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Show r bTUNUMW V.N.U. Release Ml! I INSTALLMENT 6 J THE STORY SO FAR: .Gordon had built ranches which . V Montana. King 'rfrful and uj, f (nr Ben Thorpe. Bill s- underr . to break Thorpe's power. Hit first step was to start a cattle war In Texas. He made this decision against the opposition opposi-tion of Lew Gordon and the tearful pleading of his sweetheart, Jody Gordon. With the aid of Dry Camp Pierce and other outlaw gunmen, Roper conducted raid after raid upon Thorpe's herdi. Cleve Tanner, manager of Thorpe's Texas Tex-as holdings, teemed helpless to stop him. Gunmen drove off cattle by the thousands. S to appear that Tanner were tth bj they always 'C and there men i desert the Tanner irf , fired because f nSU volar, Jtothe ranks of the t, T now almost open- the Thorpe-Tanner ifcAf tea" of driest jtreros, by a little used Jnbreroed horseman . i tested gunman, a ise name was known Zl the length of the Trouble-shooting for ; w,he was moving i, to find out what had 5, some of Tanner's m He bad come fast, ,se, frequently, riding nigbt. , the almost Invisible Ibe dark, his horse ud-d ud-d from under him, head- . . TVio nnnv CHAPTER IX With the fall, Lew Gordon, now in sole charge of the far-scattered cattle cat-tle holdings he had shared with Dusty King, came to Texas to inspect in-spect the southern holdings of King-Gordon King-Gordon the breeding ranges from which all the King-Gordon holdings drew their essential sustenance. Reports kept coming to Bill Roper at his constantly shifting bases by way of the many riders who kept him In touch with his far-spread wild bunch. Inevitably he knew that Jody was at the headquarters of the old Two-Circle, not far from Uvalde. The Two-Circle had been the original origi-nal Gordon stand; from this camp had been driven the first trail herd that Dusty King had pushed north. Roper knew that she was there. Yet the fall dragged on, and November No-vember passed into December before be-fore he went to see her. He had told himself that there was no use in his going to see Jody Gordon; Gor-don; but in the end, of course, he went. He rode up to the Two-Circle ranch house In late afternoon of a cold "Sometimes it looks like I'm not even doing that." "If you haven't accomplished anything any-thing else, you've astonished my father. He's said himself, over and over, he wouldn't have supposed it could be done. No question but what Cleve Tanner is shaken; he's shaken clear down to his roots. Nobody No-body knows what's what any more, or what will happen. People who thought a year ago that Cleve Tanner Tan-ner was invincible they're saying now that he's coming to the end of his string; that if this thing goes on, Tanner will be through." "What else do they say?" "They're saying that the worst renegades of the trail are working together, for the first time the killers, kill-ers, the men who don't care If they live or die. They say they have money back of them now, and that even Cleve Tanner, with all his string of outfits, can't stand up against the everlasting raiding, and stampeding, and mysterious loss of cattle. They say he's lost twenty outfits, Just because he couldn't spare the gunmen to hold the range." "Eleven outfits," Roper said. 10thingness. The pony ,tepped into a prairie r t could have been the -pe. But as the dazed "led up, his mouth fuU ''t was prodding his bel-ice bel-ice was saying, "Don't a might have took the ' . . ." a, or up the lonely Pecos eve Tanner's outfit bosses ; to the Ranger stationed Point. damn' outbust of lawless-at lawless-at loose here as I never i," he said. :;r here was Val McDon-dgone McDon-dgone out nineteen times i:metimes against Mexi-jEej Mexi-jEej against the Coman-te Coman-te had hunted white ren-!:re. ren-!:re. tough," he said in his cthetic way. san of the outfit that was was fit to be tied. "I e're being stolen blind," "Not just a calf here either they take 'em in s bunches. It's the bold-ve bold-ve ever seen. Even when chance of getting clear "Then it was really you? "Those eleven outfits they speak of those were outfits roughed away from little lonely men, on pretenses that hadn't any justice or any true law. Those outfits are back with their owners now." "But you admit your wild bunch is behind all this?" "Call it that if you want to. I guess there isn't anybody knows as well as you do what I'm trying to do." She said in a dead voice, "I never nev-er believed it; I couldn't believe it until now." "Didn't I tell you about it? I told you about it before I began. I set out to break Cleve Tanner; and by God, he'll be broken! if I live." "You know Cleve Tanner has put up five thousand dollars for your arrest?" ar-rest?" Bill Roper chuckled crazily. "All right. I'll put up ten thousand for his arrest. There isn't going to be any arrest, and he knows that, too." "I can't believe it," she kept saying say-ing over and over. "I can't believe it even yet." "You can't believe what?" iu He pulled up his horse a few yards from the kitchen gallery. December day. The sky was low and heavy, and the bitter norther had brought a scud of hard snow a long way to throw it sharply in his