2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

6 2-GUN WESTERN tried that now, he would die. There was only one thing to do: stay and fight until dark, if he could last that long, then slip away. Jud wriggled on again to the cov- er of a drift of branches and old grass, lodged against a small waist- high scrub blackjack. He sleeved the sweat from his eyes and inspected the caps on the shotgun, then drew the Colt and made sure the five caps there were in place. He laid the Colt near his hand, slid the shotgun through the edge of the drift, his chin resting on the breech. All he could do was wait for their next move. Cugat couldn’t wait too long. He would have to get Jud Franklin and clear out. To be connected even remotely with this or whiskey ped- dling would get Cugat chopped to bits, by relatives of those who had died under the Comanches’ hatch- CtR 5 Cugat would come all right, and before long, Jud thought with what patience he could. He pulled back the hammers of the shotgun to. prevent the telltale clicks later, and lay there sweating, burning with urgency but waiting quietly. ~ | : Several shots came from the higher position of the renegades, but none of the bullets came dangerously close. Then the rifles made a steady search of it, and to the listening Jud, the shots came from the same spot. Two of them’s coming around in the timber to flank me, he thought, they'll come bellying up from the branch. He ignored the rifleman up there and gave all his attention toward the branch, straining his ears for the _ sound of their coming. His first warning was the whisper of cloth or leather in the grainy set- tlings of the wash and Jud Franklin ezsed his cheek against the stock of the shotgun, his eyes flaring. Maybe one of them would be the big-gutted. Cugat... He moved just a little to bring the area where the sound had come from, under the muzzles of the gun. A hand holding a gun snaked into sight from behind a drift thirty feet away. A dirt-greasy sleeve followed, then the bearded face and the flaring, muddy eyes, with tobacco-stained teeth showing in the open mouth. Yewings. A man who haunted the gaming tables and saloons. His body heaved*silently into view and on his heels came a second man, a man with a sawed-oif face and a slit of a mouth. Bud Busch. Jud concentrated on Yewings, the more dangerous of the two. Busch wasn’t noted for courage and even now Jud saw his scared glances, the continual puckering of his gash mouth. “Yewings,’ Busch breathed jerk- ily. “I don’t like this.” Yewings looked back with a silent, savage snarl, and Busch shrank backward, looking more scared of Yewings than of the unknown stalker. Jud Franklin’s eyes glared down the barrel of his gun. This was no time for heroics. He was fighting for his life—and those of his wife ar.d baby. Yewings’ face steadied in- the groove between the barrels. “Yewings,” Jud said, and fired. With the word, Yewings heaved convulsively and his pistol slanted the short arc at Jud and its blast was drovned in the shotgun’s thunder. Yewings’ face vanished, Bud Busch let out a screech and swapped ends and Jud’s second bar- rel bellowed into the drift that con- cealed the scrambling Busch. Jud dropped the shotgun and snatched up the pistol. He lifted himself a little to get a look at the racing Bud and the bullets coming in a burst of fire from the upper timber ruined his aim and set him back flat again, He heard Bud crashing into the timber of the branch. | : : _ Jud reloaded the shotgun then the pistol, then he lay listening, feeling ‘the furious urgency to be on his way yet knowing that he could not. FTER AWHILE, he heard the shrill tones of Busch that were quickly silenced. Jud started snaking — down the wash for the branch. He couldn’t wait, he’d have to force this fight get it over. When they knew he was coming it would take a lot of