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Show Bandit Bait j By VIC YARDMAN Associated Newspapers. WNU Features. TV 1 1DWAY on the trail between J-'-- Silver City and Mount Tom, Sheriff Mac Cooper fell in with a tall, fair-haired youth with steel blue eyes, wearing a pearl gray sombrero, sombre-ro, blue and white checkered shirt and corduroy trousers tucked into high-heeled boots. A bone-handled six-shooter was strapped about the youth's waist and the butt of a Winchester Win-chester rifle protruded from a saddle sad-dle scabbard. He rode a coal black stallion. "How far to Mount Tom?" the stranger asked. "Ten mile. Maybe more. Stranger Strang-er hereabouts, are yuh?" "What are chances o' picking up a job?" "Slim." Mac's eyes went out and across a flat open space, interspersed inter-spersed with sagebrush and cactus. Beyond, etched against a slope of sage grass, cattle grazed. To the left and more in their line of travel the slope became a rocky incline, through which the trail was notched. "Me," he went on, "I usta be a cattle cat-tle man. Clean wiped out a year ago." Mac laughed. "You might as well turn about, stranger. Ranchin' is a thing o' the past." "How do folks get along?" the youth asked, looking at him curiously. curi-ously. "Ain't no other kind o' work to be had, is there? What might your business be? I'd sort of like to get a line on the kind of job to look for." Mac hesitated the fraction of a second. "Me? I work at the mines up at Big Mines." The youth grinned. "I get it. You come down once a week for the "You might as well turn about, stranger. Ranchin' is a thing o' the past." payroll. On your way back now, eh? Scared maybe I might be Clip Kane, or some other equally desperate des-perate character. Had much trouble trou-ble from this Clip Kane?" he asked suddenly. "Ain't had none yet. So far, thank goodness, he's only legend hereabouts. here-abouts. Been operating farther north, in a different state, though they do say he's come over the line an' is working down thisaway." "That's right, mister. Clip Kane did come over the line, an' he's right here this minute!" The first thing that Mac noticed was that something hard and round , was pressing into his ribs. "Get your hands up high, mister, an' don't try any tricks. I got half a mind to plug yuh anyhow. Guys as dumb as you shouldn't be let live." "But it's a problem how to dispose o' you. I can't leave yuh here to follow me an' spread an alarm, and danged if I can shoot such a dumb wit down in cold blood! But, by jingo, I gotta do something with you." Hardly had the words left the stranger's lips before something smote Mac just back of his right ear. And in the instant before nothingness noth-ingness claimed him he heard, far away, the sharp report of a rifle, a shout, a curse then the curtain of blackness closed about him . . . When he opened his eyes he was half sitting and half lying with his back to the canyon. Objects in front of him gradually lost their blurred aspect and took definite shape. And the first thing that registered itself clearly on his brain was..the grinning grin-ning countenance of Deputy Sheriff Red Galer. Mac struggled to a more comfortable comfort-able posture, looked beyond Red and saw the glowering face of Clip Kane, noted that the bandit was securely trussed and that his shoulder was swathed in a bandage. "Durn your miserable hide," said Mac, addressing Red, "what was the idea of waitin' fer that jigger to tap me on the haid before yuh drilled him?" "A little tap now an' then won't hurt yuh none," Red grinned. "Maybe "May-be take some o' the swellin' outter your bean." Mac rubbed his head and swore. He knew that Red had waited purposely pur-posely in the hope that Clip Kane would tap him, as he called it, but in spite of everything he grinned. "The next time," he said, "we plan to frame a jigger, you're gonna be the goat. Why, that bloke actually told me I was dumb! Now if it had been you "But I reckon," said he amusedly, "Mr. Kane is the guy as is dumb, else he would a knowed I was lyin' about them cattle, what with a thousand of 'em grazin' in plain view on that slope." |