** BvAlAN LL MAY V/.N.U. Release t m %/'4 INSTALLMENT 10 THE STORY SO FAR: Dusty King and Lew Gordon had built ■P a vast string of ranches in the West. King was killed by his powerful and un scrupulous competitor. Ben Thorpe. Bill Koper. King's adopted son. was deter mined to avenge his death in spite of * • opposition by his sweetheart. Jody Gor don, and her father. Roper's successful raids against Thorpe's Texas holdings wiped him out of the state. Roper then left for Thorpe's Montana ranches. Jody, told that her father's life was in danger. • • ie« ner nome to ride 500 miles to warn him. Walk Lasham. manager of Thorpe's holdings In Montana, saw Rop er sitting alone and unarmed in a saloon one day. Gun in hand, Lasham pre pared to kill his hated antagonist. • • CHAPTER Xin—Continued But now the scar-mouthed man spoke suddenly; from his position at one side he had dared flick his eyes to the door. “Walk, look out! Don’t turn! Watch this buzzard, but wheel back and stand by me!" Into the front of the bar two men had come; they came striding back the length of the room; their spurs ringing brokenly. Roper did not see their guns come out. But suddenly the weapons of both of them ap peared in their hands, smoothly and easily, from no place. The two men were Lee Harnish and Tex Long. Tex Long's .45 clicked in the palm of his hand as it came to full cock. He said, “Howdy, Bill. A spic girl Just brought us word. Dave Shan non and Hat Crick Tommy are up the street And Dry Camp Pierce.” “Gosh,” Lee Harnish said, “we’ve been hunting you for two months! You want us to blast these Indians, boss?” Bill Roper drew a deep breath, and grinned. At first he could not even appreciate that here, at last, were the leaders he needed for his great raid. All he could think of was that he had been reprieved from certain death; and he knew that life was good. CHAPTER XIV The tribute Implied by the re-gath ering of the wild bunch leaders was one of the most extraordinary things that had ever happened in Bill Rop er’s life. There was not much to their story. Driven out of Texas on the eve of Bill Roper’s victory, for a while they had gone their separate ways. But gradually they had drift ed together again, in the Indian na tions, at Dodge, in the northern cow camps. With Cleve Tanner broken in Texas, and the roots cut from under Ben Thorpe’s organization by the loss of his breeding grounds, the outlaw riders found themselves un willing to leave their work unfin ished. So at last they had come looking for Roper—and had found him. The first thing was to get them out of there. He named as rendezvous a lonely shanty on Fork Creek. | Roper himself was the last to ride out of Miles City. Seasoned night riders though these men might be, with names now famous the length of the trail, most of them were youngsters still. No one of them could be trusted not to get a skinful of liquor, and go gunning for Lash am’s men on his own hook. Roper was relieved, therefore, upon riding into the Fork Creek ren dezvous in the dreary February twi light, to find his Texas men already waiting for him there. They were eating fresh beef, but r t their own, as Roper came into the little cab in, stamping the snow off his boots. Lee Harnish looked sheepish. “Say, 1 forgot something. I got a letter for you here." Roper took the worn envelope and stood turning it over in his hands. The date showed it to be three weeks old—no great age, everything con sidered. But what took hold of him, so that for a full minute he dared not break the seal, was that the letter was from Jody Gordon. Roper ripped open the envelope. The whole note covered no more than half a page; but as he folded it and put it into a pocket, his hands were shaking in a way that would have cost him his life if he had been walking into a gunfight then. There was a long silence. With a visible effort, Roper ( pulled himself together. Briefly he told them what his new wild bunch had done. “But we haven’t even scratched the surface,” he finished. “Unless we hit Walk Lasham quick and hard, Thorpe will get his balance again, and reach his roots back into Texas; and all the work we did down there will go for nothing." “Me,” Tex Long said, “I aim to swing with you, and try to finish up what we begun. But, way I see it, the layout up here is terrible bad, for our style of work.” “There isn’t any profit in the way I figured,” Roper admitted. “I’ve been taking a pasear up along the Canadian border; I figure it's an easy drive. If you criminals are willing to come on and take one more crack at Thorpe and Lash __ M am— “There's no one beyond the bor der that’s needing any stock,” Dry Camp Pierce said gloomily. “Dry Camp," Bill Roper said, “I’m thinking of the tribes.” There was a moment’s silence. “Granting that Canada’s full of war paint,” Tex Long said; “how the devil—” “I’ve talked to Iron Dog.” Every one of them, each in his own way, pricked up his ears at that. Iron Dog was a famous war rior chief of the Gros Ventre Sioux. Ragged and starving, his decimated band driven far out of their home country, Iron Dog no longer wai the stubbornly resisting force which had once made his name. But though he was broken and helpless now, remnants of his leadership re f mained: his influence extended over many bands, and more than one tribe. “I don’t hold with dealing with red niggers, much," Dave Shannon said. “These bucks are forced out of their ranges without any deal made whereby they get fed,” Roper said. “Half of them are in as pitiful a state of starvation as you ever saw. A big part of the blame for that is on Walk Lasham. Now I aim to square the deal." “I already made us a rendezvous with Iron Dog, before I knew you were in on this," Bill Roper told them now. “Inside of a month Iron Dog will be camped on the Milk Riv er with anyway seven or eight bands.” “Seven or eight bands!” Tex Long shouted at him. “My God, there'll be worse than a thousand Indians on the Milk!” "A thousand, hell!" Roper said. “If there aren’t that many buck war riors alone. I’ll eat the beef myself! The men in this little cabin were not easily surprised, and less easily shocked or awed; but their usually unrevealing faces now gave them away. “God Almighty!” Dave Shannon said. It was almost a prayer. "He's done it now," Hat Crick Tommy said slowly. "You know “Now I aim to square the deal.’