That Slash Seven Kid

Johnny Lyle rode up to the bog camp at Seep Spring just before noon. Bert Ramsey, foreman of the Slash Seven outfit, glanced up and nodded briefly. Ramsey had troubles enough without having this brash youngster around.

“Say!” Johnny hooked a leg around the saddle horn. “Who’s this Hook Lacey?”

Ramsey stopped walking. “Hook Lacey,” he said, “is just about the toughest hombre around here, that’s all. He’s a rustler and a horse thief, and the fastest hand with a gun in this part of the country since Garrett shot Billy the Kid.”

“Ride alone?”

“Naw. He’s got him a gang nigh as mean as he is. Nobody wants any part of them.”

“You mean you let ’em get away with rustling? We’d never cotton to that back on the Nueces.”

Ramsey turned away irritably. “This ain’t the Nueces. If you want to be useful why don’t you go help Gar Mullins? The heel flies are driving cows into that quicksand faster’n he can drag ’em out.”

“Sure.” Johnny Lyle swung his leg back over the saddle. “Only I’d rather go after Lacey and his outfit.”

“What?” Ramsey turned on him. “Are you crazy? Those hombres, any one of ’em, would eat three like you for breakfast! If that bunch tackles us, we’ll fight, but we’ll not go huntin’ ’em!”

“You mean you don’t want me to.”

Ramsey was disgusted. What did this kid think he was doing, anyway? Like a fool kid, to make a big play in front of the hands, who were listening, to impress them how tough he was. Well, there was a way to stop that!

“Why, no,” he said dryly. “If you want to go after those outlaws after you help Gar get the cattle out of the quicksand, go ahead.”

Sundown was an hour past when Gar Mullins rode up to the corral at the Slash Seven. He stripped the saddle from his bronc, and after a quick splash and a wipe, he went in and dropped on a bench at the table.

Old Tom West, the owner, looked up.

“Where’s the kid?” he asked. “Where’s my nephew? Didn’t he come in?”

Gar was surprised. He glanced around the table.

“Shucks, ain’t he here? He left me about three o’clock or so. Said Bert told him he could get Hook Lacey if he finished in time.”

“What!” Tom West’s voice was a bull bellow. His under jaw shot out. “Bert, did you tell him that?”

Ramsey’s face grew red, then pale. “Now, look, boss,” he protested, “I figured he was talking to hear hisself make a big noise. I told him when he helped Gar get all them cows out, he could go after Lacey. I never thought he’d be fool enough to do it.”

“Aw!” Chuck Allen grinned. “He’s probably just rode into town! Where would he look for that outfit? And how could he find ’em when we ain’t been able to?”

“We ain’t looked any too hard,” Mullins said. “I know I ain’t.”

Tom West was silent. At last he spoke. “Nope, could never find ’em. But if anything happens to that boy, I’d never dare look my sister in the face again.” He glared at Bert Ramsey. “If anything does happen to him you’d better be halfway to the border before I hear it.”

Johnny Lyle was a cheerful, easygoing, free-talking youngster. He was pushing eighteen, almost a man by western standards, and as old as Billy the Kid when Billy was leading one of the forces in the Lincoln County War.

But Johnny was more than a brash, devil-may-care youngster. He had been born and raised on the Nueces, and had cut his riding teeth in the black chaparral between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. When his father died he had been fourteen, and his mother had moved East. Johnny had continued to hunt and wander in the woods of the Virginia mountains, but he had gone to New York several times each month.

In New York he had spent a lot of time in shooting galleries. In the woods he had hunted, tracked, and enjoyed fistic battles with rugged mountaineers. He had practiced drawing in front of a mirror until he was greased lightning with a gun. The shooting galleries gave him the marksmanship, and in the woods he had learned to become even more of a tracker than he had learned to be in the brush country of his father, to which he returned for his summer vacations.

Moreover, he had been listening as well as talking. Since he had been here on the Slash Seven, Gar Mullins had several times mentioned the rough country of Tierra Blanca Canyon as a likely hangout for the rustlers. It was believed they disposed of many stolen cattle in the mining camps to the north, having a steady market for beef at Victorio and in the vicinity.

