“ACTION NOVEL.

@ : ALL STORIES NEW | ALL STORIES COMPLETE

QUICK TRIGGERS Epic Novel of

Frontier Gun Justice

by FRANK C. ROBERTSON Hell Breaks Loose in GUNSLICK » CLIFF. CAMPBELL

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WESTERN

ACTION NOVELS moin

ALL STORIES NEW ALL STORIES COMPLETE

Vol. II, No. 4 C O N T E N S S September, 1937, Issue

TWO ACTION PACKED NOVELS

QUICK TRIGGERS..... SRR mes .Frank C, Robertson 6 Whon hired gunmen stole the grazing lands, nd turned their smoke-poles in his direction, Yates Trego tied down his holsters "and called for a trigger showdown.

GCUNBEAGK airs terse se Pe oy em ee Ss .Cliff Campbell 46

Up from Texas came Lone Star Bill Ryan to ‘match his wits ‘and guus against as dirty a pack of plug-uglies as ever dry-gulched a waddy.

A ROARING NOVELETTE KILL THAT SHEEPHERDER..................-.. Brian Loomis 116

Shearin’ sheep is trouble, don’t ever let no one tent ‘yuh different.

THREE SMASHING SHORT STORIES GUNDESS: GUNMAN 320 55 oboe oe score ot bwin wine ms cee E. B. Mann 39

Clay McLean buckles on the old man’s guns and shows that it takes more than bluster to prove courage.

HOT LEAD SHOWDOWN... ....... 0... cece were eens Guy Arnold 102 It was hell on wheols that followed Hi Bmerson’s order, “Get ont of town by dawn, or by Gawd, T'U shoot yuh on sight!”

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Though Trego stood on weakened

legs, his gun hand was steady as a rock.

When hired gunmen stole the grazing lands, and turned their smoke-poles in his direction, Yates Trego tied down his holsters, called for a trigger showdown, and fought to a fare-you-well with every coyote on the range.

CHAPTER I “But she’s a whole lot safer for us now

THREE AGAINST ONE that the Warbonnet outfit has sold out an’

Charley Loose an’ his tough outfit have

NSTINCTIVELY the three riders migrated,” grinned the man in the center. I paused for a moment at their first view They called him “Reckless” Reese, and he

of the town for nearly six months. was always grinning. His face was built “Well,” Yates Trego remarked, “it don’t that way, he contended. look like the old town has winter-kiiled.” “Frankly, that is a relief,” Yates Trego,

6

QUICK TRIGGERS

by FRANK C.

ea

Ea

the employer of the other two admitted candidly.

They started on. They had not gone three rods, however, before Steve Bolivar, the third man suddenly grasped Trego’s bridle-rein and pointed his finger toward the town. “Look!” he exclaimed.

The other two followed with their eyes the direction of the pointing finger. The grin upon Reckless’ face seemed fixed there by an unbending process of nature, but a troubled look overspread the features of Yates Trego. *

“And we thought they’d gone,” the latter murmured. “But there can’t be any doubt about it. Those horses belong to Charley

A ROARING ACTION- PACKED NOVEL OF GUN- PLAY ON THE RANGE

À =

ROBERTSON

Loose and the rest of the Warbonnet outfit.”

“I wonder what they are back here for,” Reckless murmured, with his perpetual grin. “They ain’t no Warbonnet outfit any more, an’ they was supposed to leave this country.”

The dark-skinned Bolivar glanced pity- ingly at his pal. “He wants to know why that bunch of hard-boiled range yeggs have come back here. Yates, can you explain it to him in words of one syllable, or less, that they’ve probably come back here to keep that threat Charley Loose made last fall to git us fellers?”

“They’ve nothing against you boys; just me,” Trego remonstrated.

*

8 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“Were with you, anyway,” Bolivar in- sisted. “There ain’t a joint of grass nor a sage-hen track in this country that them bozos don’t know. The Warbonnet outfit was sold out last fall, lock, stock, an’ barrel. Them fellers are back here for no other reason than to git you, Yates.”

Any stranger could have told that Yates _ Trego was the leader of the trio. His strong, rugged features; far from pretty, and yet by no means ugly, were those of a man eminently sure of himself. Trego was a man always ready to go more than half the way to be fair, but few tried to impose upon him twice. He was as loyal to his men as they were to him, and the result was that either of them would follow him to hell if he had so much as asked them.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he stated quietly. “I made Charley Loose powerful mad last fall, and he did indulge in some loose — say, that’s a pun — talk about bumpin’ me off if I ever crossed his trail again. But he wouldn’t stay mad that long.”

“Wouldn’t he?” Reckless asked, grin- ning widely. ‘Why, I stopped an old galoot from beatin’ his wife five years ago, an’ he’s still sore about it, an’ so’s the old lady. An’ it’s only been six months since you stopped Charley Loose from gittin’ away with a clean steal of five thousand cows. I bet he still remembers it.”

“It oughta be a lesson to you, Reckless, not to come between husband an’ wife,” Yates said sternly. “A bastin’ or two

might have done the old girl good. But I

couldn’t let Charley git away with a bare- faced steal by chasin’ part of his herd around a knoll and countin’ ’em again an’ again. Someway, it wasn’t honest.”

“Vo’re dang right it wasn’t honest,” Steve Bolivar said nervously. “Charley Loose an’ his men had planned for years on makin’ that grand little clean-up. It would prob- ably have meant ten thonsand a-piece to every one of ’em. An’ you spoiled the whole thing in ten seconds because you happened to spot one muley cow with a lump on her jaw that went past you twice. Loose is a killer, an’ so is half of his men— an’ the other half is anxious to learn. They didn’t dare call you then, but that’s what they’re here for now.”

“You're wrong about there bein’ just one muley cow,” Trego said provokingly. “I just mentioned that one as proof, but as a

Charley

matter of fact I had recognized more than fifty head before that.”

Bolivar-could stand the strain no longer.

“That don’t matter,” he said, his voice becoming a trifle shrill in spite of himself. “Do we ride down there now an’ git bumped off, or pretend that we’ve got business else- where?”

HROUGHOUT the colloquy the ex-

pression on Reckless’ face had not changed. His bad, uneven teeth, called at- tention to his constant grin, and gave some the impression that he wasn’t smart. That was a mistake. But both Yates Trego and Steve Bolivar knew that when it came to trouble Reckless was there and over.

“Why don’t you let me go down an’ smile on ’em?” he suggested now. “If they kick my pants out of the saloon you’ll know they’re just here for amusement. If I don’t come out you'll know they’re lookin’ for trouble.”

“No; we'll ride down together,” Trego said steadily. “They won’t start a gang fight without some notice. And if Loose means to make it a personal issue with me we’d as well have it over with.”

“Be plumb sure your hardware is in workin’ order,” Bolivar said ~anxiously. “Loose is the slickest proposition with a gun that ever hit the country.”

“My hardware is always ready,” Trego answered. “TI hope I don’t have to use it.”

The town of Juniper was built at the foot

-of an abrupt hillside which at the top

sloped gently back to the foothills in the form of a low mesa. The town itself was not yet twenty years old, but because of the dry, thin atmosphere which was fatal to paint it ket dra ancient. Out- side of a somewhat crooked: main street at the foot of the hill, lined by board side- walks on each side in front of false-fronted business houses, the rest of the houses sprangled anyway they pleased. Anyone attempting to find definite streets would have only found a headache.

From where the three men had stopped they could look down almost upon the roof of the GAMBLERS’ REST, the saloon in front of which the group of Warbonnet horses stood. The three took a trail which ` was little more than a clay Slide, and came to a halt at the bottom not more than fifty feet from where the horses stood eyeing them curiously. sae

Yates Trego alone of the three had wit-

QUICK TRIGGERS 9

nessed a man standing on the opposite side- walk remove a red handkerchief from his hip pocket, flirt it ostentatiously, and then disappear into a store. Trego guessed that the man had been a spotter for the crew of half outlaws in the other saloon. Yet when they rode on up the street to another saloon there was no sign from the GAMBLERS REST,

The three went into the OWL saloon and had a drink; Bolivar drinking whisky; the other two small beers.

“Know Charley Loose is back i in town?” the barkeep queried.

“Yeh, we noticed his horse when we come in. Mighty fine nag, that gray he rides,” Yates answered.

“Veh. Charley always has the best, from the horse he rides to the gun he packs,” the barkeep insinuated.

Trego gave the man a glance but offered no comment, and the man lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. The three riders went out, and instantly the saloon buzzed with comment behind them.

“Tf you fellers value a whole hide you'll stick close inside for the next few minutes,” the bartender offered. “Charley Loose was never known to make a promise he didn’t keep, an’ last fall he said that some day he’d kill Yates Trego. If I don’t miss my guess that’s what he aims to do today.”

“An’ knowin’ Yates like I do,” vouch- safed another, “I know he’ll never run, An’ with them two wildcats to back him up there’ll be plenty of gun throwin’ on both sides.”

“But the odds are three against eleven,” remarked another'man. “Trego is a crazy fool if he steps foot inside the GAMBLERS REST.”

“And if he don’t everybody will think he’s afraid to, an’ Loose will come huntin’ him,” the bartender said. “Ten dollars to one Trego goes into our rival establishment within the hour.”

“Gittin’ high-toned in his grammar, ain’t he?” a man scoffed. “Next thing he’ll be callin’ this dump a saloon.”

But there were no takers of the barkeep’s offer,

Meanwhile the three riders went quietly about their necessary shopping, talking casually about the weather and the range with the few people who seemed to have time to talk with them. Trego was casual; Reckless gon cned i te E i

and this was visible only in his quick, fur- tive glance and a pinched look around his nostrils.

Their little shopping tour had brought them close to the GAMBLERS REST when a young woman dressed in a gray riding habit stepped out of a doorway. She was about twenty-two; old enough to be sure of herself. Her abundant corn-colored hair was partially concealed by a man’s dusty sombrero, and she wore gauntlet gloves upon her strong, brown hands. Level blue eyes looked out from a strong, rather than a pretty face, though the girl wasn’t with- out beauty. At sight of the men a smile illumined her face, but her appearance, it seemed to Yates Trego, had been a little too pat to have been entirely accidental.

“Why, Yates Trego!” she exclaimed in mild astonishment, “this is lucky meeting you here. Hello, Steve. Hello, Reckless.”

Trego accepted the girl’s outstretched hand, and she shook hands with the other two boys more casually.

“It’s always lucky for me meetin’ you, Helen,” Yates smiled, “but it never oc- curred to me that you ' might feel the same way about it.”

BIT of color swept over Helen Ma- lone’s fresh cheeks.

“What I meant was that Father asked me to send a message to you, and now I can deliver it in person.”

Trego inclined his head gravely. “I’m always glad to receive any word or advice from Judge Malone,” he stated.

“He wants to see you at once if he can. Something very important has come‘ up. Will you ride out to the ranch with me now?” Her tone was urgent.

“TI be glad to—in just a few minutes,” the man said. “I have a call or two to make yet.”

“In there?” The girl nodded briefly to- ward the saloon.

“Well, maybe.”

“That’s just why I want you to go with me right now.”

“Pm afraid——”

“No, I’m not just trying to keep you out of trouble,” the girl interrupted. “It’s about Charley Loose that Father wants to see you. Loose is starting something about the old Warbonnet range that you and Father should talk over.”

“T see, But I will have to step into the

: PEERS REST a minute before I

t

16 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

start. I see your horse down the street. Will you wait for me there?”

Helen Malone’s manner did not change outwardly, except that she somewhat ner- vously wet her lips with the tip of a pink tongue, and impulsively placed her hand momentarily upon Trego’s arm.

“Yes, Pll wait for you,” she promised, and went on down the street, but her face was pale. She knew Western men, this girl, and she knew Yates Trego would not be stopped when it would be a reflection upon his courage. Nor, being the kind of girl she was, would she want to stop him. .

The men waited until she had reached her horse. Trego’s companions knew that their leader was waiting for the girl to get out of range of possible bullets. Then they turned and matter of factly passed through the swinging doors which they had ample reason to believe they might never return through again—alive,

CHAPTER II THE CONQUERING GRIN

OR men who had been waiting inside F: saloon for several hours the former

Warbonnet crew were strangely sober. The iron discipline of the square-jawed ex-foreman, Charley Loose, was perhaps responsible. Loose was a man whose hints few refused to take. Five foot ten in height, loosely built and rangey, the man carried a suggestion of great strength and dur- ability. His lean face, inclined to arro- gance, carried the calm assurance achieved only by ripe experience.

Just now Loose was seated at a table against the wall talking to a local cowmag. Two of his men were seated at the same table, while others were scattered around in various parts of the saloon. But Yates Trego noticed the instant he entered that Hash Middleton, next to Loose the most dangerous gunman of the crew, lounged at one end of the bar where he commanded a sweeping view of the whole barroom and of the door. At the other end of the bar, in only a slightly less strategic position lounged a smallish fellow with straw- colored hair and dead looking, whitish eyes who was known for his waspish temper and readiness to resort to gun or knife play. He was called Marco St. Cloud, and was less dangerous than the other two

only because he was smaller. There were — =

some who believed that with a gun he could shade either of them, and he had the further advantage of being a practiced knife- thrower. i

It was not a comfortable situation for a man whom these men had threatened to kill to walk into, but outwardly Yates Trego was as calm as he had been while talking to Helen Malone, while Reckless Reese’s face was fixed in his perpetual grin. Only Steve Bolivar betrayed the slightest sense of nervousness.

The only space at the bar was next to Marco St. Cloud, and it so happened that Steve Bolivar was the one who brushed elbows with the gunman, The three nodded to the bartender, who rested both hands on the bar in front of them in an attitude of waiting. The man was tense.

“We'll have three beers,” Trego ordered quietly. Then he half turned and ap- peared to notice Charley Loose for the first time.

“Hello, Charley,” he called in a tone that seemed to ring with genuine affability. “Join us in a drink?”

Loose had ceased to talk the moment the others entered the saloon. His look had been frigid. Now he suddenly found himself disconcerted by the unexpected manner of his foe’s greeting. He was not ready to precipitate a conflict, but he had to do it or play up to the other’s game. The faces of his men reflected their sur- prise when he got up and walked toward the bar. But in a moment he had re- gained his self-possession, and his easy manner matched Trego’s.

“Maybe I will,” he said, emphasizing. the last word.

Reckless Reese suddenly gave his neigh- bor an elbow thrust and cleared a space for loose between himself and Trego. Again Loose realized that he had been out- generaled.

“What’ll you have, Charley?” Yates asked.

“Whisky.”

The bartender gingerly placed the drinks on the bar. Loose fingered his whisky glass with his left hand, but he didn’t drink.

“Still herdin’ dogeys I hear,” the latter remarked,

“Yep.”

“Tf somebody ever dies an’ wills me a couple of Jersey calves TIl hire you to herd

E >j —

QUICK TRIGGERS il

“That'll be fine,” Trego said, calmly ig- noring the sneer. “There’s lots of range now that the Warbonnet has sold out. I'll be glad to herd any dogeys you may have —at fifty cents a month.”

“Yes?” There was a perceptible rising edge in Loose’s voice. “That’s where you’re mistaken, my friend. There’ll be no addi- tional range for you.”

“Says which?” Trego queried, eyebrows uplifted.

“I was sayin’ that I’m still holdin’ the range that the Warbonnet used when I was foreman, an’ that there’ll be no Mor- mon cows allowed between Paradise an’ the Five [Mile Meadows.”

“Nor Mormon cowpunchers,” abruptly spoke up Hash Middleton from the other end of the bar.

“Well!” Trego toyed with his glass of beer. Nobody had touched glass to lip. Apparently Trego was slightly amused. He was accustomed to having the animals he tended referred to as Mormon dogeys, and, frequently, himself as a Mormon. He didn’t mind, though the terms were grossly inaccurate.

Five years before, knowing of the unused range along the Bear River, but having no money to buy cattle, and with an ingrained prejudice against going into. debt, Yates Trego had hit upon the idea of running summer herds upon the free public domain. Most of the animals he secured did belong to Mormon ranchers in the Snake River settlements. Thus he had acquired the name of being a Mormon. The proposition he had made the small ranchers, Mormon and Gentile altke, was much better than they could have run their cattle for them- selves, and with it went a guarantee of a full count.

It was not long until it required three men to handle his charges, and he had hired Steve and Reckless. And he could have obtained three times as many cattle as he did have if he could secure range. The passing of the big Warbonnet outfit had seemed to afford that opportunity. He was taking on more cattle, and right now he had men employed gathering ani- mals from the lower valleys.

HARLEY LOOSE’S threat had come

like a bolt from the blue, and Trego

realized that if it was made the conse- quences would be disastrous indeed.

“Am I to understand that you’ve gone

into the dogey herdin’ business in com- petition with me?” he asked gently.

“No”—Loose could afford to smile broadly now—“I ain’t sunk that low. I still run a cow outfit.”

“Oh, well, I guess it’s a case of every man for himself,” Trego stated. “I’ve taken several thousand head of young stuff for the summer, and I’m sure figgerin’ on usin’ some of the range that the Warbonnet vacated. I’ve never heard of ’em sellin’ that range, an’ bein’ free government land I don’t see how they could.”

“An’ Pm tellin’ you not to bring any more dogeys into the country,” Loose de- clared flatly. “I’m still runnin’ the range I used to. I mean to keep on runnin’ it.”

Trego lifted his glass of beer to mouth, and signalled his men to do likewise. Loose deliberately shoved his glass of whisky to- ward the back of the bar. Then, as Steve Bolivar jerkily lifted his glass, he acci- dentally jabbed (Marco St. Cloud in the ribs with his elbow.

Instantly the waspish gunman leaped away from the bar with a hissing sound like a cat’s.

“You can’t jab me-around, you so-and- such,” the fellow hissed. “PI cut yore blankey-blank heart out!”

A knife appeared in the fellow’s hand and he leaped forward, making a wicked slash at Steve Bolivar.

Steve’s hand dropped toward his gun, but realizing that he had no time for that he raised his hands and tried to fend him- self until he could grab the knife.

The first slash left a long red channel down Steve’s arm. The puncher thrast his assailant back a step, but St. Cloud came in again like a flash before Steve could move to defend himself. Steve would have died had it not been for Yates Trego. Before the fellow could stab or slash again Trego’s booted foot came up in a free swing from the hip. His toe caught the killer a para- lyzing blow just below the elbow. The knife was knocked high in the air and St. Cloud grabbed his arm with an involun- tary cry of pain.

