2-Gun Western, November 1955 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

THE WILD TIME 7 “T’ll bet you would.” Janice Wells lowered her head and her shoulder-length, shiny dark hair fell in a curtain. Dick Foster looked at it and his eye dropped to her bare ankles and he suddenly took her in his arms and he kissed her at length when she threw her hair back and put her face up. A moment before she was the responsible woman that she was on the threshold, at eighteen, of becoming; now she was the teen-age girl again swept by puppy love. “Hey,” she pushed free finally and murmured huskily, “you shouldn’t do that out here in broad daylight.” She cleared her throat. “I shouldn’t, eh,” he said in a voice that was no less husky. “No you shouldn’t.” Janice, no more than Dick, had noticed her father coming from the house. Neither of them heard him even when he was upon them. So that it was like a bolt of lightning when he smashed a big hand down on Dick’s shoulder, spun him, and slapped his other hand full-open and hard across Dick’s mouth. “T’ve had enough of your antics, young man,” George Wells said in a voice that was as terrible as it was soft. “Now you get on your horse and ride out of here and don’t come back until you’ve learned some man- ners.” Dick Foster ran the tip of his tongue across his bleeding lower lip, and the tongue and lip trembled. He kept his eyes fastened on George Wells for what began to look like a foolishly long time, for Janice’s fa- ther had turned to her, saying, “You'd better get on up to the house, Jan- 166. She was watching Dick Foster. worriedly, and she in her turn couldn’t seem to pull her eyes from him, not even when her father took her arm to start her. “T’ll kill you for that, Mr, Wells,” Dick Foster said very quietly. “That’s the kind of remark I’d ex- pect from you,” George Wells said. “That's a highly intelligent state- ment. Let’s go, Janice.” 7 “Oh Dad you shouldn’t have done that—” she moaned. : ne eee HIS staring-tired lath- ered horse, Charlie Landry raised his face to the sky and sniffed the air. Then he screwed up hfs_ face sourly. It meant nothing in partic- ular. Charlie Landry was a tough, merciless, conceited young man, and he was full of such mannerisms. They grew out of his restless self-suf- ficiency; they were the sick flower — _of the insatiable craving that crawled him, to show. off. Charlie Landry had done a lot of showing off in the two blazing years since, a lad of seventeen, he’d risked drawing with a notorious notch-hunt- er and bested the fellow. The element of surprise had done it here, and his victory had been neat and easy. There had been shoot-outs since that had been neither neat nor easy. Death had taken a couple healthy swipes at Charlie Landry but without touching -him, and his confidence had swelled with each new cut on his glossy gun- butt, until he was hard now to beat. Nervousness no longer stiffened his fingers, as it more and more did -those of the ambitious hellions who had their try at him. Charlie Landry was a legend and he knew it. At nineteen. A kid of nineteen is not able to carry fame too gracefully. | Here on the edge of the vast un- known hell that was the northern half of Texas, Charlie Landry made his arrogant decision. Murder, in the course of a bank robbery, was among his achievements now, and with a virtual Ranger army on his backtrail, he might wisely have risked the danger and drought of the High Plains, where warlike Indians ruled and what little brackish water was to be found was undrinkable. For even the Rangers never went beyond this point, obviously figuring that an out- law chased north of here was a dead outlaw anyway. But such drab practicality did not appeal to Charlie Landry. The hell with laying low for a few weeks, with Indians breathing down his neck and nothing to eat and alkali salts flavoring his water. What the hell, he could probably take on a dozen Rangers in a stand-in-the-street showdown. Charlie cracked a match into flame with his thumhnail to punc- tuate this decision, tilted his head and pulled his mouth up askew put- ting match to quirley. CoOMmicbooks ©