Adventure Magazine, April 10, 1924 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

80 neat as a butcher would have done it, as near as you could tell for the blood. In a minute a dozen of us had collected around Bueil an’ the sheepman. A head above the rest was Pete Jensen. The sheep- man jerks out his knife an’ cuts the ewe’s throat to save it further sufferin’. “Either you fire the man that done that, or [ll pull every sheep outa this corral,” Fox declares grimly. The sheepman was justified. You have to watch shearers every minute or when they git to longstrikin’ they’ll just about take the hide off a sheep as well as the wool in their hurry to make a big tally. If examples wasn’t made of some of ’em it would be fierce. Fox couldn’t ignore a thing like that, an’ Buell couldn’t afford to have his last job walk out on him. “Who done that?” Buell asks Jensen. The boss wrangler was the one man in a position to know. “That one come from Davis’s pen,’ he said without a blink. “Come over here, Davis,” Buell yells, an’ Owen turns loose a sheep half-sheared an’ comes over. “VYou’re fired, Davis, I can’t stand for work like this,’ Buell says, pointin’ at the dead ewe. I never see such a look come over a man’s face as come over Owen’s then. He’d dis- connected his Stewart machine from the power rod, an’ he drawed it back like he meant to ram somebody with it. Let me tell you that one o’ those machines with the long, steel-toothed combs could just about make mince-meat of any man’s face. ‘“‘The man that says I done that is a liar,”’ Owen says just above a whisper, an’ with a glare at Pete Jensen that made the big Sanpeter back up among his friends who had clustered around. An’ then here comes big Chris shoulderin’ his way through the crowd, an’ he has his Stewart machine in his hand. I shudders when I think of what might happen if them two big boys should mix things with them machines in their hands. An’ it looks at last like Owen had played his last card an’ was ready to fight. “Tf say you done it—I counted it out 0’ your pen,” Pete Jensen says, but he backs up between Chris an’ Larsen, an’ there’s three other Sanpeters right behind. Again Owen draws back his arm. There’s Pete Adventure sure a murderous look on his face, but he seems tryin’ to keep control of himself. Suddenly he brings his arm ahead an’ throws that Stewart machine as far as it’ll sail. mad-man’s, Before big Chris knew what was hap- penin’ Owen was on him. The first blow sent the big Dane sprawlin’ for twenty feet. As Owen follered him up Larsen swung on him, an’ the wallop took Owen fair on the side o’ the head. It knocked him sideways for a dozen feet, but it never stopped him. ‘Then Pete Jensen, a bigger man than Owen, tackled him, but with a toss like a wild bull Owen threw him off. The delay give big Chris time to git on his feet, an’ as they come together he swung that murderous lookin’ Stewart machine. The blade caught Owen on the shoulder an’ traveled down his arm to the elbow. Just a second you could see the red furrows where those comb teeth tore into the flesh an’ then blood squelched through in streams like there was a force pump behind it. An’ then Owen had seized Jensen’s wrist, an’ his other hand traveled up, not more than a foot, it seemed; until it struck big Chris under the jaw. The big Dane went off the ground a foot, an’ his head popped back till it seemed like human bone couldn’t stand it without breakin’. With two such giants fightin’ like mad- men the battle couldn’t last long. Almost at once Owen twisted the machine out of Chris’s hand, an’ then he got over another mighty punch to the jaw an’ the big Dane slumped like a sack o’ straw. He was whipped, but Owen wasn’t done. The film was in his eyes again, an’ if he didn’t intend to kill him, he did intend to stop him from shearin’ sheep. I’d heard o’ men wipin’ up the earth with aman, but there I actually saw it. Owen picked up the Sanpeter an’ crashed him against the board fence on one side o’ the chute, an’ three whole panels went down in the crash. He throwed him, jerked him, shook him, mauled him, and finally fastened on his throat with the blood-thirsty ferocity of a bull-dog. The Sanpeters knew he was killing big Chris, but though they had fully intended to gang up on Owen if the going got rough for Chris, they just stood back in a sort of dumb terror with their mouths open. There was something paralyzing about such ferocity. Go DOOLK An’ then his face contorts like a C@ 5}