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Show BLAN UMAY W.N.U. Release ill,Vj " INSTALLMENT IS THE SIOKY SO FAR: . Cordon had built '"irsnchsi. King wo .nd unscrupulous I'lwne Bill Koper. or topp-'-, tlon of his sweetheart, Jody Gordon, and her father. After wiping Thorpe out of Texas, Roper conducted a great rM upon Thorpe's vast herds In Montana. Roper left for Lew Gordon's home when told that Jody had disappeared. Unable to reconcile her father with Roper, Jody had set out with Shoshone Wilce to find him. They were attacked by some of Thorps's men hiding In Roper's shack. Wilce escaped but Jody was captured. The men decided to hold her as bait. . wil-Continued EBft lTngth of Jody Casually. a It f"T V -j men were spean-S spean-S d th-the death jd once been very .nrf very dear. Sud-rA Sud-rA J glimpse the animosi-k animosi-k mStonof these men. n o"t would seem Itto great if in the j;as .truck out of ex-.nuneer ex-.nuneer rider said so-biswilc so-biswilc .bunch L it's uch flght a Sever gone into yetl J to think that any Jgte-t bunch of 'em ilookout-JlmLeath. ji "We'll know in plenty t fell. lon ilence-jody ilence-jody Gordon was the open-spacecreaureheld llhlD close walls. Her 'T. wtter. "You're beyond his age, in a face so dark and lean-carved it was hard to recognize rec-ognize behind it the face of Dusty King's kid. He m.ide no attempt to answer a question which was necessarily nec-essarily meaningless to him. He finished pulling off his gloves, unbuttoned unbut-toned his coat, and hooked his thumbs in his belt before he spoke. "I heard yesterday that Jody has turned up missing." he said. "I came to Miles hell-for-leather to see if it's so. From what I could find out down in the town, no word has come in on where she is. If that's true, I don't aim to give my time to anything else until she's found." "You mean to deny you know where she is?" Gordon shouted. Roper's voice did not change. "You talk like a fool," he said. Lew Gordon's eyes were savagely intent upon Roper's face; he was trying to discover if this man could be believed. "You may be lying," he added at last, "and you may not, but I'll tell you this you sure won't leave here "It was your own man talked her into it," Gordon said with menace. "My own man? What man?" "A little sniveler called Shoshone Wilce. Everybody knows he was a scout coyote for you, before Texas ever run you out." "Nobody run meout of any place," Roper said; but his mind whipped to something else. It was true that he talked to certain men in the town before he had come here. Now suddenly sud-denly he knew that he had learned what he had come to find out. He buttoned his coat, pulled on his gloves. Gordon confronted him stubbornly. "I mean you shan't leave here without with-out telling me what you know." A glint of hard amusement was plain in Bill Roper's eyes. "I know what you've told me. But I'll add this onto it. I think you'll soon have back your girL I'm walking out of here now, Lew, because it's time for me to look into a couple of things. But I'll be seeing you if Thorpe don't get you first." The veins stood out sharply on Lew Gordon's forehead, high-lighted 10 - , me here? a put it that way." Jim aid mildly, almost gen-. , eyes denied that mild-t mild-t behind him Jody sensed vast animosity built by Rustlers' War. aflat answer," Jody said Are you going to give t, or not?" re Jim Leathers' canine ed to his peculiarly un-rin. un-rin. "Hell, no," he said. HAPTEB XVIII Lew Gordon should have 1 if Bill Roper learned of sppeirance at all. Roper ie directly to him. wing this, he should have limself. But Lew Gordon et Roper face to face in years; and nothing was aa his mind than the pos-ai pos-ai Roper would walk in cow. is night Lew Gordon was main room of his little house; forty-eight hours by a faint dampness. "In all fairness fair-ness I'll tell you this." he said. "It's true I can't lift a gun on you, or on any man who stands with empty hands. But as soon as you're out of that door, all Miles City will be on the jump to see you don't get loose. Twenty thousand hangs over your head, my boy I" "Quite a tidy little nest egg," Roper Rop-er agreed. "I'd like to have It myself." my-self." A trick of the wind sent a great whirl of papers across the room as he went out." He had not come here without providing pro-viding that the horse which waited under his saddle was fresh and good. He struck westward now out of Miles City, unhurrying. At the half mile he found a broad cross trail where some random band of cattle had trampled the snow into a trackless pavement. He turned north in this, followed it for a mile, then swung northwest over markless snow. Now that this horse was warmed a little lit-tle he settled deep in his saddle and pushed the animal into a steady trot; at that gait, even in the snow, he could exnect the tough range- i since his daughter's dis-e dis-e and the old cattleman ! himself into a state of !ury comparable to that baffled mountain lion, or bear. Everything that ione to locate his daugh-;ing daugh-;ing done. ( that Jody's disappear-.oluntary, disappear-.oluntary, and he knew its The brief but highly in-note in-note that Jody had left : a that much. It simply you must be made to see am going to talk to Billy self." s did not tell him was per was, or how Jody exited ex-ited him. Impatient of d delay, he could not unity un-ity his many far-scattered :ould dig up no word. For ew, his daughter was by lost somewhere in the stes of snow, in immediate immedi-ate need of help. Haw ! ,:. Lew Gordon's eyes were savagely savage-ly intent on Roper's face. till I find out where my girl is. You're wanted anyway, my laddie buck; there's a legal reward on your head, right now and part of it was put