Fifteen Western Tales, March 1954 — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

. there at the ranch last week— eh PNSteaL ey F ye ‘ ’ é _ Sons, -in Mexico, I reckon. la —= a be follerin’ Tug and Bill an You'll be the only Wyeth left—against the Harbi- ‘cause we didn’t git ’em all. Duke’s still left, for one, the damned snake, but he’s But young Dorf, mebbe he’s around—not countin’ the pack of their shirt-tail kinfolks . The dying man paused, breathing hard. Then his fingers tightened on Dan’s. askin’. you to take your mother and pull outa Texas. We owe it to her, Dan. Your | mother’s life has been a hard one. Losin’ Natalie like she did- was almighty hard. When Nat run off with that no-good Duke Harbison it was-worse than if Nat had died. Then, with Tug and Bill gettin’ killed right She won't expect me back alive, so the shock won't be anything she ain’t. expectin’, and she'll have you, Dan. You’re her youngest, her favorite next to Nat,-who broke her heart. You’ll have to make up to Ma for the rest of us. “Her brother Luther is up north some- wheres—Montana or Wyoming. Him bein’ a preacher, he never thought much of us Wyeths. Mebbeso he was right in turnin’ ag’in yeur ma for marryin’ me. Luther Gregory’s a good man, even if he is a fire an’ brimstone preacher. Take her there amongst. her own kinfolks. Don’t .never leave her, son. Never. Promise.” Young Dan Wyeth was only eighteen, and until last week he had never seen death strike with the swift, deadly cruelty of a lightning bolt. He was dazed from the sudden, numbing shock of it all. “T’ll take her away,” he promised. And for the first time he could remember, ‘he leathery, grim-jawed face of his cowman father had softened; the bloodshot, gray eyes had lost their steel-like hardness. So Jim Wyeth had died, with Harbison lead in him,-with the knowledge that Harbi- sons were out there in the deepening. twi- light, their guns ready for the last Wyeth. Only the thought of his mother kept Dan = “Too. ‘many fof you to fight alone, son, so I’m from staying in the rocks and fighting it out : with the bushwhacking Harbisons till - his last cartridge was used. Then he’d have fought them with his-hands till they fin- ished him. oa But there was his mother waiting. Her hair had whitened too soon, and her. face. was etched with tiny lines around the mouth and eyes, knew—did not belong on her gentle face. Maybe work eased the grief left in her heart when her only daughter had run away, three years ago, with Duke Harbison. Nata- lie had left behind a tear-stained note telling her mother that she loved the handsome, bard-riding, gambling man and cowpunch- er—the quick-triggered range dude of the. Harbisons. He remembered hearing that. Duke was ‘in Mexico or South America. He’d turned outlaw. And Nat seemed to have vanished from the earth and from the life of her wild mate. Dan’s mother always spoke of Nat as being dead. Dan thought of Nat and his mother now. One last look at the pile of boulders that marked his father’s lonely grave. Then he, crawled through the big granite rocks and down the slope through the pinons. Worming — his way, snakelike, on his belly, using every | bit of stealth he had learned from stalking wild animals on hunting trips, foot by foot he made headway over the uneven ground. Then he heard voices nearby. The Harbi- © sons were so certain of killing their trapped quarry that they made no attempt to. be quiet. and quarreling among themselves. A match flared in the shelter of some = brush not a hundred feet from where Dan lay motionless on his belly. saw the long-jawed, _young Dorf Harbison. Dan could have. killed Dorf now. He. still wore the scars of a knife-licking Dorf . = = Comicbooks, lines which—Dan_ instinctively. They were formed in a scattered — circle around the nest of boulders, calling . out to one another, cursing the Wyeth name | In the light of . the cupped flame that lit a cigarette Dan ; ogee tes face of | Eo _——