LITMIR.BIZ

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slug missed.

      Clay Foley gained the door, and his grin was savage now as he checked his rush, leveled both guns, and let their hammers skid from beneath his slim thumbs. But that moment of checking his speed, of leveling his guns carefully for a sure, telling blast, was Foley’s last mistake. Long Sam Littlejohn’s right-hand six-shooter seemed to fire at the same time Clay Foley’s twin guns exploded. Yet there had been that fractional part of a second’s difference, and Long Sam’s slug was already ripping through Foley’s heart, jerking him up and backwards, when the twin guns of the murderous El Diabolo Blanco flamed.

      Long Sam stood up, reloading his guns as he watched the shiny boots sticking up in the doorway become immobile. He holstered his weapons and stepped over Clay Foley’s feet into the open shed, where Nina Rowland stood slanting her rifle at Sisco Denton, and trying to keep the barrel from wabbling.

      “Sam, you’re hurt,” she said tensely. “There’s blood all over your face and on your trouser leg, too!”

      “Thanks for keepin’ in the clear, Nina,” Long Sam said wearily. “And don’t worry about these hurts of mine. They’re just reminders that jumpin’ the devil ain’t always a healthy stunt to try. Here, I’ll take charge of that Denton buzzard. I want to get him up yonder to the house and let him tell your daddy the straight of things.”

      “This will just about kill Dad, I’m afraid,” Nina said shakily. “If only we could have caught onto Clay before he broke us.”

      Bart Rowland is too much of a fighter to curl up and die over the hurt he’ll get when he learns about Clay,” Long Sam said evenly. “And right here, inside my shirt, is enough cash money to see Bart through the tight Clay Foley’s thievery put him in. Get the lantern, and lead the way to the house, Nina. I’ll have to lug this Sisco cuss, for he’s sure in no shape to walk.”

      The girl went obediently for the lantern, and Long Sam stood there, feeling the bulges of the packeted money under his shirt. He thought of South America and how easy it would be to take the money he had and go there, beyond the reach of the law that hated and hounded him. Then Nina returned with the lantern, and something in her soft, dark eyes made the gaunt outlaw forget about South America as he reached down, lifted Sisco Denton to his shoulder, and followed the girl and the bobbing lantern through the horse trap gate.

      GUN-WHIPPED!, by Carmony Gove

      The Silver Spur bar was busy for a mid¬week night. Most of the gambling tables were going, too. Old Bill Tope tilted his chair back against a post. Slightly to his left a five-handed poker game was in session. Tope didn’t like the nasty squinting of Snake Furgeson’s eyes; Furgeson had too many notches on his gun.

      “An’ that Petey boy hain’t got th’ sense to keep from hornin’ right into trouble,” Tope muttered to himself.

      An abrupt, heavy-fisted slapping of hands at cards jarred the table. Each poker player suddenly kicked back his chair and was solidly on his feet.

      Three of the players backed away quickly, leaving only Snake Furgeson and young Malone. Snake’s gun was jutting out from his right hip, its big black barrel ready to spit a slug through Pete Malone’s chest, across the table.

      “He ain’t heeled, Snake.”

      Old Bill Tope was still tilted back against the post. Apparently he hadn’t moved, yet his old-fashioned Colt forty-four was steadied across one of his cocked-up knees. A fannin’ gun—that Colt. No need of pulling a trigger; there wasn’t any, anyway. The hammer had to be fanned with the heel of the other hand, or thumbed back with the thumb of the gun hand. Tope had the hammer back, now. All he had to do was let his thumb slip and the old cannon would drill Snake Furgeson through the heart.

      Furgeson’s blazing eyes flashed toward Tope and back to Pete Malone.

      “Then git heeled, er stay outta town, young fellah,” Furgeson snarled. “’Cause I’m comin’ at you smokin’, on sight.”

      Holstering his gun, Snake Furgeson wheeled and stomped toward the bar.

      “Reckon we’d better be a-moseyin’, son.” Tope got to his feet and holstered his own gun.

      Pete Malone turned his long lean frame from the table, where he had stood, bent forward, with both hands upon its top. Tope was stopped for an instant by the hard light in the youngster’s gray-blue eyes; he hadn’t known that those eyes could do anything but smile. Pete settled his big felt hat a bit more firmly over his light brown hair, rammed his hands into his pants pockets and followed the old cow¬man from the place.

      Out in the darkened street, and several doors from the Silver Spur, Bill Tope spat into the dust and growled:

      “Reckon yo’ best get ridin’, son. Get up across th’ border, pronto. Tell th’ boss that th’ grass in this yere Sonora valley he leased is makin’ beef, and to send me another man. Reckon me an’ Sime an’ Wiggin can hold th’ herd for a spell.”

      “Tope, that—”

      “Tell th’ boss I said yo’ wasn’t ripe for Mexico. He’ll savvy. He’s been under fire, hisself.”

      “That hombre had the ace of diamonds palmed in his left hand.”

      “Eh-heh. Don’t s’prise me. Gotta look out for them kind o’ things in these yere crossroads towns. That Snake Furgeson is a killer. Best thing is to ease out of a game like that, ’less yo’re heeled, an’ Snake sure wouldda drilled yo’, if yo’ had been.”

      “But I was.”

      “Was what, son?”

      “Heeled.”

      “Hey?” Tope snapped the back of a hand against the left side of Pete Malone’s leathern vest. His knuckles rapped against nothing but good solid ribs. There was no gun there in a shoulder holster. There was no gun swinging at either of the youngster’s hips. He had never seen Pete have a gun. “What yo’ headin’ at, Petey?”

      “I said I was heeled. Still am.”

      “Wh—”

      “Sure. See?” Pete Malone stopped and slid his right hand from his pants pocket. In the palm lay a little thirty-two automatic.

      “Well of all the honswagglin’ young fools! A¬packin’ iron an’ not goin’ for it ’fore callin’ a crooked deal. If I knowed yo’ had that—Tarnation! I gotta notion to chase yo’ right back to th’ Silver Spur.”

      “All right.” Pete turned. “You hold off his gang, and I’ll bust out the Snake’s fangs.” Tope grabbed one of his arms.

      “No, son. Yo’ made kind of a durned fool outta me, but I ain’t sendin’ yo’ to be plain murdered. Not with that there thing. What yo’d need is a Colts.”

      “This is a Colts.” Pete again produced the little gun, with the flip of a hand.

      “It’s a danged pocket pistol! That’s all that is. One of them new-fangled, slab-sided playthings. What I mean is a reg’lar hawg-laig—a six-gun.”

      They were just beyond the last of the town’s single block of frame and adobe store buildings, within forty yards of where their horses were tied. Tope stood shifting his weight from one none-too¬long, bowed leg to the other, muttering:

      “I’m gettin’ ’long in years; gettin’ kinda slow. But I reckon I best go back. I’d a danged sight ruther brace up to Snake, then to have him a¬gunnin’ for me. An’ he’s sure a-goin’ to be doin’ just that, when he finds out yo’ was heeled after I said yo’ wasn’t.” Then, a trifle frantically and much louder, “Hey! Come back ’ere.”

      * * * *

      Pete Malone quickened his step, avoiding Tope’s reaching hands, as the old cow-man waddled after him. But Pete was heading diagonally across the street toward Mendoza’s general store, where lights still burned, instead of for the Silver Spur.

      It

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