OCR Text |
Show INSTALLMENT 11 " i! THE STORY SO FAR? I .,. Gordon had built - HJScbM m the West. the opposition of his sweetheart, Jodv Gordon, and her father. Daring raid, upon Thorpe i Texas holdings wiped him out of the state. Roper then prepared for great raid upon the vast herd, on Thorpes Montana ranches. Severn! Canadian border to tak, every beef that 2e?X Mi Jdy that h" warn him He was mmH. . "Yes, mam. I kind of did, I guess !"d t0 be getting on there'. Miss Gordon. If you'll just give me any message you want me to take Id sure like to be pulling out of here, before" "All right. You be here with two good horses Just after dark." "If you could Just as leave give me the message now, I'd sure like to" "There is no message. rm going with you to Bill Roper." Shoshone Wilce looked like a man entrapped. "I can't do it! Your fa-ther-I Just won't do it. Miss Gordon Gor-don I" "All right I'll make the ride by myself." ' "Hey, look! You can't" "Bill Roper isn't going to like this, Wilce." Shoshone studied her searchingly, but found nothing to reassure him! It was in his mind that this girl would do exactly as she said. "My B xV-Continued Lordon spoke, his voice Kits very stillness f t rf imminent destruc-fioper destruc-fioper sent a man to . that He's a man 2 Bill Roper in the i;.' War; he doesn t I LS Montana raids." Lew Gordon rum- ft'i'his name?" iwace." Low that name. I know rope and drag him in a ; caught him talking to . bas talked with Ben - Jody told her lot of strange news is m to Thorpe from up -tani. Some bands of i'llashlng up and down reting lead and leather 3rpe outfits under Lash-,it Lash-,it he's badly hurt al-$ al-$ will know how badly nter breaks." r waited, his eyes angry, j from Dodge explains able that King-Gordon Is jody said. "Thorpe e that one lone cowboy, j everyone who should tis friend, could manage is Texas holdings, and go r3y his herds in Montana. ; that we were backing In the Texas Rustlers' ! he believes that we're 3 DOW." Lew Gordon said. "You ryou came all this way iat?" rpe means to kill you." rion's face showed no expression. But he did at once. ioubt it," he said at last; '.i you expect? You bring i i i i a a lu n". easy throw together three huidred nead In a couple of days. That two ttousand. The more the better -but with two thousand we'll make our drive." They giCpt that night under the slowly falling snow. Roper himself made cofTee and routed out his riders rid-ers two hours before the first light. They caught their horses in the dark with hands that fumbled the stiffened stiff-ened ropes; then split otT in pairs to comb the range. For two days Roper watched the enemy camp while the snow held on, piling a deeper and deeper mat; then on the third day he returned to the rendezvous as the roundup men began straggling in. Tex Long was the first one back. "This range is plumb solid with stock," Tex declared. "How many head do you figure me and Kid Johnson scraped up, just us two?" "Well," Roper grunted, "upwards of a dozen I should hope." "Better'n six hundred head! Lord Almighty, Bill! Figuring they're worth twenty dollars apiece, and allowing al-lowing that all the other boys do as good, we're liable to get out of here with around eighty thousand dollars j worth of cattle! You realize that?" I But Roper was thinking of the letter let-ter in his pocket; the appeal of a girl who needed him in some unknown way, and who did not even know why he couldn't come. All the next day they worked to throw the little bunches together into a trail herd. Not all of them had done as well as Tex Long and Kid Johnson, but most of them had done well enough. And then, at last, the first herd privateered in the Great Raid began to roll. A long unsteadily unstead-ily moving river of cattle poured northward, a dark welter in the thinning thin-ning fall of the snow. White-faces, mostly, blocky and heavy, well win- I range tuu uuj'uuu is :o down." ice was white. w what's at the bottom ouble we're having," her . "You know as well as wo years of nothing but i square at the door of ang up to face him. "I :o not know anything of the answered him. Idon stared at her. (everlasting shame upon buntry that Dusty King's i still In their saddles. I Billy Roper is the only ieen with courage enough her father angered as she neenhim anger. "You'll thing!" he roared. "Rop-k "Rop-k of hearing his name a whelp that knows noth-1 noth-1 and burn and raid!" yes narrowed ,and filled "You may as well know old her father. "The day itoper dies I want to die moment Lew Gordon nldered; he stared at his if the devil had come up floor. The girl who faced lirely strange to him. her say, "IX you had im, as Dusty King would "I'd sure like to be pulling out of here before" life ain't worth a nickel, either way," he almost whimpered. "You be here with the horses," Jody said. She turned and went into the house, leaving Shoshone Wilce standing unhappy and uncertain, ankle an-kle deep in the wet snow. CHAPTER XVI The rounding up of the wild bunch of riders lost Roper a few days; but within the week Bill Roper and Tex Long rode into the plains of the Little Lit-tle Dry. Here around a spluttering fire the riders crouched in their sodden blankets, blan-kets, like Indians, while Roper gave out his orders. Thirty-two men and six outlaw leaders were now in the field against Walk Lasham's powerful power-ful Montana outfits in the Great Raid. Roper's first move had been to split his renegade riders into five i i J U Innrlnre hat ho tered on the prairie hay Roper