Tom West loved his sister and had a deep affection for his friendly, likable nephew, but Johnny was well aware that Tom also considered him a guest, and not a hand. Mullins could have told him the kid was both a roper and a rider, and had a lot of cow savvy, but Mullins rarely talked and never volunteered anything.

Johnny naturally liked to be accepted as an equal of the others, and it irritated him that his uncle treated him like a visiting tenderfoot. And because he was irked, Johnny decided to show them, once and for all.

Bert Ramsey’s irritable toleration of him angered him.

Once he left Mullins, when the cattle were out of the quicksand, he headed across the country through Sibley Gap. He passed through the gap at sundown and made camp at a spring a few miles beyond. It could be no more than seven or eight miles farther to the canyon of which Mullins had talked, for he was already on the Tierra Blanca.

At daybreak he was riding. On a sudden inspiration, he swung north and cut over into the trail for Victorio.

The mining town had the reputation of being a rugged spot, and intended to keep it. The town was named after the Apache chieftain who had several times taken a bad whipping trying to capture the place. Several thousand miners, gamblers, gunmen, and outlaws made the place a good one to steer clear of. But Johnny Lyle had not forgotten the talk about Slash Seven beefs being sold there by rustlers.

         

Johnny swung down from his horse in front of the Gold Pan Restaurant and walked back to a corral where he saw several beef hides hanging. The brand was Seven Seventy-seven, but when he turned the hide over he could see it had been changed from a Slash Seven.

“Hey!” A bellow from the door brought his head up. “Git away from those hides!”

The man was big. He had shoulders like the top of an upright piano and a seamed and battered face.

Johnny walked to the next hide and the next while the man watched. Of the five fresh hides, three of them were Slash Sevens. He turned just in time to meet the rushing butcher.

Butch Jensen was big, but he was no mean rough-and-tumble scrapper. This cowhand was going to learn a thing or two.

“I told you to get away!” he shouted angrily, and drew back his fist.

That was his first mistake, for Johnny had learned a little about fighting while in New York. One thing was to hit from where your fist was. Johnny’s fist was rubbing his chin when Jensen drew his fist back, and Johnny punched straight and hard, stepping in with the left.

The punch was short, wicked, and explosive. Jensen’s lips mashed under hard knuckles and his hands came up. As they lifted, Johnny turned on the ball of his left foot and the toe of his right, and whipped a wicked right uppercut into Jensen’s huge stomach.

Butch gasped, and then Johnny hit him with both hands and he went down. Coolly, Johnny waited for him to get up. And he got up, which made his second mistake. He got up and lunged, head down. A straight left took him over the eyebrow, ripping a gash, and a right uppercut broke his nose. And then Johnny Lyle went to work. What followed was short, interesting, and bloody. When it was over Johnny stood back.

“Now,” he said, “get up and pay me sixty dollars for three Slash Seven steers.”

“Sixty!” Butch Jensen spluttered. “Steers are going for twelve, fifteen dollars!”

“The steers you butchered are going at twenty dollars,” Johnny replied calmly. “If I ever find another hide around here, the price will be thirty dollars.”

He turned away, but when he had taken three steps, he stopped. There was a good crowd around, and Johnny was young. This chance was too good to miss.

“You tell Hook Lacey,” he said, “that if he ever rustles another head of Slash Seven stock I’ll personally come after him!”

Johnny Lyle swaggered just a little as he walked into the Gold Pan and ordered a meal.

Yet as he was eating he began to get red around the ears. It had been a foolish thing to do, talking like that. Folks would think he was full of hot air.

Then he looked up into a pair of wide blue eyes. “Your order, sir?”

Two days later Chuck Allen rode up to the ranch house and swung down. Bert Ramsey got up hastily from his chair.

“Chuck,” he asked eagerly, “you see him?”

Chuck shook his head. “No,” he said, “I ain’t seen him, but I seen his trail. You better grab yourself a bronc, Bert, and start fogging it for the border. That kid’s really started something.”

The door opened and Tom West came out. “What’s up?” he demanded. His face was gray with worry. “Confound it, what’s the matter with these hands? Two days now I’ve had you all ridin’ to find that kid, and you can’t turn up a clue! Can’t you blind bats even find a tenderfoot kid?”

Chuck grew a little red around the ears, but his eyes twinkled as he looked at Bert out of the corner of his eyes. “I crossed his trail, boss, and she’s some trail, believe you me!”

