Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

DESERT whizzed past his head at this very moment and he ducked. It crashed on Dan Crockett’s placard and doused itself on the mess of iron gray hair and sticky feathers of Doxey’s head—a sweetish, sirupy fluid. Another bottle hit him on the chest. He caught it, holding it up by the neck and swinging it above his head with the indefi- nite intention of protecting himself from the brawling gang. But he did not throw it, perhaps because he was afraid, or else be- cause he did not know whom to throw it at. Slipping down from the dais and crouch- ing so as to run along the floor on all fours, he slunk to the nearest window, leaped over the sill into the blazing morning light and landed comfortably in the sand and tum- bleweed. In his hand he still retained that bottle of purple liquid to which he clung with the dazed intention of self-defense. He looked back, breathless, pallid, terri- fied, into that window. He saw one other man standing there aloof. Tex Ringo watched the last stand of his admirer, Shank Miller, with the detached amusement of a man watching a huge dog - fighting a pack of yapping curs. Tex’s one desire was to draw and empty his revolver into that whirlpool of humanity. But this he could not do. Shank Miller and Phil Wyndham were fighting, not like two men, but like twenty. They were so ubiquitous that it would have taken a miracle to fire without hitting either one of them. In fact, no one—perhaps due to the suddenness of the fist fight—had drawn a gun. The humpback had jumped from his seat as foreman of the jury, and thrown himself bodily on Phil’s arm—the arm that picked up the revolver from the sawdust of the floor. Three of the gang had hurled them- selves at Phil, one tackling his legs, another his waist, and the third throwing his arms about the boy’s neck. Humpy, Tex observed, had extricated Phil’s gun by the simple and time-honored Mexican method of biting his hand. Shank Miller meanwhile transformed himself into something that looked like a windmill spinning in a tornado. He had floored Quiggley _ a bone-crashing blow to oe jaw. VOICES. TTT A Mexican, with a long slash of his bowie knife, ripped Shank’s leather vest halfway down the back. Whereat the latter again used his sledge hammer fist, dropping the: vaquero for an indefinite sleep. His boot caught another knifer, sending him rolling in a gasping exhalation of breath. But this was as far as his exploits could go. Three others were upon him. He was dropped by a succession of blows timed on his long red chin. Still whirling and kicking he found himself at the bottom of a churn- ing mill of hooflike boots, — Tex Ringo’s attention had been called from the exploits of his faithful worshiper in the climax of the fight. Perhaps, if he had watched the downfall of Shank Miller he could not have restrained himself in his innate impulse to use his six-gun. But the fact was, Tex was more inter-. ested in the psychological aspects of the conflict—or it might even be said in the spiritual outcome. He was not a man who reacted suddenly or violently to actual ob- jective results. A few men with broken jaws, a few with unsheathed knives trying vainly to bury their blades in Shank’s tremendous back, these were not events that either shocked or excited Tex Ringo. He was concerned at that moment with a very different matter. Was Phil Wyndham worthy of the love of Dan Crockett’s daughter? Tex came at last to the definite conclusion that he was. Phil, with one hand still bound, with his legs tackled by a chunky half-breed, his jaw set like a steel trap on a twisted, torn cigarette—that was the picture that de- manded Ringo’s attention. : “It is a fight with two men against two dozen,” Tex said to himself, ‘“ Phil can’t win by brute strength. But if he combines it with brains, he is worthy. Otherwise, Dan Crockett’s daughter had better look further before choosing her man.” The fight went on. “ And yet,” he said, “ what deed can that blundering cowdog do to save himself?” He watched, still revolving every possi- bility in his mind, ready at any moment to blaze away if a single member of that jury drew a gun. comicbooks : a = o> 5 * ~ as a : TO*4,6 a ae . io >. re a “hs G ~~ we BS ey ii §, a ee ene a Soe 5 ee (EO) ~ atthe —~™