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

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

The Warriors of the Pecos array of weapons and its thick adobe walls, would be an admirable place for a man to stand off his enemies. It occurred to him that, with himself as a hostage, the prospec- tive prisoner would be occupying a remark- ably good strategic position, once he got inside. So he balked. “All right,” the other grinned, and shrugged his shoulders; “we'll talk it over out here then.”’ They did so at considerable length. ‘There are thirteen of us,’’ Coe argued, “and you’d never have a living show against the bunch. We’ll take you down to Lincoln and you can stand trial there.” But Roberts laughed. “T tell you what it is, Frank. The Kid and Charley Bowdre are with your posse. If we’d got them down on the Ruidoso last month we’d have killed ’em like we killed Tunstall. And if they get me here they’ll kill me. That’s all there is to it. Dll not surrender; you can bet on that.” He was a hard man, this Shotgun Roberts, deserter from the army, horse-thief and bravo; but he faced the facts as he found them and he made no evasions when it came to explaining his deeds. In a very few moments he showed them all how brave- ly a man can die. Dick Brewer was getting impatient inside the house. He kept looking through the door. Finally he bade four of his possemen go out and make the arrest without more loss of time. Billy the Kid, Charley Bowdre, George Coe and Tom Middleton picked up their weapons and left the room to carry out his order. They reached the adobe building in front of which the pair were still arguing, and Charley Bowdre was first to turn the corner. Roberts heard the foot- steps and whirled on his heel. “Hands up,” said Charley Bowdre; and - before he had fairly finished speaking both of them threw down and fired. Frank Coe leaped aside as the two weap- ons flashed; it was the only thing for him to do unless he chose to shoot Roberts in the back, which was not his way. Roberts’ bullet creased Bowdre’s body, cutting his belt in twain. But young Bowdre made a truer shot, and the border cow-thief staggered back through the open door with a leaden slug in his. abdomen. And now the smoke hung thick about the place. George Coe stepped around the corner, 35 raising his double-barreled shotgun toward his shoulder. The dying man threw down again and fired, splintering the weapon’s stock and breaking two of Coe’s fingers. Then he sank to the floor; for the sickness which precedes a man’s mortal agony made his limbs like water. Watching that open door and holding his revolver ready in one hand, he crept to the bed and dragged the straw tick from it. He placed the mattress against. the rear wall, propped himself up on it and settled down to die as a man should die who goes with his boots on. The rest of the posse had come running from the dining-room. He could hear their voices as they surrounded the building. Always he watched the door. The powder- smoke was thinning, and objects were show- ing more plainly through it. “Get down the hill and take a shot from behind one of those saw-logs,” he heard some one say. He waited, clenching his teeth against the weakness that was overmastering him; and he caught sight of Tom Middleton creeping among the logs which strewed the slope. Then he fired his third shot and Middleton fell with a bullet through his lungs. Frank Coe risked death to crawl down there and drag his companion away. He carried the wounded man to a spring above the house and left him there in a deep swoon. The next day they found Middleton still living by the spring, and he recovered a few weeks later. Now the posse debated over firing the building, and the agent reminded them that this was Government property. So they made up their minds to try another shot through that open door, and Dick Brewer took a roundabout course until he found shelter behind one of the saw-logs near the bottom of the hill. He slipped the barrel of his Winchester across his breastwork and slowly raised his head. And Shotgun Roberts got him fairly between the eyes. Buea EVERY struggle between men has Via its vital moment when the turning- @ point is reached. A chance blow in the prize ring, the arrival of reenforce- ments on the battlefield, the accidental ad- mission of some slight testimony in a court- room; such things decide large issues, and no man knows of that decision at the time. Afterward chroniclers turn the attention of CORMICLOO S (C@)