2-Gun Western, November 1955 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

LAST “My friend, you’re in bad shape,” he said. “You do any more riding with that wound, and you'll fall off your horse for good. You better stay here in town and get yourself a homestead out on the Indian Strip. You le around for a month doing nothing, then you can prove your homestead. You've got a lot of poison in your system.” “Ts it that easy to get a homestead?” Grinnell asked. “Why not? This country’s got a great iuture—a great future. You got time to see the garden I’ve planted in back?” “Some other time, Doc.” Grinnell paid the doctor his fifty cents. He Was remembering the homesteader’s place by the pothole lake. A nice place to stop and let the rest of his years run out. A place like that—or that place, after he and Shorty had moved the homesteader’s family on. As long as Bayer and Shorty were in power in the country he would be safe, and he could help keep them in power. His headache was worse, he wished that he had dared ask the doctor for some painkiller, but a dose of laudanum would make him too slow and draggy for the business at hand. He took a seat on the bench in front of the main store, not far from the hitchrack, which was already lined with horses wearing Bayer’s Cross B brand. Out at the end of the street there were three farm wagons, the horses unhitched and munching hay from the wagon boxes. After a time Bayer rode into town with his foreman, Nichols. He tied his high-stepping Kentucky horse to the. hitch-rack, took a quick hard look at: Grinnell, then went across the street to the Pastime. In three minutes, Shorty, the sheriff’s star gleaming on his chest, strolled down the street and disappeared into the saloon after Bayer. Further down Grinnell could see Spear and Walters patrolling. The cards were shuffled and dealt. The hand was ready to be played out. The farmers would push into the stacked deck. They would blame Bay- er and Shorty and Grinnell, not knowing that they, too, were merely players uselessly playing the hands they got. CARD 51 Near ten o'clock two wagons came into town from downriver. The first one held the woman and the boy, Jesse, who had fed him by the pothole lake. The man holding the reins was tall and dark-haired, with bulky shoulders and a tough, square set to his jaw. He drove directly to the hitch-rack. He stepped down, untied Bayer’s fiddlefooted Kentucky horse, and moved it up the rack to make ‘room for his team. The damned fool, Grinnell thought, he’s pushing himself harder than he has to. If he ran maybe he could get out of it alive. He’s got the wife and the boy to think about. But then he thought wearily: What difference will it make? The pride would ride with the farmer wherever he went, and the woman had probably been attracted to him because of it. What had made her a wife might make her a widow. If not here, then somewhere else. (oS felt a moment’s admir- ation for the farmer, then again, pity. No matter how brave a show he made of it, he was beat. The two young farmers, brothers, by their look, in the wagon behind had driven directly to the hardware store. One of them held the team while the other went inside. Grinnell saw Spear and Walters bearing down on the wagon, and the play was clear in his mind. He had seen it a hundred times before, in a hundred different ways. Different, but always the same. Bayer must have decided that these two and the broad-shouldered married farmer were the kingpins who must be driven out or killed. Spear and Walters wheeled in con- cert and sat down on the bench in front of the hardware store. The farmer, a red-headed, fair-skinned Swede, glanced at them, then returned to his moody contemplation of the dashboard. From where he sat Grinnell rit not hear what Spear and Walters were saying, but it was apparent they were enjoying it. The farmer’s face, already sun-reddened, turned a bright scarlet. The sound of Spear’s un- melodious bray drifted up the street. Just as the other brother appeared in the doorway with a gunny-sack of oO Gomicboo S CO