It had happened so suddenly that there had been a moment when nobody moved. Even Charley Loose seemed to have been caught by surprise. Then the man’s hand flashed to the handle of his gun in the beginning of the fast draw for which he was famous. But before the gun was quite clear of the holster Loose felt a gun muzzle

12

‘pressed against the small of his back.

“Let it drop, Charley,” purred a voice, and glancing back over his shoulder Loose looked into the grinning face of Reckless Reese. He let go of the gun.

“Thanks,” Reckless said.

Discomfited by having been outwitted by a man not half so fast on the draw as he was the Warbonnet foreman could only swear under his breath. But the pressure against his back was not decreased.

From wherever they happened to be in the saloon Loose’s men had started up; their hands clutching wickedly at the handles of their guns. Hash Middleton, at the farther end.of the bar, was the only one who had unholstered his gun com- pletely. The men between him and Reck- less had dropped below the level of the bar, but before Middleton could fire, Charley Loose bawled out,

“Stop!”

Acutely conscious of the fact that the next hostile move would send a bullet into his kidneys the foreman had reason to check his men. Awareness that he had been out- gamed and out-maneuvered, the man seethed internally; but he was not courting death for the sake of dignity.

“Your boys seem kinda touchy, Char- ley.” Trego said. “We don’t want any trouble. You feel the same way about it?”

“Sure, I don’t want no trouble,” Loose said grudgingly. “Relax, boys.”

Slowly the men’s hands fell away from their weapons. Trego smiled and started for the door with Steve Bolivar by his side. Reckless remained where he was; his grin seeming to have a peculiar fascination for the men who watched him. But the hand that held the gun against Loose’s back never wavered.

At the door Trego and Bolivar turned back and faced the room. They didn’t touch their guns, but stood there, waiting. Reckless calmly holstered his gun, gave Loose a friendly pat on the arm, and walked toward his friends.

Yates Trego’s eyes never left Charley Loose’s face. He knew that the odds against Loose drawing his gun were small. The man had been humiliated, and now he had an even chance again. Better than an even chance, since he had ten men at his back against his enemy’s three, and, moreover, he believed himself to be the fastest man in the country on the draw. Trego realized this, but with iron self control he kept his

WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

hands at his sides and gazed at his foes with an air of serene confidence. . Steve Bolivar followed his example.

The muscles of Loose’s face twitched like an addict needing morphine, but he didn’t draw. When Reckless reached the others they backed through the door and into the street unmolested.

“T shore got to hand it to you, Yates,” Reckless said, his grin widening a bit. “If you’d showed the least excitement Charley Loose would have started throwin’ lead.”

“Me?” Trego queried in surprise. “I was scared to death. You were the cool one. Keepin’ Loose covered was a big help, but it was that monkey grin of yours that really made ’em afraid to start anything. That grin said plainer than words,

“ ‘No matter what you do we’ve got you whipped before you start.’ An’ damned if they didn’t believe it.”

“Then for once,” Reckless said, ‘I’m damned glad I can’t breathe through my nose.”

CHAPTER III —OR ELSE

still waiting for him beside her horse when he came out of the saloon.

“You boys go see the doctor and git that knife cut on Steve’s arm doctored up. Then get back to camp if Steve is able to travel, and keep out of the way of the Warbonnet outfit,’ Trego directed.

“PI be able to travel all right,” Steve said. “This looks like a long cut, but it don’t feel deep. Some day I’ll git a hold of that dead-eyed knife slinger an’ break him in two.”

“PIL bet he’s got as sore an arm as you have,” Reckless said. “Did you hear it crack when Yates’ toe hit him?”

“Tt was a closer squeak than I care to have,” Trego admitted.

“But what about it?” Steve demanded. “Tf he does try to hold all the old War- bonnet range what’ll you do?”

“He can’t hold it. -It’s a bluff,” Trego said. But in his own mind he was not so sure.

Helen came a few steps forward to meet him. Her face showed that she had been under a severe strain. :

“Thank God you’re out of there,” she said. “I’ve been listening for gun shots

VY sii TREGO noticed Helen Malone

QUICK TRIGGERS 13

till my ears ached. There was no trouble?”

“Nothing serious. Marco St. Cloud pulled a knife on Steve Bolivar and cut his arm, but I managed to kick the knife out of his hand before he could do any more damage.”

The girl stared with puzzled, wondering eyes.

“You saw Loose?” she questioned.

“And talked with him. He claims he still controls the Warbonnet range, and or- dered me to keep off. I’m guessin’ it was about that that your father wanted to see me.”

“T think it was. Let’s go.”

She swung lithely into the saddle, and Trego knew better than to proffer any as- sistance, Helen Malone had handled horses “since she was six years old. He would have considered it an insult to even intimate that she wasn’t perfectly capable of mount- ing her own horse. So far as that went she seemed perfectly capable of handling her own affairs in everything.

He glanced up at her curiously as she accompanied him across the street to his horse, For five years every single man in the country had been more or less wild about her, but she had played no favorites; and it had now begun to seem that she could never take any local man seriously— and the right man from the outside appar- ently hadn’t come along. Maybe he never would, Trego was thinking. He was sure that she had never had any deep romance in her life, and if she ever did the man would have to be somebody of pretty high station. She had made it clear that no ordinary cowhand would do.

“Did you talk to many of the local cat- tlemen today, or—or lately?” she ques- tioned as they rode out of town and took the road at a jog-trot. It was dusty inside the ruts, and they rode one on each side of the road. It was, Trego thought, about as chummy as a man could get with Helen.

“Why, I saw quite a few of them here an’ there today, but I was too busy to gossip much with them,” he answered.

“I suppose they were all anxious to talk?”

He glanced at her with surprise. “Come to think of it they wasn’t falling all over themselves to get to talk with me,” he said.

It occurred to him that there had been a number of the local men inside the GAM- BLER REST; most of whom he had sup- posed were better friends to him than to

Loose. They had never had cause to love the arrogant Warbonnet outfit, and he had at some time or other done every one of them favors. Now he remembered that their attitude had been queerly strained. He hadn’t expected them to take sides with him, but he had every right to think that they would give him their sympathy rather than Loose.

“Pm afraid you’re losing your popular- ity, my friend,” Helen said bluntly.

“Well, now! I didn’t know I had any great amount of it to lose, but I sure don’t see why my stock should go down and Loose’s go up on account of what happened last fall,” he said candidly.

HE girl studied him a minute before

she spoke. “You are the romantic type,” she said judiciously, “in spite of your size and your well known courage. You’re proud of being a cowboy. You say to yourself, you Pharisee, that you are not like other men. You are the man on horse- back! The king. Not for you is the seden- tary life of the tenderfoot, or the daily life of the manual drudge. Free as the air! That’s you. I can imagine you sitting your horse on top of some pinnacle, looking out over the wide open spaces, glorying in every breath you breathe, and thanking God that you are a cowman,”’

“Frankly,” he said, “I don’t think you’re being funny, even though you smile. I think you mean it. And I’d never thought of myself as a Pharisee. In fact I’ve been purty proud of being just a common sort of fellow. Being told that I’m pretty much of a fool kinda takes the wind out of me.”

He was hurt, and the girl knew it. She suddenly reined her horse across the road and took the brush on his side. Her hand rested lightly upon his arm.

“Don’t take it that way, Yates,” she begged. “I guess the bitterness inside me sort of got beyond control, and my sarcasm didn’t get over. Personally, you’re fine—as fine a man as I’ve ever known, But you are incurably romantic.”

“I don’t know why you should know that. I’ve never mentioned romance to you, even though there’s been plenty of times when I’d like to. I knew it wouldn’t be any use. But I’ve rode to the top of a pinnacle many a time and felt just as you say I did.”

“And why haven’t you made love to me?” she asked.

14 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“Tve never quite understood that my- selfi—till now,” he answered slowly.

“And now?”

“Now I know that first of all I’m a range man, and that in your heart you cherish a kind of contempt for the whole breed.”

A deep flush spread over Helen Malone’s face, but after a moment she forced her- -self to meet his gaze.

“Were being a little more frank with each other, I think, than either of us in- tended when we started out,” she said, “I call you a fool, and you call me a snob. I’m not a snob, really; any more than you are a fool. We just don’t see alike. You think these people the salt of the earth, free, big-hearted, and happy. I claim most of them are just as little, petty, and nar- row-minded as anybody else, and the way they are treating you proves it.”

“I don’t understand. People have treated me all right. Even Charley Loose until I stepped on his toes.”

“Look. Loose has brow -beaten and abused these people for years. Was there ever a questionable brand, who got away with the critter unless Yates Trego was there to stop it? Charley Loose. There hasn’t been a cowman in this country who hasn’t seen some of his stock claimed by the Warbonnet outfit because of a blotched brand, and had to take it. They saw Loose try to get away with a wholesale theft of cattle from the tenderfeet who bought the Warbonnet cattle last fall. After it was over they applauded you, yes. But now this spring Charley Loose comes back and makes them a few mealy-mounted prom- ises of more range if they’ll turn against you, and what do they do? They lick his boots. They say what Loose was trying to do to the tenderfeet wasn’t stealing, it was just a smart trick, and you had no business ramming into it.”

“But surely—”

“T know what I’m talking about,” the girl interrupted heatedly. “They've been to my dad. So has Loose. They’re trying to form an association against you. I’ve heard their smug arguments. They say they live here and pay taxes on their cattle, and that you bring in stuff from the out- side to eat the grass that ought to be theirs. You’ve befriended them, and they’ll break you. There is your noble dowman, my romantic friend.”

“That’s hard to believe, Helen,” Trego said gently, “These men have been my

friends. Maybe I have exalted ‘em a little too much, in my own mind, but I can’t believe they’d let Charley Loose make tools of them. What sort of an association are they trying to form?”

“PN let Dad tell you the details,” the girl said wearily. “I’ve had my say.”

They rode on up the valley im silence, past a number of cattle ranches belonging to men who ran stock on the same range with Trego. It was these men whom the girl was trying to turn him against. She just didn’t understand them,

At the end of a lane they unexpectedly encountered two small ranchers named Clark and Wentworth. Trego greeted them with unusual if artificial gusto.

“Well, I’m back in the country again,” he said cordially. “Sure seems like home. How did you winter?”

“Well, we got by all right, I reckon,” Lucius Clark mumbled. ‘‘Cattle’s purty thin though. Goin’ to take lots o’ grass to git enough meat on ’em by fall to pay fer winterin’ ’em.”

The looks of both men were hang-dog, and their words had to be dragged out of them. Trego glanced at Helen Malone, and a flush crept over his tanned cheeks. The girl had said nothing. She was sitting quietly on her horse, but there was a visible curl to her red lips which a pretty girl shouldn’t have.

“Well, glad to have met you again,” Yates said to the two men. “TIl be seeing you.”

T HEY mumbled something unintelligi- ble and rode hastily away. x

“Well?” Helen murmured.

Certainly it wasn’t such a greeting as Trego had a right to expect from men who had always professed warm friendship, but he wouldn’t admit it.

“Aw, they were just embarrassed because you were present,” he said.

“Them? They don’t know the meaning of the word. If I had a dollar for every time Luce Clark has rudely interrupted me or my mother in the middle of a sentence I could buy him out.” The girl laughed bitterly:

Presently they turned into a lane that led to the Malone ranch house which set far back from the road to get the advantage of a grove of native shade trees and clear spring water. The house was not larger than some other in the valley, but it was

QUICK TRIGGERS 15

better kept. The yard, both front and back, was full of shrubs and flowers.

They dismounted at the small yard gate and the girl led the way up a rock-lined path,

“Your good friend Clark doesn’t approve of our yard,” Helen remarked. “He says he’d rather see a calf on the lawn than a

y.” : “With me it would depend on what kind of a calf it was,” Trego laughed, and was answered by a hopeless shake of the head. He grinned,

Helen led Yates into the sitting room where Chauncey Malone sat writing at a desk,

“Oh, hello, Yates,” the rancher greeted, getting to his feet to shake hands. “Glad to see you. Have a chair. Looks like Helen must have given you my message in per-

“Ves, she told me you wanted to see me, and was good enough to ride out with me,” Yates said.

“And we fought all the way,” Helen said. “Excuse me, will you? I want to change.”

When the door closed behind the girl Malone motioned his visitor to a seat and resumed his own chair. “Have a cigar,” he invited with a smile.

“Thanks. Dll just stick to Bull Dur- ham,” Yates refused.

“Just as you say,” Malone said as he painstakingly lighted up a long black cigar and drew a few luxurious puffs. He was a tall, spare man with gray hair which some- how added to his impression of natural dignity. His delicate hands looked thin and frail. They were the hands of an aristo- crat, Despite his thinness the man looked tough and wiry. He was as well tanned as Trego himself.

Chauncey Malone had begun life as a promising young lawyer. Then, five years after he had begun to practice he had been seized by an insidious disease which made it fatal for him to remain inside an office.

“Get out in the open and stay there,” his doctors had told him and he had ac- cepted their advice. Having a small in- dependent fortune he had gone into the cattle business above Juniper. He was called “judge” by courtesy.

“You came from Juniper?” Malone asked, “Hear any news?”

“I picked up a scrap here and there,” Trego replied. “Mostly from your daugh- ter. I’m several weeks late getting in this

spring on account of gathering a lot of new stuff. I seem to be behind the times. As near as I can gather the country has got enterprising all of a sudden.”

“Right. They’re meeting in Juniper to- morrow night to organize a new grazing association. A lot of new grazing land is available on account of the Warbonnet out- fit selling out, so to manage it properly and keep out outside stuff they’re going to get rid of the old riders and hire Charley Loose and his men to do the riding for everybody. They say, Yates, there won’t be much room for you any more,” _

“Are you joining, Mr. Malone?” Trego asked courteously.

“Tt seems that I’d better,” Malone answered with a dry smile. He shuffled some papers on his desk, and selecting one handed it to Trego. “I got this a couple of days ago. It seems I’m about the only dissenting voice, and dissenters are not popular.”

Trego slowly unfolded the note and read,

“Join the association, Malone, or else—’’

CHAPTER IV A STORMY MEETING

> REGO handed the note back to Ma- lone. “What are you going to do about it?” be asked.

“Tve already done it,” Malone said. “I told the men who called on me about join- ing up to go to hell, I’ve been my own man for twenty years; I’m not going to start crawling on my belly now.”

“You'd better think twice, Judge,” Trego said soberly. “This is a lot more serious than I imagined. I never would have thought the stockmen here would fall for Charley Loose after the way he’s treated them.”

“Its human nature, I reckon, Yates. None of ’em has got all he wants. When they see a chance to get more they find ways and means to justify themselves and lull their conscience. They’re being prom- ised things. Take any rancher almost and he’ll use all the credit he can get. He thinks if he just had more money he could buy more cows to eat more grass, to make more money to buy more cows. Here’s a promise of more grass—and more money.”

“How do you mean, Judge?” `

“The ones who've talked to me all stress the point that if they can get more range

16 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

the banks will lend ‘em money to buy the

cattle to use it. Which leads me to the

conclusion that there is a smarter man than

Charley Loose back of it,” Malone said.

_ “Oh-h! And who do you think this man would be?”

“I don’t know. I showed this note to Sheriff Felch. No dice. He wanted to keep it as evidence. When I wouldn’t let it go he just shook his shoulders and said he could do nothing. Count him as being on the other side. From all I can learn the promises of easy credit all seem to trace back to an enterprising real estate dealer named Jed Irvine.”

“Trvine! You mean the fellow who dropped in here a couple of years ago and landed a job in Hamilton’s store? Why, he’s nothing but a tenderfoot.”

“Yes, maybe. But he’s got brains, that fellow. Money brains. He’s went ahead fast. Had half a dozen jobs since Hamil- ton’s, and now he has his own office, buys and sells land, and loans money on mort- gages,” Malone said.

“I see,” Trego murmured. “Well, Judge, it looks to me like you’d chosen to back the wrong horse. You’d better, join the association.”

“What are you going to do?” Malone asked bluntly.

“I ain’t been invited to join. If Pd known sooner I wouldn’t have taken on more stock. Gamblin’ with other people’s property don’t appeal to me. But it’s too late for me to back out now. I’m moving in on the Warbonnet range.”

“Good. But it’ll mean war. Don’t worry about the ranchers here. They’ll pay Loose to do their fighting an’ glad of it. What kind of a crew have you got, outside of Bolivar and Reese?”

“Not much force. Just three Mormon ranch boys who know enough about cows

to get by, but they’re not fighting men.” -

“T can help some, I think. My two riders will stick and I mean to put on a third. Then there'll be four or five good men whom the ranchers will let drift as soon as the association is formed and Loose takes over,” Malone said,

“T still say you’d better keep out of it,” Trego said. “It looks to me like it was going to be between me and Loose.” The puncher’s face was gradually settling into a hard mask. He knew that he was vulnerable. Charley Loose knew it, too, and would go to any length to get him. Trego

sensed that their feud could only be arbi- trated with six-guns. He rose to go.

“Better stay all night, Yates,” Malone invited cordially. “It’s getting late.”

“Thanks, Judge, but I’ve got a lot of riding to do before that meeting tomorrow night. I want to be there.”

“So do I,” Malone grinned. “But we can’t stop it. Irvine has got them tied up with promises right now. And those who couldn’t be won with promises have been won by threats. Their lives have been threatened if they don’t sign.”

“That fellow must be a lot smarter than I figgered he was.”

“He is. And I don’t like him,” Malone said. “I’m going to tell you something in strict confidence. Helen would slay me if she knew I told you. A year or more ago Irvine tried to shine up to her, and she did go out with him a time or two as she has with most of the single men around here. People think she’s a flirt, but she’s not really. She’s naturally friendly, but when a man don’t measure up she drops him.

“Jed Irvine went dramatic on her. Seems he told her all about his ambitions and ex- pected her to fall into his lap like fruit. When she didn’t he got a bit excited. Told her that in three years time he’d be the big- gest man in this county, and in position to ruin me financially. He bragged that when that time come she’d be glad to climb off her high horse and marry him.

“The hell of it is, Yates, the fellow has a way of making his predictions come true. He has certainly got me over a barrel. My principles won’t let me join his associa- tion, and if I don’t he can certainly break me.”

