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Show INSTALLMENT 11 i THE STORV SO FAR: tlon of his sweetheart, Jody Cordon rid her father. After wiping Thorpe out of Texas. Roper conducted a great raid upon Thorpe s vast herds In Montana. Mon-tana. Unable to reconcile her father with Roper, Jody set out with Shoshone ' f listen to her and they had a row. So then the only thing she could think of was to come to you. She's got some notion of trying to get you and her old man together again." "A fine chancel" "That's what I told her. But she" "Why In God's name," Roper flared at him again, "didn't you go after help?" "I figured I'd get strung up for sure," Shoshone said flatly, "if I went and told Gordon what I'd done. I wanted to come for you. but naturally nat-urally I didn't know where you'd went The only thing I could figure out, I better try to ghost around these hills and maybe whittle 'em down to my size." "You say there are seven men In the cabin," Roper asked at last; "two wounded?" Shoshone nodded. "They ain't all In the cabin all of the time. Seems like they must have had the girl tell 'em that she come here to meet you. Naturally they'd think you knew she was coming. Most likely they figure that If I ain't dead I'm carrying you word that will bring you here a-kiting. So they're holding hold-ing her there now until they see if they can't get you. I ain't watched WUce to find him. They were attacked cy some of Thurpe's men hiding In Rop-ers Rop-ers shack. Wiles escaped, but Jody was caplu.-M. Ropt!r was approaching one of hll own ghackj when he i.ct-d outposts keeping a careful watch. ing the time. Yet he knew very definitely that dawn was Just two hours away. He shook Shoshone Wilce. The little lit-tle man groaned once, then came full awake with the sudden response of an animal. Without the snow the rock-like im-penetrability im-penetrability of the overcast sky would have made the night utterly black, but the ghostly pallor of the snow had the effect of faintly modi-fying modi-fying the darkness. The eye might possibly have made out a moving dark shape at ten yards; beyond that there was nothing but a muf-fling muf-fling blackness. "You lead out," Roper said. His voice was instinctively hushed, even at this distance from the enemy. "You've had more chance to study the lay than me." Shoshone Wilce delayed. "Bill," he said. "I lay thinking about this time for a long time, after you was asleep." A dogged stubbornness came Into his tone. "I figure we can probably take the cabin. And If we take the cabin without fighting we've got a chance to get away. But if so much as one shot Is fired Bill, the outposts will close like a b'ar trap. I don't see no way we can ever get clear." By the sudden frozen silence, Shoshone Sho-shone Wilce was able to sense Bill Roper's anger. "I wish to God," Bill Roper said at last, "I had Hat Crick Tommy here, or Tex Long; or even the very greenest kid cowboy that's riding the range with them, somewhere tonight. to-night. I need one other man for this job. It wouldn't take an especially brave man, or smart man, nor a real good gunflghter. I just need one fairly good man. But I haven't even got that!" i Cordon had built j rArsnches. King ", i &ul d unscrupulous 'C Sorpe. Bill Roper. !fi " determined to JfSTu'rSngly r5 0lle, once only. Roper ; , lee the man who had , e S his target. He waited tTwn ready, then stood C bis pony down-slope L draw In which It was tb, brush. Moving cau-.proceeded cau-.proceeded north along 'eking the position of the f ad fired- ie hillside brush a figure Inching m 10 that his (resembled a bear. Aft- nt Bill Bop" was able to Cat the approaching man light carbine. ! wjth the carbine moved the hillside, sliding on mst of the snow, but sur-jilent sur-jilent to the brush, led man dropped into the glinl toward the bend rer jtood. Bill Roper self out of the gully. He lied to dense brush, gun In He icout appeared below ;;ood up. "Steady," he , in the draw jumped as been struck; but as he hands he straightened so taw his face. ive was Shoshone Wilce. !," said Shoshone, "I was !ad to see anybody In my voice bit like frosty -ice. r where she is?" taid Shoshone. "Yeah, I re she Is." Iropped into the gully to i Into Shoshone's face. "Is Ii the all right?" it, sure," Wilce assured i alive, all right Don't she's hurt any. I" eem like?" Roper repeat-in repeat-in your hide, where Is ems like them buzzards iown there at that cabin, leave her loose." on't?" don't know who." ow the devil did she get hoshone said. He met Rop- Ieakly. Obviously, he knew as in trouble here. "I T." all-" aid have come anyway, was dead set on locating didn't have nobodv else to , "Bill. I only claim-look, Bill: I ain't afraid of 'em. I only" "You ain't afraid," Bill Roper repeated; re-peated; "no not much. But when the guns spoke, you left a girl down under her horse in the snow maybe hurt, maybe dead and you ran for your life." When Bill Roper had said that, both were utterly still, while a man might have counted a hundred. Shoshone's voice was flat and dead. "Is that the way it looks to you?" "Look at it yourself." "Then," Shoshone said, "I guess there ain't anything more to say." He stood up. "There's this to say," Bill Roper said. "You're going to work with me tonight because I haven't got anybody else. You're going to do exactly what I say, and when I say, without any back talk or question. You make one slip tonight and the West won't hold you, nor the world" won't hold you, and you'll answer to me in the end. You hear me?" "Okay," Shoshone said in the same flat, dead