West shoved Bert aside. “Don’t stand there like a slab-sided jackass! What happened? Where is he?”

         

Chuck was taking his time. “Well,” he said, “he was in Victorio. He rode in there the morning after he left the ranch. He found a couple of Slash Seven hides hanging on Butch Jensen’s fence. They’d been burned over into Seven Seventy-sevens, but he found ’em, and then Butch Jensen found him.”

“Oh, Lord!” West paled. “If that big brute hurt that kid, I’ll kill him!”

“You won’t need no war paint,” Chuck said, aggravatingly slow, “because the kid took Butch to a swell three-sided whipping. Folks say Johnny just lit all over him, swinging in every direction. He whipped Butch to a frazzle!”

“Chuck,” Bert burst out, “you’re crazy! Why, that kid couldn’t whip one side of—”

“But he did,” Chuck interrupted. “He not only beat Butch up, but he made him pay for three head at twenty dollars a head. He further told him that the next hide he found on Butch’s fence would cost him thirty dollars.”

West swallowed. “And Butch took it?”

“Boss, if you’d seen Butch you’d not ask that question. Butch took everything the kid could throw, which was plenty. Butch looks like he’d crawled face-first into a den of wildcats. But that ain’t all.”

They waited, staring at Chuck. He rolled a smoke, taking his time.

“He told everybody who was listening,” he finally said, “and probably three or four of ’em was friends of Lacey, that if Hook rustled one more head of our stock, he was going to attend to him personal.”

West groaned and Bert Ramsey swallowed. But Chuck was not through.

“Then the kid goes into the Gold Pan. He ain’t there more’n thirty minutes before he has that little blond peacherino crazy about him. Mary, she’s so crazy about that kid she can’t even get her orders straight.”

“Chuck,” West demanded, “where’s Johnny now? If you know, tell me!”

Chuck Allen grew sober. “That’s the trouble, boss. I don’t know. But when he left Victorio he headed back into the mountains. And that was yesterday afternoon.”

Bert Ramsey’s face was pale. He liked his job on the Slash Seven and knew West was quite capable of firing him as he had promised. Moreover, he was genuinely worried. That he had considered the boss’s nephew a nuisance was true, but anybody who could whip Butch Jensen, and who could collect for stolen cattle, was no tenderfoot, but a man to ride the river with. But to ride into the hills after Hook Lacey, after whipping Jensen, threatening Hook, and then walking off with the girl Hook wanted—that was insanity.

Whipping Jensen was something, but Hook Lacey wouldn’t use his fists. He would use a gun, and he had killed seven men, at least. And he would have plenty of help.

West straightened. “Bert,” he said harshly, “you get Gar Mullins, Monty Reagan, and Bucky McCann and ride after that kid. And don’t come back without him!”

Ramsey nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I sure will get him.”

“How about me?” Chuck asked. “Can I go, too?”

At the very hour the little cavalcade was leaving the ranch, Johnny Lyle was lying on a ridge looking down into the upper part of the Tierra Blanca Canyon. A thin trail of smoke was lifting from the canyon, and he could see approximately where the camp was. He lay high on the rugged side of Seven Brothers Mountain, with the camp almost fifteen hundred feet below.

“All right, boy,” he told himself, “you’ve made your brags. Now what are you going to do?”

North of the camp the canyon ran due north and south, but just below it took a sharp bend to the west, although a minor canyon trailed off south for a short distance in less rugged country. Their hideout, Johnny could see, was well chosen. There was obviously a spring, judging from the way their camp was located and the looks of the trees and brush, and there was a way out up the canyon to the north.

On the south, they could swing west around the bend. Johnny could see that this trail branched, and the branch beyond also branched. In taking any route they were well covered, with plenty of chance of a getaway unseen, or for defense if they so desired.

         

Yet if they had to ride north up the canyon there was no way out for several miles. With a posse closing in from the south, one man could stop their escape to the north. Their camp at the spring, however, was so situated that it was nearly impossible for them to be stopped from going south by anything less than a large posse. It was fairly obvious, though, that if they were attacked they would ride south.

The idea that came to him was the wildest kind of a gamble, but he decided to take the chance, for there was a possibility that it might work. To plan ahead was impossible. All he could do was start the ball rolling and take advantage of what opportunity offered.

