2-Gun Western, November 1955 — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

THROUGH GUNSIGHTS 75 chelle and Clint Abad. Tough hands both, but now they were two statues, frozen into place. Then Lanky Pete Duchelle looked down at the figure in the snow. “It’s Dave,” he said stupidly. The words seemed to break a spell. Clint Abad flung himself aside, trying desperately to swing his rifle into line. The rifle barked from the cabin, and Abad went down, his gun unfired. Pete Duchelle managed to get in one shot, firing his rifle from the hip. The slug kicked up snow a foot in front of the cabin doorway. Rod Donnelly took deliberate aim. His bullet hit Duchell in the center of the chest. : Rod Donnelly watched Duchelle go down. He lowered the rifle slowly. Not a killer, he thought. He’d been unable to shoot a little time back, when he’d had Dave Galt helpless un- der his gun. Now, with two. killers trying to get guns into action, he'd had no trouble squeezing trigger. It was hard to understand. He let it go. It wasn’t over yet. He still had a long ride ahead of him—twenty miles to Lige Altman’s ranch on Rock creek. SAM COLT'S KILLER Shortly afterward the father of the revolver died of his affliction. Just a few years earlier he had been arrested for a $400 debt; upon his death he left an estate valued at $5,000,000. His armory was making weapons at the rate of 1,000 per day, and also gun- making machinery for other armories all over the world. He did not live to hear the death knell of his revolving- breech rifle. Nor did he know that a new invention was about to come upon the scene which would revolu- tionize the firearm almost as much as had his own patent: it was the metallic cartridge. | However, the Colt armory survived this new ammunition. And after the first automatic pistols made their ap- pearance abroad, his feature was soon adapted to Colt models, too. Since then, Colt has been the main supplier of this through two World Wars and several local ones, but world com- petition has increased. Of about 200,000 revolvers and automatics made by Colt annually in today’s relatively peaceful times, about 25 per cent are .22 ealiber and He owed Galt’s crowd something there; they'd caught up the horses for him and put them in the barn. He was pretty sure he had enough left to make the ride to Altman's. He crawled outside. Pete Duchelle was dead in the snow. So was Dave Galt. There was a bloody froth on Clint Abad’s lips, but his eyes were wide open. He looked at Donnelly. “We figgered...you was dead,” he muttered. “Figgered...Dave was... in cabin...” Donnelly crawled on. He picked up the black Stetson hat which had dropped from Dave Galt’s head. It was his best hat, his town hat. He rolled Dave Galt over, and patiently he began to work the dead man out of the big coat—the black bearskin coat which had set that hook-nosed killer up as a target. When he had finished the task, he glanced again at Clint Abad. Abad’s eyes were closed now. Donnelly spoke softly to a man already dead. “I figured maybe you would, Abad,” he said. “That’s why I let Galt wear my coat and hat.” @END (cont'd from page 27) for sportsmen and target shooters. The rest are for military, police and sportsmen. But the chips are down; there has been an influx of arms from other countries at lower prices which Colt has difficulty matching because of ‘cheap labor abroad. Sam Colt ‘started the game, but makers in Italy, Spain and England and Japan may be stealing the ball. co WAS great gun fighter, al- though he never shot a_ living thing in his life as far as anyone knows. He gave us a precise system of mass production which was far ahead of his time, in addition to 6ne of the greatest weapons the world will ever know. The next time you pull out a Colt, whether it’s a Trooper, Police Posi- tive, the Cobra or the new Marshal— all revolvers—or the Woodsman, the Government .45, or the Commander— all automatics—remember the man. who spent his life fighting those who said it couldn’t be done, until he proved it could. ’ @END | conmnlelookS.co