voice. "One thing more," Roper said. "If we make a quiet Job, we'll try to go out slow and quiet, the three of us together. Otherwise, you take Jody's lead rope and ride like hell. Six miles below here, near the creek, there's a kind of a brush corral. You and the girl will wait for me there. Wait for me until daylight begins to come; then go on." They moved down into the valley of the Fork, walking fast. When they had dropped into the bed of Fork Creek itself they moved northward, following its windings, for what seemed a long way; but no sign of approaching dawn yet showed, and Roper felt that they had plenty of time. As they at last passed the point where the cabin stood, invisible invisi-ble in the dark, Shoshone indicated its location with raised arm; but they moved on fifty yards farther, so that they might approach the cabin from the north. Cautiously now, Shoshone climbed the bank, silent as the Indians with whom he had spent his youth. Turning, Turn-ing, he gripped Bill Roper's arm. His words were whispered close to Roper's ear. "One of the night guards is out that-a-way, about five hundred yards," he whispered; "about in line with where you see that big dead pine." Roper could see no dead pine. It annoyed him that Shoshone's eyes were better than his own as good as the eyes of an Indian, or a lynx. "I'll leave my carbine standing just outside the door," Shoshone said. "I only want it for later, after we've took to the horses." "That's all right," Roper said. "But you remember this: If there's any trouble in the cabin, you stand and fight! Because if you don't, I'll turn and plug you myself, if it takes my last shot to do it." "Okay" Roper went ahead now. walking boldly across the snow. Better, he thought, to simulate the casual approach ap-proach of friends than to depend upon a hope of complete surprise. As he raised his hand to the door a strange thrill of dread momentarily momen-tarily stirred him at the thought that Jody Gordon was inside witl whom? (TO BE CONTINVED) "They're taking an awful chance," Roper said. those fellers for fifteen years with-' with-' out knowing how they work." ' "They're taking an awful chance," Roper said, iron death in his eye. "If I rode in here, warned, with my wild bunch" "It ain't such a bad chance they're taking," Shoshone contradicted. "Night and day their outposts are out. Two men can check the whole country daytimes, so they can see you coming twenty miles. You only got here because you come up through the timber to the south, on the trail from Miles the last way they'd figure you'd come. Nights there are more men on lookout than that, near as I can make out, and their lookout is strongest just before be-fore dawn I suppose Iron Dog taught 'em that trick in the old days, always striking just before daylight, and now they can't get it out of their heads. Night and day they got ponies saddled. If ever they spotted spot-ted your wild bunch riding in, they'd be almighty hard to catch." "If only," Roper said, "the wild bunch was going to ride in! But it isn't." "Maybe there's some way we could fake it, so they'd give up and clear out. I figure they'd leave the girl behind if ever they set out to run." "I'm going down and smoke 'em out," Roper said through his teeth. "I'm going to smoke 'em out before the sun ever comes up again, and you're going to help me." Shoshone nodded. "If we tackled em just before daylight, when the outpost is strong and the cabin is weak" They talked it over for a long time. In the hidden gulch where Shoshone had been holing up they made coffee and cooked meat, and completed their plans. "We can get in," was Shoshone s verdict at last. "We can get in. and we can take the cabin. But God knows how we're ever going to get U"I've got a plan for that," Roper said. ., He wouldn't tell Shoshone what it was. CHAPTER XX There were no stars when Roper roused himself in his blankets and he had no mechanical means of tell- ber. I figured you'd soon-r soon-r to bring her direct to omebody would be with have her wandering loose e country by herself. A in Miles told me you I and we rode here. And then-" Hien-what?" irae into the valley," Sho-i Sho-i "seemed to me like was wrong. But I couldn't hat We come up to the ftil and slow, in the dark, seen us coming and they . I guess. Before we 1 had busted, they gunned down, and they drilled ! so bad that I had to turn ; Most likely he's dead -" Shoshone hesitated, u run out and left her," i" for him. swear, I wouldn't have "8 like that, not for no foing was, they was all ! I couldn't see where to 'ho they was. I figured your own boys, mak-ake, mak-ake, and after I seen it ust figured to keep in a :itin, you might say, and rst chance. Only " i never saw any chance," with contempt. 5; there's seven of 'em Bill, and they keep an y watch. And I been ;m steady ever since, get in a long shot at ' of 'em. This car-forry car-forry so very good, but lW0 of 'em; don't know Jou know she wasn't n When her horse went Jer demanded. "By God, ' you let anything hap-girl hap-girl her walk outside some-'? some-'? day." Shoshone s how I seen she's all make out who the bunch is? JJ're some Thorpe gun ""Jour scalp. I figure 7,ng to gun you And y got the girl, i figure lm 'o hold her for bait, s'le"t, and Roper, let him rest. ;'Mt likely right." Roper J at last. "There's four t c inorpe war parties and this could easy be an the infernal luck I na' did Jody want with e cll you?" ?as made up his mind ' ma".'- Shoshone said. f told her, because I want hor to know, so : nae look out for him Ule old man wouldn't i |