2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

DEATH OF A COWBOY a1 Didn’t have his name, Catherine Doo- ley her name was, but she looked kind of like him. Up to a point, of course. Same high cheekbones, and dark curly hair, and dark eyebrows, and flashing eyes. Emerald-green, her eyes were though, his weren't that color, and her structure of course was fragile while his was bull-like. “Hello,” she’d say, and one or two of the boys, never Curt, would tip their hats and murmur, “Ma’am,” and she’d stand there with her riding boots set part sort of frowning down at Curt, her bare knees under the pleated skirt not twenty inches away from his face, because she’d always stand boldy like that right next to where he was working. “Why does it take you so long with these fenceposts?” she said this morning. A couple of the boys glanced at each other. All of them scrooched around a little. Except Curt. Curt leaned forward narrow-eyed, bunking a post into place with the butt of a palm, &s though his task were not only a very serious matter but also a very precise one. “Settin’ posts takes time, ma’am,” one of the more amiable hands allowed with a grin. “Ves’m.” another confirmed. “Iffen yore uncle would git back from his mountaineerin’,’ an old- timer supplied, “we'd be out on the trail, like we’re supposed tuh be. Me, I’m a cowboy, ma’am, I ain’t no handyman. Been a cowboy since I was knee-high to a gnat.” This only made Miss Dooley frown the harder at Curt. This was news; when her uncle got back, the crew would not be here thenceforward... “What is your name?” she said suddenly to Curt. “Hey, somebody’s speakin’ to yuh,” one of the men nudged him. “Curt Little, ma’am,” he said with- out so much as glancing up. And it wasn’t an hour later that she found Gus Ball in his “office’— a table in a rear corner of the bunk- shack—and he grinned broadly as she came in the open rear door and then wiped the grin clean off when she said, “Will you send Mr. Little up to the house this afternoon please? I have a chore that needs to be done.” And her skirt whirled high with how fast she turned and went back out of there, before Gus could ask, “Only Curt Little, you want? Wouldn’t any other of us do just as well?”— Meaning himself, of course. The men flipped remarks at Curt’s back as he took his stetson and went up the hill after dinner. A couple of them flipped more than words—one tossed an apple core way up in the air, So that it bounced in Curt’s path; another snapped a cigarette butt at him, which fell far short of its tar- get. ~ : “Oh my!” one of the. crew jeered, and the pent-up irritation in all of them was released at this in a gen- eral burst of raucous laughter. Gus Ball had got up from the din- ner table, which, along with the kitchen, was in another building that adjoined the bunkshack, and gone to his “office”... YATHERINE DOOLEY’S wide, emerald-green, devilish eyes played on Curt Little’s face boldly, expectantly, as he came into the big dark front room of the rambling ranchhouse on the hill. His own grey eyes touched hers fleetingly and he took off his hat. “You had something you wanted done. ma’am?” he said at once. “Yes, I need to be entertained.” Curt managed a brief twist of one corner of his flat-lipped mouth, that was supposed to be a smile at Miss Dooley’s joke | “T’m not joking. Do you know why I’m here? My parents, who are very wealthy, consider me a brat, and they thought that if they sent me out to my uncle’s ranch in the big, wide- open spaces, it would make a new woman of me. So far it has just plain bored me.” Curt began chewing an inside cor- ner of his lower lip. “That’s too bad, Ma’am,” he said. “You had something you wanted done—?” “I don’t think I’d be bored though if you went for a ride with me. Would you go for a ride with me, Mr. Little?” A muscle played back, alon 1g Cur <S7Gonn ee — ~