“Are you sure he wouldn’t break you if you did join?”

“That’s just the point. I firmly believe that Loose and Irvine will break every man who joins their association. But there’s not a thing I can do.”

REGO was more shaken than he cared to admit by what Malone had told him, Helen Malone was a big stake for any man to play for. Trego was beginning to be afraid of this fellow, Irvine. More afraid of him than he was of Charley Loose.’ “Well, I'll see you at the meeting to- morrow night,” he said, It was midnight when Trego got back to his camp where the first of his summer herds were bedded. Another herd was in

QUICK TRIGGERS 17

process of formation in the lower valleys, and he had planned to send Steve back to boss it up the trail, but the critical situa- tion that confronted him now necessitated a change. He needed both of his trusted lieutenants by his side, and badly.

He found Steve Bolivar awake and suf- fering from a badly inflamed arm. St. Cloud’s knife had bitten deeper than they had thought. Fortunately it was the puncher’s left arm that was hurt.

Yates explained matters as best he could to Steve and Reckless.

“Tf Pd knowed what was up Pd have shot Charley Loose yesterday while I had him danglin’ on the end of my gun,” Reck- less said.

“We're in a tough spot, boys,” Trego admitted. “I can’t turn those cattle back now because the owners have no place to put them and it’s too late to look for other range. If we go on we may get our heads shot off, and if we don’t it’ll break me mak- ing good the loss guarantee. It’s a stiff fight, but what worries me most is dragging you boys into it.”

“Don’t mind that,” Steve said. “You couldn’t leave us out if you tried.”

Trego wakened the other riders and des- patched one of them back immediately to urge all haste with the other herd.

“Tell the boys with them to follow up the river as nearly as they can when they get out of the valleys, and somebody will meet them on the way. But the main thing is to drive. Weve got to get our stuff on the old Warbonnet range before anybody else grabs it.”

Almost before daylight Trego had his herd on the méve. The Warbonnet outfit had always been a transient outfit; trailing out to the vast Snake River desert for the winter, and back up in the spring. The range they used had been high, and of little use until the middle of May. Thus far none of the local men had got their stock on it because their animals would do better on the lower, earlier range. Two hard days’ drive, Trego figured, would place his cattle on the range.

They were tired and dirty riders at sun- down that evening. Their charges were dogeys, and hard to drive. Moreover, they were inclined to back-track at every possi- ble opportunity. In the lower country Trego had been able generally to hire a field to hold them in at night. But on the

range they sometimes required night herd- ing. Usually this only meant to guard the rear and prevent any animals from stray- ing back. It required at least two men to hold them, and since Steve was suffering with his arm it was he who remained at the camp with the two new men, and Reck- less who went to town with Trego.

They had to ride fast, and Trego realized that he would be late to the meeting any- way.

“You prowl around a bit and keep your ears open,” Trego ordered his companion. “PI go right over to the opera house where the meeting is being held.”

“Aw, I like meetin’s,” Reckless said. “Let me go along.”

“Nix. You'll not be needed. Nobody is going to start anything in the presence of fifty or sixty people.”

As he approached the door of.the opera house, before which groups of horses and a few buggies were clustered, a figure de- tached itself from the darkness and ap- proached him. Trego halted, and his hand dropped to his gun.

“Its all right, Yates,” the man said. “The judge told me to watch out here till

«you come.”

Trego heaved a sigh of relief. He had recognized the man as Dewey Carson, one of Judge Malone’s riders.

“Then the judge is inside?” he said.

“Yes. Sa is Charley Loose, but none of the rest of his gang are here.”

“That’s funny. I rather expected them.”

Trego opened the door and gazed over the slumped figures in the uncomfortable seats in the dimly lighted emporium of pleasure. A man was speaking. It was Luce Clark.

“So as I sees it,” he was going on, “there ain’t a doubt of the wisdom of formin’ this here association. With it we can buy more cattle to use our own range, an’ not have to hand it over to foreigners who pay no taxes. Besides, as Charley Loose has told you, he can handle everything with half the men that we’ve been payin’.”

The man suddenly saw Yates Trego, stared at him a moment and abruptly sat down. Immediately Charley Loose was on his feet.

“There’s just one consideration if this association is formed and I’m hired to run your cattle,” he said. “I must have abso- lute control over all the range in our terri-

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tory. In return I promise you that no cattle belonging to men outside the association will be permitted to run there.”

Judge Malone got to his feet.

“I’ve told you before,” he said, “that TIl not join any association. I’ve always run my own outfit and I always will. My cattle are on the range and I warn every- body that I intend they shall stay there. The rest of you may be willing to stand for Charley Loose being dictator of the range, but I won’t.”

OOSE had remained standing, “We'll see about that, Judge Malone,” he said coldly.

Before Malone could answer back Jed Irvine was on his feet. He was rather well built, though as he grew older his frame would certainly take on fat to the point of obesity. Now he was almost chubby, and . his thick red lips and rosy cheeks carried the impression of good nature until one looked at his small, acquisitive ice-blue eyes.

Dm sorry my good friend Judge Malone takes the attitude he does,” he began. “Our action certainly is not levelled at him, and Tm sure that he’ll be willing to come in later when he sees the benefits of our or- ganization, But I don’t feel that we can afford to wait longer on account of him. I move you that the articles of the associa- tion which have previously been read be adopted.”

“T second the motion,” Andy Wentworth said. “Mr. Chairman,” Yates Trego called out. “May I ask a question?”

Had a pin dropped in the room it would have startled the crowd like a gun going off.

The chairman hesitated a moment, and glanced toward Irvine. “I reckon so,” he said then. “What is it?”

“All I want to know before joining this association is whether or not Mr. Loose is going to be required to give bond to make good any cattle he may lose while in his care. It’s customary, I know, because I’m in the same line myself, and I always give bond. If he’s prepared to do this, or Mr. Irvine will do it for him then I’m not only ready but anxious to join.”

A bombshell could not have startled the men more. A hub-bub of voices arose from every corner, and the chairman pounded in vain for order.

Judge Malone arose; his face wreathed in smiles.

“Tf Loose and Irvine will do that PI join it, too,”

Charley Loose leaped to the top of a table. “Loose will do nothin’ of the damned kind,” he bellowed. “I work for wages. Pll run your cattle, an’ run ’em right; but Tm not takin’ on any Jersey bulls, nor lettin’ em run on my range.”

Irvine, Judge Malone, half a dozen others were trying to get the floor. Yates Trego stood calm and undismayed at the other end of the hall. It necessitated look- ing around to see him. All of them there knew of the deadly enmity between him and Charley Loose. At any moment they expected the fire-works to start and they wanted to get out of the line of fire.

“Are you going to turn your stock over to a man who was caught red-handed in theft, and who won’t give you the least guarantee—” Judge Malone shouted ex- citedly.

Charley Loose whirled, and a look of murderous rage crossed his face. Forgetful of his worst foe at the other end of the hall he slapped hand to gun. Malone’s death seemed inevitable. But as Loose turned on the treacherous table he threw too much weight on one side and it tilted. He lost his balance and fell, wildly waving his arms just as he fired.

There were two shots at the same identi- cal moment. One of them came from Yates Trego’s gun. Loose’s fall had caused both bullets to miss their mark, but for the moment Trego believed that he had shot Loose. Judge Malone had sunk from‘sight in the milling crowd, and Trego feared that his friend had been shot, too. He started forward.

As he fought his way down the crowded aisle he saw Loose on his feet. The man was bleeding from the mouth where he had struck some object as he fell, but there was panther rage in his eyes as he saw his foe coming. Heedless of the possibility that somebody between them might be shot he again raised his gun.

Trego found himself behind Luce Clark, and reached out with his left hand to sweep the man aside so that he could stand face to face with Loose, but he was too late. Something descended upon his head with terrific force, and the world turned black.

QUICK TRIGGERS 19

CHAPTER V

A MYSTERIOUS MISSIVE

dirty ceiling over his head and a hard bunk beneath his back. At the first move an involuntary groan of pain escaped his lips. He shut his eyes and grabbed his head. But when he opened his eyes again he had better control of himself. He saw

Yas TREGO awakened to find a

that the place was half lighted. by a lamp *

in some other place, and when he turned on his side he saw that there were iron bars between him and the light—a smoky lantern that swung from the ceiling in the jail corridor.

Presently he yelled, but it was ten min- utes before he got a response. Then a surly, curly-headed deputy sheriff shuffled back.

“What the hell is eatin’ you?” the fellow demanded.

“T want out of here,” Trego said.

“Oh, you do, hunh? Well, try an’ git out.” The man turned away.

“Hey, wait! Why am I in here? What happened last night?”

“You tried to kill Charley Loose and now you're in here on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.”

“That’s nonsense. I fired to save Judge Malone. Loose drew first.”

“Try provin’ it.”

“What happened to my head?”

“From the size of the bump I’d judge that somebody fell a tree on you. But all that happened was that Sheriff Felch bent a gun barrel over your dome.”

“Felch, eh? What about Judge Malone? Was he hurt?”

“Not that I know of,’ the deputy growled. “Now go back to sleep an’ keep quiet, or I'll turn the hose on you.”

There was nothing for Trego to do but contain himself until morning. The same surly deputy, who answered to the name of Sam Vestry, brought his breakfast, but it was several hours later before Judge Malone appeared, following the sheriff. By that time Trego had got used to walking about without feeling that his head was going to swell up and burst with every step. He perceived at once from Malone’s grave face that something was wrong.

“I'm going to get you out of here this afternoon—-just as soon as court convenes,” Malone said, after he had inquired how the

prisoner felt. “They can’t make a charge like this stick, even in Juniper. There are still enough decent men left to tell the truth.”

“I suppose their organization went through,” Trego said.

“Not yet,” Malone replied. “You at least busted that up for the time being. You gave those boneheads something to think about, and now they want some kind of guarantee from Loose before turning him a-loose with everything they own.”

“They'll sign all right,” Sheriff Felch put in heavily.

“You hope,” Malone retorted with with- ering scorn. “I’ve got bad news for you, Yates. Somebody—tLoose’s men no doubt —raided your trail herd last night and scattered ’em from hell to breakfast. Steve Bolivar seems to have disappeared, and Johnny Bartley was wounded.”

Yates Trego went mad. “Let me out of here Felch, damn you,” he roared. “I’ve got to find Steve. And when I do I’m goin’ to git the bloody-minded curs who mur- dered him.”

“Not in that frame of mind you don’t git out,” the sheriff snorted.

“Take it easy, Yates,” Malone be- ` seeched. “I can’t get you out till this after- noon. In the meantime we’re doing all that can be done. When Reckless learned that you were in jail and that I was doing all that could be done he started for camp. He got there right after the raid, and found Johnny Bartley, the wounded puncher, and Tim Bell, the one who had escaped. He sent Bartley into town and Bell to my ranch while he started to hunt for Bolivar. As soon as Bell arrived I sent my punchers, Dewey Carson and Joe Henderson back to help Reckless. They may have picked up a few more men. They’ll soon find Bolivar

„and round up your herd.”

“And PI be setting here in this damned cell,” Trego raved. “I’ve got to get out of here, Judge. I know Steve Bolivar. He’d never have run an inch. That boy has been killed!”

But despite his pleas it was three o’clock before the door of the cell was reluctantly opened by Sheriff Felch. Malone’s legal ability had done that much. Malone and Helen were waiting for him with sober faces.

“Any news of Steve?” were his first words.

Helen choked back a sob, and he knew

20

that the boy who had been more friend than employee was dead.

“How was he killed?” he asked.

“T believe he was shot to death,” Ma- lone answered. “I hope so, He was hang- ing from a tree when they found him.”

Ta presence of Helen Malone could not restrain the terrible oath which rose to his lips. The girl didn’t mind.

“You were right, Helen,” he said slowly, as though each word was brought forth in pain. “I’ve been a fool. Pd have trusted these cowmen with my life. And the first time anybody offers them a few dollars they turn against me and cåuse the death of my best friend. Well, from here in PH

. treat them like the vermin they are. And Pll have some dealings with the crew that hung Steve Bolivar.”

“Be careful, Yates,” the girl pleaded. “Don’t ruin your whole life for revenge.”

“It’s not revenge,” he said dully. “It’s justice.”

“About these rancher neighbors of mine,” Malone said, “Don’t be too hard on them. Some of them may be as bad as you think but I have found out that some òf them didn’t want to join. But they would have got the same thing that Steve Bolivar did if they hadn’t promised. Loose and his gang have got the whole country terrorized. They always did have, you know.

“Through terror Jed Irvine is trying to make tools of all the men in the valley. He’ll put them at the mercy of Charley Loose and his killers. If he can get away with it Irvine and Loose will break every man here except maybe two or three fav- orites. And Irvine has his own game to play. It’s not because you stopped Loose from making that steal that they’re after you, though that’s enough to make Loose and his bunch hate you. You're only an incident. They can use you as a straw man to knock down.”

“I hope they’ll find me the toughest straw man they ever tried to monkey with,” Trego said grimly.

“They will. We only want you to be careful,” Helen pleaded.

“Don’t worry. TIl be careful.”

He promised them that he would soon join the men who were trying to gather up his stampeded herd. First, however, he went to see Johnny Bartley, the boy who had been wounded,

WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“We never had a chance,” the puncher half sobbed. “Me an’ Tim Bell was on guard duty. I was goin’ off in about half an hour an’ Steve was gonna take my place. All at once, a big flare of fire sprung up at the other end of the herd. They’d strung black powder across an’ struck a match to it. The cattle were on their feet in a second an’ gittin? away from there. Right after that five or six men busted out of the brush right close to me an’ started shootin’.

“One shot got me in the laig, an’ another under the arm-pit. I tried to shoot back, but my horse started to buck, an’ then stampoodled. I heard Steve yell from the camp, but I never seen him. Time I got my horse stopped the cattle had gone on by. I could hear ’em runnin’ an’ hear that gang shootin’ an’ yellin’, but there was nothin’ I could do. After while I run across Tim. He’d got in the brush outa the way. We hunted for Steve but never found him. It was tough, Mr. Trego, but I guess me an’ Tim kinda let you down.”

“Nothin’ of the sort; you done all you could do.” Trego placed a hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “You stay here till you get well. I’m paying all expenses.”

He wished now that Steve might have been injured just a little more in his fight with Marco St. Cloud. He might still have been alive.

When he came down the stairs which opened directly out upon the sidewalk. he almost collided with Jed Irvine. The man tried to draw back, but Trego’s long arm reached out and caught him by the lapel. Luce Clark was with Irvine.

“What’s the meaning of this—” Irvine demanded indignantly.

“Irvine, I’ve just learned that you are the dirty skunk behind the murder of as fine a boy as ever lived. You’re lower than the ones who murdered Steve Bolivar, but you and Loose were smart enough to be in town while the rest of your gunmen did that lynching. Hangin’ you, though, is a little matter that I’ll take up myself.”

“Are you threatening to hang me?” the man blustered.

“Exactly,” Trego purred wickedly. He had worked his fingers onto the man’s shirt collar, and now he took a twist that all but shut off the fellow’s breathing. Irvine’s eyes bugged out, and his face took on ter- ror. He seized Trego’s wrist with both hands trying to tear the punishing hand

QUICK TRIGGERS 21

loose, but Trego’s arm was like a band of steel,

UCE CLARK took a threatening step

forward, but paused abruptly when he

saw that Trego’s other hand still rested upon the handle of his gun

“Help! Sheriff! Sheriff! Stop this mur- der,” he bawled at the top of his lungs.

Men started to run toward the tussle; then stopped abruptly when they recog- nized the contestants.

Suddenly Trego jerked his enemy toward him, then straightened his arm and flung Irvine backward into the dirt.

“I wouldn’t murder you, you skunk,” he said. “You've got a hanging coming, but you won’t get it from me.”

“You can’t get away with this,” Irvine panted from where he lay in the dirt, rub- bing his throat. “TIl teach you to lay your hands on me. Just wait, my friend, just wait.”

Abruptly Trego turned on his heel and approached his horse. He was sorry for his outburst of temper, yet somehow glad that he had briefly punished and frightened the man whom he believed had instigated the murder of Steve Bolivar.

Trego rode rapidly out of town and headed in the direction where his scattered herd would be. Being the kind of animals they were he didn’t believe they would stampede very far. He expected to be able to find most of them gathered by his own men and the ones who had volunteered to help them.

He had hardly got out of the lanes before he began to encounter scattered bunches of cattle from his trail herd. Picking them up he soon had collected fifty or sixty head. Also he noticed that some of them were suffering bullet wounds, and he saw a few dead ones. His anger became cold and deadly.

He had just got into the foothills when a rider appeared suddenly on the top of a ridge half a mile away. It was impossible to recognize him at that distance, but the man waved his hat two or three times and then disappeared down the farther side of the ridge.

Trego stopped. It had all the earmarks of being a crude trick to draw him into a trap. Then on second thought it seemed queer that they would think him foolish enough to fall for a simple thing like that. Impulsively he wheeled his horse and gal-

loped across below where the rider had dis- appeared, in hopes of again catching sight of him. Nor was he mistaken. His man was now three quarters of a mile away and riding at full speed back toward the lane which Trego had just quitted.

“That’s darn funny,” Trego muttered, and turned his horse straight up the ridge where he had first glimpsed the man. He kept a wary lookout for treachery on both sides, but he saw nothing unusual, and the top of the ridge certainly was not a good place for an ambush.

When he had reached the place where the man had first appeared he could see by the horse-tracks that the fellow must have been waiting in the vicinity for some few - minutes. Then his eyes suddenly fell upon a piece of white paper impalled upon a broken twig of a sarvis bush. He hastily plucked it off and read the message. The writing on the soiled paper was plain, even though the handwriting had obviously been disguised.

He read:

Trego: I didn’t want to join that associa- tion, but I had to or get the same dose they’re fixing for you. Lots of the others feel the same way, but unless Charley Loose and his gang are stopped we’ll have to. Charley Loose and his men are camped in the mouth of a brush ravine that runs into Bear River about a mile below Emmigrant Butte. And there is to be a secret meeting of the cowmen with Irvine and Loose tonight in the old log schoolhouse on Badger Creek. I’ve got a family and I don’t dare do anything, but I

hope you can, A FRIEND.