Mounting his horse, he rode along a bench of Seven Brothers and descended the mountain on the southwest. In the canyon to the west he hastily gathered sticks and built a fire, laying a foundation of crossed dry sticks of some size, gathered from canyon driftwood and arranged in such a way as to burn for some time. The fire was built among rocks and on dry sand so there was no way for it to spread, and no way for it to be seen, though the rising smoke would be visible.

Circling farther south and east, he built three more fires. His hope was that the smoke from all of them would be seen by the outlaws, who would deduce that a posse, having approached during the night, now was preparing breakfast, with every way out blocked. If they decided this, and without a careful scouting expedition, which would consume time, the outlaws would surely retreat up the canyon to the north.

Johnny Lyle worked fast and he worked hard, adding a few sticks of green wood to increase the smoke. When his last fire had been built, he mounted again and rode north on the east side of Stoner Mountain. Now the mountain was between him and the outlaws and he had no idea of what they would do. His gamble was that by riding north, he could hit the canyon of the Tierra Blanca after it swung east, and intercept the escaping outlaws.

He rode swiftly, aware that he could travel faster than they, but with no idea whether or not they had seen his fires and were moving. His first idea was to ride into the bottom of the canyon and meet them face-to-face, but Hook Lacey was a rugged character, as were his men, and the chances were they would elect to fight. He chose the safer way and crawled down among some rocks.

An hour had passed before they appeared. He knew none of them, but rightly guessed the swarthy man with the hook nose was Lacey. He let them get within thirty yards, then yelled:

“All right, boys! Drop your guns and get your hands up! We’ve got you bottled!”

There was an instant of frozen silence, then Lacey’s gun leaped to his hand. He let out a wild yell and the riders charged right up the slope and at Johnny Lyle.

Suddenly panic-stricken, Johnny got off a quick shot that burned the hindquarters of Lacey’s plunging horse and hit the pommel of the rider following him. Glancing off, it ripped the following man’s arm. Then the riders were right at him.

Johnny sprang aside, working the lever of his Winchester, but they were too close. Wildly he grabbed iron, and then took a wicked blow on the skull from a clubbed six-shooter. He went down, stunned but not out, and managed a quick shot with his six-gun that dropped a man. And then he was up and running. He had only time to grab his Winchester and dive into the rocks.

Cut off from his horse, he was in desperate straits. It would be a matter of minutes, or even seconds, before they would realize only one man had been shooting. Then they would come back.

Scrambling into the rocks, he worked himself higher, striving for a vantage point. They had seen him, though, and a rifle bullet ricocheted off the rocks and whined nastily past his ear. He levered three fast shots from his rifle at the scattering riders. Then the area before him was deserted, the morning warm and still, and the air was empty.

         

His head throbbed, and when he put a hand to his skull he found that despite his protecting hat, his scalp had been split. Only the fact that the rider had been going away when he fired, and that the felt hat he was wearing was heavy, had saved him from a broken skull.

A sudden move brought a twinge. Looking down, he saw blood on the side of his shirt. Opening it, he saw that a bullet—from where he had no idea—had broken the skin along his side.

Hunkered down behind some rocks, he looked around. His position was fairly secure, though they could approach him from in front and on the right. His field of fire to the front was good, but if they ever got on the cliff across the canyon, he was finished.

What lay behind him he did not know, but the path he had taken along a ledge seemed to dwindle out on the cliff face. He had ammunition, but no water, and no food.

Tentatively he edged along, as if to move forward. A rifle shot splashed splinters in his face and he jerked back, stung.

“Boy,” he said to himself, “you’ve played hob!”

Suddenly he saw a man race across the open in front of him and he fired a belated shot that did nothing but hurry the man. Obviously that man was heading for the cliff across the canyon. Johnny Lyle reloaded his Winchester and checked his pistol. With both loaded he was all set, and he looked behind him at the path. Then he crawled back. As he had suspected, the path dwindled out and there was no escape.

The only way out was among the boulders to his right, from where without doubt the outlaws were also approaching. His rifle ready, he crouched, waiting. Then he came up with a lunge and darted for the nearest boulders. A bullet whipped by his ear, another ricocheted from a rock behind him. Then he hit the sand sliding and scrambled at once to a second boulder.

