The Lawless West Read Free Page B

some of his comrades rushed to him, and helped him up. Then, black in the face and cursing savagely, he jerked for his gun. He got it out, but, before he could level it, two of his friends seized him, and wrestled with him, talking in earnest alarm. But Jones fought them.
    “Ya damn’ fool!” finally yelled one of them. “He’s not packin’ a gun. It’d be murder.”
    That brought Jones to his senses, although certainly not to calmness.
    “Mister Nevada…next time you hit town you’d better come heeled,” he hissed between his teeth.
    “Shore. An’ thet’ll be bad for you, Beady,” replied Nevada curtly.
    Panhandle and Andy drew Nevada out to the street, where they burst into mingled excitement and anger. Their swift strides gravitated toward the saloon across from the post office.
    When they emerged sometime later, they were arm in arm, and far from steady on their feet. They paraded up the one main street of Beacon, not in the least conspicuous on a Saturday afternoon. As they were neither hilarious nor dangerous, nobody paid any attention to them. Springer, their boss, met them, gazed at them casually, and passed without sign of recognition. If he had studied the boys closely, he might have received an impression that they were hugging a secret, as well as each other.
    In due time the trio presented themselves at the railroad station. Tex was there, nervously striding up and down the platform, now and then looking at his watch. The afternoon train was nearly due. At the hitching rail below the platform stood a new buckboard and a rather spirited team of horses.
    The boys, coming across the wide square, encountered this evidence of Tex’s extremity, and struck a posture before it.
    “Livery stable outfit, by gosh,” said Andy.
    “Son-of-a-gun if it ain’t,” added Panhandle with a huge grin.
    “Thish here Tex spendin’ his money royal,” agreed Nevada.
    Then Tex espied them. He stared. Suddenly he jumped straight up. After striding to the edge of the platform, with face as red as a beet, he began to curse them.
    “Whash mashes, ole pard?” asked Andy, who appeared a little less stable than his comrades.
    Tex’s reply was another volley of expressive profanity. And he ended with: “…you-all yellow quitters to get drunk an’ leave me in the lurch. But you gotta get away from heah. I shore won’t have you aboot when thet train comes.”
    “Tex, your boss is in town lookin’ for you,” said Nevada.
    “I don’t care a damn,” replied Tex with fire in his eye.
    “Wait till he shees you,” gurgled Andy.
    “Tex, he jest ambled past us like we wasn’t gen-nelmen,” added Panhandle. “Never sheen us a-tall.”
    “No wonder, you drunken cowpunchers,” declared Tex in disgust. “Now I tell you to clear out of heah.”
    “But, pard, we just want to shee you meet our Jane from Missouri,” replied Andy.
    “If you-all ain’t a lot of four-flushes, I’ll eat my chaps!” burst out Tex hotly.
    Just then a shrill whistle announced the train.
    “You can sneak off now,” he went on, “an’ leave me to face the music. I always knew I was the only gentleman in Springer’s outfit.”
    The three cowboys did not act upon Tex’s sarcastic suggestion, but they hung back, looking at once excited and sheepish and hugely delighted.
    The long gray dusty train pulled into the station, and stopped. There was only one passenger for Springer—a woman—and she alighted from the coach near where the cowboys stood waiting. She was not tall and she was much too slight for the heavy valise the porter handed to her.
    Tex strode grandly toward her.
    “Miss…Miss Stacey, ma’am?” he asked, removing his sombrero.
    “Yes,” she replied. “Are you Mister Owens?”
    Evidently the voice was not what Tex had expected and it disconcerted him.
    “No, ma’am, I…I’m not Mister Owens,” he said. “Please let me take your bag…I’m Tex Dillon, one of Springer’s cowboys. An’ I’ve come to meet