“The poor, scared devil,” Trego mur-

mured commiseratingly.

He folded the paper carefully and stuck it in his pocket. He was strongly inclined to accept its authenticity; though again there was a possibility that it was another trick. Anyway, he meant to find out.

E AGAIN picked up the little bunch of cattle, and just after sundown he came to a small meadow where the herd was again being gathered by five men. He gave his bunch a start and galloped to join the men. Besides Reckless and Tim Bell, and Malone’s two men, Carson and Hen- derson, there was a lean, wrinkled, red- headed puncher named Wes McCrea, who had been a rider for Luce Clark. For once there was no grin on Reckless’ face.

22 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“T see you got out of jail,” he greeted.

“Yep, for the time being. Looks like you had most of the herd gathered.”

“T’m sure we'll be able to pick up every- thing else above here as we go along— except the ones that was killed,” Reckless answered.

“This is the rottenest deal I ever heard of,” McCrea spoke up. “Ain’t there any law you can appeal to?”

Trego shook his head. “Irvine and Loose would like nothing better than for us to try that. I’m grateful to you boys for your help, but the same thing may happen again, and I don’t want you to get what hap- pened to Steve Bolivar.”

Try as he might he could not keep his emotion from showing in his voice when he spoke Steve’s name. He saw Reckless sur- reptitiously wipe away a tear.

“Were with you in anything you start,” Dewey Carson answered.

“That goes for me,’ McCrea answered with much emphasis. “I quit that skunk of a Clark because he went over to Loose. Pd have got fired anyway, but you’ve got my help, an’ I’m not askin’ any pay until you find out how you come out.”

“Thanks, boys,” Trego said feelingly. “I may need your help, but I don’t want you staying here where you wouldn’t stand any chance. I don’t want to influence you in any way. If you want to ride with me tonight you'll risk your lives. I'll not think any less of any one of you who wants to be excused.”

The answers they gave to that were quick and vehement.

“We'll follow through on anything you

want to start,” Wes McCrea answered. “We've all had to eat dirt from that War- bonnet outfit, but hangin’ men who were only trying to do their work is going too far. What do we do?” - “The first thing we do is get some sup- per. By that time it'll be dark. Then we'll ride down to the Badger Creek school- house,” Trego answered.

CHAPTER VI MURDER IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE

HE SIX riders swung along at a fast gallop, the rhythm of their horses’ feet on the soft sod, and the faint creeking of saddle leather making the only sound to disturb the stillness of the night.

As on the previous occasion when he had attended the stockmen’s meeting Trego was late, but there was no help for it. This time, however, he was not going to an- nounce his presence as soon as he arrived.

The Badger Creek schoolhouse sat in the center of an open space surrounded. by quaking aspens. It was over a mile from any ranch, and had been located where it was as a sort of compromise between par- ents who had all wanted their hopefuls to attend school as close to home as possible. As a result it had been built close to none of them.

Its location was most favorable to Trego now. As he and his companions approached through the aspens they saw that the build- ing was dimly lighted.

“They’re here,” Trego said with satisfac- tion. “You boys stay here. I’m going to reconnoiter a bit.”

“Come back an’ let us know before you start anything,” Reckless insisted.

Trego gave the promise with a nod of the head, and dismounted. As he saw the horses tied around to the scattered aspens which had not been cut down to make room for the schoolhouse he became certain that he had not been tricked. There were too many horses for it merely to be the Loose outfit.

He could see at once that the building was dimly lighted by two lanterns. As he made his way carefully through the stumps he could hear the sound of angry discus- sion on the inside. He reached the back of the building and then tip-toed cautiously around to one of the broken side windows. Without even dirty: glass to hamper his vision he could see quite clearly in spite of the poor light.

One lantern was on the teacher’s dusty desk, and behind it sat Jed Irvine. The Juniper valley ranchers sat in the small, uncomfortable seats like sullen, recalcitrant pupils.

“The situation is just this, gentlemen,” Irvine was saying coldly. “I have figured out a good proposition for all of you. One that will make us all money. Bankers are willing to lend money to anybody who has got good range. Well, here is the whole Warbonnet range. By joining this associa- tion it falls into your lap. Refuse and Yates Trego gets it. If he doesn’t some other outside outfit will.”

“And if we don’t join it,” a slender young rancher by the name of Lawrence Hoan

QUICK TRIGGERS 23

spoke up quaveringly, ‘“you’ve intimated that we'll get the same thing Trego’s out- fit got. Is that right?”

“T said,” Irvine smiled, “that you might get it. If you sign up Mr. Loose and his men will be able to protect you. If not, there’s no telling what may happen. This is still a wild country.”

Another cowman was on his feet. “I’m willin’ to join an association if I have some say-so,” he shouted. “But I’m not willin’ to make it as a condition that we have to agree to give Charley Loose a three-year contract as manager. If he'll give us a guarantee or a bond that our interests will be protected like Yates Trego suggested Tl sign. But I was talkin’ to Judge Malone today an’ he pointed out that if we borrow all this money you’ve got to lend, Mr. Irvine, and you and Loose was in cahoots you could mighty easy ruin all of us. An’ we know that Loose did try to euchre——”

It was as far as the man got. A gun crashed, and when Yates Trego straightened up to peer through the broken window pane he saw the rancher clutching desperately at the school desk in front of him, while a look of stark horror and amazed unbelief was fixed upon his face. Then his arm crumpled and he lurched forward upon his face; one arm dangling to the floor.

All this Yates Trego saw out of the corner of his eye while he searched the room for a sight of the man who had fired the shot. Then he saw Hash Middleton standing at one side of the room with a smoking six- gun in his hand. There was a cynical, sar- donic expression upon the killer’s face.

Trego’s hand was upon his gun, but still he didn’t draw. , Something told him to wait. After all it was not his put in. Would the ranchers be intimidated, or would they revolt?

“That was murder,” Lawrence Hoan shouted: “Why did Sheriff Felch make us take off our guns when we came in here, an’ not you fellows? Do you intend to kill any of us that refuses to join your asso- ciation?”

“That’s just what I intend,” answered the rasping voice of Charley Loose, “I’m through fooling with you saps. If you think I’m gonna let you go away from here sayin’ that one of my men killed Lester yo’re crazy. Yo’re gonna sign them papers Ir- vine has, an’ then every last one of you is goin’ to swear that Lester was killed by a bullet fired from outside.”

“What if we won’t?” a man shouted.

“It'll just be too bad for all of you,” Loose said furiously. “If you ain’t got sense enough to take a good thing when it’s offered to you IIl make you take it. If there’s anybody here who won’t sign let him stand up.”

OT aman moved. The ranchers had been tricked into giving up their guns. The sheriff was hand in glove with Loose. They, themselves, had voluntarily placed themselves in the man’s power. Most of them were men with families. If he refused to sign each man could picture the grief of his wife and children when his dead body was found in some gulch with a bullet in the back. If they so much as pro- tested they were certain to get what Lester had just got.

“Don’t be damn fools,” Loose went on. “Lester spoke out of turn. The man to charge with his murder is Yates Trego. We can all swear that the bullet came from that window.”

Dramatically Loose waved his hand to- ward the very window through which Trego was watching. His amazement at seeing the face of his enemy there must have been great, but he was quick to take advantage of a favorable situation. Trego had ducked, but Loose’s turn had been too swift. The eyes of the men inside had been faster than his legs.

For one breathless minute there was no sound. Then came the sound of Jed Ir- vine’s shrill tones.

“Trego is out there. He did kill George Lester. I saw him.”

Trego was tempted to leap back to the window to fire just one shot, but he knew that it would not do. Charley Loose’s men were already tearing through the door, and the ranchers, without their weapons, were powerless to aid him, even if they had had the courage and the inclination, which he doubted.

“You fellows stay where you are,” he heard Loose roar at the ranchers. “My men an’ the sheriff will git Trego.”

Trego ran; stooping low and taking a zigzag course as the first of Loose’s outlaws appeared outside.

A gun roared and a bullet whizzed past him with a vicious, blood-chilling sound. The ones that followed he did not notice. There were too many of them.

“Come on, men, we can down him before

24 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

_he gets to the brush,” he heard somebody shout, and he recognized the voice of Sher- iff Felch.

. “Why, the dirty, double-dealin’ swine,” /Trego gritted. He knew Felch favored Ir- vine, but he hadn’t thought the man would openly countenance murder and show his hand as an ally of outlaws.

The ground was uneven, and the night fairly dark. This was all that saved Trego from being hit by the bullets which swarmed around him. With quick thought he had taken an angling course toward the aspens, instead of running directly toward the place he had left the others: That quickly proved to be good strategy, for out of the edge of the timber a fusillade of bul- lets stopped the pursuers in their tracks and made them drop flat on their bellies to avoid the slugs that whistled a threat of death over their heads. Had Trego ran straight toward his friends they would not have dared to fire.

Covered by the guns of the intrepid punchers Trego gained the timber, and then turned sharply toward the horses. He was soon behind his men.

“All right, boys, let’s go,” he called softly.

The punchers made the short run back, while Trego emptied his gun over their heads, and they were in the saddle before the opposition realized that they had left their position.

For a mile they held their horses to a dead run, and then paused when it became certain that there was no pursuit.

“I sure thought Charley Loose would chase us to hell an’ back,” Dewey Carson said. “How come?”

“They’ve got a better bet than that now,” Trego said, and told them of the killing of Lester. “They accused me of firin? the shot, and even those who knew better will swear now that they saw me do it. With men like the sheriff and Irvine to dispute ’em it wouldn’t do any good if they did say that Middleton fired the shot.”

“Gawd, that’s bad,” Dewey said.

“What I’m interested in now is to keep you boys, out of it,” Trego stated. “You Malone men go home, tell the judge what happened, and get him to swear that you were at the ranch all the time. McCrea, you go with ’em. Tim and Reckless, you go back to the herd, an’ roll into your blankets. You'll have time to catch fresh horses and turn the ones you’re on loose,

Be sure you turn them where they can’t be found. Their wet backs would be a give- away.”

“That’s right, Tim, you do that,” Reck- less said, his white, uneven teeth showing a wide grin in the moonlight. “But me; I’m stickin’ with the boss.”

“Im sorta unemployed myself, an’ I don’t feel like spongin’ off Judge Malone,” McCrea said laconically. ‘Besides, they know there was more’n one feller shootin’ back at ’em,”

HE others offered to stick, but in the end Trego, Reckless, and McCrea rode on alone, while the others went their re- spective ways under protest. Before they left, however, Trego handed Dewey Car- son the note he had found on the bush and instructed him to give it to Judge Malone. “So Hash Middleton killed Lester, did he?” Wes McCrea said. “Lester was the whitest one of the whole bunch of ranchers, and he was no coward. He was a friend of mine. I hope Middleton turns out to be my meat.” There was something in the man’s tone that sounded forced, but Trego soon forgot it. After all McCrea had proved himself back there at the school- house.

“And I want Marco St. Cloud,” Reckless said in the grimest tone Trego had ever heard him use. “I’ve got a hunch it was St. Cloud who put the rope around Steve Bolivar’s neck. All I want is a chance to hang my twine on him.”

“Which leaves me Charley Loose,” Trego grinned. “We’ll take the rest as they come.”

“Any plan, Yates?” Reckless queried.

“Not much. But the longer we delay now the less chance we'll have. Felch will be after me now with a posse, and if I’m caught TIl Jay in jail even if they can’t prove a murder on me. That is if I’m lucky enough to get to jail. I know where Loose’s camp is. I have a notion to visit

it.” “Fine,” Reckless said. “Let’s hit ’er up.” “Tt’ll be a dangerous business,” Trego warned. “I have an idea, too, that we

might make a profitable little raid right in Juniper first.”

“What do you mean?” the others chor- used.

“Sooner or later Jed Irvine will be going to his room to hit the hay, He certainly won’t be looking for us in town. I’ve a

QUICK TRIGGERS 25

notion to be there waiting for him.”

They altered their course, and around midnight they entered the outskirts of Juniper. There was an old shed close under the brow of the hill which was used as a shelter from winter blizzards by the out- lying ranchers when they visited town in the winter time. It saved them livery bills. This would now be deserted. The three punchers rode up to this place unmolested and led their horses inside.

“You'd better stay here, Reckless,” Trego said. “One man can git around safer than two. Wes, do you suppose you could sorta mingle with the crowd when they begin to drop in without bein’ noticed? They don’t know you’ve been with me, and you might pick up something.”

“You bet I can,” the red-headed puncher said eagerly.

“Remember, Loose’s camp is near Emmi- grant Butte. If we don’t get out of town together we’ll try to meet at Bellvue’s foot- bridge above there. It ought to be safe now that old Bellvue is dead.”

Trego remained for a few minutes with Reckless after McCrea had taken his de- parture.

“What about this McCrea, Yates?” Reckless asked. “Are you shore he kin be trusted?”

“I think so. Loose caused him to lose his job, and Judge Malone recommended him to me. He certainly seems all right.”

“T reckon he is,” Reckless said. ‘He shore done some shootin’ back there. I’m sure Malone’s two men are all right, but don’t lean too much on Timmy Bell. He means well, but no backbone.”

“I had that figgered,” Trego smiled. “But I’m figgerin’ that the job of squarin’ things for Steve Bolivar is rightly ours.”

Trego skirted a line of houses and pres- ently came to a rather large two-story house, which he had been informed was Jed Irvine’s boarding house. It was easy to creep up from the rear in the shadows of various small out-buildings. Once his passing disturbed a rooster in a small chicken coop, and its premature matutinal salute gave him a momentary start. Then he gained the back of the house and crept along below the level of the windows until he had gained the corner of the front porch. There was a railing there, and a trellis upon which climbing roses, not yet in bloom, were supposed to climb. It af- forded him fairly good shelter, and he flat-

tened himself against it in the wall in the deepest shadows.

He had no more than got himself fixed when he heard a party of horsemen enter- ing the town. Very soon there was consid- erable noise and excitement that seemed to have its focal point at the GAMBLERS REST.

Lights presently began to appear in vari- ous houses as the news spread. Once two men came together close enough for Trego to hear their voices.

“What’s up?” one asked.. “Why is every- body headin’ toward the saloon at this time of night?”

“Ain’t you heard? There was a meetin’ o’ the stockmen at the Badger Creek school- house tonight, an’ while it was goin’ on Yates Trego, who assaulted Jed Irvine this mornin’, took a shot through the winder at Irvine, but missed him an’ killed George Lester. The sheriff is raisin’ all the men he can to form a posse.”

“Mebbe Trego was justified,” the first speaker said. “Somebody raided his herd, an’ hung one of his men. I reckon every- body knows who was responsible for that, even if there ain’t no proof.”

“T wouldn’t be talkin’ that way, neigh- bor,” remonstrated the first man. “It ain’t healthy. Trego is an outsider.”

Some fifteen minutes after that Jed Ir- vine passed through the gate and came on up the path. Trego waited until the pro- moter’s foot was raised to take the first step onto the porch. Then he spoke.

“Hold it, Irvine. Make a sound or a move and it will cost you your life.”

For a minute Irvine was as motionless as a statue carved cut of solid granite.

“Who are you?” he asked then in a thin, strained voice.

“Step around the corner here and find out,” Trego commanded.

CHAPTER VII A ONE-MAN JOB

S THOUGH drawn by a magnet Jed Irvine removed his foot from the step and slowly came around to where

Trego stood with hat pulled low over his eyes.

“What do you want of me?” the man asked hoarsely.

“Just keep on walking,” Trego ordered. “You'll find out.”

26 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“Trego!” Irvine exclaimed. “If you think”

“Shut up. Pd as soon shoot you as not.” His gun was trained on the man, and Irvine kept walking.

When they reached the outbuildings Trego made the man stop and frisked him for weapons. Irvine carried a short, bull- dog revolver in his-coat pocket. Trego care- lessly threw the weapon into the chicken- yard. And he also discovered a bulky docu- ment in the man’s inside pocket which he was certain was the identical agreement the stockmen had been forced to sign that night. This he pocketed.

“Let’s talk this over,” Irvine begged.

“You’ve got nothing to offer me, Irvine,” Trego refused. “Git goin’.”

Whether Irvine had more courage than his captor suspected, or whether he merely gave way to blind panic Trego didn’t know. But suddenly the fellow emitted a frantic bellow for help that must surely reach the ears of those who still were up in the town, and was likely to waken a lot of sleepers.

“Help! It’s Trego!” he shouted.

He started a second yell, but the aggra- vated Trego suddenly slapped him alongside the cheek with the barrel of his six-shooter. It was not a hard blow, but the yell ended in a wail of pain as Irvine staggered back and grabbed his cheek. The blow had cut a wide gash.

Trego seized the man by the arm and shoved him forward.

“Another squeak out of you, Irvine, and it'll be the last noise you'll ever make. Run.”

Stumbling and moaning, vainly trying to stop the flow of bleod with his hand, the real estate man floundered on at an awk- ward run, propelled by the gun muzzle pressed hard against his ribs. Behind them an excited mob was forming.

By dodging among the buildings Trego was able to keep out of sight of the mob. He heard them reach the place where Ir- vine had yelled.

“Tt was right here, and it was Jed Irvine’s voice,” he heard a man shout.

“Its Trego all right, an’ he’s got Jed. Look around, men, an’ keep yore eyes open.”

Irvine staggered into the horse shed witk his captor right behind him. Irvine fell face forward in the dirt and refused to move. The punchers had but two horses, The only way to take Irvine along was to load

him forcibly onto one horse and one of them hold him on. Against his stubborn refusal to move it was quite impossible. Trego swore with vexation.

“Tf we can’t take him we can shoot him,” Reckless said. “It'll chalk off one of Steve’s murderers.”

“We should but we can’t,” Trego gritted. “Git a rope, while I gag him.”

“With pleasure,” Reckless said. ‘“There’s a dandy good beam right over his head.”

Irvine sprang to his feet with alacrity. “No, no,” he cried. “Don’t hang me. PU go with you.”

“T don’t want you now,” Trego said. His plans had been disorganized by the pursuit. He had hoped to get out of town with Irvine, and use the man as a decoy for the outlaws he wanted to reach. But with a pursuit on their hands the plan would not work. Neither did he want the enemy to think that there was anybody with him.