up by me." "I heard that," Bill Roper said. "When I get ready to leave, I'll leave, all right. My advice to you is to begin using your head. I may be in a kind of funny position. But it puts me where I know things about the Montana range that neither you nor your outfits have got any clue to. If you want your daughter back you better figure to use what I know about the Deep Grass." Lew Gordon compelled himself to temporize. What he couldn't get around was his own belief that Roper Rop-er knew something definite, specific, about where Jody had gone-or had started out to go. He must have known also, in spite of the bluff to bred pony to last most of the night. CHAPTER XIX A tired horse is not much inclined in-clined to shy, toward the end of a long day's travel; and when Bill Roper's horse snorted and Jumped sidewise out of its tracks the rider looked twice, curiously, at the carcass car-cass which had spooked his pony. A dead pony on the winter range being be-ing a fairly common thing, he was about to ride on, when he noticed something about this particular dead pony which caused him to pull up and dismount for a closer examination. examina-tion. After leaving Lew Gordon he had ridden deep into the night. Half an hour would bring him within sight of the Fork Creek rendezvous, and he was eager to push on, so that his deduction as to Jody's whereabouts might have a quick answer, one way or the other; but when he had examined ex-amined the dead pony he was glad w the moment his help-f help-f was burned down into a sriness. His mind was full Shter, whom he persistent-i persistent-i as a little girl, much a child than she actually aiore. 1 it struck him how curi- s that in this bare room be sat there was no sign id that Jody had ever been This was partly be- ! had never lived here nor a expected here; but it to him sharply how i life had been given tow little to his daughter. torn realize how little he daughter, and how little ' given her of himself. Lew Gordon's state of 'je door thrust open, let- brief lash of wintry wind; leeled in his chair to face man n earth he had ex-see. ex-see. Per shook a powdering of I off the roll of his coat en stood looking at Lew f cool hard silence as he ""gloves. Once this man alrtost a son to Lew Corrupted Cor-rupted son, in actuality, of on dead partner. But a now replaced what ago had been a friend-,;ep friend-,;ep and close as the vari-t;eir vari-t;eir ages could permit. All ,lg 01 lncir association, al- as Bill Roper's life. WlPed out by those two e"s since the death of -8. which anger had prompted nu, he could not hold Roper here when Roper decided to leave, nor force any information from him in any way whatever. "What is it you want to know?" he asked at last, helpless, and angry in his helplessness. "In the first place, I want to know what made you think Jody was with me?" "You swear," Lew Gordon demanded, de-manded, "you don't know the an-swer an-swer to that?" "I don't swear anything," Roper said. "I asked you a question, Lew. Lew Gordon hesitated. It was a good many years since anyone had talked to him in the tone Bill Roper took; but for once the purpose in hand outpowered the violence of Ins natural reaction. He turned from his litter of papers, and handed BiU Roper the little scrap of Jodyi handwriting which was all she had feft to indicate where she was gone. -One of you must be made to see reason. I am going to talk to Billy Roper myself." When Bill Roper had read that, the eyes of the two men met in hostile hos-tile question. -This looks mighty like a false lead to me," Bill Roper said at last. "Lte asihe aimed to cover up where she really went. Don t hardly seem likely she'd start out to come to me." "I know she went looking for you because she said she did. My g.rl Roperhrugged. "Why should she do that?" that he had checked. This was no winter-killed pony. The bright trace of frozen blood that had first caught Roper's eye was the result of two gunshot wounds in neck and quarters. A dark foreboding possessed Roper Rop-er as he studied the dead pony. Rop-er Rop-er himself was short-cutting through the hills, following no trail. The coincidence co-incidence that he had stumbled upon the carcass in all those snowy wastes could be accounted for only in one way: both Roper and the pony had followed a line of least resistance through the hills a line that had the Fork Creek rendezvous at its far end. His discovery told him that there had been fighting at Fork Creek within the last forty-eight forty-eight hours. If he was right in believing that Jody had come to Fork Creek- He remounted and swung northward, north-ward, mercilessly whipping up his weary pony, but approaching the Fork Creek camp roundabout, behind be-hind masking hills and through hid-den hid-den ravines. An hour passed before be-fore he threw down his reins and crept on hands and knees tq the crest of a ridge commanding the valley of the Fork. He moved a half mile closer and resumed his watch; but for some time he could make out nothing. Then just as the sun set. three men moved out of the cabin For a moment or two they stood in the snow close together. One went back into the cabin. The two others disappeared dis-appeared for a moment, to reappear mounted. They separated, and Rop-er Rop-er watched them ride in opposite di-rections di-rections up the nearest slopes of the hills These passed beyond his sight, but in anomer minute or two their ways were retraced by two other Outposts." Roper decided "Somebody's keeping a hell of a careful watch." (TO BE CnflNUED or two Lew Gordon utter disbelief. Then 10 "is feet. :y she?" he demanded in- "What have you Lr " 'onger looked like iSL HUSty King had raised ttemely competent, old WtTTo' mni m con |