Ace High Western Magazine, March 1941 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

SIXGUN SAVIOR OF DOOMED RANGE 1 _For years he had been judge, protector, and patrén to the smaller cattlemen who had settled along the Ysleta after Scotty had run out the wolves and Indians. Scotty had come to the Kingbolt country when it was still as wild as the devil’s horse and the odds were a thousand-to- one against his ever weathering that first year. Apaches... prairie fire... drouth. The gods laughed behind their hands! But Scotty brought a crew of fighting Texicans from the Big Bend with him. He built houses and barns; built them with walls four feet thick of gray-brown mud bricks. He fitted them with doors and shutters it took a man’s shoulder to budge, and broke the walls with loops. He dug a well under the house and stocked enough ammunition fora guerrilla army. So when the raids came, Scotty outlast- Scotty had taken their coming as a joke. Kingbolt got its cow-country hackles up at the idea of hoe-men being almost with- in gunshot, fifteen miles up in the Blue- stones in the shack-town they called Fri- jole Flat. But Scotty winked, taking it as ‘a joke. “Wait'll July!’ he said. “The Ysleta’ll run dry and their corn an’ black eyed peas will burn to bacon-frazzlin’s. Leave "em alone, boys. Nature will take its course.”’ That summer was the driest in twenty . years. The grangers nearly starved, and ‘their crops were shot to hell. Kingbolt didn’t hand out any free meals. The cow crowd waited to see them rattle away in their clap-trap wagons. : But Bill Bronc sat down and showed his hoe-men friends how they could build EE STEP To RL LE LE POT I ED ORIN EN a IR SOE IIL TEE GOO FTE LORS Sad ETE SD OSE EE TRA EEE Es RS ERD Another smashing action-novel of a range divided appears in April 10 Story Western. When the eternal feud between men of the soil and high-riding, gun-hung men of the saddle flamed in outlaw-ridden Timber Bend, Judge Lynch overruled the statute-book law—with a night-riding jury of hang- men. ... You'll want to read I. L. Thompson’s “King of the Vigilantes” — in April 10 Story Western! On sale February 7th! ed the redmen and lived to hunt them down. And when prairie fire swept the plains, Scotty’s men sacked and backfired and whipped that menace too. He had established himself. He was here to stay. He was the big boss—a huge, bear-like man with a black beard and hair shot with silver—and secretly he fancied the title, “Law west of the Jornado.”’ At any rate, Scotty never denied it. But he never learned to fight drouth. It was a youngster the squatters called Bill Bronce who licked it. Bill. Bronce, handling the horses up the road toward the Pass, felt none of his former fierce pride in the way his mud dam had saved the crops that second sea- son after he came with the squatters to Devil's Canyon. a mud.dam for nothing and have water all next summer, and the summers to follow. Before their crops were laid by, that win- ter, they pitched in and built it. And next summer they had their water while Kingbolt burned to a crisp. IGHT from the hour the first shovel- full of dirt was pitched into the dam, Bill Bronc’s troubles started. Scotty Hal- lett roared bloody murder, stalked up and down his puncheon porch and swore ven- geance. Those smoky years had made him a strofig defender of the faith, but they hadn’t given him any insight into the problems of weaker men. It would have been bad enough fighting him, without having to worry about Jeanie. When Bill met her at a meeting in COPMICLOOOKS (©)