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Show P2jf By EUGENE CUNNINGHAM )&! isjr EUGENE CUNNINGHAM W.N.U. RELEASE llsf JT THE STOR? SO FAR: Con Cameron ll arrested ai a robber and murderer when be rides alone Into the town of Tivan. Someone bad seen blm on the trail with three fugitives, Lee Welsb and the two Raniers. They wert Just casual acquaintances Con picked np In Fron-teras, Fron-teras, but circumstantial evidence is against him. The marshal, Nevil Lowe, apparently does not know that Con Is the cowboy who saved his life a few days before in Wild Horse, when Lowe was nearly killed in a quarrel with Asa Brock, Dynamite Downes, marshal of Wild Horse, and a deputy called "El Mu-chacho." Mu-chacho." Now Jailed as a suspect, Con tells Lowe to wire Wild Horse and have his old trail boss, Buzz Upperman, or his pal, Caramba Vear, identify him, Lowe does so, but neither Upperman nor Vear can be located. So Con and another prisoner, Jeff Allmon, know their only chance is to escape. They have Just succeeded in dropping to the ground from a window in the supply room. Now continue with the story. CHAPTER VI Flat upon their bellies in the ditch, the two waited. Jeff whispered to Con that his horse was in the corral behind the jail. He had heard Nevil Lowe order it brought there. 'So's mine. Corral gate's locked. So's the saddle-shed door. Our hardware's hard-ware's in a locked case in Lowe's office." Clouds blanketed the sky, but occasionally oc-casionally the moon showed for a minute or two. In such an interval of pale light, they saw a dark group halfway between courthouse and cot-tonwoods, cot-tonwoods, coming their way. Accompanied Ac-companied by furious snarling, the group moved nearer ditch and cot-tonwoods. cot-tonwoods. On the edge of the ditch above Jeff and Con some of the men halted. halt-ed. Moonlight showed the grim business busi-ness thirty yards from Con and Jeff; the dim shapes of horses under the giant trees; movement of the men beside them. Two men came at the trot from somewhere behind the building. Con stiffened automatically. automatical-ly. "Over?" one of the men panted. "We couldn't find them fellows downtown " "Half-over," Jeff grunted. "We een enough." The pair broke into a run and Jeff indicated a door standing open, giving upon a dark room. He led the way Inside and Con heard him fumbling, then the click that was beginning to be familiar, of a lock yielding. "Come onl" Jeff commanded. "Pick your hardware!" They moved fast and surely to loop their horses, and saddle. Very quietly, they walked the horses away and past the farthest house of Tivan. Then at the mile-covering mile-covering hard trot, Jeff led the way into the rough north. At dawn, Jeff looked familiarly around and called it more than twenty miles to Tivan about twenty-five. "House ahead a liT ways. Across that hogback. The man's all right. Friend of Dud Paramore's. We can eat there. Rest, too, if you're galled." An hour later, they came to a squat adobe house on a hillside. Chickens, pigs, a couple of gaunt and savage hounds, moved about the yard. Under a ramada an open-sided, open-sided, brush-roofed shelter a good horse dozed. In the doorway two fat and solemn youngsters stood with thumbs in mouths, black eyes wide. A big Mexican appeared behind them. His right hand. Con observed, ob-served, was not in view. But when Jeff gave Dud Paramore's name, he grinned. "Come in!" he said. "The house is your house." While they ate beef and beans served by his smiling wife, he talked to Jeff. Con understood most of the words, but the pace was too fast for him. Jeff translated swiftly. "Dud and his bunch had a fight three days ago at the Heart Ranch. Posse from Tonadura holed 'em up, there. Perez, here, he was with Dud. Dud killed one of 'em peeler named Cree from the Slash O. He always passed for a friend of Dud's and Quill Hogan that rides with Dud." They sprawled and drowsed while Perez rode off to see if anyone was in sight on their trail. Con heard the rest of the story of Paramore's fight at the Heart. Cree's killing had apparently shaken the posse-men posse-men and the Paramores had got sway. Perez came back before noon, grinning. He had seen a dozen men riding across the flats below