Adventure Magazine Cover — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

Clothes and the Man him chew up that there Yuma party an spit him out,” said Peters. “Wait till the boys hears about this,” the other said. “Tom, I’m tellin’ you that hombre from Yuma ain’t got enough sense to pound rock. It stands to reason any- body who'd corral hisself in duds like them ain’t got no more gumption than a focoed jackass. Your play, ain’t it?” 4 NOT only the “boys” but everybody BX in Sutton in short order heard how a special deputy sheriff from Yuma, a stranger appointed by the sheriff for the sole task of making an important arrest, had come to Sutton looking for Henry Buskirk. As a consequence there followed a good deal of speculation regarding the exact form of death the desperado would visit upon the man from Yuma. Not that anybody in Sutton sympathized with Buskirk; he was cordially hated for the bully he was. As a matter of fact Sutton’s sympathies were all with the Yuma deputy. He seemed so pitifully weak and impotent alongside the huge, fierce-looking Buskirk, the man who was said to have killed five men and who boasted that he could shoot the eye from a needle at a distance of thirty paces. But while Sutton sympathized with the Yuma deputy, at the same time its risibilities were keenly aroused; the humor of the situa- tion appealed to the town. If such an event as the battle between David and the Philistine did repeat itself in history Sutton wanted to be a spectator. The remainder of that day and a good portion of the next the Gray Wolf Saloon was the civic center of Sutton. Many men darkened its doors; some of them residents of Sutton and others riding in from out- lying ranches to be in at the death of the foolhardy deputy from Yuma, and in- cidentally to help with Buskirk’s lynching if such a commendable deed came to pass. Men, and women too for the matter of that, hunted up the man from Yuma, surveyed him appraisingly, then went away to laugh. The little deputy could not help but see that the town was making sport of him but he received their stares with good- natured coolness and even jocularity, which attitude on his part caused more than one remark concerning his sanity to be passed. At the bar of the Gray Wolf a number of men stood quaffing their bitter water and discussing the deputy. “Tf I’d of knowed I was voti Eh for a man who’d make a toad li deputy Id of went out in the cfepliral somewheres an’ busted my head open with a slug from my gun before I’d ’a’ done it,” one Buck Dugan growled disconsolately. “That fool sheriff down to Yuma. shore must be loco when he makes a dude like him a deputy,” complained Sam Parker, another disgruntled voter. “Funniest lookin’ clothes I ever seen a man wear,’ said Ed Rawlins, foreman of the Two-Line outfit. “T ain’t satisfied yit them’s clothes, Ed,” chimed in Phil Thompson, a Bar-X man. “T kinda figgered them things Just sprouted outa him like horns on a cow.’ “Did you-all note that ferocious gun he’s totin’?” inquired some one. “Where at’s he totin’ a gun?” said Rawlins scofingly. “Why, that there thing he’s packin’ in that holster on his belt, Ed.” “Oh, was that a gun? I figgered it out a tack-hammer. Will she shoot?” “I’ve heard tell they brings down hum- min’-birds an’ cow-ticks with them kinda pistols now an’ then,”’ Hawkins said. “Shore ’nuff?”? doubted Danny Phelps, Rawlins’ right-hand man on the Two-Line. “T’m askin’ why somebody don’t go talk to that little lizard an’ git him to toddle along back to Yuma before he gits hisself all messed up,” said Thompson. “I’m right willin’ for to admire nerve in a man but I allus likes to see him git a chancet when he goes up ag’in’ another man’s game that- away. Somebody oughta tell him about this Buskirk he’s honin’ to meet so bad.” “He’s already been told,” announced Peters. “Who told him?” : “Me an’ Sam Parker. I feels kinda sorry for him, so I asts Sam would he go ’long with me an’ have a talk with him. I ain’t or wantin’ to see him all et up thataway when — Buskirk comes to town.” “T don’t notice he’s makin’ any tracks outa town,” said Rawlins skeptically. “You ain’t goin’ to see him makin’ no tracks outa town, neither,” declared Parker. “That hombre’s got sand, Ed, he shore has. Else he’s plumb crazy an’ off his feed. He figgers to stick here till he meets up with Buskirk.” Gomichbook (E@)