Raw Land by Luke; Short Page A

can cry. But he looks too tough to fall for that.”
    Mary Norman said in a low, passionate voice, “I hope you choke, Charlie Sommers! I hope you die in your sleep tonight!”
    Charlie Sommers’s plain face broke into a smile. “I won’t,” he drawled. “When you get to hatin’ yourself too much for tryin’ to trap your old sweetheart, just think how jail looks from inside—for a long time.”
    He went back into Mary’s room, took a hand towel, soaked it in water from the pitcher, and gave it to her. Afterward, saying nothing more, he went back and opened the door to her closet and went inside.
    Mary Norman knelt and laid the towel on Will’s forehead. She worked over him a full minute before he stirred, opened his eyes, looked about him, and then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.
    â€œAre—are you all right?” Mary asked. “What happened?”
    Will shook his head, and then his sultry gray glance settled on her. “Don’t bother,” he murmured.
    â€œBut what happened? I only saw—”
    â€œDon’t bother, I said,” Will said curtly. “It was a cheap frame-up by a pair of cheap bounty-hunters. But it didn’t work, did it?”
    Mary Norman started to cry then. Will picked up his Stetson and left.
    During his first look at the town Milt Barron made the pleasant discovery that nobody paid any attention to him. Among the scattering of punchers on the street and in the stores, he was inconspicuous. The only hostile glance he received was from a man he thought was one of the Nine X crew. Milt looked at him blankly and didn’t speak.
    After he met Will at the horses and talked with him, he headed idly for the big saloon across the street. Will’s words were still in his mind, and he felt the anger that comes with helplessness. For it wasn’t pleasant to see a friend break himself buying a squalid stone shack and a handful of stony acres so that he could hide a friend there. Milt felt a hot loyalty to Will. Some day, of course, he could and would repay Will tenfold for this help, but that didn’t comfort him now. He looked at the movement on the street with a kind of childlike hunger, thinking of the loneliness of the spread. He reflected, with a touch of irony, that Will had bought a place to hide him that was so much like prison that there was hardly any difference. An angry restlessness was on him as he shouldered through Hal Mohr’s swing doors and tramped up to the bar and ordered a drink.
    He gulped it down and poured another, feeling it warm his belly. He leaned both elbows on the bar and hunched his shoulders and stared in the bar mirror, seeing the image of a man he scarcely recognized. This was what hunger did to a man, he thought. Nature intended him to be a thick-bodied, burly man; and he had starved himself into this slim, work-worn-looking puncher in the mirror. His stomach protested at the liquor, and with a sudden recklessness he wondered how much it would protest at several more drinks. He took the bottle and his glass and tramped over to one of the tables where a dirty pack of cards was scattered. There was a desultory game of poker going on at one of the back tables.
    He had another drink, shuffled the thick cards, and laid out a game of solitaire.
    He was barely into it when he was aware of the bartender calling sharply to someone. He looked up, and standing in front of his table was a small Mexican boy.
    â€œGet out of here, kid,” the fat bartender called.
    The boy extended a soiled envelope to Milt, and Milt took it. On it, written in pencil, was the name: Milt Barron . Milt gave the boy a coin, and he ran out of the saloon.
    Milt looked at the envelope. The drinks he had taken were working now, and he regarded the envelope with dispassionate curiosity. Only a handful of people here knew his name, and of them he couldn’t think of one who didn’t dislike him. Oh, yes,