2-Gun Western, November 1955 — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

A TINHORN CHOOSES HOT LEAD “You led yourself on!” the gambler amended, “I work here—it’s nothing to me who I play with. I have to make a game for anybody who wants one. But you kept coming back, and every time you got wilder. You beat your- self!” The rancher’s face had paled a lit- tle, and his mouth twisted harshly. “Try to talk out of it—go ahead! Why, you filthy tinhorn—” Hatton saw it coming a moment in advance. Lashed by his own words, Kelsey suddenly bit them off and was falling back into a crouch. His right hand shot downward, came up palm- ing the rubber butt of a heavy sixgun. Lew Hatton couldn’t do anything else in the face of that but defend himself. Seconds after the other start- ed his draw, his own hand was mov- ing—up toward the breast of his coat, sliding in easily toward his armpit. Fingers closing around the hideout, he drew the lean hand out easily, gracefully. The two weapons coughed their bullets forth almost at one time. But as burnt powder and silence pressed in ‘again on the tail of the shots, Kelsey stumbled. He caught himself with one hand gripping the edge of the bar, hard. Astonishment and pain washed across his homely features. The gun slipped from his fingers with a thud against the floor, and he reached up to claw at his chest as though he would try to dig out the bullet that was killing him. Then he collapsed, dropping in a lifeless heap at the foot of the bar. Looking down at him, MHatton frowned. He hadn’t wanted this. He had killed before; and always, it seemed, in some futile manner. There was no reason why Kelsey should have died. But the rancher had forced him to it. Hatton looked around at the men in the silent roonmm He saw Spade Pierce, who had come to the door of his office at the shooting. As he looked at the paunchy figure of the saloon man, and the evil that lived in his narrow eyes, the beginning of dis- gust tugged at the gambler’s mouth... Then there was a great deal of con- fusion. Town Marshal Ed Lane came hurrying in—a small, spare gent in his fifties, with thining hair and level 61 eyes that seemed to look right through you. Lips pursed at sight of the dead man on the floor, he set briskly to work. He took a look at Hatton’s gun, and shot out a rapid fire of questions about the shooting; everyone who had seen it told him that the gambler had been forced into his part. FTER A bit, the coroner came in and took the body away. And presently, Hatton found himself alone with the marshal. in Lane’s cubbyhole of an office, eyeing the back of the little man as the latter stood gazing silently out the door, pipe smoke curl- ing above his thinning hair. Shadows were long and sharp in the late sun- light outside. “A bad business,” said the marshal at last, with a sigh. “I’d close that Red Rooster in two minutes if I could.” He turned, cocked a challenging eye upward at the gambler. “Yeah,” he added, “you can tell Pierce I said so, too!” His words irritated Hatton. “Don’t look at me,” he retorted “I’m newito this town, and I don’t figure to take sides in its battles. I draw my pay, and that’s all I care about.” Lane puffed a cloud of smoke, shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “But Tom Kelsey was a good man—hotheaded and unreasonable at times, maybe, but that’s little enough against him. It’s made me pretty sick to watch him go- ‘in’ back and goin’ back to that clip joint, and losin’ his shirt every time—” “The games I deal are square,” Hat- ton told him, levelly. “Well, maybe so. But what of it? That can’t make much difference now to Kelsey—or his womanfolks.” Hatton looked at the other sharply. “What women?” he demanded. “He had a wife and a girl—both as fine a pair of ladies as I ever knew. They had this little Rafter K spread down on Somers’ Creek, and they was a mighty happy family—until the Red Rooster got its claws into Tom!” The marshal glanced into the street again, suddenly pointed with his pipe stem. “You can take a look for your- self!” he exclaimed. “Somebody’s been and told them what’s happened, and they’re comin’ in now. Take a i) Comicaoolks CO