* what happens when you throw that many loose Indians together? You got a war on your hands, by God! They’ll come whooping down Mon tana—they’ll tear the country wide open! The whole frontier will go up in a bust of smoke. Nothing’ll ever stop ’em, once they get together like that!” “One thing will.” “What will?” “Grub,” said Roper. “That might be so,” Dave Shan non admitted. “I never yet see an Indian go to war on a full stom ach . . .” A tensity had come into that dark cabin; they were realizing now that they stood in the shadow of events of a magnitude they had not dreamed. In the quiet, Bill Roper’s hands kept creasing and recreasing the letter from Jody Gordon. A faint damp ness showed on his forehead, but his fingers acted cold and awkward. “There’s five of us here,” Tex Long said. “You expect us to just suddenly feed every Indian in crea tion?” “I've got twenty-seven riders wait ing to throw in with us at the first word.” “Twenty-seven riders? Where?” “All over Montana. What do you think I did all-winter? Holed up like a she-bear?” Silence again, while they all stud ied Roper. “How many you figure to move?” Tex Long asked at last. Roper’s voice was so low they could hardly hear his words. “Be tween twenty and thirty thousand head." Tex Long threw his hat against the roof poles in a gesture of com plete impatience. "Dead of winter,” he said; "maybe having to fight part of the time; why, thirty-forty cowboys couldn’t drive—” “We don’t have to handle this stock like fat beef,” Roper remind ed him. “We don’t have to pull up for quicksand, or stampede losses, or high water. If a hundred head get swept down a river, what the hell? Some different Indians will get hold of 'em downstream. Working that way, hard and fast, thirty cow boys can move every head in Mon tana!” “We’re terrible short of time,” Tex Long said. “I know it; in another couple of THIS IS A months their chuck wagons will be heading out, and the deep grass will be full of their riders. We have to move and move quick." “It might be," Dry Camp Pierce declared himself, "it just could be done.” A hard gleam was coming into the old rustler's wary eyes. "And if it can—great God! There’' never been nothing like this!" The others seemed to have had the breath knocked out of them by the unheard-of scope, the bold dar ing, the headlong all-or-nothing char acter of the plan. “This is bigger than the Texas raids," Tex Long said wonderingly. "This is bigger than anything has ever been!” Suddenly Dave Shannon smacked his thigh with his huge hand. "By God. I believe it’ll bust ’em!” Over the pack of outlawed young sters had come a wave of that fa natic enthusiasm which sometimes sways men as they face the im possible, but Roper, strangely, was unable to share it. The great raid he had planned all winter now seemed futile—a plan senseless and cold. "Bill,” said Lee Hamish, “what’s the matter with you? You got chills and fever, or something?” Roper spoke to Hamish alone, as if he had forgotten the others. "That letter was from Jody Gordon,” he said. “Bad news, son?” “I don’t know. She wants me to come to Ogallala.” “When?” “Now—right away.” “What for? Does she say?” “She says she needs me; she says she needs me bad, and right away. I guess she does, all right. If she didn’t, I don’t believe she’d ever write, to me.” The faces of the wild b,--'*v' rid ers were expressionless, noncommit tal; Roper knew they wouldn’t have much to say. They were youngsters still—all except Pierce; but their faces were carved lean and hard by long riding, and a lot of that riding had been for him. He stood up, shaking his shoulders. “Catch up your ponies.” “We pulling out? Tonight yet?” “You bet your life we are. Ought to make Red Horse Springs by mid night.” “And after that,” Harnish said slowly, “what is it, Bill? Is it Ogal lala?” Once more the silence, while they waited for Bill. “It’s the raid,” Roper said. CHAPTER XV Lew Gordon came stumping across the corral of his little Miles City house, his spurs ringing at every stride. His big hands, rope-hard ened and thickened at the knuckles, swung loose at his sides; but his face had the look of a man beset. Opening the back door of the house he sent a great roar through the walls—“Jody! Jody, where are you?” She answered him, and Lew Gor don went to find her. “What’s the meaning of this?” was his greeting as his daughter came running to him through the house. “You were supposed to stay in Ogal lala!” Jody threw her arms about his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him; but Lew Gordon was not to be put off. lhat horse wrangler just brought me word that you was here,” he said. “There’s a pretty kettle of soap, when some horse wrangler knows more about where a man’s daughter is at than he knows him self!” “Dad, will you please sit down? 1 tell you, I want to talk to you!” “Oh, all right.” Lew Gordon flopped into a chair, jabbed his spurs into the floor at long range, and tore off another huge mouthful of beef. “There are two pieces of bad news." Jody said now. “First thing, Ben Thorpe has cut under us in the bidding for the government con tracts, at Dodge.” A spark leaped into Lew Gordon’s eyes; under the pressure of the last two years he had turned edgy and garrulous, as if his mind had be come hasty on the trigger, now that his hands were idle. “I might have known it!” his big voice boomed. “Those infernal—" “The loss of those contracts is go ing to hurt,” Jody said; “I’ve brought the books up into fair shape, and it looks to me as if King-Gordon is starting the worst year in his tory. If the losses go on piling up the way they are—” Jody Gordon came and sat on the arm of her father’s chair. “There was a man rode up to Ogallala from Dodge City,” she said. “He brought some very peculiar news, and I don’t like it at all.” “If that renegade Colorado outfit think they’re going to—” Lew Gor don began. “This was a Bill Roper man,” Jody said. Lew Gordon checked as suddenly as if he had been struck across the face. 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