counted two thousand six hundred odd! Pressed hard by the heavy force of cowboys, the cattle bawled but humped along northward into the valley of the Prairie Elk. Rounding up within a day's ride of Miles City itself, Roper's men had taken this herd almost out of the very corrals of Lasham's outposts; and yet, so far as any of them knew, that swift-moving drive represented repre-sented a harder blow than had ever been struck a cattleman in a single raid. In all their months of effort the winter wild bunch had been unable un-able to achieve an equal reprisal upon Lasham, and now they could hardly believe their own success. They forced the cattle hard, driving driv-ing through the clogging snow at a rate incredible to men accustomed to handling market herds. The cattle that broke the way through the snow kept dropping back, blown and tired; but as fast as they failed, others were forced forward for-ward to take their places. Long-horned, Long-horned, stag-legged steers of the old Texas strain fought the riders, breaking the heavy column repeatedly repeat-edly in their wild-eyed thrusts for liberty, and these were allowed to get away. Gaunt, weak cattle lagged back, unable to keep up even under the snapping rope ends of the tail riders; they also were allowed to drop out, promptly forgotten. Yet, in that first day, the side riders swept in enough north-roaming cattle cat-tle to more than make up the loss. Roper went with the herd as far as Circle Horse Creek; but when they had forded the shallows, crashing crash-ing through the rotten ice, he turned back. With him he took four men who he believed would do what he said. The cattle were moving more slowly now, plodding doggedly through the heavy going; Tex Long and the remaining eight men could hold them to their way. What was needed now was work of a different kind, and Roper thought he knew how that was to be done. It was his intention to fight a rear guard action-not only for this first herd which would be delivered within with-in the week to the Indians who would spirit it away, but for the protection protec-tion of all the rest of the wild bunch raiding to westward. But now as he neared the head of the Little Dry, a rider came dropping drop-ping down a long slope upon a racing horse. His carbine was held above his ragged sombrero in sign of ncace; and as he came near they saw that it was Hat Crick Tommy. "Roper jumped his horse out to meet Hat Crick. "What is it? Is there any word? Did she-Tommy's she-Tommy's face was haggard with . ...... ..cw eone!" he jerked bunches under the leaders that he knew Tex Long, Lee Harnish, Dave Shannon, Dry Camp Pierce and himself. him-self. Hat Crick Tommy he sent to Miles City in search of further word from Jody Gordon; Hat Crick would later rejoin Roper as messenger and scout. It was Roper's plan that he and Tex Long, with twelve men between them, should make the most daring raid of all; a raid upon the big herds which Lasham held between the headwaters of Timber Creek and the Little Dry. Of all the ranges in which the wild bunch was interested, inter-ested, this was the nearest Miles City the most accessible, the most closely watched, the best protected. How many cattle he could transfer from this range to the starving Canadian Ca-nadian Sioux, Roper did not know; but it was his hope to raise such a conspicuous and stubborn disturbance disturb-ance as would mask the operations of the rest of the wild bunch, and permit Pierce to work unimpeded. "The fourteen of us will split seven sev-en ways." Roper told them now. 'I figure Lasham's look-out camp tot this range is about twelve miles southeast We'll comb every way but S way. I'm not telling you how to gather stock. Hunt em like you know how to hunt em. Move out one day's ride, spotting your cow bunches. Next day pick em and work 'em this way An on the third day throw your gadier SauS . coulee or something where one man can hold 'em. and the oth- i of each pair ride back and meet me here. I figure this range rheaS with cattle. I don't see any reason why two good men cant Thorpe would have been i through, long ago." said queerly, "what :ing about?" only take Billy Roper tog-Gordon " lever happen while I 'ther said flatly, fell between them, pres- by the girl. "He asked "ith him once, when he outlaw trail. I wish the last day I live, I'll fen with him then. And you something more. If 1 me again, I'll go." '1 moments he stared at laken than he had been "h of Dusty King. Then Bested, and he rose up keels to tower over the ' ne said, his voice un-tte un-tte repression he put " closes the deal! I've off him because of anl I let him run on "Sup a range war that busted King-Gordon. ' comes to tampering s? e end! I'm through. UP his battered sombre-Prs sombre-Prs rang as heurned oor. 'are you going to do?" 15 a reward on Bill Rop-'"g-Gordon is going to reward." ming out, his face 10-ent with portent of '' moments Jody Gor-woniess Gor-woniess where he had ; he turned and went 3USe to the long shed- '''ce was loitering there of the rear wall, an esess figure. " out where Billy Rop-"hel?" Rop-"hel?" Jody demand- out" "She's been to Miles City-and now she's gone!" Gone? Gone where? Nobody knows. She's missing-disappeared-strayedorlostorr us- Ucd I don't know which! Her fair's fa-ir's wild crazy, and every K-G outfit in the north is combmg the opTrsat staring for a full half minute. Then his hands fumbled T, his reata, shook out ti,e loon. Turntotroanponyirvego'to have a fresh horse ... (TO BE COSTIXCED) |