2-Gun Western, February 1954 — page 63: what you’re looking at

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

THE KILLING AT SPANISH L | CK by ED ASHLEY SAW THE killing that day, [ eroren the window of the Crazy- Horse Saloon. I never want to see anything like that again. I guess most of the folks in town felt the same way, though a killing was just what a lot of people were waiting all morn- ing to see, from the time word got around that Vern Sanders was back in town. Everyone knew that, sooner or later, the marshal would come af- ter him. Jed was that kind of marshal. Vern Sanders, at thirty-four, had the reputation of be- ing the fastest gun- man in all of Colora- do, Wyoming and Utah. Fourteen men had died before Vern’s gun, some of them well-known gunsling- ers, and any one of them as fast or faster than the marshal of Spanish Lick. And still, if you had want- ed to bet a _ nickel against the marshal’s coming after Vern, you couldn’t have found a tak- er anywhere in town. Jed didn’t stand a chance with Vern Sanders in a showdown, but we all knew he wouldn’t try it any other way. Besides, he couldn't have gotten any deputies if he had tried. Not to go against Vern. That was why I closed the store and started over to the Crazy-Horse to try to talk to Vern. At the time, I had an idea I might get him out of town before it happened. Then too, I was curious to see how he looked after fifteen years and fourteen killings. Vern and I had gone to school together, right here in Spanish Lick. I guess I was just about the only real friend Vern ever had in this town. He never had gotten along with people any too well. Even his father, a big, rugged man, had resented Vern, 63 Vern Sanders? He wasn't aman, he was a gun..... the skinny little dreamer. A skinny kid has a mighty rough time of it in a town like Spanish Lick. As I went down the board sidewalk toward the saloon, I remembered that I was the one who had bought Vern his first gun. a single-action Colt .44 with an eight-inch barrel. | I was nineteen then, and clerking in the store for old man Bartow. Vern had just turned seventeen, and he was afraid old Partow wouldn't se!l him the gun. He’d been saving the money for six months, and he was pretty anxious. So [ bought the gun for him, and a box of shells, and I met him that afternoon down in the dry-wash back of cown and gave it to him. Ever see a good jeweler take a 21-jew- el works out of the case? That's the way Vern Sanders handled that new gun of his, balancing it in his thin hands, easy and light as a feather, turning it slowly, smiling all the time like a man who has just realized his life-long dream. Vern was always small for his age. I guess he figured that gun would make up for it some day. It surely did. Lots of times after that Vern and I would ride up the dry-wash into the foothills and do some shooting. I can remember the way the blisters came on Vern’s hands; on the palm of the right hand where it slupped the butt of the Colt’s, and one on each of the middle fingers. And the raw, red place on the edge of his left palm where he’d fan the hammer. Most kids would have fooled around with sev- eral styles of drawing, trying to find which was the fastest. Vern never did “that. Right from the first, he ~ fanned his gun at waist level, and he never changed. By the time those COMMICLOOoKX (C@