Adventure Magazine Cover — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

The Warriors One night a number of the smaller stock- men surrounded a house where the cattle king was visiting in Roswell. It was their intention to brand him with one of his own irons and earmark him like one of his own steers; and they had the fire going before Chisum’s host got wind of what was taking place. He managed to slip his guest out of the house and mount him on a fleet horse at the last moment, and the old Indian fighter raced away with a dozen pursuers hot on his trail. In Lincoln Sheriff Brady swore in new deputies: Johnny Riley, who was re- cruiting men for Murphy & Dolan up in Santa Fé, sent a number of Panhandle war- riors down the Pecos. In reviewing events after all these years it is easy to see that the aggressive had passed from the hands of young John S. Tunstall’s avengers; they were fighting on the defensive now. A band of thirty-five gunfighters, for the most part Texans who had hired out under the Murphy & Dolan banner, started from ‘the valley toward Lincoln with the idea of ambushing Billy the Kid and several of his warriors who were in the county seat. They were resting at the Spring ranch on the river Bonita late in the afternoon. | Frank Coé and his partner Bud Saunders came riding out from John Chisum’s ranch, with Chisum’s foreman, Frank McNab. They too were on their way to Lincoln, and they had no idea of the presence of these enemies. They traveled up the Pecos and turned off to the west at Roswell, crossing the wide mesa and coming down into the cafion of the Bonita. They were passing the Spring ranch when the flat report of a rifle sounded among the adobe buildings below the road. Coe’s horse fell dead under him. Now the other two ponies wheeled vio- lently and threw their riders in the dusty road. A second shot came from a bunch of cottonwoods; and Saunders, who was scrambling to his feet, collapsed with a bullet through his body. McNab turned and ran up the hill toward a narrow cafion which came down to the main stream. Coe lingered trying to catch one of the horses. Dust spurted about his feet, and the voices of the rifles arose in a venomous chorus among the ranch buildings Several forms showed crossing the road be- low him, bent low with running. He let the pony go and struck off for the of the Pecos 37 arroyo where his companion was already vanishing; but the bullets were coming thick and there was a considerable interval of open ground to cross. He saw a sinkhole which last Summer’s rains had gullied out from the side hill and plunged into it. McNab found a cluster of boulders near the mouth of the cafion and dropped behind it. The men from Texas crept up the hill on either side of the gully, keeping to such cover as they could. They climbed above him and they rained their bullets down upon him. He stood them off for something like half an hour with his six-shooter before one of them got him through the heart. Coe crouched in his sinkhole fighting it out with Bob Ollinger, who lay behind a cluster of rocks on the hillside below him. ‘The two men knew each other well and had often practised pistol-shooting together. So now they took it slowly, using plenty of care not to show themselves before they fred. Between their shots they heard the rattle of the rifles where McNab was dying hard Over in the cafion. Once Ollinger raised his head a little farther than usual, and Coe’s bullet passed through his hat. They had exchanged five shots apiece when a fifteen- year-old boy who had come up from the ranch-house with an old Sharps single-shot buffalo gun, gained a position directly above the sinkhole and opened fire. Coe felt what seemed like a rough hand plowing through his hair. His hat fell at his feet with a big hole in its crown. Warren Ollinger, who had just witnessed McNab’s death in the cafion, came to join his brother Bob and got a glimpse of the cornered man. “——! ‘That’s Frank Coe!’ he shouted. “Hold up. Don’t shoot, you fellows. Now, Frank, you come out and I’ll stay with you. Pll give you my word, there’s no one will hurt you. Throw away that six-shooter; that’s all I’m asking.” Coe surrendered, and the party rode on the next morning to Lincoln; but word of their coming had preceded them, and they found Billy the Kid and his companions entrenched in Alex MacSwain’s big adobe house. They took their prisoner to the Murphy & Dolan store and placed Warren Ollinger on guard over him in an up-stairs room. Then they went outside to re- connoiter. The two men looked each other in the CORmMICLOOokKs (C@