Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 1, 1922 — page 147: what you’re looking at

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

THE GUN-FANNER. curious—an almost drunken assurance that he had finished a great fight. CHAPTER XXVIII. MY DESPERADO. HEN Nan returned to the canon after the stampede was over, it looked as if a cyclone had passed through it. The chaparral was trampled flat on the sand, the barrel cactus and so- juaro had been mowed down, mesquite up- rooted. The ore-crusher was a mass of splinters; the hut had collapsed like a pa- per box, and everywhere, like soldiers strewn on a battlefield, lay the dying year- lings, and trampled steers. As the girl raced her horse toward what remained of the hut, the sheriff and his posse clattered down from the bluffs and joined her. From the lower end of the canon Scrub Hazen and his cow-punchers were coming. They reached the shack al- most simultaneously, and Nan Harvess saw the face of her foster father, grim, stern, woebegone. Scrub was not disposed, however, to re- gard the stampede as an ultimate disaster to his herd. The dead steers were almost negligible compared to the mass of the herd, and he realized that now he had a two days’ ride rounding up the scattered drags. “We got to get to work directly, now, sheriff,” he said. ‘‘ Once we tally up and find out who’s dead, we got to get busy punching the damned brutes together agin.” “Don’t appear like there’s anybody dead,”’ Pickering said. Saul Meakin had dragged himself to his feet as the riders approached. He leaned against the pile of débris and waved the sheriff to him. ‘‘ He took my gun, sheriff,” Meakin cried out weakly. ‘‘ What more he’ll do I don’t know, but I’m warning you he’ll fight to the last ditch.” The girl dismounted and ran to the wrecked hut. She found Cal partly hidden in the débris. “Come here and help,” she said, turning to the men. Cal was lying on the warped floor, a hand hanging limp on the boards, his 937 wounded leg stretched out and pinned by the fallen wall. Pickering took his gun away, broke it, and found it empty. Scrub and his cow- men lifted the mass of boards and dragged Cal out. The girl knelt immediately to his side. “Sheriff, you better take care of him now that you have him,” Scrub said. “I got to be goin’, My drags will be spreadin’ out into Mexico if I don’t hurry.” ‘What should I do with him now that I got him?” the sheriff asked. Every man turned to look at Pickering, sensing a new note. “* What should you do with hire?” Scrub shouted. ‘‘ You should give him justice for his deeds. ‘That’s what you should do.” The girl who had been tearing the khaki from Cal’s wounded leg looked up sharply. ‘“‘ You come here, Daddy Hazen, and help me bandage this wound.” “You're crazy, gal! His wound ain’t goin’ to trouble him when he’s swingin’!”’ Sheriff Pickering came over to the girl’s side. ‘‘I guess you didn’t see much of the stampede down to your end of the canon, aye, Scrub?” ““What’s the stampede got to do with this hellbender?”’ “* He saved your gal’s life—ridin’ into the thick of it. Maybe that’s got something to do with it—aye?” “‘ He saved Nan’s life?”’ Scrub asked be- wildered. ‘“‘Of course if you want to ax him to look up a tree because of his stealin’ two of your rope-hosses, all right. That’s the law hereabouts. But I don’t reckon these here men can get their heart into the job any more.”’ ‘Daddy Hazen,” the girl cried, with an excitement that amounted almost to fero- city, “‘ you have nothing to say about those horses. They are mine. I rode with him. You can’t call that horse stealing. Some one give me a flask of whisky—and give it quick!” Pickering proffered her his flask, and she lifted Cal’s head, holding the drink to his lips. ‘Tl be damned to hell!” Scrub said des- perately. ‘If he akcherly rode into that comicloool C©