'Doan tell me w'hat to do,' Slade, swaggering over to pat General Custer. He breathed in the dog's face and General Custer promptly went to sleep. 'If there'sh one thing that I can do, it's lick my holder, I mean hold my liquor. Ho get out of my way before I blon you in tno.'
'The door's out the other way,' the bartender said cautiously.
'Coursh it is. You think I doan tinow where I'm goin'?'
Slade staggered across the bar, stepping on General Custer's tail (the dog didn't wake up) and managed to make his way out through the batwing doors where he almost fell off the sidewalk. Just then a steely arm clamped his elbow. Slade looked around blearily.
'I’m Deputy Marshall Hoagy Charmichael,' the stranger said, 'and rm taking yuh in-'
'On what charge?' Slade asked.
'Public intoxication. Now let's go.'
Slade burped. 'Everything happen'sh to me,' he groaned. The two of them started off for the Dead Steer Springs jail.
After Slade was sprung from the pokey, Sandra Dawson's top hand, Mose Hart, went his bail. Slade filled both Hart an Deputy Marshall Hoagy Charmichael full of lead (blame it on his terrible hangover). Then, mounting his huge black stallion, Stokely, Slade made it out to the Rotten Vulture Ranch to have it out once an for all with Sam Columbine.
But Columbine was not there. He was off torturing ex border guards, leaving Sandra Dawson under the watch of three trusted henchmen - Big Fran Nixon, 'Quick Draw' John Mitchell, and Shifty Ron Ziegfeld. After a heated shootout, Slade dropped al three of them in their slimy tracks and freed the fair Sandra.
The acrid, choking smell of gunsmoke filled the room where the lovely Sandra Dawson had been held prisoner. As she saw Slade standing tall and victorious, with a sinister.45 in each hand and a Mexican cigar clenched between his teeth, her eyes filled with love and passion.
'Slade!' she cried, jumping to her feet and running to him. ''I'm saved! Thank heaven! When Sam Columbine got back from torturing the Mexican border guards, he was going to feed me to his alligators! You came just in time!'
'Damn right,' Slade gritted. 'I always do. Steve King sees to that.'
Her firm, supple, silken fleshed body swooned into his arms, and her lush lips sought Slade's mouth with ripe humid passion. Slade promptly clubbed her over the head with one sinister.45 and threw his Mexican cigar away, a snarl pulling at his lips.
'Watch it,' he growled 'my mom told me about girls like you.'
And he strode off to find Sam Columbine.
Slade strode out of the bunk-room leaving Sandra Dawson in the smoke-filled chamber to rub the bump on her head where he had clouted her with the barrel of his sinister.45. He mounted his huge black stallion, Stokely, and headed for the border, where Sam Columbine was torturing Mexican customs men with the help of his A No.1 Top Gun - 'Pinky' Lee. The only two men in the American Southwest that could ever approach 'Pinky' for pure, dad-ratted evil were Hunchback Fred Agnew (who Slade gunned down three weeks ago) and Sam Columbine himself. 'Pinky' had gotten his infamous nickname during the Civil War when he rode with Captain Quantrill and his Regulators. While passed out in the kitchen of a fancy bordello in Bleeding Heart, Kansas, a Union officer named Randolph P. Sorghum dropped a homemade bomb down the kitchen chimney. 'Pinky'' lost all his hair, his eyebrows, and all the fingers on his left hand, except for the forth, and smallest. His hair and eyebrows grew back. His fingers did not. He has, however, still faster than greased lightning and meaner than heIl. He had sworn to find Randolph P. Sorghum some day and stake him over the nearest anthill.
But Slade was not worried about Lee, because his heart was pure and his strength was as ten.
In a short time the agonized screams of the Mexican customs officials told him he was nearing the border. He dismounted, tied Stokely to a parking-meter and advanced through the sagebrush as noiselessly as a cat. The night was dark and moonless.
'No More! amigo!' The guard was screaming. 'I confess! I confess! I am - who am I?'
'Fergetful bastid, ain't ye?' Pinky said. 'Yore Randolph P. Sorghum, the sneakun' low life that blew off 90% 0' my hand durin' the Civil War.'
'I admit it! I admit it!'
Slade had crept close enough now to see what was happening. Lee had the customs official tied to a straight- backed chair, with his bare feet on a hassock. Both feet were coated with honey and Lee's trained bear, Whomper, was licking it off with his long tongue.
'I can't stand it!' The guard screamed. 'I am theese whatyoumacalluma, Sorghum!'
'Caught you at last!' Lee gloated. He pulled out his sinister Buntline Special and prepared to blow the poor old fellow all the way to Trinidad. Sam Columbine, who was standing far back in the shadows, was ready to bring in the next guard.
Slade stood up suddenly. 'Okay, you two skulkin' varmits! Hold it right there!'
Pinky Lee dropped to his chest, fanning the hammer of his sinister Buntline Special. Slade felt bullets race all around him. He fired back twice, but curse it - the hammers of his two sinister .45s only clicked on empty chambers. He had forgotten to load up after downing the three badmen back at the Rotten Vulture.
Lee rolled to cover behind a barrel of taco chips. Columbine was already crouched behind a giant bottle of mayonnaise that had been air-dropped a month before after the worst flood disaster in American Southwest history (why drop mayonnaise after a disaster? None of your damn business).
'Who's that out there?' Lee yelled.
Slade thought quickly. 'It's Randolph P. Sorghum' Hh cried. 'The real McCoy, Lee! And this time I'm gunna blow off more than three fingers!'
His crafty challenge had the desired effect. Pinky rushed rashly (or rashly rushed if you preferred) from cover,