Reckless dropped a noose over Irvine’s shoulders and drew the man’s arm tight to his sides, while Trego ripped the bandanna from his neck and gagged the man securely. They had to work fast, for they could hear the pursuit rapidly drawing nearer.

They tumbled Irvine into the manger, half-hitched his arms, fastened them se- curely to the manger poles; then ran the rope down to his feet, half-hitched them together and then tied them to the manger. The fellow lay utterly silent and helpless, and they had tied him up in the time they would have taken to hog-tie a steer.

“They come this way. They must be in that old horse shed. Surround it,” they suddenly heard Sheriff Felch’s booming voice, z

“Do we shoot our way out?” Reckless asked, still grinning.

“Not unless we have to. Here.” He jerked Reckless’ big, somewhat floppy old hat from his head and replaced it with Irvine’s natty lid. “Keep your head down.”

They swung onto their horses in the low shed, and had to stoop until they got out- side.

“There they come, men! Watch out,” a voice yelled.

“Hold everything, Sheriff,” Yates Trego called out loudly. “You come any closer, or fire a shot and it’ll cost Irvine here his life. Don’t try followin’ me either.”

Reckless had ridden between Trego and the mob, and they didn’t doubt that it was Irvine. The sheriff swore loudly, but no-

QUICK TRIGGERS 27

body dared shoot. The two punchers turned their horses, and rode away; not too rapidly, for fear of arousing suspicion.

“Horses, men, an’ we’ll run that damned Trego to death,” the sheriff bawled. “I won’t let him git away with that.”

Looking back Trego and Reckless were sure that the mob had all turned back with- out investigating the horse shed. They looked at each other and grinned. Then they poured the spurs to their mounts and managed to get out of town far enough in advance of the posse to be temporarily safe.

“Well, I guess that hombre who left the note figgered he’d be doin’ me a good turn, but the way it turned out he couldn’t have served Irvine better if he’d tried,” Trego stated.

“We still know where Loose’s outfit is camped,” Reckless said with a touch of grimness so unusual that Trego glanced at him with surprise.

“Yes,” Trego murmured. “Two against eleven. Maybe three if McCrea joins us. But they’ll be after me on a murder charge after this and God knows what else. If I’m goin’ to do anything to avenge Steve now I’ve got to work fast.”

“We can pour a hell of a lot of lead into ’em just about dawn before they can do much,” Reckless said hopefully.

REGO looked at the grinning young

puncher with genuine affection. He wanted to avenge Steve Bolivar—but not at the cost of Reckless’ life. And there was only one way to stop that impetuous young puncher. That was by subterfuge and de- ceit.

“Listen, ‘Reckless,’ he said earnestly, “the main thing is to stop Charley Loose and his murderers before they can do any more harm. If we can get rid of Loose it’ll be like pullin’ the chunk out from under Jed Irvine. And with Loose and one or two more of those killers out of the way there’ll be a good chance that somebody who knows the truth about Lester’s mur- der will weaken. But we’ve got to be sure there’s no slip-up. We need more than two men.”

“Meanin’ which?” Reckless queried un- enthusiastically.

“Meanin’ that Judge Malone and his men will be glad to help us. I think Tim Bell will help some, too. With that many we can really accomplish something an’ not just throw our lives away. We'll be harder

to follow anyway if we split. I want you to circle back to Malone’s an’ tell him how it stands. Tomorrow night we’ll all meet at Bellvue’s bridge. I'll ride past camp an’ give the word to Tim Bell.”

“An’ then what?” Reckless demanded.

“TI look the ground over and decide on a plan of attack,” Trego answered prompt- ly. “We won’t take any more chances than we have to. And here’s another paper to give Judge Malone.” He passed over the document he had taken from Jed Irvine. It might serve as evidence.”

Nevertheless, it required considerable argument to get the puncher to agree to leave him. Yet it seemed such obviously good sense to get what help was available that Reckless was at last convinced. Pres- ently, he turned up a brushy gulch to wait for the pursuing posse to sweep by, and then he rode back toward Malone’s ranch.

Trego kept on going, urging his hard- breathing mount to a fast pace, and choos- ing his course with canny skill to throw off the pursuit; but he had no intention of notifying Tim Bell; nor of waiting for Reckless and Malone’s men before striking at his foes.

As he saw it it was a one-man job—and he was the man. He had been too badly pained by Steve Bolivar’s death to want anybody else to suffer a similar fate. It was primarily his fight. He sensed that without Charley Loose the ring which Ir- vine had formed would fall to pieces. And Loose was the man whom he blamed chiefly for the murder of poor Steve.

Reckless’ idea to attack the outlaw camp at dawn, he believed was a good one; but he intended to make the attack single- handed—and twenty-four hours earlier than he had told Reckless.

Once assured that he had shaken off the posse he turned his tired mount toward Emmigrant Butte.

ACK IN JUNIPER Jed Irvine had struggled in vain to release his hands

or to shift the gag from his mouth so that he could call for help, but without avail. Trego and Reckless had done their job well. Nobody came near the old horse shed, and he heard the posse gallop out of town on what they imagined was an effort to rescue him. He had been there perhaps an hour, and was getting a real fright lest he might be left there to die, when he heard footsteps.

28 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

A moment later he saw the blink of a lighted cigarette. Somebody was coming, but so furtively that cold fear shot through Ir- vine’s heart.

Suppose, he thought, Yates Trego had thrown the posse off his trail and had cir- cled back to murder him!

The unknown entered the shed, paused a moment; then lighted a match and looked curiously around. Just before the match died out his eyes rested upon Irvine, and he chuckled aloud.

“Oh! So there you are? I kinda thought I'd find you here, when I saw there were only two men leave.” He waited a minute or so, chuckling, before he loosened the gag from Irvine’s mouth and lighted an- other match. But he seemed in no hurry to liberate the man in the manger.

“Turn me loose, McCrea,” Irvine pleaded. “I’m a friend of yours.” “Yeh? Yore damned organization

throwed me out of a job, didn’t it? I didn’t see you fallin’ over yourself gittin’ me a new one.”

' “I can remedy that. I’m badly hurt, McCrea. Look at the blood. Get me to a doctor and Tl! see that Loose gives you a job.”

“I don’t want no job with Loose,” the red-headed, wrinkled-faced puncher said. “There’s only one way you can interest me »

“What is that? Hurry, man, I may be dying. Trego struck me over the head with his gun

“Then you ain’t dyin’, or you wouldn’t be able to talk,” McCrea said.

“What do you want?” Irvine cried an-

“Keep yore shirt on, an’ don’t raise yore voice,’ the other admonished. “I want money. A lot of it. If I don’t git it I'll join Trego an’ you can lay here an’ rot for

all I care. I can put this gag back you know.” “How much?”

“T reckon I could use about five thousand dollars.”

“You're crazy. Somebody is sure to find me in the morning. I can stand a lot of discomfort for that much money.”

“But they think Trego has got you,” McCrea pointed out. “If yo’re ever found it’ll be an accident,”

“Children come here to play every day,” Irvine said with a confidence he didn’t

really feel, “TIl give you a hundred dol- lars, no more.”

“Fella, listen: This is the first time I ever sold anybody out in my life. If I wasn’t sure Trego was goin’ to lose anyway I wouldn’t do it now. But you know your- self that if anything was to happen to Charley Loose it would crimp your plans. Would it interest you to know that Yates Trego knows where Loose is camped, and that he means to dry-gulch Loose the first chance he gets?”

“Fle can’t know. Loose has been keeping his camping place a secret.”

“He’s camped in the mouth of the first ravine south of Emmigrant Butte on Bear River.”

“My God, man it'll be murder if you don’t let me go,” Irvine cried.

“I won’t shed a tear if Trego gits Loose. It'll be too late for you to do anything about it anyway, maybe. But I can tell

you where Trego will be hidin’ out. Do I get the five thousand?” Irvine was silent for some time. “One

thousand,” he said at length.

“Five thousand.”

“T haven’t got it, man,” Irvine protested.

“Pll tell you what Vil do, Irvine,” Mc- Crea offered. “Your credit is always good at the GAMBLERS REST. Barstow al- ways keeps a lot of money in his big safe there. If you’ll go there and ask him for a loan of five thousand he’ll let you have it if he’s got it. If he ain’t got that much T'I take whatever happens to be in his safe. Is it a bargain, or do I leave you here to enjoy your gag again until I can git out of town?”

“Its a deal,” Irvine said reluctantly, “Cut these ropes.”

CHAPTER VII A MAD ESCAPADE

Yates Trego left his horse tied to a tree

and started to pick his way up the trail which he believed would lead to the outlaw camp.

Emmigrant Butte, a mighty, isolated hill which rose like a gigantic cathedral above the surrounding plain had in older days served as a landmark for weary immigrant trails on the famous Lander cut-off. Its majestic front rose hundreds of feet straight up from the rushing river that bathed its foot. Its two sides were scarcely less pre-

[> STILL lacked an hour of dawn when

QUICK TRIGGERS 29

cipitous, but the deep, bushy gulch he was following headed against the south side of the monster butte.

It was an admirable hiding place, but the outlaws had erred in trusting too many people with knowledge ot it.

Trego had no definite plans; preferring to be guided by circumstances as they arose. Since he would have to use strategy rather than violence against such overwhelming odds he carried no weapon save his six- shooter. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to shoot anybody without warning. True, the Warbonnet crew had not given any warn- ing when they murdered Steve Bolivar, but he hated to fight that way.

It seemed to grow darker just before dawn. He fought his way through the brush with difficulty, and was constantly be- ing alarmed by the sticks which snapped beneath his feet.

It was the inquiring nicker of a horse which warned him that the camp was near. A few minutes later he reached the edge of a small clearing just below a small stream of water gushing out from a sleek black rock. He could make out the outlines of three tents, two large and one small one, and then he saw two night horses tied up not far

low.

The outlaws could not have been in bed more than a couple of hours, for at least most of them had been at the Badger Creek schoolhouse. They had not, however, been in Juniper. They would be sleepy, and in all probability would sleep late.

Trego was no man to want to commit suicide; yet he realized that he was taking desperate chances with his life by making this lone-handed raid. But if it was neces- sary to die in order to relieve the world of Charley Loose he was ready to make the sacrifice. But he wanted to make the most of his opportunities.

Suddenly he saw his opportunity to use strategy, and without strategy he would be committing suicide.

The men had kept up two night horses, and turned the remainder of their animals into the cavvy. Probably one of the two kept up was for emergency use anyway. The point was that the horses had been tied close to a huge cluster of sarvis bushes, so that they couldn’t circle around the trees to which they were tied and get wound up. It was easy for Trego to conceal himself behind those bushes.

But first he carefully untied the night

horses without letting the animals know they were loose. By the time he had fin- ished dawn was breaking rapidly as it al- ways did in that mountain country. Soon somebody was stirring inside the tents. A few minutes later a sleepy-eyed outlaw stumbled out of one of the tents, and came toward the night horses. It was the horse wrangler. Trego drew his gun and waited.

The puncher shuffled over and slapped one of the horses on the rump, and said gruffly, “Git over.”

When the horse moved the fellow sud- denly saw Trego and his six-gun just be- yond. He blinked.

“What the——”

“Don’t move,” Yates Trego uttered in a low, deadly tone that must have frozen the fellow’s blood. Every movement now was fraught with death, and the tension in Trego’s brain was communicated to the man he had held up. The fellow remained mo- tionless, sensing that death itself was at his shoulder.

Slowly Trego stepped out from behind the bush. Keeping the man covered with one hand he removed the six-gun from the fellow’s holster and thrust it under the waist-band of his own overalls. Then, slash- ing a string of a saddle, he tied the fellow’s hands behind his back, and motioned him to a point behind the brush where he was con- cealed from the tents, but where Trego could still keep an eye upon him.

“Whether you keep on living depends on how you act from now on,” Trego said matter of factly. “A wrong move will bring hell on your ears, but Charley Loose is the man I want.”

“What can I do?” the outlaw shrugged.

Trego told him.

With a voice that quivered from strain and fright the puncher, whose name was Ollie Drew, called out:

“Charley! Oh, Charley. Come out here a minute.”

“What the hell is wrong?” demanded an irritated voice from the smallest tent.

“Something here that looks queer. I want you to look at it.”

“Well, what is it?” Loose demand in still more irritation.

“I can’t bring it to you. You'll have to come out here. It’ll only take a minute,” Drew said, dutifully repeating each sen- tence as Yates Trego dictated it in a whisper.

30 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

“Go see what he wants, Hash,” then came Loose’s voice.

Drew looked at Trego inquiringly, and the puncher bit his lip in vexation. Hash Middleton wasn’t the man he wanted, but he couldn’t insist upon Loose coming in- stead of sending his trusted lieutenant. Trego stepped back to the end of the bush and waited. His gun was always where he could cover Ollie Drew.

The flap of the tent was thrown back and Hash Middleton, still logy from sleep, stag- gered out. The men all slept in their shirts according to usual range custom. Middle- ton had drawn on his boets to protect his feet, and buckled his gun belt around his waist, but had neglected to put on his pants. He expected to go back to bed.

“What the hell do you think you’ve found?” he grumbled as he approached the horses. “Gawd, if I was as timid as you Td hire a nursemaid. Where the hell are you-——”

Yates Trego didn’t voice a challenge now. He stepped out in full view of Middleton, and the business end of his revolver was directed straight toward the outlaw’s giz- zard.

Middleton’s jaw dropped; he made a spasmodic move toward his gun, then jerked his hands suddenly into the air as he saw Trego’s eyes start to narrow.

“You'll never be closer to death than you are right now till they put the rope around your neck, Middleton,” Trego said softly. “Unbuckle that gun belt and keep your eyes on the ground. I want Loose, but if I can’t git him I'll take you.”

LOWLY the gun was unfastened and

dropped to the ground. Middleton kicked it toward Trego when the latter com- manded him to do so. Trego gave it an- other kick that landed it behind a bush. Then he used another saddle-string to tie Middleton’s hands, and made him move over beside Drew.

Anything might happen now. If any- body got suspicious and stuck their head out of a tent there would be hell to pay. The slightest mistake would be fatal. In Hash Middleton’s eyes, red with the fury of a goaded bull, Trego read a hatred that waited only for the first possible break to become deadly.

“You tell Loose that he’d better come out here and have a look himself,” Trego whispered. “Make your talk pretty because

if he comes a-shootin’ Pll drop you and

` Drew and make my git-away on one of these

horses.”

Hash Middleton gulped twice before he could call out. For the moment he was as much concerned in getting Loose out there as was Trego. His life depended upon it. He could read that in Yates Trego’s merci- less face. He was a cold-blooded killer, and he knew that Trego knew it, and would act accordingly if he were pressed.

“Oh, Charley: Better come out here an’ have a look at this yourself.”

The answer was a fluent stream of pro- fanity issuing from inside the small tent.

“What the hell is eatin’ you fellers?” the Warbonnet foreman ended. “What is it?”

Trego’s hope was to get Loose out with- out arousing the others. But it was difficult. If it sounded important they would all come. If it was. trivial Loose wouldn’t budge.

“Say there’s a mark on the trees that wasn’t here last night,” he dictated tersely.

“There’s something on a tree here that looks funny,” Middleton called dutifully. “I don’t think it was here last night.”

“Oh, my Gawd,” Loose answered ina disgruntled tone, but a couple or three min- utes later he came out of the tent. He had drawn on his pants as well as his boots, but perhaps for one of the few times in his life he had neglected to bring his gun.

“What kind of a mark on a tree is it, an’ who cares?” the man grumbled as he ad- vanced. ‘“Prob’ly some animal——”

“Keep right on talkin’ Loose, but be careful what you say,” Yates Trego com- manded.

Loose gave a spasmodic start. His pale blue eyes bulged and then narrowed with a gleam of hate. He halted for just a sec- ond, and then came on, grumbling unintel- ligibly as he walked until he stood by Middleton’s side.

“What kind of a doin’s is this?” he de- manded then. “You can’t git away with this, Trego. If you fire a shot at me my men will wipe you out.”

“Maybe. Git into that saddle, Middle- ton, and no monkey business. Loose, you git on behind him. Drew, you walk on down the trail an’ keep ahead of us. And remember: No matter what happens Ill get one of you two for the murder of Steve Bolivar, and the other for killin’ George Lester.”

With considerable difficulty because of

QUICK TRIGGERS | 31

his tied hands—Hash Middleton got into the saddle on one of the night horses, and tense as the situation was Trego had an impulse to laugh at the ludicrous picture the man made with his shirt-tail flapping in the breeze and his white drawers drawn tightly over his skinny legs down to his boot-tops.

But another man had viewed the spec- tacle with less amusement. Marco St. Cloud, made curious by what was going on, stuck his head out of another tent, and at sight of Middleton on a horse in his strange attire had suspected something wrong. He suddenly let out a yell that brought the remainder of the outlaw crew tumbling out of their blankets. In a flash the fellow saw what was wrong.

Trego had stepped to the side of the other horse. His only chance to get away alive now, he realized, was to get on that horse. He wasn’t half a second vaulting into the saddle, but that was long enough for Charley Loose to make a desperate lunge into the brush. Trego fired, but a sudden plunge of his horse made him miss. The same instant a bullet from St. Cloud’s gun crackled the air within an inch of his ear.

With his left hand Trego brought the iron-jawed night horse sharply about. The animal reared as a second shot from St. Cloud tore through the overalls on Trego’s right leg. The small killer with the whitish eyes was yelling lustily for the others as he fired, and this perhaps was spoiling his aim.

HEN, even before his mount’s front

legs struck the ground again Trego fired. He saw St. Cloud’s hands go up, and a small red smear- appeared on the front of the fellow’s shirt, just over the heart, as his knees crumpled from under him.

“One,” Trego said explosively.

But now the remainder of the crew were pouring out of their tents with their guns in hand. Trego whirled his horse, and brought the ends of his reins down across the rump of the horse Hash Middleton was on, starting the animal down the trail ahead of him. “Keep going, Middleton, damn you,” he ordered.

A whole swarm of bullets seemed to have been turned loose behind him, but the brush and the trees afforded a fair screen, and none of them found a mark. Ollie Drew leaped aside just in time to avoid being run down, and then fell flat to escape the reck-

less lead being scattered around. Charley Loose was howling at his men to aim low, but none of them seemed to hear. The ravine fell away steeply, and their shots were persistently going just over the fugi- tive’s head.

