2-Gun Western, November 1955 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

AS FAST AS THEY CAME 23 top of the feather mattress made no sound, “Dead,” Long Sam figured. An Indian grabbed the edge of the boat to pull himself aboard, his knife in his teeth. Long Sam laid a nice swish with the scythe blade and cut _ off his hand. Betty was shooting point-blank with the pistols. Pappy and the Yankee had reloaded and fired again. Long Sam did then what he had planned all along, if it came to that. He laid the flat side of the blade on the rump of the mule that had been bucking the worst, cut the leather trace, and the beast jumped off the side of the boat into the water. Then Long Sam belted the other mule and it snatched the wagon and tumbled it onto the Indian canoe, long Sam whacking rapidly at traces and tie ropes to free this animal and the led mules and the cow and calf. Such a milling around Long Sam never dreamed of. Four mules and the cattle churning the river. Redskins trying to get out from under the wag- on. Wagon, swimming cows and mules, canoe, and ferryboat by this time had drifted down the river far past the landing. An Indian who hadn’t died, given up, of swum away, and who still had his gun, shot at Pappy. Long Sam saw Pappy grow limp. The Yank killed the Indian. Betty was still lying on her belly, pistol in hand. Long Sam discovered: blood running out of him over his clothes, and stared at it in wonder. He decided he would stay alive long enough to get the treadmill mule’s leg undone and see if it would be possi- ble to navigate the ferryboat/ back up the river, by warping and poling. The Yank examined Pappy. “I seen ’em hit worse’n that and live to fight another day, bub,” he said to Long Sam. “I’m one of ’em. But he’s sorter bunged up, at that.” He stood and looked in all direc- tions. “By Judas, where’s my old woman ?” | with a weary kind of finality, “She’s gone, Paw,” Betty said. “Gone where?” : But he knew. | Long Sam pulled off his sie He saw something that looked like a rib sticking out. Betty pushed it back in, bound him in bandages. She didn’t bawl. She helped Long John and her father warp the boat back to the land- ing, tie it up. Strangely, the sun was still shining. All this had happened not in a lifetime but in moments—and not too many even of them. Fifteen, twenty, at the outside. The Yank said, “I’m going after, my cows and my mules and my wag- on. I can’t go West without them.” Betty helped Long John up the rise to the shack. The Yank toted Pappy up and put him in the bed, saying, “T’ll be back soon’s I get my animals.” Ma was gone. So were the hogs and chickens. Betty said to her father “Pa, I’m not going West no farther. I’m going to stay right here. This is far enough toward the setting sun for me.”’ A snort of rum raised Long Sam’s hopes of his life. “T didn’t miss that half-breed Cody, Betty,” he said. “You didn’t? You didn’t hit him.” “TI shot at the waterline of the bull- boat. I knew if it was loaded with red- skins it would sink and that would give us a chance to pick ’em off,” Betty patted ‘his cheek. “You go to sleep. I knew you were as good a shot as Pa or your Pappy.’ He took her hand. “You fixing to stay?” “It’s a hard thing to say, but Pa probably ain’t going West now, where ‘there ain’t any women. He'll likely — stay here and wait till some show up. But that’ Il be long enough for me and you.” Long John sank away into a rum- my coma, loading and firing Pappy’s shootin’ arm and paca em dead as fast as they came. @® END