2-Gun Western, February 1954 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

FURY _ olence. There had been a slide and the lip of the Cut was crumbled. Testing the sol- idness of the ground as he went, he walked gingerly to the edge and peered over the sheer side. Calico, Jane’s old pinto, was lying at the bottom of the Cut. He was not dead. Sam could see his heaving ribs, and one front hoof thrashed out suddenly and jerkily. There was a rope hackamore on the horse. Sam inched back to safer ground, then hurled himself into his saddle. With one movement, he turned the pack mare loose and sent the gelding racing toward the house. He snatched his rifle off the rack, made sure it was loaded, then sped down the hill into the mouth of the cut. The gelding pounded through the brush and Sam did not notice the whipping branches or tear- ing thorns. N A MATTER of minutes, they reached the narrow box canyon where the pinto lay. A look at the sunken eyes and foam flecked mouth was enough. Sam sent a mercy shot into Calico’s head, Then he began his search. The pinto had a broken back, but he had been lying in the Cut alive and suffering for a long time. At least two days, Sam figured. The streaks along his side were undeniably spur marks. : Sam looked carefully. Whoever had tied the rope hackamore around Calico’s neck had not fallen with the horse. There was no trace of him among the rocks. The sun came late to the Cut, but now it was reflected from the wall. It was hot already. Yesterday and the day before it must have been a small and stifling hell. Sam rode around and up again to the broken fence. There had been no strong wind in the past two days and the story was written in the sunbaked dust. There were the deep hoofprints just be- 67 yond the shattered rails. Coupled with the spur marks, they told that Calico, never having felt spurs before, had been driven to terrified fighting. He had thrown the rider—there were the marks, even a hand- print plowing along the gravelly dirt— and gone crashing through the fence. The ground had given way. His toss had saved ee rider’s life, but Sam would take care of that. He gave one bleak glance at the pack mare. She was plodding back to the corral. Let her go—she’d be all right for a while. He followed the footprints. He had to dismount several times to study them but the trail was never lost for long. It was easier because he’d known from the begin- ning where it would lead. The man had walked straight and un- injured. There was no reason why he couldn’t have come back to put the pinto out of its agony. “He should have come back,’’ Sam said aloud in a terrible anger. “He should have come back. He should have come back.” it was Jane’s pet that had lain there in the heat— Sam did not travel fast, now. He had to make sure he was following the right track, even though he knew. And there was no hurry. The pinto was no longer suffer- ing. Will Staley would be dead a long time. There was no hurry. Staley must have heard that the owner of a dude ranch near Dillon was offering a good price for Calico. The gentle old horse could be trusted not to harm the valuable skins of important dudes who came West to play. cowboy and Indian. Sam had refused to sell. He liked to see the pinto around the corrals, or eating his head off in the best pastures. Calico had wandered from corral to range as he pleased, thinking he owned the ranch. After all, he had been there al- most as long as Sam. Calico had never been a really useful horse, but Jane had loved him. She’d raised him from a colt, and in a way, let him take the place of the child she’d always wanted. Will Staley had been a burden to Sam since the day six years before when he had halted a rickety spring wagon in front of the abandoned claim shack below the Barge ranch and turned his sorry family out to live off the country. Jane’s heart had been touched by Bert, the hungry two- year-old, so she carried food and blankets down to them. A month later, she helped Molly Staley at the birth of baby John. She felt that John was partly her child af- ter that, she said. Jane had died the next year. In a kind of memorial to her, Sam accepted the re- sponsibility of Molly and the two boys. He knew Will Staley was robbing him, bak as long as it was only a beef steer now and then, he overlooked it because it helped feed Molly and the young one, even though Will drank up most of the money. Sam had been patient, but at last Will Staley had gone too far. HE TWO little boys were outside the Staley cabin when Sam got there. Bert CORMICLOOKS (C@