Hash Middleton was ahead of Trego in the trail, and for the moment he had no more desire to slow down in that hail of bullets than his captor had.

The firing soon ceased as the outlaws lost all sight of them in the brush, but not until they were back to where he had left his horse did Trego begin to breathe easy. It had been a close call. He had failed in his major object to capture Charley Loose, but he at least had Hash Middleton. And he had permanently checked the career of perhaps the most bloodthirsty killer of the gang. Leading his own horse behind they hurried on.

“Hey, where you takin’ me?” Middleton demanded.

“Tf there was just a county fair runnin’ Td exhibit you as a specimen of wild bull,” Trego replied. “Just keep on ridin’ where I tell you, an’ ask no questions.”

“But I ain’t got no pants,” the outlaw wailed.

“That’s your hard luck. But you won’t be needin’ pants long. You fellows set a precedent for us when you hanged Steve Bolivar. Now we can hang you for mur- derin’ George Lester. You know I was an eye-witness to that. I saw you shoot him down in cold blood.”

The killer was silent. His face was ashen with fear, but he sensed the futility of denial. And the implacable look on Tre- go’s face implied that it would be useless to beg for mercy.

It was only a matter of some five miles to the hiding place which Trego had chosen. It.was a foot bridge across a nar- row place in the river. It was never used now, since the half-crazy prospector who had built it was dead, and his diggings deserted. It was a rickety affair at best, and never would have sustained the weight of a horse. Just above the bridge was a narrow strip of meadow some two or three rods wide between the bluff and the water, but it was concealed from the bridge by a fringe of tall thick brush. Few besides Trego knew that there was a place just between the brush and the bluff that a horse could squeeze through. It was here

32 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

he had told Reckless and McCrea he would meet them.

On that hard-packed earth he knew that the barefooted horses could never be tracked, but to make sure he rode on past, and made a half circle back above the top of the bluff over solid rock.

The outlaws were afoot, and they would remain so until some of them walked a long distance to get a horse to run in their cavvy.

His failure to capture Charley Loose was discouraging. He had hoped to hold the man prisoner long enough to make Irvine and the others believe that Loose was dead or had deserted them. He had believed that with the outlaw leader out of the way that Judge Malone could contrive to bust Irvine’s association wide open. If that happened some of the ranchers would tell the truth about the murder of George Les- ter. That would clear Trego himself of the murder charge, and then he could come forth with Loose and accuse the man of the murder of Steve Bolivar. He had believed, too, that this would frighten Jed Irvine into repudiating Loose, and insure Loose hanging for some of the crimes he had committed:

The plan had been good, but it had been too much for one man to accomplish single- handed. Now his only hole card was Hash Middleton, and different tactics would have to be used. But if Middleton could be frightened into confessing his crimes in or- der to save his neck the required ends might be obtained just as quickly.

Trego planed to hold the fellow prisoner at the Bellevue bridge until Reckless and the Malone men arrived that night. Then there would be an impromptu murder trial which would certainly be an ordeal for the pantsless Middleton.

There was a steep rocky slope to be got down before they reached the foot bridge. When they reached the end of the bridge they stopped and looked down at the roar- ing torrent some fifteen feet below.

“Yeh, there’s plenty of room there to hang a man,” Trego soliloquized. “If the boys have got here it won’t be long now. But they may not arrive till night, and I don’t want to deprive Reckless of the fun of seein’ the dirty cur who killed his buddy swing.”

“Trego, you can’t do that!” Middleton at last broke his silence. “Give me a break. All you need is a witness to swear that

Bolivar was killed on Loose an’ Irvine's orders. Let me live and Ill swear it for you. Honest to God I will.”

“We'll see what Judge Malone and the boys think. Personally, I favor hanging,” Trego said grimly.

IDDLETON continued to talk. He admitted unhesitatingly that the plan was to first organize the Juniper ranchers into an association over which Charley Loose and Irvine would have com- plete control, destroy Trego in revenge for what he had done to the Warbonnet crew the years before, and then despoil the ranchers themselves.

“Just whose bright idea was it in the first place?” Trego asked.

“It was Irvine’s. He wanted a chance to put the screws on Judge Malone because Malone’s daughter had turned him down. He’s crazy about her, an’ he figgered he could git her if he could break her dad. Loose wanted to git back at you. At first our idee was for Charley to pick a gun fight an’ bump you off. Then we figgered to cash in on yore dogeys. But Irvine fig- gered out this bigger scheme. Sheriff Felch was his uncle, an’ it looked safe.” He went into still further details.

“What I still can’t see,” Trego remarked, “is how you could have scared all those ranchers into joinin’ against their will.”

“In the first place they all kinda hank- ered to join because Irvine promised ’em big money for doin’ it. If it hadn’t been for Malone an’ you there wouldn’t have been no trouble a-tall. When they begin to balk we just put the fear o’ Gawd into ’em. Havin’ the sheriff on our side helped. They knowed Loose had the nerve to bump ‘em off, an’ they knowed nothin’ would be done about it.”

“Well, if you stick to that story yore chances for livin’ may be fairly bright after all,” Trego admitted. But he could not forget the cold-blooded way he had seen the fellow shoot down George Lester. Mid- dleton did not deserve to live, but it was more important to bring the two leaders to justice. With Middleton’s confession Trego believed it would be easy.

But a man had seen them coming from Emmigrant Butte. He had gotten into an aspen drogue in time to avoid being seen by Trego, and he had watched them pass with bitter, hate-filled eyes. With the sly cunning of a coyote he had watched them

QUICK TRIGGERS 33

turn down to Bellevue’s bridge. When satisfied that they were going to stop there he had turned and ridden madly on to the outlaws’ camp. That man was Jed Irvine. Needless to say he had been welcomed.

CHAPTER IX THE LONG CHANCE

of sight from the bridge Trego and

his prisoner dismounted. Middle- ton was rather a pitiful sight. His woolen drawers had seemed to catch every branch and thorn along the way, and some of them had torn the skin. Neither was his raiment adapted for horseback riding, and he got out of the saddle breathing lurid oaths. He got no comfort from his captors.

“Looks like I’d better tie you up better, Middleton,” Trego said. “ ’Specially your head. You're liable to bite yourself in the neck ”

“Git me some pants,” the fellow bleated. “These damn’ skeeters are eatin’ me alive. They bite right through this underwear.”

“It’s yore hard luck, Middleton. You lost all claim on me when you hung Steve Bolivar.”

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, honest I didn’t,” the fellow insisted. “(Char- ley Loose did send us to raid your herd with orders to scatter ’em from hell to breakfast an’ shoot when we could. We knew the sheriff wouldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t aim to kill nobody. Loose wanted to make you come after him so he could plead self-defense when he downed you. It was Marco St. Cloud who started that. First he shot one of the men on guard. Then Bolivar rode out a-shootin’ an’ St. Cloud shot him. When he slumped over St. Cloud hung his rope on him. I went on an’ I didn’t know he’d been strung up.

“Pretty poor defense,” Trego com- mented grimly. “I’ve paid St. Cloud, but I want the rest of you. The only reason Pd make an exception of you is that I want Loose and Irvine worse.”

Trego mercifully wrapped the man’s legs in a saddle blanket and then tied him securely to two small saplings in the shade.

There was nothing to do now except wait for the arrival of Reckless with help. Hash Middleton’s confession had to be got out of him where pressure could be brought

O NCE behind the thick brush and out

to bear. Once in jail the fellow would repudiate it instantly.

The day was warm, and he had had a hard fight. It would be a wait of several hours, and he was growing desperately sleepy. He examined Middieton’s bonds again, made certain that the fellow could not possibly free himself; then he went a few yards distant, found a shady place and stretched out upon the other saddle blanket. He was sound asleep in ten minutes.

Out of that uneasy, feverish sleep of high noon he was aroused by a voice di- rectly above him.

“All right, Trego,” it said. wake up now.”

His body jerked. He blinked, but his eyes were almost stuck shut, and for half a minute everything was a blur. His mind wasn’t clear. He supposed Reckless and Judge Malone had arrived—only they never called him ‘Trego.’ Maybe it was Wes McCrea.

Suddenly his senses flowed back:like a released flow of water. His eyes flew open, and he recognized Charley Loose standing over him. Spasmodically he reached for his gun, but his hand didn’t respond to the command of his brain. Instead, he suffered excruciating pain. Glancing down he saw Loose’s booted foot grinding down upon the back of his hand. A gun in the out- law’s hand pointed straight into his face.

“Calm down, Trego, calm down,” the Warbonnet boss said sardonically. “Gittin’ all excited ain’t gonna do you no good.”

Somebody—it proved to be Ollie Drew —reached down and removed his gun from the holster. The one he had taken from Drew he had laid upon the ground and it had already been taken. Trego was suf- fering agony from the boot-heel that was planted upon his hand, but he wouldn’t voice a protest. Loose was shifting his weight just enough to give a revolving movement that was paralyzing in its ef- fect. It was a couple of minutes before the fellow desisted, and by that time Trego was unable to use his hand. Loose hol- stered his gun.

“Bein’ sociable critters we thought we’d return the call you made on us this morn- in’, Loose said. “We’ll try an’ be as hospitable to you as you was to Hash. Cut that cuss loose there, somebody.”

“Did anybody bring my pants?” Mid- dleton demanded as he was released.

“You can

34 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

>

“Nope, plumb forgot about you leavin in such a hurry,” Loose said. ‘“Yo’re lucky to have a shirt.”

“Then, by Gawd, I'll have Trego’s pants,” Middleton said furiously.

“You’d have been interested in the little story Hash told me when he thought I was goin’ to have him hung,” Trego re- marked.

“So he squawked, did he?” Loose gritted. “I figgered he would. Never mind the pants, Middleton. If you’ve spilled the beans you won’t need no pants.”

“He’s lying! I didn’t say a word. Honest to Gawd I didn’t,” the gunman protested.

“Except how your whole racket was worked. He even told me that the sheriff was Irvine’s uncle, and told me how you expected to break all these ranchers by shippin’ their cattle out after the sheriff had certified to crooked brands. Said your outfit was to git the cattle, an’ Irvine and Felch the ranches and the range.”

“By Gawd, lemme at him,” Hash Mid- dleton mouthed. “I'll cut his damn’ lyin’ tongue——”

He made a rampse at the prostrate puncher but Charley Loose met him with a straight-arm that thrust him back.

“Don’t growl, you dirty, yaller cur—it don’t fool nobody,” Loose said vengefully. “You got scared an’ talked yore head off. Well, even if it won’t do any hurt now I won’t have that kind of a man around me. Take what you got comin’.”

Middleton stopped and a look of horror transfixed his face. He knew the caliber of the man with whom he dealt. Charley Loose was utterly cold and implacable. Even as Jed Irvine voiced a strangled cry of protest Loose’s hand dropped to his hip and his gun came out of holster like a piece of well-oiled machinery. The pre- cision of that draw, aside from the horror of what it meant, was a beautiful thing to watch. Twice the hammer fell, and the two slugs buried themselves within an inch of each other in Middleton’s body.

“Charley, you think you’d ought to have ——” the white-faced Irvine muttered feebly.

“What’re you croakin’ for?” Loose. in- terrupted savagely. “You wasn’t squeam- ish about startin’ this fight. He squawked, didn’t he? An’ another thing: sooner or later some of them fool cowmen would squawk about him killin’ Lester. This is

an out. We don’t need the Lester killin’ to pin anything on Trego now, because we’ve got Trego. We’ll admit now openly that Middleton killed Lester. An’ him an’ St. Cloud can take the blame for the Bolivar killin’.”

HE Warbonnet foreman turned to Yates Trego.

“Tf it'll make you feel any better, Trego, they was solely responsible for Bolivar bein’ killed the way he was. I give ’em orders to raid your herd, but I didn’t tell ’em to kill anybody. They took that. on themselves. I intended to kill you an’ them two punchers some day, but not that night.”

“I still hold you responsible,” Trego said coolly.

“Anyway, I’m glad I’m free of Middle- ton an’ St. Cloud. They’d got to the point where they thought I couldn’t do without ’em an’ they wanted to give the orders,”

“I didn’t plan these murders,” Jed Irv- ine said weakly. “The killing of both Bolivar and Lester was a mistake. I’m mighty glad that it can now be explained. We can say that Trego and Middleton killed each other.”

“You stick to the money end,” Loose sneered. “Trego is goin’ to disappear. A body that falls into this river here would never be recognizable even if it was ever pulled out. That’s where Trego is goin’.”

Trego made no sign that he was in any way alarmed, yet he realized that death was probably not five minutes away. It was ten men against one, and he was un- armed. For a moment he entertained a feeling of bitterness against the cowpuncher who had sold him out. The feeling didn’t last. Rather he felt pity for Wes McCrea. The fellow was weak rather than vicious.

“Well, Trego, there’s no use you makin’ us carry you to the river as long as you’ve got legs,” Loose said with a thin-lipped smile, “Git goin’. The bridge will suit our purpose fine.”

“I—I—think TIl stay here,” Jed Irvine stammered.

“Yaller, huh?” Loose sneered. right, we won’t need you.”

Yates Trego was ordered to march out to the foot-bridge. As they went Loose picked out two of his men by name to aid him as executioner.

“Al

QUICK TRIGGERS 35

“We'll let him walk out on the middle of the bridge alone. If he prefers to be shot from the front we'll let him turn around,” he said.

“Pll turn,” Trego volunteered.

He knew that once he got out on that bridge nothing could save him. If he tried to leap off the bridge he would at least be wounded, and in those rapids even the strongest swimmer would stand no chance. But he meant to fight for his life, if it meant no more than rushing against a bullet. He was not going to be shot down like a sheep.

“Pd hoped I’d be able to test that al- leged fast draw of yours, Loose,” he re- marked as he walked along. “I see it’s mostly bluff like I always thought. You wouldn’t have the guts to stand up to a man in a fair fight.”

“Oh, yeh? Well, after just about two minutes you won’t have to worry about it,” the outlaw replied. Plainly he was not going to be lured by vanity into do- ing anything foolish.

“I suppose Pd accommodate you by standing on the edge of the bridge so Pl be sure to fall into the water?”

“That would be real thoughtful,” Loose answered cynically.

“In that case—” Trego had reached the end of the bridge. He stopped and turned around. It was now or never.

“Git out on that bridge,” Loose ordered coldly. “You beat me out of one big stake with that damned honesty of yours. See what it gets you now.”

A trick, only a trick could do any good now. “Wait a minute,” Trego urged. “I’ve got a money belt. ` There’s no use takin’ it to the bottom of the river. I wish you’d send it to my sister z

There was neither money belt nor sis- ter, but he had to get one of the men within arm’s-reach. It worked.

“Why, that would be foolish wastin’ all that money,” Loose murmured in his usual sardonic tone. “TIl be glad to take care of it for you. Funny we didn’t notice it when we searched you.”

He stepped forward and, pressing the the muzzle of his gun against Trego’s stomach with one hand, reached for the money belt with the other.

It seemed a lost hope. Not for even a second would Loose relax his caution. Trego’s face had turned a sort of gray

color, but it was from intensity of concen- tration rather than fear. He had raised both hands, and by sheer will power he compelled Charley Loose to meet his eyes. Then, for half a second the two men be- came rigid as the eyes of each spoke their silent hatred for the other. Only, Trego was not quite rigid. With that gun against his waist-line he cautiously bent his left knee.

Then, with the tremendous drive of a piston rod, he brought that left knee up. Up into Loose’s groin. But, fast as he had been, he could not move without his intention being telegraphed to his enemy’s brain. Even as the knee landed with terrific force, and Loose’s face contorted with terrible agony as he started to col- lapse, the man pulled the trigger.

Yates Trego felt a searing pain along with an impact that turned him half around, but with the grimness of despera- tion he retained his footing. The shot, the sight of their leader going down had caught the other outlaws by surprise. Before they could move Trego was among them, his fists working like flails as he fought for his life.

CHAPTER X AT BELLEVUE’S BRIDGE

of the Warbonnet crew had elected

to remain with Jed Irvine rather than witness the execution of Yates Trego. Chicken-hearted their leader had called them contemptuously. But even with Loose writhing upon the ground in ageny there still remained six men on their feet to oppose Trego.

They were armed, but he was in the center of them, and they dared not use their guns for fear of hitting each other. They decided to gang up on him, and this gave Trego his one slender chance. Man after man seemed to melt down before the dynamite in his fists, but always there were others to take their places, and those who went down bobbed up again, though. always with less vigor than when they had went down. They got in each other’s way, and frequently received blows intended for Trego.

But plenty of their wild swings landed on the desperately fighting puncher. His wind was going and he was weakening,

Tat of the nine remaining members

86 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

but always he strove to bring the fight nearer the river bank. He couldn’t get hold of a gun, so his only chance to escape was to take to the river. By great good luck he might be able to ride the current and eventually reach the bank. He was much more likely to be smashed in pieces against the rocks, and he knew it.

Irvine and the other two, aroused by the shouting, had rushed over, and now Charley Loose had got to his feet. The odds were ten to one. No man could long struggle against such odds.

“Git away from him, you fools, and give me a shot,” Loose yelled when he got his breath back, but the men were too excited to heed the command at once.

A burly outlaw named Gus Sarns, whom

Trego had floored with a right cross to the.

jaw, came up berserk. He rushed in swing- ing wildly. Somebody else had seized Trego from the back. Seeing that wild sledge- hammer blow coming Trego ex- erted his full strength and broke the hold of the man behind him. He ducked. Sarns’ wild punch went over the puncher’s head and struck the man behind Trego fair in the jaw. As that fellow went down, knocked out cold by his associate, Trego lunged forward and seized Sarns around the waist. Others were onto him now; his knees bent and he went down backward with Sarns directly on top of him, and still others were piled en top of Sarns.

But Trego’s brain was still working. He had failed to reach the river. All he could hope for now was to get a gun and try to get as many of the killers as he could before they finished him.

One hand was free, and suddenly it closed upon the handle of the gun in Sarns’ holster. He pressed the end of the barrel against the top of Sarns’ hip, but he didn’t fire. The other men had tumbled off of Sarns, but Trego held that worthy down.

“Stop! Hold everything,” Charley Loose yelled. “You’re actin’ like a mob of schoolboys gittin’ in each other’s road, an’ trampin’ on each other’s toes. I'll settle this business myself. Git up from there, Sarns.”

