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Show h I VtEMAY V.N.U. Release tIjM I I INSTALLMENT 16 1 TIIR KTdnv in cm. , uw Cordon had built Trf wnchei. King was Jrfulsnd unscrupulous " Jwi EW RPer ""nlned 10 itlteofth.oppo.i- w . w.v s r An. tlon of his sweetheart, Jody Cordon, and her father. After breaking Thorpe in Texas. Roper conducted a great raid upon Thorpe's vast herds in Montana. Jody was captured by seven of Thorpe's men. Roper and Shoshone Wllce res- cued her In a surprise attack. Sho-shone Sho-shone and JoJy rode to a prearranged pot. but Roper was captured while fighting a rear guard action. Whila waiting for Roper to meet them. Jody saw Shoshone fall down. dead. Lasham's southwest camp was broken, bro-ken, and seemed to have been little understood by the men who had brought It; but Roper, with his inside in-side knowledge of the force he had turned loose against Lasham, could piece together its meaning well enough. Lasham's southwest outpost, out-post, with its big herds of picked cattle wintering in this deepest and richest of the Montana grass, had been more powerfully manned than any other Lasham camp. But twice In the past week frantic calls for reinforcements from the outfits to the east had drained most of this man power away first five picked gunflghters, then a dozen cowboys more, until only five men had been left. The messengers who had killed their ponies to come for help had brought the camp a fragmentary story which gave Roper the deep-est deep-est satisfaction. In their talcs of incredible losses, of raiders who struck night after night at far separated points, driving driv-ing cattle unheard-of distances to disappear weirdly in the northern wastes, Roper read the success of his Great Raid. Dry Camp Pierce was sweeping westward across Montana like a destroying de-stroying wind; by unexpected daring, dar-ing, by speed of movement, by wild ' HAPTEB XXII ,.,7big mistake, not S be done with IV l't'0 day from Fork !j long and narrow 3 i Jim Leathers paced 10 II nt the kitchen of the j ,tWalk Lasham aouth- f convenient stop-over K to Sundance, where Rop- k turned over to Ben ier we hang him, the ii 'lie off," Red Kane said Ti doggedly. Jim Lers I trette. HetookhliUme ii 1st "Seems like you alii al-ii hat once before." I I, to keep on saying it," a told him. "Things is dif- Lrway, behind the two latched Bill Roper, a girl I-ed, t slim, full-breasted Idark, slanting eyes had troubled Bill Roper be- Lt been surprised to find here in Walk Lasham' jcow camp, to which his Id brought him. He had ten he had last talked to IsCity, that she was Walk girl; and in spite of her eagerness to leave Lash-ta Lash-ta with Roper, he real-S'arquita real-S'arquita still had to live Tier stamp could not af-Ijw af-Ijw down such a man as fctil more interesting op-I op-I offered. 1 was impassive now, but I I slanting dark eyes nar-' nar-' 1 definite signal to Roper, iration of Spanish and In- in this girl from the Tex le her a lithe, lazy grace, Lting depth of dark eyes; fcme blood made her un--sometimes stoic and ft, sometimes livened by kg flashes of an inner fire, ledly she was capable of a I devotion, and an equally I cruelty. Anything could la situation which included l-with Marquita in love. l.ment Bill Roper resented lit he couldn't be interest-Kirl interest-Kirl except Jody Gordon I didn't want him or need I the worst aspects of his Ion were apparent to him, I was an outlaw wanted I of the Trail; probably an outlaw all the rest of laid) gave every promise la short one. That even panted him, or had any p, was a gift which he 'e been glad to accept. hi to think of now, though, Marquita was extremely precipitate a lot of imme-trbance. imme-trbance. R he wished to shake his l some other way caution l-e must make no attempt f e. Roper had no inten-ter inten-ter coming into the hands Ihorpe alive. Somewhere lis place and Sundance, rpe waited, he would make however slim the chance. I would rather take his Pith some unforeseen op- I later, when they were Fe trail, than to be plunged helpfully intended situa- II the girl might devise f to herself and question-stage question-stage to him. She had ight him any luck. iuable, however, with the 1:1 two enemies upon him, to in any way. uted him alive, if I could Jim Leathers said stub-1 stub-1 gu him alive, and feeP him that way. You f t going to talk me into "'flerent just because you fleid man is easier to to listened sardonically. days spent in traveling 11 Creek rendezvous, the f4 Mch had brought him i nearly healed; but when 13 tagers behind his head a"d dropped his hands JP'cal of the quality of his "at his hands were not tied They t0id him where Wey made him stay put, ere careful that no op- as given him to snatch a n unwary holster; but merely the routine pre- sensible men. For these ' we picked gunflghters 'nfPe's scores of outfits. ! fear Roper, would not him had he been armed. jer had no doubt that Red Perhaps one or two of ' Wo"'d kill a doomed pris-more pris-more reason than Jim s "aa suggested. e'an camp had been boil- ws as Jim Leathers' men at dusk with their whi! had haPPened on 1 'e Leathers ad waited f0pe at the Fork Creek De that had reached i "I guess it could be dona," Red Kane said nastily. Leathers ignored this, and Red Kane disappeared. This time the door shut after him. Leathers said, "Get me a drink." Marquita unhurriedly set out a bottle bot-tle and a glass on the table beside Jim Leathers' elbow. "A deck of cards," Leathers said. She produced this, too. Marquita strolled over to Leathers, Leath-ers, the high heels of her slippers clicking lazily on the puncheon floor. "Why are you so cross with me?" she asked reproachfully. She moved behind Jim Leathers, and slowly ran her fingers through his hair. "Ain't going to get you a thing," Jim Leathers