Fifteen Western Tales, March 1954 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SIX-GUNS SAY aoe | es he got there at all, he did not much care. Now he was following the crest of a high, timbered hill and was preparing to swing down into the valley when he came to the edge of a clearing. He drew rein sharply as he saw that he had come upon a road and that a stagecoach stood at. the summit of the hill, the horses blowing and resting after the hard climb. The driver slouched sleepily in his seat, and even as Clay Evers watched, a woman stepped from the coach and walked up and down at the edge of the road. A feeling of pain gripped Evers’s stomach as he studied this woman. She was of me- dium height, and as she took off her hat and swung it at her side, he saw that her hair was a coppery red. She wore a long blue dress trimmed in white, and in one hand carried a pair of white gloves. Her walk combined an easy grace and youthful vigor, and though Evers could not make out her facial features clearly, he sensed that she was pretty. Clay Evers. had not so much as seen a woman in over two months, and as he ‘watched this one now, beads of perspira- tion appeared on his forehead despite the coolness of the morning. It was as if some- how she symbolized all that was anges in his bleak, solitary life. He imagined that she was going to the next town to meet her husband, and for a moment Evers was consumed with an un- reasoning envy. That. man would take her in his arms and kiss her. He would sit at a table with her and they would eat to- gether and talk about small, unimportant things. At night he would lie beside her and feel the softness of her. The stagecoach driver said, “We'll go now, Miss Raines.” The woman stepped back into the coach, and in an instant the stage was down the hill and out of sight around a curve. Clay Evers sat his horse very still until he could no longer hear the sound of the stagecoach wheels, and then, without knowing why % XY he did so, he moved forward to the place where the woman had been. In the red dust of the road he saw wheel tracks and shoe prints, and then as he was turning back to the timber, he saw something else— something white—half covered with the dust pushed up by the coach’s wheels. Evers swung down and picked it up, and it was a white glove, soiled now to a reddish brown. He held it for a long mo- ment and then dropped it back to the ground. But before he remounted, he picked it up again, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. ‘ He did not know why he did this. did not even think about it until he realized that he was riding for the town which must lie ahead. He had not ridden on a road or into a town in months, but now he was. He had to sleep in a decent bed just once more, he told himself. He had to eat a decent meal and drink a drink and listen to men talk. He had to have some clothes that weren't coming apart, and his horse needed a shoe. And Clay Evers knew that he was lying to himself. He was riding into town to see the woman from the stagecoach again and to talk to her a few seconds when he gave her her glove. It was a crazy thing to do, a damn fool thing to do. He admitted this to himself—and he kept riding. He thought, Maybe I'll have some luck, ND HE knew that he Seitions For years Evers had lived by his gun as trail town marshal, range detective, some- times as private gunhand for big cattle out- fits terrorized by rustlers. He had had some close calls in those years, and they had brought him to believe in hunches and breaks and runs of luck. : He was in a run of bad luck, and he had decided that it would keep on being bad now until the end. It had started two years ago when he had decided to quit his gun work and settle down to a life of ranching. He had picked the Seven Rivers country, CONMGCIOOLK<S } (F@) Pe sy en: [28 31 r , He im