2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

To the devil with rene- gade whiskey peddlers and raiding Comanches— Jud Franklin, by Judas, was going to get help for his young wife.... HEY’VE seen me, Jud Frank- lin thought. They’ve seen me and I know I was cutting away from their tracks, They'll have to kill me now to shut me up. Cugat and his damn renegade whiskey peddlers. Jud knew that his very urgency had betrayed him. In his sweat to get to the Holder farm he’d cut his cir- cle too short after finding the still and empty demijohns in the ravine. But he had to get the farm woman with all possible speed and get back to Lettie. After the fall this noon, his young wife might even now be in labor. Jud had to get to Liz Holder and then go on to Buckley Cornors for the doctor. He cursed Cugat and his whiskey peddlers, and the buzzards that had caused him to find the dead dog and the still. But he couldn’t afford to take chances either in this time of full moon and the Comanches raid- ing. If he’d only taken the extra few minutes to ride the branch and the cover there, instead of cutting across this bald patch of prairie..... Damn Cugat to hell, He ought to have his big gut cut open and filled with redhot coals, like the Coman- ches did some of their victims after tanking up on Cugat’s rotgut whis- key. Jud held the bay mare with a firm rein as she tried to increase her trot to a gallop with the unconscious ten- sion of his legs. He eased her off to the right a little, toward the leveling out of the several washes that were deeper on his left but convering to the right in a thirty-yard-wide flat with brushes and hummocks of soil and drifts. Jud cut his eyes to the left, toward the bank of woods yonder, hoping to see again the movement that had warned him of Cugat’s presence ahead. But he saw nothing now, as he 4 ~ squinted his eyes against the western sun. He wiped his sweaty palm against the wool leg of his pants then harder as the wool refused to take up the dampness. He was going to get Mrs. Holder if he had to fight every blame whiskey peddler in Texas. He hitched the belt around a lit- tle that supported the Navy Colt, then on second thought, removed the double-barreled shotgun from- where it hung by the buckskin loop from the saddlehorn. He slipped caps on the nipples and laid the gun gingerly across his saddlebow. They forgot that the dead dog would bring buzzards, Jud thought with jrowing uneasiness, they’d been in asweat to get back to town and safety before the Comanches started raiding, full of whiskey... Jud cursed through his teeth and let the rein out a little and the mare leaped into a fast lope. The move- ment saved Jud Franklin’s life. Even as the mare jumped, the rifle report came bluntly after the vicious sound of the bullet. Jud hit the mare with his heels, and iaid forward as two more rifles joined the first in a burst of sound. Bullets smacked meatily into the mare and_instinc- tively Jud freed his feet and as the mare went forward in a loose fall, he leaped, hitting the ground on his feet, plunging forward. with the momentum to lose his balance. He fell in the softer dirt of the first wash, desperately cushioning the shotgun with his elbows. The caps didn’t explode, and Jud lunged on to a deeper wash and into the protection of its clay banks. With him under cover, there was silence, and Jud’s glance whipped around quickly, seeking a way out of this. He went snaking down the ditch toward the timber of the branch. The banks. flattened out but there were enough of the drifts and weeds and small: scrubby bushes to offer him cover all the way to the branch. After that he would be in this semi-prairie, afoot while three men hunted him on horseback. He wouldn’t have a chance. UD STOPPED. He had to go on ] to get help for Lettie—yet if he Comicbooks com