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Show 3gg By EUGENE CUNNINGHAM jM' THE STORY SO FAR: Coo Cameron, forced to )olo Dod Paramore' band ol entlawi to iav bit U(e, li again on tha Ida ol the law. When ba was arrested at Tlvan at inspected murderer and robber, rob-ber, ht had bo choice but to escape or ba hanged ai "Comanche Linn," In spite of the tact that he once laved the life ol the marshal, Nevtl Lowe. Lowe had apparently ap-parently forgotten that. So Can broke enl ol JaU with Jeff Allmon and Joined raramore. But when ba helped Janet Lowe, the marshal'a sister, escape when Dud attempted to kidnap ber, Jeff warned htm that he must again ride for bis life. Re learned that Dud planned to rob the bank at Tlvan. There la open war between them, and Con taw bit chance to atop Paramore. In the gun fight at the bank he shot down some of Dud's companions. Certain that Dud hlmiett escaped. Con Is after him. Now continue with the story. CIMPTER X Three or four miles covered at the lope showed Con nothing either before or behind. Then he topped a light rise and Jerked in short with sight of a horse standing riderless, not fifty yards away, and the dark figure of a man lying on the ground close to It. He rode slowly down the slope, looking past the man for sign of an ambush. But there was none. The man made a moaning sound, but did not move. Con swung alertly down, still covering cov-ering the still figure, walked in a narrow circle until he could see the face, then stooped quickly over Jeff Allmon. Jeffs gray shirt was soaked with blood. "Jeff! JeffI" Con called him shakily. shak-ily. "What happened, man? You Did you get hit, at the bank?" But Jeff made no answer until Con had got the flask of Garcia's whisky from his alforja and forced the pain-set teeth apart to let liquor run into his mouth. Then he gagged and mumbled, but opened his eyes. "Dud shot me!" he muttered. "Horse went lame. Wanted mine. I kicked and he shot me." He swallowed more of the whisky and looked Intelligently at Con, even managed a twisted grin: This is it!" he said. "I rode with wrong crowd whole life. Reason I rode way I done I liked It better! But you pegged Dud-plumb Dud-plumb right. Dirty dog." He was quiet, breathing painfully, seeming not to hear Con's questions. Then he said: "Whole world's gone excepting your face it's going, too" When he was sure that Jeff was dead. Con stood to listen for sound of the posse which he was sure would quickly ride out of Tivan in this direction. But it had not come o quickly as he had been able to ride; he had a little time. "Por dios!" he said triumphantly. triumphant-ly. "You can tell the tale that'll blow up the Dud Paramore yarn for the whole Territory!" From an alforja he Jerked a piece of brown wrapping paper. The soft nose of a lead bullet made a pencil of sorts the seat of his saddle a desk. The note was brief: "Dud scared of posse. Shot me for my horse. His lamed. Comanche was one stopped us at bank shooting shoot-ing at us." Note and cartridge he put artfully beneath Jeff where the wind could not twitch the paper away. Then he rode ahead on the road to the Lobos for a little way. When he camped at last, he. was well to the northwest north-west of Tivan and he thought that be was not likely to be tracked. Rain waked him, well before dawn, a steady drizzle that promised prom-ised to last. When he sat up with the blanket around him, he looked at the leaden sky and grinned. Whoever Who-ever rode yesterday's trail today would have his work for nothing. He got the slicker from behind his saddle sad-dle and put it on, smoked a cigarette, ciga-rette, and tried to answer the question ques-tion he had asked the night before: Where to ride? Presently, he turned and faced the rim of the arroyo in which he had sheltered. A man, slickered like himself, sat comfortably upon a boulder with carbine on his lap. The carbine was pointing steadily at Con. . In a husky voice, the man said: "And they call it a big, fierce outlaw! out-law! Shucks!" Con watched stiffly, but his carbine car-bine was two yards away and the slicker coveted his pistol. "Might as well come on down and have breakfast," Con told him calmly. "That is, if one tortilla-tough tortilla-tough as leather by now and about two square