Arizona Round-Up — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

106 WILLIAM HOPSON he smiled at Gardner, “I can sort of talk better when I’m smoking.” Gardner looked at Carriker, the day marshal. He and the others had been released on promise not to try stopping or inter- fering with the proceedings. “Remove the prisoner's handcuffs,” the gambler ordered. Jed Haraway rubbed his wrists as the shackles fell free and then stepped down. He took pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket and tamped in the tobacco as he stepped onto a box and thence to the top of the gaming table serving as witness stand. It put him head and shoulders above the hushed crowd. “I spent fifteen years as a crooked tinhorn gambler of the variety now infesting that camp,” he stated in a matter of fact voice, and then lit his pipe. The blue smoke roiled up around his clean-shaven face. “Some of the old bunch who used to run together are still here. Some are not. A few got killed by men who had sharp eyes and a fast draw. One named Sansome got hung down in Arizona Territory one evening when he stopped in at a small horse camp and found out too late, when a party of ranchers rode up, that they were horse thieves. Reports said that he was quite game when they put air under his feet.” He paused to puff a bit and wait for the laughter to die down. “Then I heard that my daughter, Lily Owens, that I hadn’t seen in many years, was here in Mule Gulch. By then I long since had given up the pasteboards and was pretty contented just working for an honest living.” The laughter this time was a little cynical, almost bitter. Jed ignored it and continued. “I also found my stepson by a second marriage, Lance Hara- way here, known to the people of this camp as ‘Evergreen.’ I hardly approved of either the business my daughter was engaged in or the company my stepson was keeping and the life he was living. I particularly didn’t approve of the crooked tinhorns of the old bunch and their methods of fleecing the miners. Their names are Deacon Sellers, standing over there in the doorway across the street’—the Deacon hurriedly disappeared at the craning of necks—“Tommy Ace-in-the-Hole, Black Jack Smith— there he goes in a hurry—Three-Finger Charley, the man with a thumb and index finger shot away by Tex Burnett fifteen years comicbooks.com