A whizzer on Willer Crick

A whizzer on Willer Crick by W. C. Tuttle is a pulp Western short story written in the early 20th century. It centers on two drifting cowboys who stumble into an inheritance on a rough, clannish range and find themselves up against a feuding community and a crooked local “law.” Narrated by the droll Sleepy Stevens, the tale pairs him with his wiry partner Hashknife Hartley. After a rodeo getaway lands them in the Willow Creek country, they discover the mortally wounded Ebenezer Godfrey, who wills them his ranch and mine. The insular Willer Crick clan—led by sour lawyer Sol Vane and would‑be heirs Pete Godfrey and Jim Albright—steal the body to void the will and try to frame the newcomers. Hashknife answers with a sly fake grave rigged over buried dynamite, secretly recovers the corpse, and survives a nighttime lynch meeting thanks to crack‑shooting help from tough, sharp‑eyed Glory Sillman. At dawn, Albright and Pete dig into the “grave” and are blown sky‑high, while a singed Sol staggers off. To save Glory from an arranged marriage into the clan, her father proposes a quick, paid marriage to one of the drifters; after cutting cards, plans collapse when Hashknife discovers Glory’s “Uncle Luke” is the sheriff from Yolo, and the partners light out, having run their “whizzer” on Willer Crick and lived to grin about it.