inches of cold beef'U do you." "Ought to down you first, then eat. But, no use rubbing you out till you've saddled up. Save me the trouble." He stood, pushing back his hat and Stretching. "Caramba Vear!" Con yelled. Caramba slid over the arroyo edge and for a moment they pounded pound-ed each other enthusiastically. Then Caramba shook his head and shoved Con away, so that he could look him up and down. "If you ain't the damnedest! Nicest Nic-est UT pilgrim ever I showed the difference between a cow and a crit-j crit-j ter." I Con looked curiously at his friend. "How-come you found me? It's i too big an accident to be an accident! acci-dent! But, still, I don't see" I "Accident, your aunt's black cat's long, curly tail! Boy! I got all the I pieces, but I don't fit 'cm together ! just right How'd It happen you I i ! The carbine was pointing steadily at Con. got to be Old Cole Younger over here?" "Not here! Let me saddle and we'll hit out for cover." But as he moved quickly, surely, to break camp, he told briefly of his adventures. When Caramba got his own horse and they rode vaguely south and east, he finished the account ac-count "Well, if you never hubbed hell!" Caramba cried at the end. "And you can see how this Nevil Lowe figured. Me or you, we'd thought the same, in his boots. Well . . ." "So. I'm Comanche Linn! And when I'm Con Cameron, that's Just a new go-by for Comanche. You can't ride with me! You have got to ride off before somebody sees us" "Sh! my child," Caramba drawled. "It ain't becoming to you. telling wise old folks like me what they can't do. Hitting me in the map last night like you done in Tivan-" "Huh?" Con cried. "You mean-that mean-that was you I laid out?" Con had not realized how lonely he had been until loneliness was over. Time after time, on the long, slow ride from Apostles' Arroyo to Wild Horse, he had seen Caramba tested. By every standard, the Texas Tex-as cowboy was a man and a brother. When they rode on southward the next day, Caramba looked thoughtfully, thought-fully, gravely, at Con. He shook his head. "Boy! You certainly have growed up!" he drawled. "This country kind of belongs to you, huh? You could go a long way around the Territory, Ter-ritory, I bet you, and find friends. Well! I reckon we're kind of safe to hit for this village of Onopa, huh?" "Safe as most places," Con said, shrugging. "Right! Now, listen to me. Nobody No-body in the Territory knows me or has got a thing against me. Anywhere Any-where 1 go, I'm looked at as Just plain cowboy. Now, if you ride with me and I say you're Twenty Johnson, John-son, like you told 'em on Los Alamos, Ala-mos, why, chances are nobody'll claim different If somebody thinks Twenty Johnson and Comanche Linn-Con Cameron look alike, well! plenty men look like plenty other men." "You think that Comanche Linn can just disappear and Twenty Johnson John-son can pop up?" Con demanded incredulously. in-credulously. "With Nevil Lowe and and Janet Lowe and some others knowing me?" "Wouldn't surround me a speck, if he couldl Anyway, look at what you're bucking: Right now, everybody's every-body's thinking about Paramore and you. Whichever way you was to head out. likely you'd run into folks looking for you. But If you stick right here, on Los Alamos or this Busted Wheel, till the noise dies down, they ain't going to be looking for you here!" "If I thought I could do it" Con said slowly. "Le's try! We ain't likely to lose a thing more'n we'd be losing, anyhow!" any-how!" When they came quietly Into the little cowtown of Onopa on the Bravo, late that afternoon. Con had not yet made his decision. But there was much of sound sense, he thought to Caramba's suggestion. Nobody seemed more than casually casu-ally interested In two more cowboys, cow-boys, when they left the horses behind be-hind a cantina In Onopa and drifted in to the long bar. They had a drink and bought one for the bartender, a squatty, nervous man with restless rest-less eyes. Then he bought one for them and asked if they had heard of the try at Tivan bank. He began to tell of it without waiting for reply. "Dud lost three that crack," the bartender said. "Catfish Coyle and a big fellow that went by Dandy and Jeff Allmon that rode for a while with Quirk Ellis' bunch up around