Arizona Round-Up — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

10 WILLIAM HOPSON the wagon while I was coming down from the mill. I recognized him right off. Nobody would ever forget that white platinum hair of hisn. It used to be a sort of trademark. Then he dropped out of sight over a period of years and nobody ever knew what became of him.” “A gambler, you say, Pap?” At his nod she went on. “I don’t think he just dropped in. I think Deacon Sellers sent for him. I'll be glad to meet this Mister Tex Burnett over at the Pheasant.” Jed was pulling a shirt from a pile of clean laundry on a shelf above his bunk. He unbuttoned it and slid in an arm. “I wouldn’t be too sure, Hon,” he said. “I somehow can’t figure Tex sittin’ in on the kind of crooked deal you've got cooked up with the Deacon and the others.” Swift anger flared in her pretty eyes. The lips turned a trifle cold. “It’s not crooked,” she snapped out. “These miners get drunk and throw away their money. Part of it’s at gambling. Half of them are so drunk and befuddled that they lose it any- how, regardless of who or what they're playing.” “So you just take it with a bunch of crooked tinhorns to save time?” her father commented dryly. He unbuckled his belt, slid the shirt tail inside his pants, and worked the heavy brass buckle tight again. “I don’t understand you, Lil—or maybe I do after all,” he said. “You're my first child. Then your mother left me and took you with her. Later, when she died and I married a widow with a son—Lance here—I got you back again. You and your stepbrother. But she left me too. You were sixteen then. A good kid; none of these highfalutin ideas about being ‘somebody’ in the world. I once had ideas like that myself. It's why I'm a freighter today, happier than I’ve ever been in my life. When I heard along the trails that woman named Lily Owens was run- ning the Golden Pheasant I didn’t lose any time getting here. I knew youd take your mother’s name and were on your own. I came in a few weeks ago, hopin’ that the three of us could sort of take up our scattered lives and make a family once more. What I found was my daughter running the biggest gambling place in town, and my stepson a two-gun badman supported by you and hanging around trying to show how tough he could be.” comicbooks.com