Fifteen Western Tales, January 1953 — page 89: what you’re looking at

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

BRING HIM BACK DEAD! 89 flow of blood. Frowning, he regarded the bare, smooth-muscled arm of the Cross L man. ° | Across Blaney’s forearm, still faintly pink, was the welt of a freshly healed scar, a scar that must have been burned there by a bul- let! For a moment he looked at the scar with thoughtful eyes, but when at last he spoke it was about another matter altogeth- er. “He meant to drill you in the back, Clint,” _ he muttered. ‘That sort’s peculiar. Did he have anything agin’ you? Personal, I mean?” “T’ve had plenty of trouble with the Cross » L outfit ever since I homesteaded next to them,” said Clint Farley slowly. ‘Blaney and McCaulley both! Blaney and me had a fight six months or so ago. I took a gun from him, and whipped him all over a cor- ral. He seemed kinda provoked about it at the time.” “He was the gent who found McCaulley.” Farley nodded. ‘Him and Ed Seminole.” ‘How do you and Seminole stack up?” “Jest a drinking acquaintance. Why?” But Sam Fenton shook his head. A hunch hunch that he was not willing to try to put in words. On the day following the killing of Jess McCaulley, Sam Fenton had gone in- to the little Saddle Rock bank on business. Jim Blaney had been standing at the cash- ier’s window when he entered, and Fenton had waited at Blaney’s elbow while the Cross L man scrawled off a check. And a little fact, meaningless, then, and unimpor- tant, had lodged in a corner of Fenton’s mind—a little fact forgotten until now. For Blaney, writing, had moved his hand in slow and careful strokes. So a man with a sore arm might write! No” crouching in a gulley in Rawhide | Canyon, Sam Fenton was adding up the score. Always, heretofore, he had assumed that Clint Farley had killed Jess McCaulley. Now he was not sure. On Jim Blaney’s arm was a fresh scar that must be a bullet burn. Blaney had been troubled with a sore arm on the day after his partner was found mur- dered. Sam Fenton lifted puzzled eyes to Clint Farley, fugitive from justice, hunkered there beside him. “Clint,” he said, “I never got to take in your trial. There was one thing I remember — ‘was now lying unconscious at his feet. ‘hearing which seemed funny at the time. Way I heard it, the testimony was that Mc- Caulley’s gun was in the holster, but that it had two empty shells.” “That was the how of it,” agreed avtew, “A normal, thoughtful gent carries an empty to cradle his firing pin,” ton. “Only a plumb careless hombre would have two empty shells in his gun. An’ Jess McCaulley was never careless.” “Which tallies up to how much?” “Clint,” said the deputy, deadly serious now, ‘“‘mebbe Jess McCaulley died with the gun in his hand—might be he even got in a shot before he died. That would account for the empty shell. “Mebbe the gent what killed him put the gun back in the holster, and then, knowin’ you and McCaulley had trou- ble, wrote your name there in the dust.” Clint Farley nodded agreement. “TI fig- ger something like that happened. But you can’t make a jury believe that kind of story. Not without knowing who killed McCaulley, or having some sort of proof to back up the yarn.” And that was true. The evidence which had convicted Farley, while wholly circum- stantial, was yet so strong that. absolute proof would be required to overthrow it. Sam Fenton recognized that fact. Two men had furnished the evidence. One of these The other, Ed Seminole, was still somewhere higher up on the steep side of the canyon. A hunch was prodding the big deputy now. The time was short. Blaney was still unconscious, but he might recover at any moment. Other members of the posse might appear, drawn by the single shot. Sam Fen- ton did not want that to happen—not yet. He had a plan, a wildly fantastic, utterly hare-brained plan. Lifting his head carefully above the mass of rocks he searched the hillside at the place where last he had seen Seminole. It was some little time before he found his man. Seminole, made cautious, by the revolver shot, crouched in the shadow of a great pinon tree, but even as Fenton spotted him ‘the Cross L man began a slow advance on hands and knees. He was evidently taking no unnecessary chances. He reached a small boulder in his path, crouched there to. re- connoiter. Sam Fenton, completely hidden from Seminole’s view by the depression in which comiclboooks mused Fen- | CO