to see.” The cell.door swung inward. Four men stood there, tense and silent. They did not look at Toby Miles. Bonner’s fingers clinched the bars until his knuckles whitened. Then, slowly, he turned and walked toward the waiting mer At the door he paused, and for a moment his pale eyes locked with Toby’s. “You ought to feel right proud, son,” he said quietly. “You're lying on the same bunk Cole Mallory laid on. He didn’t get off it until two hours ago. That’s when they took him out and hung him.” His voice went down to almost a whisper. ‘‘I sided Cole on his last hold-up. Looks like Pll pretty soon be siding him again, in boothill.” OBY MILES Jay there a full minute, feeling the pounding of his heart, trying not to be sick to his stomach. whole body screaming against the pain; he pushed himself off the bunk and onto the dusty floor. Dragging his bullet-torn leg behind him, he inched toward the window, not trying to hold back the tears any longer, knowing only that he had to leck through Then, his° that barred window, that nothing else mat- tered“now. a He heard the sounds of men moving around outside, and the soft curses.and short words of men who talk only because they have to. Then the muffled sound of boots on clay changed abruptly to the louder sound of boots on pine planks. He clawed at the cell wall, trying to pull | himself upright. His fingers slipped on the smooth adobe. Time and again he sank back to the floor, weak from the pain in his thigh and the cramping nausea in his belly. At last his fingers caught the edge of the window. He hung there a moment, getting his breath. Outside, there was complete si- lence—and then he heard a sharp sound, a sound very much like the crack of a drover’s whip. Moments later, he heard the beat of boots on planking again, then on clay. Then silence once more. Tight-lipped, he pulled himself up the last - six inches to the leve] of the window. He stood there, eyes straining at: the gal- lows, at Bonner’s body swaying there at the end of a new vellow rope. He watched the early morning breeze stirring the old man’s gray hair. The new rope creaked softly on the pine cross beam. There was nothing else. High adobe walls enclosed the smal] jail vard that held the scaffold. There was no free-running creek, no gen- tly rolling land—-there was nothing out there but the high adobe walls and the scaffold, and an old man who hadn’t had his break- fast, swaying at the end of a rope. Toby Miles sank slowly to the floor. The pain in his thigh was now only a vague, dull ache. He stared across the heat-filled room toward the bunk where Cole Mallory had lain. Numbed fingers fumbled in the pocket of his levis and drew out the “Wanted” dodger. With his eyes still fixed on the empty bunk, Toby Miles crumpled the yellowed paper—slowly and with deliberate care into a small, firm ball and flung it into the far corner of the cell. ooo cComiclboooks C©