“But, he’s——” Sarns began.

“Git up,” Trego hissed in his ear, and the fellow felt the muzzle of his gun press harder against his hip. Trego was holding the man in such a way that none of the others realized that he had got hold of

Sarns’ gun. When the fellow rolled to his feet Trego came up with him, almost like they were one body.

“Now, damn you, step out from behind there an’ die like a man,” Loose said. “Or would you rather be shot in the back?”

“PII take it from the front, Loose,” Trego said coolly. “Use yore hardware, Loose.”

With one hand he thrust the giant Sarns stumbling to one side, while he side-stepped the other way. For the first time Charley Loose perceived that his prospective victim held a gun. And in Trego’s eyes he read a resolution to get his chief foe, even though he knew he must die the next moment.

Loose had been caught with his weapon pointed at the ground. He brought it up with the snaky speed for which he had long been noted. But it was not enough. Though Trego stood on weakened legs that would hardly sustain his weight, his gun hand was steady asa rock. His bullet struck Charley Loose squarely in the heart.

So fast had been Loose’s movements that ~ his finger pressed the trigger even as he was + hit. His bullet struck the ground almost — between Sarns’ feet, causing that worthy to leap high into the air with a startled yell. Charley Loose pitched full length on his face, and was dead in ten seconds.

That bit of action had taken place almost in the time a man could draw his breath. The outlaws had not reeévered from their shock at seeing Sarns’ gun in Trego’s hand before their leader lay stretched dead at their feet. For a moment they were unable to either think or act.

Trego sensed his advantage. His gun was ready, he was facing them all, and he could kill the first man who moved. After that they would simply mew him down by mass action. But as yet none of them quite had the courage to make the first move.

UT the man was in bad shape. He was aware that a steady stream of blood was running down his leg, and he had mo- ments of acute nausea. Both the wound he had received and the desperate fight after- ward had weakened him. He knew that he couldn’t hold out much longer. Yet he faced them on wide-spread legs, the still smoking gun revolving on a level with their waist- lines. “Go on an’ shoot, cowards,’ Trego taunted, “You were brave enough about hangin’ Steve Bolivar when he was

QUICK TRIGGERS 37

wounded. Why don’t you shoot. I won’t be able to get more than two or three of you before you get me.”

It was colossal bluffing, but it was the only chance he stood, and if they were go- ing to act he wanted it to be before his strength left him entirely. He saw some of them glancing furtively at each other, trying to arrange a signal for simultaneous action, It wouldn’t be long, he knew.

“Men! What’s that?” Jed Irvine cried suddenly. “I heard horses. So-somebody’s coming.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth before four horsemen shot into sight fifty yards away where the trail broke down the bluff. The man ahead was Reckless Reese, and as he took in the tableau he let out a wild cowboy yell, which the two men be- hind him, Dewey Carson and Joe Hender- son echoed wildly.

The fourth rider was Helen Malone, and as she topped the bluff, she turned for a moment in the saddle, and waved her arm behind her as though signaling other men to come on. It was quick thinking on her part, for there were no other men in sight.

For perhaps five seconds they were out of sight, then they broke into view almost upon the outlaws. The outlaws were on foot; the newcomers on horseback. The former felt their disadvantage. And they were still covered by that deadly gun in the hands of Yates Trego.

“Git ’em up, you swine!” Trego hissed, at exactly the right moment to catch them still befuddled. One by one, the more re- luctant ones last, their hands went into the air.

Reckless and the others brought their horses to a sliding stop. Their guns cov- ered the humiliated outlaws, but they had no excuse to shoot. Reckless looked at his leader, and then at the dead body of Charley Loose. ;

“We kinda imagined you might need help,” Reckless grinned, “but it looks like you had the situation under control.”

“You couldn’t have come at a better time,” Trego managed to smile. ‘“They’d have got me in another minute, An’—an’ I’m mighty happy to—to resign.”

Black waves had been marching before his eyes for minutes. He slowly began to crumple; hanging onto his senses by sheer force of will. He was sick. Sicker than he could ever remember having been

in his life. Only the fact that he had turned sideways when Loose had shot him had saved his life at all. But as it was the bullet had struck his hip bone a glanc- ing blow that had deflected it along the side; ploughing a deep, ugly gash that would have been enough to have brought most men down.

Helen leaped from her horse and ran toward him with a cry of pity. He tried to wave her back, but the words wouldn’t come. In a moment she had his head pil- lowed in her lap.

But the diversion had given Jed Irvine his chance. Or so he had believed. The moment Helen took her gun off him the man ducked behind the outlaws and raced for the brush. He headed straight for the river. -

“Watch these hombres, boys,” Reckless ordered, and with a grin that had some- thing of the feline cruelty of a cat about it, he spurred around the outlaws in pur- suit.

Irvine was almost to the thin line of river-washed brush before Reckless saw fit to call out, “Stop!” The fleeing man looked back over his shoulder, gave a des- pairing wail and plunged into the brush.

HERE was no shelter there and he

should have known it. The thin line of willows was not enough to shelter him from the bullets tossed. after him by the cowpuncher. But Reckless was not trying to hit him. Each bullet dropped so close to the man that he kept jumping. He was yelling something, but the grinning Reck- less didn’t seem to hear. He was now at the very edge of the river and dancing like a wild man,

“No, no!” he screamed like a frightened woman, and leaped out upon a spray- bathed boulder. “I can’t swim.”

A bullet from Reckless’ gun struck the boulder between the man’s feet and rico- cheted off with a vicious whine. — Irvine leaped high in the air, lost his balance, and disappeared into the turbulent stream with the wail of a lost banshee. His white face was visible for an instant just before he was sucked under the foot-bridge, and then it disappeared forever.

“He musta thought I was tryin’ to hit him,” Reckless said as he rode back to the others. “I wasn’t shootin’ at him.” But just the same there was a peculiar glint in

38 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

the grinning puncher’s eyes. Now he could feel that Steve Bolivar’s murder had been avenged.

“But I don’t understand how you hap- pened to come here. I didn’t expect any- body ’till dark,” Yates Trego said some- time later. He lay in the shade, and he was. surrounded by friendly faces. Judge Malone had arrived with over a dozen men half an hour after Jed Irvine’s death. Trego’s wound had been dressed, but his head still lay in Helen’s lap.

“Tt was your own doing,” Helen said. “You had ‘sent my father both that note you found on the range, and the agree- ment which you took out of Irvine’s pocket last night. We compared the handwriting of them under the microscope and it ‘was not difficult to discover that Lawrence Hoan was the man who wrote that note.

“Father at once got busy. He told Hoan that he knew he was the man, and made him believe that Loose and his men would be wiped out tonight. Hoan ad- mitted then that Middleton killed George Lester, and that they had most of them been forced to sign that agreement on penalty of death if they refused. When the others learned that one had told the truth they weren’t long following suit. Long before morning Father had got the truth out of a dozen of them. When Sheriff Felch came back to town they had a posse waiting to arrest him. But before that Reckless told me you were going to be here, so we decided to ride on ahead and bring you the good news.”

“An’ you dang near got yourself killed

by double-crossin’ us,” Reckless charged, as he grinned down at his employer. “Why the hell didn’t you wait until tonight like you agreed? If Barstow, the boss of the GAMBLERS REST hadn't let it drop that Irvine paid Wes McCrea a big wad of money last night you might be fish food like Irvine is. But that made me suspect somethin’ was wrong, an’ me an’ Dewey an’ Joe, an’ Helen here, burned the hoofs off our horses’ feet gittin? down here. We couldn’t leave this dang girl behind.”

“You sure come in the nick of time,” Trego smiled. “But I really wasn’t tryin’ to hog all the glory when I went to their camp alone.”

“I know,” Reckless said. “And after the way Wes McCrea sold us out I guess it was better that you did.”

“You've got everything you want now, Yates,” Judge Malone said. ‘You can have all the Warbonnet range if you want it, and if you'll only establish residence here you can be sheriff if you want to.”

“I don’t know about that, Judge,” Trego said slowly. “I’ve got an idea that cow- folks are pretty nice people after all, take

’em by an’ large, but I’m thinkin’ of “quittin’ th’ business myself.”

Helen leaned close to his ear and whis- pered, “Why?” Her eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his face.

“Well, I always figured I could do some- thing else in a pinch,” he smiled. ‘An’ knowin’ your opinion of cow people——”

“My opinion of you is all that matters,” Helen said softly. “And that is—ace-

high.”

“Sudden” the Outlaw Gains His Reputation in

“OUTLAWED”

A COMPLETE 75,000 WORD NOVEL by

OLIVER STRANGE

IN THE AUGUST ISSUE OF

DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN

A TRUE FEATURE OF THE WINNING OF |THE WEST by

Clay comes back witha right that was a beauty. It was a‘real active scrap

for a minute or two.

S

Sy A ABER

Clay McLean buckles on the old man's guns and shows that it takes more than bluster to prove courage.

by E. B. MANN

LD MAN POMEROY lit his bat- O tered pipe and tossed the match-stub in the general direction of an ash

tray on the window sill.

“There are lots of different kinds of men in the west.” The Old Man packed the coal into his pipe as he soliloquized. “Take Webb Tucker, now. He rode the Chisholm trail with me, back in the old days. He was one two-fisted, two-gun slingin’ miracle.

“Webb Tucker was a long, gangling, un- whipped cub with never a thought in his head beyond what he could see. He had a wart on the end of his chin, and———” The Old Man shut one eye and favored me with an insulting glare from the other orb.

39

“——he chewed tobacco! Maybe you think there’s no connection between chewin’ tobacco and a wart on the chin. That’s because you never saw Webb Tucker chew! He was a real determined chewer, Webb was. The way that wart jumped up and down was a sight to behold! e “Courage. Webb Tucker had his share of it. He wasn’t scared of God nor man; didn’t have'the sense to be, I always thought. Or maybe he just knew what a sweet piece of fightin’ machinery he was and figured he was safe. Webb was strong and he packed a kick in both hands, and he could thumb-roll a six-gun with speed and some dispatch. Sure he was brave. With

40 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

them assets, why wouldn’t he be brave? “Tt’s.a funny thing, courage.” The Old Man punctuated his words with pulls on his pipe. “Some men have it and some don’t. Then, again, there’s different brands of it. Now you take Clay McLean for instance. ”

LAY McLEAN was the sort of a man that would fit into one of those yarns they write about the west. He was a big square-shouldered kid with a mop of curly hair and a pair of nice blue eyes that sort of offset any mistakes there might have been in the rest of his features. And he had a smile that always made me think of a friendly pup. He was one of those men women want to mother and that men like in spite of that.

Only one thing was lackin’ in Clay. He was not a gun-fightin’? man. Them days, a man’d just about as lief be caught with- out his pants as without his gun. There was a feelin’ then that a man who didn’t tote a gun was.shirkin’ responsibility. You see, if a man was heeled and he did some- thin’ you didn’t like, you could shoot him or let him shoot you and the thing was settled right then and there. But if a man didn’t wear a gun, it was considered impolite to shoot him up. So the man who didn’t wear a gun was thought to be takin’ a sort of unfair advantage. Some folks was real out-spoken about it, claimin’ that a man who went unarmed just plain lacked the guts to back his plays.

But Clay just laughed at ’em. Claimed he had no hankerin’ either to shoot or be shot, so why should he weight himself down with å lot of heavy artillery?

Every other way, though, he was plumb man-sized. I knew him since he was a pup down in Texas and he was one of the men I picked to bring my trail herd north when I came here to settle. He was a top hand in the saddle and he knew cows. Far as courage is concerned, I’ve seen Clay bull- dog a full-grown steer in real good time; which bulldoggin’ ain’t exactly a sissy pastime in any language.

Maybe you get what I’m drivin’ at. Clay was a likeable boy and a darned good cattlemen; but when it come to fightin’, well he wasn’t the kind of man that you’d expect him to be.

That didn’t keep Molly Clare from likin’ him, though. Molly was a black-eyed little trick that came out here from Omaha to

teach school over at Dry Creek. It was late spring when we landed here with that trail herd of mine and Molly was helpin’ the Widow James run the postoffice, not havin’ any school to teach right then. I sent Clay McLean to town the day after we got here and that was when he met Molly. Every cowhand in the valley was sparkin’ Molly then, but it wasn’t long *fore Clay had the inside track. They kept company for about a year and most of Clay’s competition died off for lack of en- couragement. Folks was convinced it was just a matter of time till we’d have to start huntin’ us another school ma’am. Nothin’ official, you understand; only it just looked as if the youngsters had made up their minds.

So when Clay came to me with the news that he aimed to take his savin’s and buy the Circle J spread, I put two and two together and made five, figurin’ him and

.Molly was about ready to get hitched.

Two things happened then, real sudden- like. Cal Winters, over on the Bar 9, had been grumblin’ for quite a spell, claimin’ that his neighbors, the Three Stars bunch, was tryin’ to hog the range. All of a sud- den, now, Cal and his boys takes guns in hand to put a stop to it. There was some little preliminary skirmishes and, first thing we know, we’ve got a war on our hands with every cattle outfit in the valley takin’ sides. Everybody, that is, but Clay McLean.

The thing sort of divided itself up geographically, so to speak. Folks up north of the river sided pretty generally with the Three Stars bunch, and us gentry here to the south swung in solid behind Winters. So, with Clay’s new Circle J layin’ between the two factions, Clay’s idea of stayin’ neutral was what you might call a highly optimistic one. But that’s what Clay tried to do.

The second thing that happened was the arrival of Cal Winters’ niece, Jane.

She reminded me of snow on a moun- tain top, Jane did. She was tall and slim and her hair was yellow and her skin was dead white and the way she carried her head looked like she was thinkin’ what a shame it was she had to mingle with us common, earthy folks.

Maybe she wasn’t like that at all. I had no. less than six otherwise sane cow- boys tell me, private-like, that she was an angel. : :

GUNLESS GUNMAN 41

But she looked to me as if she’d be a doggone cold and disappointin’ reward for the trouble it’d be to climb up to where she was. I may have been wrong.

Well, Clay rode down to see me about a week after this new girl arrived and we had a long talk. Clay was determined he wouldn’t be dragged into this Bar 9-Three Stars fracas. But he was worried. One of his punchers had stopped some lead the night before, and Clay was pretty sure it was Three Stars lead. Feller wasn’t hurt so much as he was aggravated. Clay tells me, too, that somebody took a shot at him about a week before that, which I hadn’t known till then. Bullet drilled a hole in Clay’s hat, making Clay real thankful he wasn’t no taller’n what he was!

“Tt’s a real discouragin’ situation,” Clay says tome. “The Three Stars bunch figure I'll side in with Winters because you and Winters are friends and I used to ride for you. And Winters and his south-range bunch are sore because I haven’t sided in with ’em. I don’t know what the hell to do.” :

He’d named the situation just about as it was, too. Clay’s range sort of straddled the line between the two factions, occupy- ing a position either side would’ve give a lot to hold. Winters would do his level best to force Clay to come in on his side of the feud, and the Three Stars outfit would be mighty apt to try to shove Clay off the Circle J by any means that came to hand. Shootin’ one of Clay’s riders and ambushin’ Clay himself was just a sample of how far the thing was apt to go.

I gave the kid the best advice I had. “Go to Winters,” I said, “and tell him you're throwin’ in with him. That way you'll be friends with one side, anyway. And the Three Stars bunch is against you already.”

Clay nods, but he ain’t happy. “I reckon that’s the best way,” he says. “But, damn it, Pop, I hate to mix into a fight that don’t concern me. Or any fight, for that mat- ter.”

That sort of stuck in my craw and I told the boy what I thought. “It concerns you, looks like to me,” I said, “when they start shootin’ up your men! You do what I tell you and you do it quick, ‘fore you get yourself pinched between the two sides. It’s all well enough to avoid trouble if you can, but there’s times when a man’s got to fight. This here is one of them times. You go see Winters!”

Clay seemed convinced. “All right,” he said. “PI see Winters tonight, at the dance.”

It seemed somebody had chose this par- ticular time to throw a party for Winters’ niece and had hired the Odd Fellows Hall in town to give a dance. All my boys was wastin’ the day preparin’ for it, so it wasn’t any news to me. Likely Winters would be on his way to town ’fore Clay could get to him anyway, so I let it go at that.

“You better be on your way if you’re aimin’ to hit that dance on time,” I says. “It’s a long ride over to Dry Creek and back to town.”

Clay sort of blushed. “I ain’t takin’ . Molly to the dance,” he says. “I’m takin’ Jane.”

Well, I set right down and lit a pipe and cogitated on the plumb damn-foolishness of men in general and some men in particular. Vd heard that Clay was buzzin’ around this new girl some, but I never thought the kid was fool enough to ditch Molly Clare for her. And that’s what it meant, his takin’ Jane to this here dance. This shindig was aimed to be the outstandin’ social event of the year and every man would take his best girl to it. Unless some other man asked her first, he would, anyway.

But I knew from experience it’s no use buttin’ in on another man’s business where a woman is concerned; so I didn’t say any- thing to Clay.

Molly was there, all right, in spite of Clay’s givin’ her the go-by. She came with a youngster from over on Dry Creek and you’d never know from lookin’ at her that she wasn’t havin’ the time of her life. May- be she was. Anyway, she sure wasn’t lackin’ for partners. It looked like some of the boys had sort of got their hopes revived, seein’ Clay had stepped out of the picture, - and was givin’ her a special rush.

Clay and Jane didn’t get there till late, which didn’t surprise me none. You could tell by lookin’ at Jane that she was the kind of a woman that’d spend an hour in front of a lookin’ glass, no matter who was waitin’ on her. But Clay comes struttin’ in beside her with his head in the clouds. He brings her right over to me and, after that, I'll have to admit I ain’t blamin’ him so much. It was the first time she ever favored me with so much as a glance, and when she turned them eyes of hers on a man it was like takin’ a drink out of a tea- cup and findin’ that somebody had put

42 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

whiskey in instead of tea. Jarred you, if you know what I mean.

Practically the whole county had turned out to that dance and it didn’t surprise me much to see that six or eight of the Three Star boys had rode down, too. I knew some of them and some I didn’t. There was talk goin’ around that they’d hired some new men; gunmen. I was willin’ to believe it after takin’ a look at the delegation pres- ent at this dance. Of course, everybody had to check their hardware before comin’ onto the floor; but two or three of them Three Star boys was tough lookin’ hombres even without their guns.

