Arizona Round-Up — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

cs WILLIAM HOPSON The stagecoach still stood in front of the Silver Pound, Curley holding the snorting, frightened horses. Two hundred men were milling around. Shouts, oaths, orders, supplications filled the air. A group of heavily armed miners, drunk and remembering losses at gaming tables, tore down three tent bars and set one of them afire. Bothwell and Howard, tired from the night’s work and red- eyed from loss of sleep, fought their way through the crowd to where Pearson stood on a poker table carried out from the Pound’s gaming room. The gambler, Gardner, stood impassively to one side; immaculately dressed in gray suit, white shirt, newly shined shoes, the sedate diamonds glittering from his dark cravat and his slim fingers. He had been forgotten. Nor did anybody notice the black horse carrying Tex Burnett as it came in out of the trees and pulled up before a rude, strongly built shack which served as marshal’s office and jail. Lily Owens came down the street to where more than two hundred men milled around, and pulled up close by where Gardner stood alone. He smiled and tipped his hat. “Miss Owens, I believe? I saw you yesterday when I came in on the stage. You were walking down the street.” “I didn’t see you,” she replied. “But you could be only one man: Gardner. I thought you had orders to leave town.” “I believe Harlan did say something about it, Miss Owens,” he answered. “But as you see, I’m still here.” “Youll leave,” she told him, fighting down the fear she kept so well hidden. She was still Lily Owens; she was still a power in the gulch. “So you call him Harlan now?” “Yes,” he nodded. “You see, Miss Owens, youre not the only one who thought of bringing in gamblers to fleece the miners. That was mine and Massey’s job until your good friend’—a touch of sarcasm here— “Tex Bumett shot him early this morning and then ate a hearty meal while he talked with you. Harlan did the same as yourself. Only we were not to fleece the miners by crooked dealing, simply because it was easy enough to win without resorting to such methods. Our job was to take care of your tinhorns. Unfortunately this man Bud Bailey stepped into the picture, at your orders. He’s a gun fighter and plain killer, hired by a woman.” Again the touch of sarcasm and contempt in his voice. “Harlan, Massey and myself are gentlemen-though comicbooks.com