Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

By CHARLES FRANCIS COE Author of *‘ Moonglow,’’ *' The Rider o’ Spook Hollow,’ ete. CHAPTER. XXIV (Continued). CIMARRON JONES. HE absolute calm of the lad and the certainty of his attitude rather shat- tered Jones’s confidence. He damp- ened his lips with his tongue, raised his right hand toward his gun ever so little, then stood staring into Jimmie’s eyes. “Tf yuh ain’t got the nerve tuh finish what yuh started, Mr. Roarin’ Jones,” Jim- mie taunted, “I’m willin’ tuh help! Vl do it just fer you, see? You ain’t a liar— you’re a damn liar!”’ The words fell as sharply on the clear air as the very shots that followed them. As they sounded, men all over the town tensed, their eyes alight with excitement. For one brief fleeting second, almost comparable to that moment of stillness before a theater curtain rises, Jones did not move. Then his hand flashed and his gun glinted in the rising sun. Jimmie had been watching. When it came time to shoot he did not, hesitate. Brant was the first to see the superb man- ner in which he drew and fired from the hip. Jimmie himself saw the look of de- feat leap into Jones’s eyes. He saw those eyes change. They widened first, then ‘grew bright with a light of fear; of un-- belief that Jones had met a man faster with a weapon than himself. Jimmie fired and he fired to kill. He saw that a queer, gaping spot appeared directly between Jones’s eyes. It looked blue to him and there was no blood that he could see; more like a bruise, it appeared, than a wound, It seemed that the man hung suspended by some lingering desire to live; a long, long time it seemed to Jimmie before he saw that body settle toward the earth. And,. when it had fallen, and the bruised face groveled into the dust, Jimmie knew that it must have been but a very short time, for he stood and watched as Jones’s hand trembled, jerked, and three shots bored in- : Blows = tues in nthe Argory-Aletery Weekly for Saccard 15. ‘comicbooks. com.