face. He pulled up his horse a few yards from the kitchen gallery, then sat there looking at the house, his sheepskin sheep-skin hunched about his throat. "That you re an outlaw a wuu bunch boss thrown in with the ugliest ug-liest killers this range has ever seen, or any range" He said ironically, "Don't hardly hard-ly see how I could use second rate men." "Reports have come in, Jody said wonderingly, "from over eight hundred miles of country; they re beginning to call it a rustlers' war a final showdown between the wild cattle, they're game to i cut herd that it's took round up, and scatter it to-" one of Ben Thorpe's out-:at out-:at mean" iswmany times has Cleve issed out the word, 'The e damned?' He's put more in the way of things ;ing to do than any other Who was it had the legis-: legis-: down our pay until we ride for nothing, and fur- 3 own stuff?" -estion here is whether 8 to have any law, or are to have" what I heard," McDonald :ve Tanner has left it be it he's the biggest end of imself. Go talk to Cleve you want law." ierstanding is," the fore- 4 "that the Rangers are :o-" Even now, having come this far, he almost made up his mind to go away. Then Jody Gordon stepped out on the gallery in a whippy woolen dress and stood estimating the uninvited horseman through the dusk. Some-thing Some-thing like the strike of a buffalo lance went through Bill Roper; it was so long since he had seen that one slim little figure that could so change everything under the sky, for him. A split pole fence separated them; and after a moment she came across the few yards of space . ooninst the bitter bunch and lawful men. Ana you- "What about me?" "Oh Billy, it's unbearable! That vou-you've turned yourself into toe festering point of all that struggle, and hate, and lawless gunning-' He had to grin at that, unhappy as he was. "Didn't realize I was festering." he said. "You had everything," shesaid, "and you threw it away . . ." He had only heard her say that once before; but. in memory he had heard it so often since that her words had the ring of a familiar S0"f'm sorry that we can't ever see things the same," Bill said. I started out to get Cleve Tanner and Til get him. After Tanner, Walk Lsham; and after Walk Lasham Ben Thorpe. But when t comes to saying I had everything before I started in, I guess maybe that isn t SJody said hotly, "There wasn;t one ling in all the world you didn't velor couldn't have had-before you chose this crazy way! "I didn't have you," he told her I had had you, I guess I would have you yet. Things don t shift change so easy as that-not m the part of the world I know. He was pulling on his gloves now leaning sideways against the Diner wind, and stood gripping a bar oi the fence as she peered up into his fa"'knew it was you," she said. "Child," said Bill Roper, "you get back in that house. You'll freezer "Then you put up your horse and come in." "Is your father here? "He's in San Antonio." I don't think he'd want me here. J.'Lew Gordon has never turned away any rider without a cup of Cte;ganv:yrthen. and stepped do. He tied his horse to the fence, fe out and straighten up ' old range," McDonald oe glad to. Just as soon irders from headquarters. 8 for them right orders weeks rolled by, and head-as head-as curiously still . . . "nmer; a welcome end rnner himself, the Cleve represented Ben Thorpe ith, master of breeding ke man who controlled the ;-H Ben Thorpe's plains or-as or-as talking to the Unit-1 Unit-1 Marshal at San Antonio. ? h broken a hundred long and Sry Sns; except that Dusty King h- d perhaps never looked so old. He? voice came to him as if from Stance "And when you're throth.' sa.d-'-what are you ?arViaSow?-BiU Roper s.d, Tm not going to have anything it God knows I've got very htUe Shrcrsetorend he really stood. chMriSlv "Can't HPr V1herre s no htpe in this T-uTui nTThoVs grip ghasUy unmg . ck)se tQ brH her words came through her teneth "It's your very Ufe yuu're throwing away ! ' derstood ber ""for he rinned. "Maybe." he "that would be the least S M.ose the very least of aU... uu i oeen such a wave of ' jtoce the horse Indians ; Damnation, man! back ten years ... I a your policy has been. atolet us fight it out for s- against Mexico, against l!!f- against all hell. But I ts thing comes from in-! in-! ijig might be something beat without help." -ted States Marshal at San ."ed to himself a little . ,he said, "Seems like this ternble bad thing for you, 'H you :,ead and tell me. You're a man, ain't you? A right n fhorpe man. Well you a couple of JUeday . law in Texas, even in . hut there was no such 4,.,,,tand against the com- Stf Ion8 trail-ila trail-ila a lawyer who forever in the courts; 6 'expenditure of mon- if lch some sus' wtU(:h was not definitely and followed her into the house. The fire in the big wood range mSe tne room a dazing contrast o Se cold sweep of the ; praine, he threw his coat open, but did not take " course." Jody said, "we keep hearing about you. ' "That's too bad. I expi." j wou be hearing anything good. "Na" hp didn't know to be so near th.s girl a"1"-yet a"1"-yet to be so far away. -Still." Jody sa-d ou be getting dne what you to do." t |