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W. N.U. Release
INSTALLMENT 13
THE STORY SO FAR:
Dusty King and Lew Gordon had built
up a vast strlrig of ranches. King was
killed by his powerful and unscrupulous
competitor, Ben Thorpe. Bill Roper,
King's adopted son, was determined to
avenge his death In spite of the opposi*
tion of his sweetheart. Jody Gordon, and
her father. After wiping Thorpe out of
Texas, Roper conducted a great raid
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 And
him. They were attacked by some of
Thorpe's men hiding in Roper's shack.
Wilce escaped but Jody was captured.
The men decided to hold her as bait.
• •
CHAPTER XVII—Continued
A shiver ran the length of Jody
Gordon’s body. Casually, as if they
were talking about getting breakfast,
these quiet-faced men were speak
ing of a proposed death—the death
of a boy who had once been very
close to her, and very dear. Sud
denly she was able to glimpse the
power and the depth of the animosi
ty behind the mission of these men.
No effort and no cost would seem
to Ben Thorpe too greaf if in the
end Bill Roper was struck out of ex
istence.
"Jim,” the younger rider said so
berly, "if Roper’s got his wild bunch
with him—Jim, it’s such a fight as
none of us have ever gone into yet!
When you stop to think that any
time—any minute—a bunch of ’em
may land in here—”
"Charley’s on lookout,” Jim Leath
ers shrugged. "We’ll know in plenty
time.”
A silence fell, a long silence.
Heavy upon Jody Gordon was the
panic of an open-space creature held
helpless within close walls. Her
voice was low and bitter. “You’re
set on holding me here?”
"No call to put it that way,” Jim
Leathers said mildly, almost gen
tly. But bis eyes denied that mild
ness, so that behind him Jody sensed
again the vast animosity built by
the Texas Rustlers’ War.
"I want a flat answer,” Jody said
bravely. "Are you going to give
me a horse, or not?”
Once more Jim Leathers’ canine
teeth showed in his peculiarly un
pleasant grin. “Hell, no,” he said.
CHAPTER XVIII
Perhaps Lew Gordon should have
known that if Bill Roper learned of
Jody’s disappearance at all, Roper
would come directly to him.
And, knowing this, he should have
prepared himself. But Lew Gordon
had not met Roper face to face in
nearly two years; and nothing was
farther from his mind than the pos
sibility that Roper would walk in
upon him now.
Upon this night Lew Gordon was
pacing the main room of his little
Miles City house; forty-eight hours
had passed since his daughter’s dis
appearance and the old cattleman
had lashed himself into a state of
repressed fury comparable to that
of a trap-baffled mountain lion, or
a goaded bear. Everything that
could be done to locate his daugh
ter was being done.
He knew that Jody’s disappear
ance was voluntary, and he Knew its
purpose. The brief but highly in
formative note that Jody had left
him told him that much. It simply
said:
“One of you must be made to see
reason. I am going to talk to Billy
Roper myself.’’
What this did not tell him was
where Roper was, or how Jody ex
pected to find him. Impatient of
mystery and delay, he could not un
derstand why his many far-scattered
cowboys could dig up no word. For
all he knew, his daughter was by
this time lost somewhere in the
frozen wastes of snow, in immedi
ate desperate need of help.
Lew Gordon sat alone for a little
while. For the moment his help
less anger was burned down into a
heavy weariness. His mind was full
of his daughter, whom he persistent
ly pictured as a little girl, much
more of a child than she actually
was any more.
Suddenly it struck him how curi
ous it was that in this bare room
In which he sat there was no sign
of any kind that Jody had ever been
here at all. This was partly be
cause she had never lived here nor
even been expected here; but it
brought home to him sharply how
much of his life had been given
to cattle, how little to his daughter.
It made him realize how little he
knew his daughter, and how little
he had ever given her of himself.
This was Lew Gordon’s state of
mind as the door thrust open, let
ting in a brief lash of wintry wind;
and he wheeled in his chair to face
the last man on earth he had ex
pected to see.
Bill Roper shook a powdering of
dry snow off the roll of his coat
collar, then stood looking at Lew
Gordon in a cool hard silence as he
pulled off his gloves. Once this man
had been almost a son to Lew Gor
don—the adopted son, in activity, of
Lew Gordon’s dead partner. But a
definite enmity now replaced what
a little while ago had been a friend
ship as deep and close as the vari
ance in their ages could permit. All
the meaning of their association, al
most as long as Bill Roper’s life,
was gone, wiped out by those two
smoky years since the death of
Dusty King.
For a moment or two Lew Gordon
stared at him in utter disbelief. Then
he whipped to his feet.
“Where is she?” he demanded in
tensely, furiously. “What have you
done with her?”
Bill Roper no longer looked like
the youngster Dusty King had raised
on the trail. His gray eyes looked
hard and extremely competent, old
» *
beyond his age, in a face so dark
and lean-carved it was hard to rec
ognize behind it the face of Dusty
King’s kid. He made no attempt
to answer a question which was nec
essarily meaningless to him. He
finished pulling off his gloves, 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
Lew Gordon’s eyes were savage
ly intent on Roper’s face.
till 1 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.
"Wr.en I jet 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 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
which anger had prompted him, that
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 de
manded, ‘‘you don’t know the 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 his
natural reaction. He turned from
his litter of papers, and handed Bill
Roper the little scrap of Jody’s
handwriting which was all she had
left 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 hos
tile question.
“This looks mighty like a false
lead, to me,” Bill Roper said at last.
“Like as if she 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 girl
don’t lie.”
