done stopped serving them.
I got plumb tired of having people pass out on the roulette wheel'
'What's it called?'
'We call it a zombie,' the bartender said.
'Well mix me up three of them and make it fast!' Slade commanded.
'Three zombies?' Mose Hart said with popping eyes. 'M'God, are you crazy?'
43
Slade turned to him coldly 'Friend, smile when you say that.'
Hart smiled and took another drink of Digger's Rye.
'Okay,' Slade said, when the three drinks had been placed in front of him. They came in huge beer steins and smelled like the wrath of God.
He drained the first one at a single draught, blew out his breath, staggered a little, and lit one of his famous Mexican cigars. Then he turned to Mose.
'Now just where is Sam Columbine's ranch?' He asked.
'Three miles west and across the ford,' Mose said. 'It's called the Rotten Vulture Ranch'
'That figursh,' Slade said, draining his second drink to the ice-cubes.
He was beginning to feel a trifle woozy. It probably had something to do with the lateness of the hour, he thought, and began to work on his third drink.
'Say – ' Mose Hart said timidly, 'I don't really think you're in any shape to go up against Sam Columbine, Slade. He's apt to put a crimp in your style.'
'Doan tell me what 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 to.'
'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 Carmichael,' the stranger said, 'and I’m 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 and Deputy Marshall Hoagy Carmichael 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.
44
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 is, however, still faster than greased lightning and meaner than hell. He had sworn to find Randolph P. Sorghum some day and stake him over the nearest anthill.
