Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 5, 1928 — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

714 Once in a great tor or a sheepherder. That’s while a bad man, hidin’ out. about all.” “ A fool for luck,” The Fox gloated to himself. ‘ This will be easy. Am I a foxy guy? Oh, no! Just dumb! Here I am in a lonely country with only one guy and his gun between me and buried gold. One gun and that'll be spiked, long before he'd have a chance to use it. Maybe I better fix that right now.” Aloud he said: “ Say, Jack. I no- tice you pack a gun. Do you guys use them much when you're out like this?” “Oh, once in awhile. I, that is, the boys kind o’ think I’m kind o* fast with mine. And so I keep in practicé when I’m alone.” ‘Wish yeh’d show me this here fast draw I read so much about, and some of the shootin’ you Western guys are supposed to do.” | Smiling Jack Peebles smiled quietly and dropped his right hand so that it hung limply at his side. “ Aw, there’s not much to it,” he smiled. ‘Then he suddenly leaned for- ward slightly, his right shoulder twitched, there was a swift dragging motion to his right arm and his gun was out and spitting a staccato stream of yellow flame. The Fox’s startled eyes were almost too slow to follow the speed-blurred motions, but they followed the flame and saw a big sugarpine cone ahead of them leap mysteriously, roll and leap again, each time Peebles fired. - ‘* My-y-y, gosh!” he breathed in awe- struck wonder. ‘‘ And yeh hit the mark each time.” The Fox knew his fastest gunplay was slow motion compared to this, but he had a trick that would beat even this speed. “ Say,” he asked diffidently, “ would —would yeh let me shoot that gun?” Jack Peebles assented cheerfully and reloaded the gun and handed it over. “Hop to it,” he grinned. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. The Fox selected a pine cone and purposely missed it at each shot. “That's how good J am,” he said ruefully. “ Well, I can clean it for yeh, anyway. And hand over some shells. I'll load it up.” He ejected the empty shells, but sur- reptitiously shpped them into a pocket. And after he had cleaned the weapon, he slipped the empty shells back into the cylinder. He carefully watched Jack as the Westerner took the gun, and his own hand was on the flat auto- matic pistol in his hip pocket; in case the substitution be noticed. But Jack did not glance at his gun. The Fox grinned behind Peebles’s back. “Oh, yeah, I’m a dumb ape,” he soliloquized. ‘‘ Me, I’m not a foxy euy, huh?” smiling Jack Peebles drove one mule ahead of him. The Sullivan mule came next and The Fox brought up the rear. “ He's still stubborn about this trip, for some reason,” Jack had explained the order of procedure. ‘‘ So this way you can keep him from turning back and I can watch the trail ahead of me.” The Fox had been nursing a vicious resentment because of the mule’s mur- derous enmity of the preceding night. And, now that conversation lagged, he evolved a method of persecution that pleased him. He found it very satisfactory fun to annoy the beast in many ways, chief among which was to tickle it in the tender flanks with a alder switch. This constant teasing won protests from the laden animal. It lashed out at times with a quick, murderous hoof, squealing. Once it kicked mighty with both hoofs and squealed in futile rage. Smiling Jack turned impatiently. “Aw, come on, Sullivan. Quit that now. You're going through with this trip till I find the gol—uh, you come on now. Wait a minute. I will fix yuh.” He took a small rope and tied the mule’s hackamore to the tail of the (E@) COPMICLOOOKS