said sourly. "No?" said Marquita. For a moment mo-ment one hand was lost in the folds of her skirt; then deftly, unhurriedly, unhurried-ly, she planted the muzzle of a .38 against the back of Jim Leathers' neck. There was a moment of absolute silence, absolute immobility. Jim Leathers' eyes were perfectly still upon Bill Roper's face, as still a his hands, in one of which a playing card hung suspended. But though his face did not notably change, Marquita, with her .38 pressed hard against the back of the gunman's neck, had turned white; her mouth worked as she tried to speak, and her wide eyes were upon Bill Roper in terrified appeal. Perhaps no more than a second could have passed in that way, but to them all it seemed as if time had stopped, so that that little fraction of eternity held them motionless forever. Bill Roper, moving up and forward, for-ward, exploded into action smoothly, like a cat It was the length of the room between them that saved Jim Leathers then. Leathers twisted, lightning fast. Marquita's gun blazed into the floor as her wrist swept down in the grip of Leathers' left hand; and Bill Roper Rop-er checked a yard from the table as Leathers' gun flashed into sight, becoming be-coming instantly steady. Marquita sagged away from Leathers, and her gun clattered upon the puncheons; but although Leathers' whole attention atten-tion was concentrated upon Roper, Marquita's wrist remained locked in his grasp. The gunfighter's voice was more hard and cold than the steel of his gun; it was as hard and cold as his eyes. "Get back there where you was." Bill Roper shrugged and moved back. Leathers flung Marquita away from him and with his left hand picked up her gun as the door of the storeroom was torn open and Red Kane bulged In. "What the" "This thing come behind me and stuck a gun in my neck," Leathers told him. "The devil! You hurt?" "Hell, not I took it away from her." Gently, tentatively, his long fingers fin-gers ran over his wounded leg. That bullet wound in his thigh must have tortured him unspeakably through the two days in the saddle; and it must have been jerking at his nerves now with red-hot hooks, roused by the swift action that had preserved his command. His face had turned gray so that the black circles under his eyes made them seem to burn from death's-head hollows, and his face, which had changed so little in this moment of action was relaxed into an ugly contortion. Slowly the gray color was turning to the purple of a dark and terrible anger. "By God." said Red Kane, "I told you we should have hung him!" "You told me right." Jim Leathers Leath-ers said. The burn of his eyes never for a moment left Bill Roper's Ro-per's face. "You was right and I was wrong. I should have hung, him at the start" A pleasurable hope came into Red Kane's face. "Well - it ain't too late'" "No, it ain't too late. Tie his hands." Keeping Roper between himself and Leathers, so that his partner's gun bore steadily upon Roper s belt buckle, Kane lashed Roper's hands behind him. The frost-stiff rope bit deep. .. . "Tie up this girl, too," Leathers ordered when Kane had finished. "I want her to see this show." Marquita said, "I'm sorry Bill Her voice was broken by hard, jerk-ing jerk-ing sobs, and tears were running down her face; yet somehow her words sounded dull and dead. I did the best I could." "You did fine." Roper said. That was a game try." Hobbling on bis ItX leg Leathers moved to the outer out-er door, flung it open; coatless, he stopped and signaled Red Kane hark with one hand. "Red get back! Get out of line!" With 'the quick instinct of a man who has always been in trouble. Red Kane jumped back intc . the room carrying Bill Roper with him They "l could hear now the sound of run- "ing haO BE COST,MF.D, Dry Camp Pierce was sweeping westward across Montana. riding relays which punished themselves them-selves no less than the cattle they drove, Dry Camp was feeding an increasing stream of Lasham beef into the hands of Iron Dog's bands, who spirited the beef forever from the face of Montana. By the very boldness of its conception and the wild savagery of its execution the unbelievable Great Raid was meeting meet-ing with success. And now Dry Camp had struck even deeper than Roper had planned, lifting the best of Lash-am's Lash-am's beeves from almost within gunshot gun-shot of Lasham's strongest camp. So well had Dry Camp planned, and so steadily did the luck hold, that a full day had passed before the loss inflicted by the raiders was discovered. discov-ered. The five remaining cowboys at the southwest camp were only tightening their cinches as Jim Leathers rode in. Most of the Leathers party had joined the Lasham men in pursuit of Dry Camp's raiders. Only Jim Leathers himself and the unwilling Red Kane remained to convoy Roper Rop-er to Ben Thorpe at Sundance. Because of the confusion involved in the organization of the pursuit, the night was now far gone; already it was long past midnight. "There's still another reason," Red Kane said, "why it would be better to hang him now. Suppose that wild bunch of his knows he s here?" "How the devil would they know that?" Leathers said with disgust. "Maybe they was scouting us with spy glasses as we come over the trail today." "If they was, they would have landed on us right then, in place of waiting till we got into camp. "Maybe the girl run to them- "The girl! You make me sick. "Have it your own way." "You're darned right I'll have it mv own way. I don't want to hear n7mTe about it And HI tel you this: if your trigger finger gets itchy while you're on watch tonight, you better soak it in a pan of water and leave the gun be. Because if any-thing any-thing comes up while you're on I S such that you got to shoot him, by God. next thing you got to shoot me-yoti understand? |