Someone moved ahead of him, and raising himself to his knees, Johnny shucked his pistol and snapped a quick shot.

There was a brief silence, then a sudden yell and a sound of horses. Instantly there was another shout and a sound of running. Warily Johnny looked out. A stream of riders was rushing up the canyon and the outlaws were riding back down the canyon at breakneck speed.

Carefully, he got to his feet. Gar Mullins was first to see him and he yelled. The others slid to a halt. Limping a little on a bruised leg, Johnny walked toward the horsemen.

“Man,” he said, “am I ever glad to see you fellers!”

Ramsey stared at him, sick with relief. “What got into you?” he demanded gruffly. “Trying to tackle that bunch by your lonesome?”

Johnny Lyle explained his fires and the idea he’d had. “Only trouble was,” he said ruefully, “they rushed me instead of dropping their guns, but it might’ve worked!”

Gar Mullins bit off a chew and glanced at Chuck with twinkling eyes. “Had it been me, it would’ve worked, kid.” He glanced at Bert. “Reckon we should finish it now they’re on the run?”

“We better let well enough alone,” Ramsey said. “If they think there’s a posse down canyon, they’ll hole up and make a scrap of it. We’d have to dig ’em out one by one.”

“I’d rather wait and get ’em in the open,” Monty Reagan said honestly. “That Lacey’s no bargain.” He looked with real respect at Lyle. “Johnny, I take my hat off to you. You got more nerve than me, to tackle that crowd single-handed.”

Bucky McCann came up. “He got one, too,” he said, gloating. “Pete Gabor’s over there with a shot through the head.”

“That was luck,” Johnny said. “They come right at me and I just cut loose.”

“Get any others?”

“Winged one, but it was a ricochet.”

Gar spat. “They count,” he said, chuckling a little. “We better get out of here.”

         

Considerably chastened, Johnny Lyle fell in alongside of Gar and they started back. Several miles farther along, when they were riding through Sibley Gap, Gar said:

“Old Tom was fit to be tied, kid. You shouldn’t ought to go off like that.”

“Aw,” Johnny protested, “everybody was treating me like a goose-headed tenderfoot! I got tired of it.”

The week moved along slowly. Johnny Lyle’s head stopped aching and his side began to heal. He rode out to the bog camp every day and worked hard. He was, Ramsey admitted, “a hand.” Nothing more was said about his brush with the Lacey gang except for a brief comment by Bucky McCann.

There was talk of a large band of Mexican bandits raiding over the border.

“Shucks,” Bucky said carelessly, “nothing to worry about! If they get too rambunctious we’ll sic Johnny at ’em! That’ll learn ’em!”

But Johnny Lyle was no longer merely the boss’s nephew. He was a hand, and he was treated with respect, and given rough friendship.

Nothing more was heard of Lacey. The story had gone around, losing nothing in the telling. The hands of the Slash Seven cow crowd found the story too good to keep. A kid from the Slash Seven, they said, had run Lacey all over the rocks, Lacey and all of his outfit.

Hook Lacey heard the story and flushed with anger. When he thought of the flight of his gang up the canyon from a lot of untended fires, and then their meeting with the Lyle kid, who single-handed not only had stood them off but had killed one man and wounded another, his face burned. If there was one thing he vowed to do, it was to get Johnny Lyle.

Nobody had any actual evidence on Lacey. He was a known rustler, but it had not been proved. Consequently, Lacey showed up around Victorio whenever he was in the mood. And he seemed to be in the mood a great deal after the scrap in Tierra Blanca Canyon. The payoff came suddenly and unexpectedly.

Gar Mullins had orders to ride to Victorio and check to see if a shipment of ammunition and equipment intended for the Slash Seven had arrived. Monty Reagan was to go along, but Monty didn’t return from the bog camp in time, so Lyle asked his uncle if he could go.

Reluctantly, Tom West told him to go ahead. “But don’t you go asking for trouble!” he said irritably. But in his voice was an underlying note of pride, too. After all, he admitted, the kid came of fighting stock. “If anybody braces you, that’s different!”

Victorio was basking in a warm morning sun when the two cowhands rode into the street. Tying up at the Gold Pan, Johnny left Gar to check on the supplies while he went to get a piece of apple pie. Not that he was fooling Gar, or even himself. It was that blonde behind the counter that he wanted to see.