One of them, especial, had a swaggerin’, go-to-hell way that sort of riled me. You know how it is sometimes; you just take a dislike to a man and you don’t stop to fig- ure why. It was like that with me about this jasper; Turner, his name was; Jed

Turner. He was a big red-headed man with a pair of big red hands that looked like hams. I noticed his hands when he was dancin’ with this Jane girl. She had on a white dress, cut sort of low in the back, and this Turner’s hand against her back as they waltzed—it didn’t look right, somehow.

But Jane seemed to be enjoyin’ it. He was a good-enough lookin’ man, givin’ the devil his due. Him and Clay was about the only men there that kept on lookin’ tall when they danced with Jane, her lookin’ even taller than she was in this closefittin’ dress she’s wearin’. It got to be sort of a race between the two of them to see who’d dance with her the most.

I watched that a while and then I cor- nered one of the Three Star boys, feller by the name of Daugherty, and I pointed out to him that Turner wasn’t makin’ him- self a whole lot popular monopolizin’ Jane that way. Maybe I sort of hinted that it was sort of unthoughtful for the Three Stars to horn in here anyway, things bein’ like they were.

But Daugherty just grinned at me. “It’d be too bad,” he says, “if anybody tried to stop Red from dancin’ with her. Folks down Sonora way don’t figure it’s healthy to cross that Turner man. And, as far as the rest of your remark goes, it may surprise you some to learn that the Three Stars will horn in where-ever and when- ever the spirit moves!”

ich wasn’t friendly, any way you look at it. But it set me thinkin’, Them

names, Jed Turner and Sonora, got to mixin’ in my mind and pretty soon I figured out a connection. A two-guz hombre called Sonora Red had been gettin’ himself talked about some on account of some plain and fancy shootin’ he’d been doin’. This Jed Turner bein’ a red-head, it wasn’t hard to guess that him and this Sonora Red was identical.

It wasn’t hard to go on from there and figure some other things, too. Clay Mc- Lean was a stumblin’ block in the way of the Three Stars’ aim to control the range. This Sonora Red person used two guns real indiscriminate, from what I’d heard, and fast. Not to mention fatal. If he used them on Clay, now, it wouldn’t exactly be a tragedy from the Three Stars point of view; and there’s no surer way of startin’ a fight with a man than by pickin’ on his girl. And so, thinks I, there’s somethin’ due to happen soon.

Sure enough it happened. Just as I got through interviewin’ Daugherty in the interests of peace, Clay and Turner heads for Jane to claim a dance. Clay gets there first and Jane’s just steppin’ off with him when Turner arrives. Turner says some- thin’ and Clay looks inquiringly at Jane. Jane smiles and shakes her head at Turner and holds out her arms to Clay again.

And Turner got ugly. He stuck one of those big hands of his past Clay and got hold of Janes arm. “You’re makin’ a mistake,” he said. “This here is my dance.”

Jane don’t help matters any. She jerks her arm loose and tilts her chin up and says somethin’ I don’t catch. Clay looks sort of flabbergasted and says somethin’ to Turner. He was smilin’ sort of apolo- getic-like. And Turner hits him.

It was a real surprisin’ thing the way that left of Turner’s lifted Clay right off his feet and onto the back of his neck. It surprised Clay, anyway. Didn’t give him a chance to decide whether he wanted to fight or not, seemed like. He was fightin’, whether he liked it or not!

Well, Turner went for Clay with his boots and Clay grabs hold of one of those boots and climbs right up Turner’s leg and heaves Turner over backward into a row of chairs against the wall. The chairs smashed and Turner crawls out from among ’em and goes for Clay.

Folks was yellin’ by that time and tryin’ to separate ’em. But it was a real active

GUNLESS GUNMAN 43

scrap in spite of that for a minute or two. Clay gets in a couple of rights that jars Turner right down to his heels, and Turner lands another hook that don’t do Clay’s eye any good.

I got a grip on Turner finally, along with three-four other peacemakers, and somebody else got Clay. It was all over so quick that the Three Stars outfit had no time to join in and make a free-for-all of it and I was thankin’ my stars there hadn’t been no guns in the crowd. Things was bad enough as it was.

Well, we packed Turner out of there and across the street to the Drovers’ Bar. He was doin’ a lot of cussin’, tellin’ what he’d do to Clay the minute he got his guns. I tried to discourage him, but it wasn’t any use. No man could lay a fist on him and live, he says. So I dropped a hint or two about how Clay was a local boy with quite a parcel of friends and if anything happened to him it might be sort of un- pleasant for whoever was the cause of it. Which calmed him down some. I could see that, but I could see, too, that he wasn’t through. He had a reputation that had to be maintained, the way he figured it; and Clay had put an eye on him that was goin’ to attract considerable attention.

Most men, if they get joshed about havin’ a black eye, can grin and suggest that you take a look at the other man. But a gun- fighter is pretty apt to feel that the only dignified come-back for him is to tell you to go take a look at the other man’s grave- stone!

Besides that, I'll always figure Turner was sent to town that night for the specific purpose of gettin’ Clay McLean and he couldn’t go back to the Three Stars with- out makin’ a stab at it.

I drifted back to the dance after while and there’s Clay with a patch over his eye and a swellin’ on his jaw, dancin’ with Jane again. It was easy to see that she was mighty proud of him. She was layin’ the possessive stuff on thick, and Clay was sort of sheepish about it. He knew that, if he’d had time to think and talk a little, he’d have ducked that fight; and it sort of embarrassed him to have her hold him up as a shinin’ hero.

It was ’most midnight ’fore we heard from Turner again. The Ladies’ Aid had cooked up a stack of food for the folks and a recess had been called in which to eat it. Clay had brought Jane over close

-like duelin’ and the like.

to me and we was gettin’ better acquainted- like when Cal Winters comes walkin’ in and heads for Clay. I saw Clay turn sort of white and I knew that he knew, same as I did, that Winters was bringin’ trouble in no small-sized chunk. You could tell it by the look on Winters’ face.

Cal comes to a halt in front of Clay and his voice sounds like he was announcin’ a funeral. ‘Turner is down in the Drovers’ Bar,” Cal says, “and he’s tellin’ all and sundry how he-aims to shoot you down. If somethin’ ain’t done, he’ll come up here after you. And it wouldn’t do to have a shootin’ scrape here, among these women folks.” Cal was real upset, judgin’ by his tone of voice. “It’s sort of up to you, Clay,” he says. “What do you aim to do?”

It was a mighty hard thing for a man to face, comin’ up against it all of a sud- den like that. And havin’ Jane there to hear it didn’t make it any easier. But there wasn’t anything anybody could do about it. Them days, if you got yourself into a jam and the other fellow made war- talk like Turner was doin’, you either ac- commodated him or you tucked your tail and hunted you a spot where your shame hadn’t been heard of yet. It was a code, A tough code, maybe. I ain’t defendin’ it. But there it . was. You got to remember that about the only law we had, them days, was what a man packed on his hip.

Clay sort. of stuttered. “I—TI ain’t a gun-fighter, Cal,” he says. “If Turner wants to fight—with his hands—.” He didn’t finish it. i

“You know that ain’t what he means, son.” Cal was sort of reprovin’.

“Then—lI reckon I better drift.” Clay’s voice was sort of low and sick. “I could go out the back way, maybe—”

He stopped talkin’ all of a sudden and I see he’s watchin’ Jane. She’s starin’ at him and her face is sort of rigid-like. Cold as ice, it looked to me.

He put out his hand and touched her. “But Jane!” he said. “That man is a— a killer! I can’t—”

She didn’t jerk away from him like she’d done from Turner, her voice wasn’t what you'd call affectionate. “What you do,” she said, “is no affair of mine. If you pre- fer to run—”

She shrugged. That shrug made her meanin’ pretty clear.

44 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

She stood up then and walked away. Clay was still lookin’ after her when he spoke to me. “Pop,” he said, “Td like the loan of your gun,”

His chin was up, too, now, defiant-like: But he was scared; froze stiff with fear. I tried to reason with him. “You can’t go up against a man like Turner, son,” I said.

To hell with the code, I was thinkin’ then. Of course, it ain’t a nice thing to be called a coward; but a man can be a coward for a long, long time and, in this case, it looked like Clay couldn’t be brave more’n a few minutes at most! Seemed like to me he was too nice a kid to let him throw his life away.

“I won’t let you do it,” I said. “If you go down to meet him and you’re wearin’ a gun you'll be playin’ right into his hands. He can kill you then and call it self- defense.”

“Tf he kills me,” Clay says, “it won’t make much difference to me what he calls it. If you won’t loan me your gun I'll have to borrow one from someone else.”

I got my gun and strapped it on him. If he was set on committin’ suicide, it might as well be my gun as any.

Molly came runnin’ across the floor and starts askin’ questions, but Clay just looks at her and let’s Cal Winters talk to her. She tried to stop him, but he pushed her

off.

“Pd like to have you come along, Pop,”

he said. ` That was better than Pd expected. “You bet!” I said. ‘Cal, let me have your gun,”

But Clay said, “No. You'll come un- heeled. I aim to handle this myself.”

So I went along with him, and I didn’t wear a gun. I’m tellin’ you, there was chills chasin’ up and down my spine as we went across that street! I knew Turner wouldn’t be alone, and I figured it was about an even bet that them Three Stars boys wouldn’t notice me not bein’ armed in time to do me any good. And it wasn’t goin’ to be pleasant, either, to stand by and see the kid shot down without bein’ able to take a hand.

Turner was standin’ at the bar when we walked into the Drovers’, and he wasn’t alone. Dougherty was with him, and three other men. Turner swung around as we came in and I saw him grin.

Clay stopped just inside the door and motioned me off to one side. “I hear you

been makin’ talk about me, Turner,” he said.

It got awful still in that room then. Turner’s face got sort of purple.

“Tm gettin’ tired of havin? my men shot up and of dodgin’ lead myself, and of hearin’ talk. If you Three Stars hom- bres ain’t a bunch of four-flushin’ skunks, suppose you do your talkin’-—and your shootin’—to my face for a change!”

It didn’t sound like Clay McLean talkin’. Not to me, it didn’t. I looked sideways at him to make sure I wasn’t dreamin’. His face was as white as chalk, but his voice was firm enough. You could see he meant what he said. He was facin’ certain death and nobody knew it better’n him; but he was facin’ it.. That’s somethin’!

Turner knew that Clay was scared, and he was puzzled. Somethin’ was worryin’ him. It wasn’t until he spoke that I knew what it was.

“Tt’s a smart trick, mister,” he said. “But it ain’t a-gonna work! You can’t talk me into makin’ a draw just to give your friends a chance to cut me down!”

Clay didn’t understand it, but I did. Clay never took his eyes off Turner. “Pom- eroy ain’t in on this,” he said. “He ain’t even got a gun. Anyway, you're five to two. That should be odds enough.”

“Five to two—in sight!” Turner said. “That ain’t sayin’ how many friends you got outside them windows there, waitin’ for me to make a move!”

I almost laughed. It was easy to see how Turner figured it, of course. Pd warned him, myself; told him if he made a play at Clay he’d have Clay’s friends to whip. He was rememberin’ that. Knowih’ that Clay was scared of him, he figured Clay never would stand up to him like this unless there was a trap set. And Turner had no intention of springin’ that trap!

Puttin’ it into words that way, he’d transmitted his own fear to the other Three Stars boys. You could see ’em watchin’ the windows and movin’ their hands away from their guns.

Clay took a long deep breath. He didn’t understand it, but he aimed to do a job of it while he was at it. “So you’re yellow, eh?” he said, insultin’ as all get out. “Just like I thought! If guts was buckshot, yours would rattle around inside a walnut shell! . . » Well, you’ve had your chance. Now Vl tell you a thing or two: You drift! Slope out o’ here, sabe? Because if ever

“4@UNLESS GUNMAN 45

I catch you around here again I’ll stretch your mangey hide on a cactus frame! . Come on, Pop. Let’s you and me get out o’ here. The smell is sickenin’!”

It was a real man-sized talk, you got to admit. And he got away with it. There was a ticklish minute or two while we was crossin’ the street, me wonderin’ how soon Turner and his friends would find out there wasn’t anybody outside them windows and take a shot at us. But nothin’ happened. We got across the street all right and, in a little while, we see Turner and the Three Stars outfit fork their broncs and high-tail out of town.

Turner kept right on goin’, too.

It didn’t take long for it to get known that Clay hadn’t had any backin’ on the deal like Turner’d thought he had, and when Turner found that out he just headed back to Texas rather than face the music.

His dignity as a badman was sort of frayed, you see, and he couldn’t see any way of mendin’ it. He could’ve killed Clay, of course, but that wouldn’t’ve helped him any. It would’ve just proved that he’d been backed down by a man he could’ve killed if he’d had the guts to draw.

. . . Which just goes to show you never want to crowd a man too far when he’s seared. You scare him bad enough, he’s apt to jump right down your throat and strangle you!

HE Old Man grinned a reminiscent grin. “But look here!” I said. “You can’t leave the story half told! What about Clay? I suppose he married Jane—”

“Jane? Hell, no!” The Old Man chuck- led. ‘He married Molly! You couldn’t get him near Jane, after that.. He was scared she’d get him in another fight!”

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Lone Star’s hand grasped the gun and covered the men who were on the point of attacking him.

.

CHAPTER I MURDER

N Tarai had been prodigal with Paradise Valley.

The valley was as lovely as the name some first settler had given it. It was well watered and protected. On three sides it was hemmed by fine, high, heavily timber- ed hills over which grew rich grasses, and through which was much cold, sweet water. Truly the region was a horse heaven and a cow paradise. To the west reared the Ghost Mountains which constituted immense ram- parts, forbidding storms to enter and desert cattle from straying into the valley, for over the range there were but few passes and these were easily fenced.

46

GUN

by CLIFF

A HOT - LEAD LAWLESS

Up from Texas came Lone Star Bill against as dirty a pack of plug-

Men seemed happy there, seemed re- markably free from all menace, and counted themselves singularly lucky in being given the privilege to work out their destinies and fortunes in such a wonderfully serene setting.

gar

SLICK

CAMPBELL

NOVEL OF THE FRONTIER

Ryan to match his wits and guns uglies as ever dry-gulched a waddy.

To the east stretched the White Sands— the white sands!

And these were detestable, They were avoided as though they were something hateful, some vast and evil area designed to plague and torment man. The White Sands,

=D.H. MONEYPENNY”

They were always creeping, creeping, slowly to be sure, but creeping, all the time. The movement was toward the mouth of the beauteous valley, and east winds, which prevailed but occasionally, were the cause

of the sands’ encroachment. Inhabitants of that valley stared at the blazing extent of white fire and shuddered as a white light filled their vision.

Out beyond these beds of ghastly white was nothing—that is, nothing but the East, the States. Back that way lay home, the youth of most of the men, the way toward which some of them could not go, for sor- row, of some character, lay over and beyond that horizon. Sorrow or—penalty.

But the creep of the sands, the edging closer and closer of their dusty mounds, knolls, and their armies of dunes, was in-

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48 WESTERN ACTION NOVELS MAGAZINE

deed but very, very minute. Fifty yards a storm, men said. That is, surveyors said this. But fifty yards a storm meant much.

Ultimately, unless western winds threw back those sands, the valley would be sur- faced with a miserable white floor, for the sands covered an area as great as the val- ley’s bottoms and were capable of filling the depression. It would take years, but—

Yet, for a time, success seemed to make those rugged pioneers oblivious to those sands. Cattle fattened, hay and grain grew, and men were happy. Unlike other border regions the cowmen had been free from rustlers and all manner of crime.

Cowboys jogged into the region, went to work, stayed a month or a year, jogged on again and thus gave all ranches a full quota of expert labor. But thievery was a thing unknown. And then, out of a clear sky, out of an almost sluggish sense of security, fear came to dwell in Paradise Valley. And with it awe, alarm, shaking suspicion and qua- vering mistrust; for each man, somehow, suspected some other man. It came about in this way.

AM HARRIS’S body had been found with a bullet through its head. He had been killed as he had sat at his table. And evidence left in that room, on that table beside the dead man, had screeched aloud that Sam Harris had fed some one before he was ruthlessly shot down as he ate. Whoever had partaken of the dead rancher’s fare had had a queer appetite on which to train his stomach for murder.

This wretch had eaten six fried eggs— Sam never ate eggs—had consumed nearly a pound of mesquité honey. The jar, which had been a gift to Sam a few days before, had been left at the plate of him who had sat opposite to the dead man. Then the fellow shaved. Shaved with Sam’s razor and had left the cup, soap and brush be- side a lather covered piece of paper. On a cross bar of the table, exactly where a man would set his boots as he ate, was a smear of blood red earth. That dried adobe had come from some place. Where? No man knew, for in all that valley there was none of this earth.

It resembled red pipe-stone. And was of the texture of potter’s clay. It took no artist to understand that on the boots of the killer this earth had clung until the man had scraped it off on the table.

Bad news travels fast, and soon Sam’s

killing was known all over Paradise, and up at Eagle Rock, the small town which nestled to the north in the foothills. Gaunt fear stalked the valley. All men checked up on strange riders and none of these had been reported as passing through for a week. Who then had murdered kindly old Sam Harris? The answer would not come.

In less than a week Jed Burdock was found hanging to a cottonwood limb by his own rope. And the tree showed no marks which would indicate that Jed had climbed it to the first branch and then had jumped with intent to slay himself in this awful manner.

Examination disclosed that Jed had been hoisted to his death-and strangled in this fashion. The path of the rope showed clearly that whoever had hanged Jed had jerked him from his feet with a rope evi- dently fixed to a saddle horn. A small bump back of Jed’s ear told of a blow which had knocked him senseless. But it was Jed’s kitchen which sent men’s minds racing with angered furies.

The man who had killed Jed had eaten with him.

Had eaten six eggs and almost a pound of mesquite honey, and had shaved. And on the floor near the table were bits of blood red earth.

RIOT of anger filled all the peaceful

region. And while Eagle Rock had

no law, nor law officer, the citizens and

merchants there, even the gamblers and

saloon keepers, volunteered to comb all the hills and gulches for stray humans.

But the search revealed nothing. Weeks