Kit

Grim things were happening on Sick Steer Trail when hard-boiled gang moll Kit met world-weary Hampton one night on a snowy ridge in Colorado in the short story "$2,000 Reward, A Drama On The Top Of The World," written by Alma and Paul Ellerbe, and published in Cosmopolitan, March 1925 (not 1924 as everyone on the internet believes) with illustrations by Dean Cornwell. Read their desperate struggle toward redemption and the inevitable proposal of marriage here. The top image is a modern photo of Cornwell's original oil painting; the bottom two are screen grabs from the scanned magazine, showing the state of 1920s colour reprography. Kit’s Colt 45 automatic looks way too modern for a Western but was in fact in service from 1911 onward.