the foothills, foot-hills, evidently looking for a trail. But they had gone past the little trail that led here. Con listened to Perez giving detailed de-tailed directions to Jeff. So when they rode away from the house, leaving some of Con's silver with the woman and the children, he had as good idea as Jeff of their trail. Memory came of the grave, concerned con-cerned face of Janet Lowe, as she tried to look at him without being observed. And he had ridden into Tivan so gaily sure that he would be a friend of the Lowes as soon as he met them! Several times he had noticed her study of him as if wondering won-dering how so much viciousness as he, in the role of Comanche, was charged with, could be masked by the face he wore. They rode deeper into the Lobos along a narrow valley and made camp at a spring of which Perez had told Jeff. As they smoked after " Jeff talked ramblingly of past, present and future. eating the food Perez had given them, Jeff talked ramblingly, always al-ways cheerfully, of past and present and possible future. Listening, Con added touches to the picture already formed, of his odd, lawless cowboy and wondered. They rode out of the valley next morning across a ridge and down-slope down-slope toward another spur of the Lobos. On a dim cross-trail three Mexicans traveled with a train of burros lightly burdened. They had been to Tonadura to sell mesquite roots and were going home, still fifteen miles distant. Con rode on, but Jeff stayed talking. talk-ing. When he came at the gallop to rejoin Con, he was roaring with amusement, carrying his hat, which jingled as he shook it. "Fourteen dollars!" he gasped. "Was they took back when I put old Colonel Colt to gaping at 'em! I left 'em a dollar apiece so's they can buy drinks and forget trouble." "Wait a minute!" Con cried. "You mean you robbed those poor, hard-working devils?" "Let 'em grub some more mesquite!" mes-quite!" Jeff said cheerfully. "It's good, healthy work. This ain't much, but every dollar of it's round and will roll. Ne' mind how you get it, if you get it!" Con looked at the Mexicans fifty yards away. One sat upon the ground with heads in hands, the very image of utter despair. Jeff was serenely dividing the silver. He recalled what Martino Palafox had said of him, that if he were crossed he was dangerous. He thought he had best try persuasion first. "This is certainly going to make you out the New Jesse James, to Dud's forty-five calibre crowd," he drawled. "Dud'll ask you what you've been doing. You'll say: Why, we just stuck up three great, big, fierce mesquite grubbers, and looky what we got fourteen real dollars!" He shook his head as Jeff stared uncertainly, kneed Pancho over and took the hat. Pancho jumped into the gallop and the Mexicans looked up as he charged down at them. "No tengo mucho Espanol!" he said, smiling at them. "I don't have much Spanish. But my friend make joke with this money. Here! You take. Good, now?" The man who was still holding his head hopelessly looked up incredulously. incredu-lously. Then he ran to Con's stirrup, stir-rup, waving his hands and fairly spluttering. A younger Mexican grinned at Con. "He say got sick wife got hunger very much need hard work money this. Bad if other man take one time he kill him. Now muy bien! He good friend for you make help sometime " They were still shouting thanks and goodbyes and waving when he and Jeff rode over the next ridge. Con looked expectantly at his companion, com-panion, but Jeff seemed to have forgotten for-gotten the matter. But when Con began practice of the quick draw, he watched critically. "Por dios!" Jeff said at last. "You're plenty smooth and speedy. How-come you never slapped leather with .Quirk Ellis or them marshals in Wild Horse?" "Scared to," Con told him solemnly. sol-emnly. "They might be faster. Then where would I be? No . . I haven't got the slightest itch to be a gun-fighter, gun-fighter, or collect notches. But in a hard-case country, I'm going to be able to hold my own. When I was no more than knee-high to a short Winchester, I knew where my uncle kept his hogleg. I used to sneak it out and practice. But he caught me, when I was about seventeen. And he showed me a handful of things; ways of cutting