Hook Lacey was drinking coffee when Johnny entered. Lacey looked up, then set his cup down hard, almost spilling the coffee.

Mary smiled quickly at Johnny, then threw a frightened look at Lacey.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said, her voice almost failing her. “I—I didn’t expect you.”

Johnny was wary. He had recognized Lacey at once, but his uncle had said he wasn’t to look for trouble.

“Got any apple pie?” he asked.

She placed a thick piece before him, then filled a cup with coffee. Johnny grinned at her and began to eat. “Mmm!” he said, liking the pie. “You make this?”

“No, my mother did.”

“She sure makes good pie!” Johnny was enthusiastic. “I’ve got to get over here more often!”

“Surprised they let you get away from home,” Lacey said, “but I see you brought a nursemaid with you.”

Now, Tom West had advised Johnny to keep out of trouble, and Johnny, an engaging and easygoing fellow, intended to do just that, up to a point. This was the point.

“I didn’t need a nursemaid over on the Tierra Blanca,” he said cheerfully. “From the way you hightailed over them rocks, I figured it was you needed one!”

Lacey’s face flamed. He came off the bench, his face dark with anger. “Why, you—”

Johnny looked around at him. “Better not start anything,” he said. “You ain’t got a gang with you.”

Lacey was in a quandary. Obviously the girl was more friendly to Johnny than to him. That meant that he could expect no help from her should she be called on to give testimony following a killing. If he drew first he was a gone gosling, for he knew enough about old Tom West to know the Slash Seven outfit would never stop hunting if this kid was killed in anything but a fair fight. And the kid wasn’t even on his feet.

“Listen!” he said harshly. “You get out of town! If you’re in this town one hour from now, I’ll kill you!”

Slamming down a coin on the counter, he strode from the restaurant.

“Oh, Johnny!” Mary’s face was white and frightened. “Don’t stay here! Go now! I’ll tell Gar where you are. Please go!”

“Go?” Johnny was feeling a fluttering in his stomach, but it angered him that Mary should feel he had to leave. “I will not go! I’ll run him out of town!”

Despite her pleading, he turned to the door and walked outside. Gar Mullins was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lacey. But a tall, stooped man with his arm in a sling stood across the street, and Johnny Lyle guessed at once that he was a lookout, that here was the man he had winged in the canyon fight. And winged though the man was, it was his left arm, and his gun hung under his right hand.

Johnny Lyle hesitated. Cool common sense told him that it would be better to leave. Actually, Uncle Tom and the boys all knew he had nerve enough, and it was no cowardice to dodge a shoot-out with a killer like Hook Lacey. The boys had agreed they wouldn’t want to tangle with him.

Just the same, Johnny doubted that any one of them would dodge a scrap if it came to that. And all his Texas blood and training rebelled against the idea of being run out of town. Besides, there was Mary. It would look like he was a pure D coward to run out now.

Yet what was the alternative? Within an hour, Hook Lacey would come hunting him. Hook would choose the ground, place, and time of meeting. And Hook was no fool. He knew all the tricks.

What, then, to do?

The only thing, Johnny Lyle decided, was to meet Lacey first. To hunt the outlaw down and force him into a fight before he was ready. There was nothing wrong with using strategy, with using a trick. Many gunfighters had done it. Billy the Kid had done it against the would-be killer Joe Grant. Wes Hardin had used many a device.

Yet what to do? And where? Johnny Lyle turned toward the corral with a sudden idea in mind. Suppose he could appear to have left town? Wouldn’t that lookout go to Hook with the news? Then he could come back, ease up to Lacey suddenly, and call him, then draw.

Gar Mullins saw Johnny walking toward the corral, then he spotted the lookout. Mullins intercepted Johnny just as he stepped into the saddle.

“What’s up, kid? You in trouble?”

Briefly Johnny explained. Gar listened and, much to Johnny’s relief, registered no protest. “All right, kid. You got it to do if you stay in this country, and your idea’s a good one. You ever been in a shoot-out before?”

“No, I sure haven’t.”

“Now, look. You draw natural, see? Don’t pay no mind to being faster’n he is. Chances are you ain’t anywheres close to that. You figure on getting that first shot right where it matters, you hear? Shoot him in the body, right in the middle. No matter what happens, hit him with the first shot, you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

         

Johnny felt sick at his stomach and his mouth was dry, his heart pounding.

