2-Gun Western, February 1954 — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

THE TROUBLED GUN “Oh, Tom, you’ve got it all wrong. He did it because I asked it of him. Now he’s leaving the country. He didn’t even wait to be thanked. Can't you see?” “T see, ail right,’ said Holbrook, his voice hoarse with hate. “He might be geing but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be back. He wants.me to stew and fret a while and then he plans on returning when I’ve begun to think he wasn’t ever coming back. It’s his way of getting even with me but I’m a little too smart for him. I’ve always been too smart for him.” “I wouldn’t call it smart,” said Cameron. “‘Sneaky’ would be a bet- ter word.” ~“So you've got a tongue?” said Hol- brook with a sneer. “Little good it will do you, however.” “What are you going to do, Tom?” asked Lucy. “I’m going to kill him!” “No!” she cried, voice thick with horror. “You can’t do a thing like that. No, Tom!” “It’s either him or me, Lucy.” “That’s 1ight, Lucy,” said Cameron, his lips stiff with anger and hate. “He has to kill me because as long as I’m alive there’s always the chance I might prove he held up the Los Pinos stage and framed me into the pen. He has no choice but to kill me, Lucy.” “It’s not true,’ cried Lucy. “Say it isn’t true, Tom.” “Tell her, Tom,’ said Cameron. “Lie to her and tell her it’s not true. You should be able to convince her. Lying and all the other yellow, sneak- ing things come pretty easy to you. Go on and tell her, Tom.” Holbrook’s teeth showed white in a snarl of ferine hate. “You're try- ing to force .ny hand, aren’t you, Steve?” he said with a quiet ferocity. “You know you're gonna die and you want it over with. Well, you’re not hurrying me, and when you do get it, it’s going to be in the belly and I’m going to stand and watch you die inch by inch.” 3 He gave an ugly laugh that sent a chill down Cameron’s spine. “Sure, Steve, I’ll tell her,’ Hol- brook went on. “What if she does know the truth? She’s my wife, isn’t she? A wife can’t testify against her husband. So she might as well know the truth. Steve is right, Lucy. I held up the Los Pinos stage ten years ago. I planted that bar of silver bul- lion in his corral. How else do you think I got the money to get started in the cattle business? There, Steve, I’ve told her. Does it make you feel any better?” Lucy was crying. “Don’t joke about a thing like that, Tom. Please don’t joke about it.” “It’s no joke, Lucy,” said Holbrook, “When you see Steve with a couple of slugs in his belly, you’ll know then it’s no joke.” “Don’t talk like that, Tom,” she begged. “Not after everything he has done for you. He helped you out of a jail sentence after all you had done to him. He was willing to forget eve- rything. Can’t you do as much?” “He’s not forgetting anything,” Holbrook snarled. “He means to kill me someday.” Lucy was still crying. “Don’t make me stop loving you, Tom. Please don’t make me do that.” “You'll get over it,” Holbrook said callously. “You'll cry a while but you'll get over it.” His teeth showed white again and there was a harsh note of evil in his voice. “Here it comes, Steve. A red hot slug in the belly. Don’t forget to tell me how you like it.” The roar of the gun was loud and strident in Cameron’s ears. He won- dered that he felt nothing but maybe that was how it was at first. Maybe it was only numbness at the begin- ning with the pain to follow soon after but as of now he could not feel even the numbness. Yet a gun had blasted and there could have been no missing at that range. He stared unbelievingly at Hol- brook. There was a look of vast as- tonishment on the man’s face. His mouth gaped wordlessly and he seemed to be straining in an effort to say something but only strangled sounds emerged from his throat. The gun fell from his hand and he clasped both palms against his chest and it 47. was then that Cameron saw the blood © squeezing through Holbrook’s fran- (please turn to page 62) econichoolks (E@)