2-Gun Western, February 1954 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

WHEN A TEXAN TAKES OVER by LOUIS L'AMOUR HEN MATT RYAN saw the WW cattle tracks on Mocking Bird he swung his horse over under the trees and studied the ter- rain with a careful eye. For those cattle tracks meant rustlers were raiding the KY range. For a generation the big KY spread had been the law in the Slumbering Hill country, but now the old man was dying and the wolves were com- ing out of the breaks to tear at the body of the ranch. And there was nobody to stop them, nobody to step into the big tracks old Tom Hitch had made, no- body to keep law in the hills now that old Tom was dying. He had built an empire of land cattle, but he had also brought law into the outlaw country, brought schools and a post office, and the beginnings of thriv- ing settlement. But they had never given up, not Indian Kelly nor Lee Bann, They'd Matt shot at _ the middle of the man's body. ae ee we There was a sixshooter in his belt and a Winchester in his saddle boot—yet the stranger wanted no part of any gun ruckus... waited back in the hills, bitter with their own poison, waiting for the old man to die. All the people in the Slumbering Hill country knew it, and they had looked to Fred Hitch, the old man’s adopted son, to take up the job when the old man put it down. But Fred was an eaSy-going young man who liked to drink and gamble. And he spent too much time with Dutch Ger- lach, the KY foreman...and who had a good word for Dutch? “This is the turn, Red,” Ryan told his horse, “they know the old man will never ride again, so they have started rustling.” It was not just a few head...there must have been forty or more in this bunch, and no attempt to cover the trail. In itself that was strange. It seemed they were not even worried about what Gerlach might do...and what would he do? Dutch Gerlach : f iil a. | GomiGcoooks) (C@)