2 Gun Western, May 1957 — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

72 ¢ 2-GUN WESTERN ‘ notice. Alec had been made Agent at Red Rock, but he had bumbled the job and at the end of six months his blundering had made him the laugh- ing-stock of the West. The Red Brethren had been too much for him. But if his past was well known, his teason for enlisting as a cavalryman f. several white farmers to teach the { Utes, an when spring came the pro- . ject was ready to start, But the Utes, after a winter of be- | ing cared for by the Bureau, had oth- « er notions. They jumped the reserva- } tion—and took Alec’s costly imple- . ments and seeds with them. They - ‘ * ' was obscure. It may have been done on a day when he was suffering from a hang-over, for, after his failure as an Indian agent, Alec had taken to drink. But now, in the field, he tried hard enough. : It appeared that he wanted to be an honest-to-God trooper. But the saddle punished him, and horses gave him a touch of asthma. Desert sun and wind burned him lobster red. His ear- nestness, once the whiskey was sweat- ed out of him, was the only soldierly thing about him. He tried so hard that Captain Hammond, after the heliostat message was decoded, sent him out on patrol with the civilian scout, Aubrey, and four other troop- ers under Second Lieutenant Mack- lin. As the patrol saddled up, some of B Troop’s hardcased veterans joshed Alec by chanting their version of the Rogue’s March: Ree “Poor little soldier. Poor little soldier, Handed a gun and sent to hell Because he couldn’t soldier well!” Alec’s sunburned face showed a painful grin. A burly trooper yelled, “You aim to catch Orfano and his band by sprinkling ink on their tails, Smart Alec?” The laughter rose in what seemed to Alec a suffocating wave. He could still hear it crashing against his ears ten minutes later, when the patrol rode away from B Troop’s bivouac. He was that thin-skinned. He had been laughed at a lot dur- ing the year since he had made that blunder at the Red Rock Agency. Yet it had been an honest mistake. He had believed he could make the Utes self- —sufficent by training them in the ways of the white man, and his first step had been to make them into farmers. With Indian Bureau funds, he had purchased farming imple- ments and seeds. He had hired ‘interpreter and handyma He sav vies had headed into Arizona, traded the ~ implements and seeds to the Apaches . for guns and horses—and the Apaches - had taken the farm stuff across the Border where Mexicans were glad to barter for such precious contra- band...And the joke had been on Alec Small. His trusting school- teacher’s nature hadn’t been able to : cope with the sly Utes. He had been laughed at for believing that the - tribesmen could learn to think and live in the manner of white men... when any real frontiersman knew ‘ that the only way to change an Indian’s nature was with a rifle or - a calvalry saber. And now Trooper — Alec Small, on his first patrol, was - apt to learn that the hard way. G Bees PATROL headed deep into the rocky furnace of the Pinals, seven riders venturing into Apache country. The day grew long and hot and dusty, and the unmarked trail led through rockwalled fastnesses. Higher up were pinestudded slopes, but on the canyon floors there grew only cactus and catclaw and sparse forage grass. With Aubrey, the scout, riding ahead, the patrol probed and found nothing at all. Lieutenant Macklin rode with Sergeant O’Mara, and next came Troopers Harmon and Schultz. Alec rode at the rear with the leathery- faced, tobacco-chewing Trooper McSwan, and finally asked, “Tim, who’s this Orfano?” “A damn’ Apache,” McSwan growled. “What'd you think?” “I know he’s an Apache.” Alec re- plied. swallowing the rebuke. “But how is it he’s never been heard of until now?” “First time he turned ‘bronc’,” McSwan told him. “Until he jumped the reservation with this band, Orfanc was a peaceful ’Pache. He worked around the San Carlos Agency as (LA MMUCLOOOKSa COL