Fronteras. Dandy, seems like, got his legs shot out from under him and everybody around Tivan's claiming he downed Dandy when he tried to get away. Catfish he was Just a crazy cowboy that worked all over got shot by Bain the deputy, at the bank door. Dud killed poor Jeff Allmon to take his horse. Jeff lived long enough to write about it. and I tell you! Dud would have trou-ble trou-ble getting a drink of hot water in hell, way everybody feels about him." He was puzzling the rest of that note found on Jeff. Why he wondered won-dered aloud should this strange buscadero Comanche Linn Interfere in Dud's plan? Two men down the bar joined the talk; they thought that it was jealousy on Comanche's part. While they talked and Con and Caramba Ca-ramba listened as two drifting cowboys cow-boys should have listened, a heavy-shouldered heavy-shouldered young towhead with scarred face came in. "Slash Oxweld." the bartender muttered. "Plumb poison! Out of Fronteras. Slash's all swoll' up, right now, account some of them tough Busted Wheelers is in town and they ain't paying him the attention at-tention other folks does," the bartender bar-tender went on, watching Oxweld from an eye-corner. "Huh! That outfit from old Topeka Tenison on down, they don't give a hoot about nobody, much! They Ah-ah! Comes Gale Goree! He's wagon boss on the Wheel. Texas man and Watch him! He sees Slash, but acts like he don't!" . Con thought that the talL weathered weath-ered man of middle age, coming into the cantina, would have been one to mark in any cow-country company. There was nothing unusual about his battered and dusty black Stetson, Stet-son, his old vest hanging buttonless. his faded overalls and rusty boots to attract attention. But there was something about all of him together togeth-er that fairly shouted, "Here is a Man!" When he came abreast Slash Oxweld Ox-weld he stopped to turn his head and stare as if he had never seen him or anything like him in his life. He shook his head and pushed back his hat and rubbed his stub-bled stub-bled chin. "I swear," he said generally to the room, in soft draggy voice, "if it ain't bust loose In a new place. You could almost think it was the Noon Whistle like they have got In workshops back East Only, something's some-thing's kind of fierce and boogery about It too. Why, I bet you I'd be scared half to death if he was to have some more like him with him a hundred, maybe . . ." Slash Oxweld's heavy, sullen face was set like a furious mask. The long scar that gave him his nickname nick-name showed tallow-white. But Gale Goree seemed to be done with him. He turned toward the bar, humming softly. "Something wet and hot" he called to the bartender. "That Is. if you-all made up a new lot of that Real Kentucky today." "You! You" Slash Oxweld began be-gan In a stifled voice. "Goree has certainly got the Sign on him." Caramba muttered to Con. "He wants to pull, but he's Just grabbing air . . ." But Oxweld's hand was brushing the butt of his low-swung Colt and Goree spun at the bar, made a long step and seemed to do no more than lean to the towhead. His lanky arm snapped out and his big hand clamped on Oxweld's wrist Then he laughed. "You trifling son of a dog!" he drawled. "You ain't nothing around grown folks. Less than nothing! noth-ing! Why-" Oxweld was straining against that grip, perspiration beading his face, his eyes glassy. He hardly moved Goree's arm. Then Goree dropped his own free hand, twisted, to his own pistol. Oxweld's gasp was plain throughout that tense, quiet room. The long Smith and Wesson came out deftly. Goree shoved Oxweld violently. "It ain't my tender heart" Goree drawled. "Account I ain't specially tender. Damn' if 1 know what It Is keeps me from killing you. Unless it just seems wrong to rub out something some-thing your puny size with a big slug. But don't let that fool you! Next time you see me coming, you cross over to the other side of the road you heah me?" Goree had his drink and went humming toward the door. Two men trailed him from the bar. with hard, darting glances to left and right Con understood, then, that Gore had not been so foolhardy; those were Wheel cowboys and they were ready for trouble. Apparently, every ev-ery other drinker understood, also) (TO BE COMTIM'EDI |