BUCKSKIN CLASSICS - FREE SHORTSTORY

JEFF SULLER was let out of the cell by Marshal Pete Peters, who crooked a finger at him and said, "Come along."

Jeff ambled out of the cell, his backside cramped from so much sitting down. He was pleased but curious.

"How come you're lettin' me out, Pete?" he asked, following Pete's fat back toward the front office. When he passed the cell on the end nearest the front, he momentarily lost interest in Pete's reply. A mean face appeared between the bars of that cell and called him a dirty name.

Jeff stopped and started to hunch up like a porcupine ready for battle. But Pete Peters had been expecting it, apparently, and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the office door, which he immediately slammed shut.

"Don't go giving me cause to lock you up again," Pete said. "You oughtn't to let them Wimmles get you so mad. You ought 'to learn to control your temper. Over there at the desk is your effects."

Jeff looked toward the desk, blinking. It contained more than his confiscated pocket property. Besides his penknife, stub pencil, and several .44 cartridges, there was a girl perched on the comer of the desk: Miss Susan Shepard, who was smiling at him brightly.

"All right," Jeff said. He advanced suspiciously toward Susie Shepard, whose smile trembled a little.

"You don't have to ask!" Susie said quickly, and took a deep breath. "You've just been paroled, Jeff. Isn't that nice? I mean, now you can round up those cattle which Mr. Johnson wanted to buy and--"

"Right," Jeff said, feeling very fine. "And here I thought I was goin' to have to spend thirty days in jail and not get nothin'!" His eyes narrowed again. "But you ain't gone and answered where you come in, Susie."

Jeff was extraordinarily mistrustful of Susie, for the reason that she had been trying to rope him for some time-and in face of his protests that his heart belonged elsewhere. Now she was grinning from ear to ear.

"Why, Jeff, you're paroled in my custody! You're a minor, you know, and I paid your fine."

Jeff stared at her in petrification. Then suddenly he was looking into the mustached face of Pete Peters, who had stepped in front of him and was glaring at him.

"I didn't approve of it," Pete informed him. "This roughnecking has got to stop. But Miss Shepard talked me into it and you better toe the line or you'll be looking through those bars again. Case dismissed -get the hell out of here!"

PETE forced his junk into his hand and propelled him toward the door; Jeff found himself in the hot street, with the sun glaring off the sides of Adobe buildings, and with Susie's hand tucked in the crook of his elbow.

"You see," Susie was saying, "I'm an adult, being twenty-one, and you're not, and you're in my custody and I'm responsible for you. -Over here's my buggy."

Jeff allowed himself to be set in the driver's seat of the buggy. It was very mystifying. As a matter of fact, there was only two months difference in his own and Susie's ages. But she was on the long side of twenty-one and he still had a month to go. Which apparently made it legal for her to-

Jeff suddenly swore as the whole diabolical plot came clear to him. He looked angrily at Susie.

"It won't work! You're figurin' this'll give you an excuse to hang around and try to vamp me." He crossed his arms firmly. "But you ain't foolin' anybody but yourself. Now I'm out of jail and got a sale for two hundred head of cattle, I aim to marry Oba Demerrest. I just been waitin' for some money.�

Susie turned red and jerked the reins out of his hands. She whipped up the blaze-faced sorrel that was harnessed to her buggy and drove it clattering up the street.

"You're the world's biggest fool," she snapped. "I didn't see Oba coming around when you were locked up and broke."

Jeff hung on and prepared a retort. But at that time they swayed past the restaurant and a girl came out-a girl in a black dress with black hair and a black parasol. It was Oba, whom Jeff considered his type, not a silly man-hunting girl like Susie. It was a fact that Oba was expensive to take out, and always liked to be getting gifts, but she was so pretty she had -a right to expect that.

Jeff tried to get in position to leap off the buggy, but Susie gave him a slap in the chest that sat him down again and whipped the sorrel to top speed. They went so t that in a minute they were too far out of town for Jeff to consider hopping off to see Oba. He settled back morosely.

Susie gave him a scathing look. "You're certainly stuck on yourself. Just because I don't want to see you getting hooked out of your big opportunity, you go jumping to conclusions." Jeff was surprised to see a tear appear in her eye, but Susie tossed it away with a jerk of her head. "Just don't forget you're in my custody, Jeff Suller. And if you're smart you'll get to work and forget about Oba."

Susie pushed him out of the buggy when they got to his place and drove off without a word. Which was the way Susie usually acted. She came around all happy trying to vamp him, and when he put her in her place she'd get mad and stomp off. But it never took her long to cool and try again.

Jeff went into his cabin, grumbling. Susie was right about one thing, at least, which was that he had to get to work.

HE�D BEEN practically flat broke for almost a year now, the market for cattle around Stockton having gone into a nosedive and stayed there. But yesterday an hombre named Johnson came to town and announced he would pay cash money for four hundred head to be shipped within five days.

It so happens that Jeff was in the saloon at the time Johnson made his announcement, along with the three Wimmle brothers, who owned the spread next to his and didn't get along with anybody. The Wimmles had given him plenty of trouble since they moved in. He suspected them of wide-looping his beef, but he couldn't prove it and had to settle for disliking them.

This Johnson was a square man, and although the Wimmles tried to hog the whole order, he'd said he'd take two hundred head from each. Which was to Jeff like stumbling on a mother lode. At forty dollars a head it meant he'd make eight thousand dollars.

Johnson brought everybody a drink and said he had to have the critters in the loading pens by Friday, it being Monday. Which Jeff figured be could do. But as soon as Johnson left, the Wimmles put their heads together and started playing dirty.

The youngest Wimmle, Ben, came over and called Jeff a low name. Jeff busted him in the mouth, which was of course what the Wimmles wanted. They hollered for the marshal, and Pete Peters, who was strong against that sort of thing, hauled Jeff and Ben off to jail.

They both got thirty days, which was fine with the Wimmles. They could spare Ben. So, thinking it over, Jeff had to admit he owed Susie considerable for getting him out of jail, and he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have been a little more polite to her....

The next day, Jeff rounded up fifty head of loose stock and drove them into a barbed-wire corral. Then he began the harder task of flushing the remainder out of the various inaccessible places they got themselves into. By evening he had added thirty more, which was a good start, but he knew it would get harder as the total rose.

He rode his tired bay back to the cabin and fed and rubbed it. Then he fixed himself a dinner of fried salt pork and gravy and fried dough. He was bone-tired but his spirits were high and he figured be couldn't let an opportunity like this pass. He'd go into town, borrow a few dollars, and show Oba the town. He shoved away the table and went outside.

Humming, he tightened the latigo under a dun's belly. Then there was the crack of a close gun and he jerked upright. A slug made a little puff of dust a dozen feet to his left, and whirling, he cussed at the sight of another of the Wimmle brothers, astride a big black and not a hundred feet away.