The Holbrook news., 1916-11-03
T h e K ill e r
 by Wright Walker
by Wright Walker

quenched his thirst Food he had not-nor desired.
 On the third day, well along to- wards evening. his mind cleared. Too weak to move he lay like a dumb, sui fering brute awaiting death. He neither feared nor welcomed it. It was as if his body had already died and only his mind still lived.
 A party of miners from an adjacent claim came to the water tank to catch the train that would stop there and which would carry them into the mining camp below where they could sIend their monthly salary in one glorious debauch.
 After the sun sinks. the high alti- tudes of the west chills rapidly and some of the men sighting the old lum- Der of the lean-to decided on a fire.
 Thus was Tights discovered and taken to Hot Dog. one of the many flourishing mining camps of Arizona in the middle '90's.
 Under the care of a young physician who had come to the camp (and had never accumulated enough to get away from it). Tights gradually came back to earth.
 I wish I could state right here that his experiences had changed him and he soon became a manly man-but
 
 must be told. One thing had happened, however, he couId no longer drink. His system refused to asslmilate liquor and the slightest taste of it made him deathiy i'll.
 Tights regained his strength, and. as soon as the doctor informed him it was time for even a man who had been an invalid to get out and earn his own living, Tights left the doc tors shack with never a mention of payment nor a word of thanks.
 He took possession of a hovel that had once been sta ble for a burro and in this he lived-soon becoming as filthy and dirty as he had been the day he was brought into the camp.
 One change had come to him. He was no longer the supine thing he had been. Fear was constantly on him that some one would again drive him on and on and make hIm experience again the sufferings he had undergone.
 He did odd jobs of all kinds, even to helping the chinaman who did the camps laundry and it was this as- sociation that caused the camp the greatest excitement it had ever known.
 Some miner in the past had thought more of cleanliness than he did of de- fense and had given the ChInaman
 
 known as British Bulldog. to guaran- tee payment of a wash bill.
 Tights accepted this gun in lieu of two days labor and kept it continually in the front of his dirty shirt.
 The idea of enforced migration had become an obsession. He walked with stoop-darung little, rat-like glances to right and left and his right hand always lay within the shirt opening and on the butt of his pistol.
 It was Sunday afternoon The min CTS were down from their claims and the saloons doing a rushing business when word slipped from door to door that "Bardon was in town"
 Bardon was desperado. Driven from the Indian Territory he had made his way through Texas-urged on by rangers, had crossed the border of New Mexico under guard, and had taken up a semi-residence in Hot Dog.
 In the first week of his stay he had killed four men who had questioned him as to his former place of abode and one man who had refused to drink with him. Two citizens who had talked of a "neck-tie party" were discovered with their throats cut the morning af- ter and, since then, Bardon had been a fungus growth on the camp.
 He ran charge accounts at all the saloons. He also owed the general store a generous account.
 After an absence of possibly fort night he would come back with plenty of money and make Hot Dog as close to an imitation of Hell as an earthly town could be and then would settle down to a months likeness once more.
 On the particular Sunday of which rT1s.- the Chinaman's to beg tobacco and the Mongolian had insisted he bring in some washing that was hanging on the line.
 Tights did as he was bid and Was observed by Bardon performing the task. When Tights was returning to his sty-he was stopped before the general store by Bardon. What hap pened came as lightning from clear sky.
 Bardon stood before Tights and after a preliminary cursing finished with, "and no white man who works for a damn heathen stays here. I'll run you out"
 Then those watching heard a re- port, saw Bardon fall back and lay quiet, while Tights, his head wreathed by a halo of blue smoke, shrilled to the watchers, T won't go. No one can make me go. Better let me alone And trembling like a leaf-turned his back and went blubbering on to his hoFel.
 If some one had appeared and told the onlookers the Little Katie mine was giving strawberry ice cream there would not have been more disbelief exhibited than the men now showed.
 Clancy-owner of the Gold Nugger, voiced the surprise of the entire crowd as he exhaled his breath in the sharp exclamation "Well-Im damned"
 Gilson, the -storekeeper, usually tao iturn to a degree g. Y loquacious.
 T knew a feller once," he began, "wot cum frum Mexico and he told us of had man down there who moved to another place and tried to reform. Because he had been such onery