Pete snapped a match, lit his freshly rolled cigaret and puffed out a cloud of smoke. Over the heads of the crowd, he saw Sime’s big gray hat. Snake Furgeson was coming.
Pete’s nerves began to tingle, his jaw muscles hardened. He saw Snake moving toward him. The crowd opened up a path and then made for the doors. The bartender disappeared behind his mahogany fortification.
“Howdy, Snake Furgeson,” Pete made a futile attempt at one of his friendly grins.
Old Bill Tope, over against his post, groaned aloud. Petey Malone had sure put the showdown up to Snake. But he was standing there with his right fist shoved down into his pants pocket, when it should have been fumbling at his left vest pocket right above his gun.
“I told you that—”
“That you were coming at me smoking, on sight. Well—start smoking!” Pete leaned forward, tense, and Snake went for his gun.
Crack! Petey Malone had jerked his right hand from his pants pocket. His little automatic had spit a bullet through Snake Furgeson’s right forearm as he made his cross draw.
Snake’s heavy gun roared harmlessly, jetting its slug through the floor. Another sharp crack, as Pete drilled Snake high up on the right shoulder. Then came a second roaring of a heavy gun.
Old Bill Tope scrambled to his feet. His chair had been kicked from under him. Close beside Tope, one of Snake Furgeson’s followers was twisting and crumpling to the floor, a heavy bullet through his thigh. Tope booted a drawn gun from the falling man’s hand, and wheeled with his own gun ready. Then he stopped, staring, his mouth agape.
Petey Malone was leaning lazily against the bar once more. His right hand had slipped back into his pants pocket; while in his left was his new six-gun, swinging back and forth, threatening the scanty remains of the crowd.
That last roar had come from Pete Malone’s big gun. He had gone for it backhanded, with his left, and dropped the man who was planning to put Tope out of business.
Snake, himself, was still on his feet. A thirty-two bullet won’t floor a big husky man. His right arm hung useless at his side; his gun was on the floor. His left hand was clapped over the little hole high up in his right shoulder.
Old Bill Tope hitched his belt a bit higher. He high-stepped toward Snake, like a banty rooster.
“Well, Snake, looks as how yo’ started smokin’
once too offen. An’ no more pottin’ at us from th’ brush. Savvy? ’Cause we got up-to-date artillery, what shoots right or left, back’ards or for’ards.”
Snake began backing toward the side door. Tope, now satisfied that Snake’s nerve was gone, let out a yell, slipped his gun and fired through the floor. Snake dove out the door.
“Come on, Bill. Snake ain’t got no fangs no more. Petey’s done busted ’em off right down to th’ roots.”
“Eh-heh, Sime. Just a minute. I want Petey to write a letter for me an’ order me one of them there pocket pistols like his’n. Danged thing might come handy some time. ’Cause I’m gettin’ ’long in years, gettin’ kinda slow on th’ draw.”
EASY MONEY, by Ben Frank
Money being something we can always use here on the WL range, it is my old saddle-mate and partner, Wintergreen Wilson, who thinks up the idea of us learning dudes to be cowboys by a correspondence course. So we raise all the cash we can and advertise in the big city Sunday papers. HOW TO BE A COWBOY IN TEN EASY LESSONS BY MAIL, the ads say. SEND TEN DOLLARS CASH PRONTO!
Wednesday morning at the breakfast table, Wintergreen sops up the last of his molasses with a biscuit and says, “Lywell, leave us up and be going to pick up the answers to our ads.”
Looking, as usual, like he is about to fall apart, he ambles from our ranch house, which also looks like it will fall apart, and I follow. We rope our broncs and begin to saddle. “Lywell,” he says, “when you stop to think how many dudes there is who wish to become cowboys at ten smackers a head—”
“Easy money,” I say, climbing aboard my cayuse.
“Wait,” he says. “I forgot somethin’ to get our mail in.”
He bow-legs it into the house and returns with an empty flour sack. “This oughta hold most of it,” he says. He swings into the saddle, and we head along the trail for Putantake at a easy lope. “Lywell,” he says, smiling happy, “only a man with brains would have thunk up this easy way to get rich an’—uh-oh, ain’t that Orv an’ Neff Paschal cuttin’ our trail?”
“Yes,” I say, uneasy, for the Paschal brothers are two gents who own the Double-X and go around well-armed and with chips on their shoulders. “But who is the third gent?”
Puzzled, Wintergreen shakes his head, almost losing his hat, which is so big it would fall down over his face if his ears did not stick out like handles on a beer mug.
Presently the Double-X outfit angles up to us.
“Hello, boys,” Orv says, squinting at us under shaggy red eyebrows. “Goin’ places, or travelin’?”
“Going to town,” Wintergreen says, polite.
“What you doin’ with that flour sack?” Neff asks curious.
“It’s to put our mail in,” Wintergreen replies.
“Mail?” the black-haired, beady-eyed stranger says. “You hombres must have a lot of girls writin’ you if—”
“We are not getting letters from no girls,” Wintergreen says, dignified. “Lywell and me are learning people to be cowboys by mail, and—”
“By mail! How’n thunder can you learn ’em by—”
“Curly,” Orv says to the beady-eyed gent, “Wintergreen an’ Lywell have likely been out in the sun without their hats.”
Laughing fit to bust a button, they ride away from us. Wintergreen’s face, I see, has turned somewhat pink.
“Them coyotes,” he says, indignant, “won’t feel so smart after we have took in our first million bucks.”
* * * *
Arriving in Putantake, we ride straight to the post office and hurry in.
“Mr. Simmons,” Wintergreen says business-like to the postmaster, “kindly put our mail in this here sack and—”
“What mail?” old man Simmons asks.
“The mail for the WL Correspondence School.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been drinkin’, Wintergreen,” Simmons says, “but there ain’t even a postcard for you mavericks.”
Somewhat dazed, Wintergreen and I stagger outside.
“Lywell,” he says, voice husky, “do you suppose our ads ain’t writ right, or—” His voice chokes off, and his eyes widen. “Look!” he gasps.
A stranger has stepped out of the Putantake Hotel. He is tall, bony and loose-jointed, with spectacles astraddle his long nose, and a orange shirt and new Levis held up by a silver studded belt. Seeing us, he seems pleased and removes a fancy, pearl-gray Stetson from slicked-down straw-colored hair. If ever a dude hit Putantake, this gent is it, and no mistake.
“Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lilly, I believe,” he says pleasant.
“How’d you know?” Wintergreen asks flabbergasted.
“The proprietor of the hotel pointed you out. Gentlemen, I am”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“Percival Octavius Ogram the Third, but,” and he raises his voice for one and all to hear, “just call me Omaha.”
Wintergreen blinks bewildered. “You from Omaha?”
“Boston,”