2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

DEATH OF A COWBOY 95 at the Indians. As far as any effect on the Indians went, this was like spitting into a blizzard. Which set- tled it for the boss, though reluctance to abandon this first try at his new pass dragged heavily on his decision. “Okay!” he growled. “Let’s get the blazes out of here!”... Despite the distraction of the much more serious matters at stake, Gus Ball noted regardless that Curt Little was among the first to turn their horses away from the herd. “He’s a beauty all right,” the ramrod gritted, putting rowels to his own mustang’s flanks. 5 No great deal of choice was open to the O-X outfit as they began their retreat—they simply rode as hard as they could back across the valley floor. The Indians, though, having produced ponies, were so quickly in hot pursuit that it came clear that the O-X was never going to get away with whole hides by merely trying to outrun them. Gus Ball had the idea. Who knows, it might actually have grown out of his sour brooding over Curt Little. We're never going to run away from ’em!” he shouted at the boss. He jabbed a finger several times at the boulder-strewn slopes they were paralleling. “We got to cut up there, and somebody stay and rear-guard us while the others duck out through them rocks!” The boss nodded, waved his left arm in signal, and led the crew up the north slope. Gus Ball banged a steel fist on Curt Little’s forearm as Curt, pulling up to turn, started to gig his roan after the boss. “Wait a minute, Curt! Somebody’s got to stay back and stop them sin- ners. How ’bout you?” : Before Curt could answer, the foreman was yanking his own Win- chester from its saddle scabbard and shoving it at Curt. “Fort up behind one of them boul- ders and pick ’em off as they head up here!” Gus Ball went on. He tossed his cartridge belt at Curt as he spurred after the rest of the crew. “Who'd you put back to cover us, that Curt Little fellow?” the boss asked Gus when the ramrod caught up with him. There was that in the boss’s tone that indicated he already knew the answer, only wanted a kind of gloating confirmation of it. “That’s right.” A couple of the men asked it too. In the same tone. “What'd you do, leave Curt to cover us?” “That’s right.” S° THAT when they came back two days later and found Curt Little, with Gus Ball’s .30-30 on one side and his own rifle on the other, it was, somehow, with a feeling of guilt. As if Curt had been murdered not by the Indians but by them. Others of their saddlemates had been killed, a herd had been lost, the boss, new pass had been proven useless, but the thoughts of everybody were ironically tangled only with Curt. And it somehow didn’t help when they reminded themselves and each other that somebody had to stay be- hind and cover their flight. It had been proven a wise maneuver, too, be- cause the Indians were sufficiently disrupted by it to allow the rest of the O-X crew to escape. That, though, was at the same time paradoxically the most disturbing angle. Curt Little had plainly done quite a job. He’d used up all his own and most of Gus Ball’s ammunition before an Indian bullet took him, He hadn’t run, nor hidden, nor cowered frozen with fear. There was no way of telling how many Indians he’d picked off before he died, for they would not of course have left any of their dead behind, but the fact did remain that Curt had stopped them and so saved everybody’s life... No, nobody had much to say when they found Curt Little. The boss was about the only one who said anything, under pressure of an urgent need to break the intolerable silence, to bring them back to simple reality. He’d picked up Curt’s .30-30 and said, “Jeest, this one jammed up on him. Good thing you left him your gun too, huh, Gus?” “Yeah,” Gus said, then cieniee his throat. PEND _ COMMcoool<