“I’ll handle that lookout, so don’t pay him no mind.” Gar looked up. “You a good shot, Johnny?”

“On a target I can put five shots in a playing card.”

“That’s all right, but this card’ll be shooting back. But don’t you worry. You choose your own spot for it.”

“Wait!” Johnny had an idea. “Listen, you have somebody get word to him that Butch Jensen wants to see him. I’ll be across the street at the wagon yard. When he comes up, I’ll step out.”

He rode swiftly out of town. Glancing back, he saw the lookout watching. Gar Mullins put a pack behind his own saddle and apparently readied his horse for the trail. Then he walked back down the street.

He was just opposite the wagon yard when he saw the lookout stop on a street corner, looking at him. At the same instant, Hook Lacey stepped from behind a wagon. Across the street was Webb Foster, another of the Lacey crowd. There was no mistaking their purpose, and they had him boxed!

Gar Mullins was thirty-eight, accounted an old man on the frontier, and he had seen and taken part in some wicked gun battles. Yet now he saw his position clearly. This was it, and he wasn’t going to get out of this one. If Johnny had been with him—but Johnny wouldn’t be in position for another ten minutes.

Hook Lacey was smiling. “You were in the canyon the other day, Gar,” he said triumphantly. “Now you’ll see what it’s like. We’re going to kill you, Gar. Then we’ll follow that kid and get him. You ain’t got a chance, Gar.”

Mullins knew it, yet with a little time, even a minute, he might have.

“Plannin’ on wiping out the Slash Seven, Hook?” he drawled. “That’s what you’ll have to do if you kill that kid. He’s the old man’s nephew.”

“Ain’t you worried about yourself, Gar?” Lacey sneered. “Or are you just wet-nursing that kid?”

Gar’s seamed and hard face was set. His eyes flickered to the lookout, whose hand hovered only an inch above his gun. And to Webb, with his thumb hooked in his belt. There was no use waiting. It would be minutes before the kid would be set.

And then the kid’s voice sounded, sharp and clear.

“I’ll take Lacey, Gar! Get that lookout!”

Hook Lacey whipped around, drawing as he turned. Johnny Lyle, who had left his horse and hurried right back, grabbed for his gun. He saw the big, hard-faced man before him, saw him clear and sharp. Saw his hand flashing down, saw the broken button on his shirtfront, saw the Bull Durham tag from his pocket, saw the big gun come up. But his own gun was rising, too.

The sudden voice, the turn, all conspired to throw Lacey off, yet he had drawn fast and it was with shock that he saw the kid’s gun was only a breath slower. It was that which got him, for he saw that gun rising and he shot too quick. The bullet tugged at Johnny’s shirt collar, and then Johnny, with that broken button before his eyes, fired.

Two shots, with a tiny but definite space between them, and then Johnny looked past Lacey at the gun exploding in Webb Foster’s hands. He fired just as Gar Mullins swung his gun to Webb. Foster’s shot glanced off the iron rim of a wagon wheel just as Gar’s bullet crossed Johnny’s in Webb Foster’s body.

The outlaw crumpled slowly, grabbed at the porch awning, then fell off into the street.

         

Johnny stood very still. His eyes went to the lookout, who was on his hands and knees on the ground, blood dripping in great splashes from his body. Then they went to Hook Lacey. The broken button was gone, and there was an edge cut from the tobacco tag. Hook Lacey was through, his chips all cashed. He had stolen his last horse.

Gar Mullins looked at Johnny Lyle and grinned weakly. “Kid,” he said softly, walking toward him, hand outstretched, “we make a team. Here on out, it’s saddle partners, hey?”

“Sure, Gar.” Johnny did not look again at Lacey. He looked into the once bleak blue eyes of Mullins. “I ride better with a partner. You got that stuff for the ranch?”

“Yeah.”

“Then if you’ll pick up my horse in the willows, yonder, I’ll say good-bye to Mary. We’d best be getting back. Uncle Tom’ll be worried.”

Gar Mullins chuckled, walking across the street, arm in arm with Johnny.

“Well, he needn’t be,” Gar said. “He needn’t be.”