splits of seconds off the draw. He mustn've been hell on wheels, before he settled down." They came in early afternoon to a log cabin on the bank of a swift, shallow creek, where five men played cards at the door. A lanky, yellow-haired cowboy on the log doorstep grinned at them. The others turned to look them over. Con understood that their coming had been expected. "Close squeak you had." the lanky cowboy said as to old acquaintances. acquaint-ances. "Bet you heard hell gates a-fiapping when the stranglers dragged out that illegitimate, Fant, and the rest, and just missed you-all." "It was too close," Jeff admitted, swinging off. "And when you got clear, you lenowed there was just one safe place for you-all: with the only bunch that Johnny Laws ain't going to bother," Dud Paramore went on. He had a high, almost singsong, drawl, and his mechanical grin matched Jeff Allmon's. "So you come hunting me, huh?" "You certainly got 'em eating out of your paw, Dud," Jeff told him admiringly. "I been telling Con, here, about your outfit, and how it was the only one to ride the Territory Terri-tory with. So I pulled out of Fron-teras. Fron-teras. All right for us to come here?" "What you mean is all right for you-all to stay," Dud corrected him. "Hadn't been all right to" come, you-all would be biting daisies down the line right now." Dud gestured toward the other men: "Most of the main bunch. Big Yager, that helped me rub out the sheriff and clerk at Tonadura." The huge, stolid cowboy indicated grinned and jerked a thumb toward a slender Mexican whose short-chinned, short-chinned, flat-nosed face and beady eyes gave him a reptilian look. "I reckon it was me and you poured the buckshot to 'em, Dud," he said in slow, husky voice. "But 'twas Snaky Gonzales that run out from behind the wall after we dropped 'em, to see what kind of fees they'd been collecting. I still think he held out on us. Hey, Snaky?" Gonzales snarled. Then something about Con's expression seemed to infuriate him. He came to his feet with a wriggle, hand dropping to the pearl hilt of a dagger on his belt. "Mabbe you don't like hah?" he cried. "You look by me and make face nose turn-up, hah? Me, I don't like your look. Mabbe I give you something nice knife by your neck, hah?" "Ah, Con's all right!" Jeff said hastily, with a quick side-glance at the grinning Dud, who was looking from man to man. "It's just a way he's got of looking at everybody. He ain't turning up his nose at nobody no-body " "Keep out, Jeff," Dud drawled. "Every man kills his own snakes in the Paramore Bunch. If i Con ain't man enough to hold his own, hell with him!" "Kill him. Con!" Jeff snapped. "No fooling with fists " Gonzales darted in, cat-quick, shifted feet flashingly so that he swerved right, then left, stooped with the dagger held against his shirt, point out. Con had only lifted on his toes. He twisted, even faster than the knifeman had done, to hook a terrific right to Gonzales' unprotected jaw just below the ear. Gonzales' feet snapped from the ground. He seemed to hang bodily from Con's fist for the fraction of a second, then dropped sideways to the pine needles and sprawled motionless. mo-tionless. Con took one step forward and stamped upon the thin blade of the dagger. Dud Paramore continued contin-ued to grin mechanically. Then Big Yager slapped his leg resoundingly and whooped. "Snaky forgot to ask Con could he please cut his heart out!" he cried, and Dud's grin widened slightly. Gonzales moved jerkily, groaning. Con slid a hand to his Colt and watched coldly. The Mexican pushed himself up to sitting position and blinked stupidly around. Suddenly, he scrambled up with loud slap of hand on empty scabbard. "Gonzales!" Con called sharply. "Miia! Look! It would have been more easy to kill you than to knock you down. But I let you live that time. If you look at me again and touch knife or gun " He half-drew the pistol from his holster and Dud Paramore's singsong sing-song drawl cut in: "Snaky! No mas! No more!" Paramore announced, "We'll hit San Marcos tonight. Big baile there. Lots of liquor. Lots of pretty gals to dance around. Paramore bunch owns Marcos." "He's what I said," Jeff muttered. "Plain hell on wheels!" (TO BE COMIMED) |