Roper shrugged. “Why should she
do that?”
this IS A
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i
* mark of fine fiction
* w
“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 me out 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 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 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
by a faint dampness. “In all 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!”
"Quite a tidy little nest egg,” Rop
er agreed. "I’d like to have it my
se/f.”
A trick of the wind sent a great
whirl of papers across the room as
he went out.”
He had not come here without 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 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 expect the tough range
bred pony to last most of the night.
CHAPTER XIX
A tired horse is not much 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 thfe car
cass which had spooked his pony. A
dead pony on the winter range 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 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 ex
amined the dead pony he was glad
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 Rop
er as he studied the dead pony. Rop
er himself was short-cutting through
the hills, following no trail. The 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
Rony 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 hours. If he was right in
believing that Jody had come to
Fork Creek—
He remounted and swung north
ward, mercilessly whipping up his
weary pony, but approaching the
Fork Creek camp roundabout, be
hind masking hills and through hid
den ravines. An hour passed be
fore he threw down his reins and
crept on hands and knees to 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 dis
appeared for a moment, to reappear
mounted. They separated, and Rop
er watched them ride in opposite di
rections up the nearest slopes of the
hills. These passed beyond his sight,
but in another minute or two their
ways were retraced by two other
riders.
“Outposts,” Roper decided.
“Somebody’s keeping a hell of a
careful watch.”
(TO BE CONTINUED)
By VIRGINIA VALE
(Released by Western Newspaper Union.)
SAMUEL GOLDWYN has a
sure-thing combination in
Bette Davis and Director Wil
liam Wyler, who’ve just done
“The Little Foxes” for him.
They were responsible for
“Jezebel,” which won the sec
ond Academy Award for Bette,
though a lot of people thought she'd
Bette Davis
given better per
formances in other
pictures. They also
did “The Letter," a
hit film.
Bette is working
now in “The Man
Who Came to Din
ner," and likes it
because it’s legiti
mate comedy; the
comedy she did
with James Cag
ney, “The Bride
Came C. O. D.,”
wasn't so much to her liking, be
cause it was slapstick stuff.
-*
And RKO, which releases “The
Little Foxes,” may have a sure
thing on Its hands in Terry Frost.
He is the last of the three men who
played "Killer Mears” in the stage
version of “The Last Mile.” Pro
ducer Bert Gilroy picked him for a
part in Tim Holt’s “Cyclone on
Horseback,” in which Frost will
make his film debut after a wait of
11 years.
And—the other two men who
played "Killer Mears” were Spen
cer Tracy and Clark Gable—and it
was Gilroy who picked Gable for
his first film, "Painted Desert.” So,
if good things come in threes, Terry
Frost is headed straight for star
dom.
-*
A matrimonial expert, who’s been
asking American wives “What has
Charles Boyer that your husband
doesn’t have?” maintains that 70
per cent of the country’s married
women are in love with male stars.
One thing he’s got is a beautiful
and charming wife.
—m—
It's on again, off again with John
Garfield and Warner Brothers. As
previously reported
here, he refused to
do “New Orleans
Blues,” was sus
pended, and Rich
ard Whorf, the very
talented actor who’s
appeared so of
ten on the stage
with Lunt and Fon
tanne, replaced him.
Garfield was as
signed to “Bridges
Are Built at Night,"
and all seemed well.
John Garfield
But it wasn't, and now he s been
suspended again, and again Whorf
has replaced him. Seems to be be
coming a habit. Maybe Garfield has
forgotten the rumpuses Bette Davis
and James Cagney had with the
same studio—-and that both of them
went back to work at the same old
stand when the fuss was finally
settled.
t -_
Guy Lombardo has been having a
lot of fun with those lyric ized com
mercials, superimposed over a mu
sical background, and radio audi
ences like them so much that he’s
decided to make them a regular fea
ture of his Saturday evening pro
grams.
Tom Hanlon, announcer on Gene
Autrey's CBS Sunday program,
i “Melody Ranch,” figures that he’s
on his way up, in motion pictures.
He recently played a scene with
Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas
at the Metro studio. He did a com
mercial announcement which they
were supposed to hear over the ra
dio during an important sequence.
But—he worked just out of camera
| range on the set with the Swedish
| star.
’ /}• " 1
Red Skelton has already arrived
at the top, if reports of what pre
view audiences thought of “Whis
tling in the Dark” are a prophecy.
Seems he’s going to give Bob Hope
a run for Hope’s laurels, and make
all of us laugh our heads off while
so doing.
-■<: ' 1
It looks as if September 15 would
be Orson Welles day in Hollywood.
On that date he inaugurates his new
variety broadcasts as star, produc
er, director and author with the
Mercury players, and also starts
the cameras grinding on his next
RKO picture, “The Magnificent Am
bersons.” Between times he’ll prob
ably do card tricks; he’s just mas
tered seven new ones.
-*
ODDS AND ENDS — That man
Rochester, Jack Benny’s “valet,” is the
high spot of the new Mary Martin pic
ture, “Kiss the Boys Goodbye" . . .
Practically all newspaper critics have
thrown bouquets at “The Stars Look
Down” ... fEalt Disney and some of
his staff will journey to South America
to get ideas for cartoons suitable for
that market . . . Charles Laughton will
star in “Out of Gas,” a Tahiti tale by
the “Mutiny on the Bounty” authors ...
Maureen O’Hara wilt have the lead op
posite Tyrone Power in 20th Century
Fox’s “Benjamin Blake” . . There’s a
National Society of Hardy Families, not
related to Metro’s.
Grand Coulee World’s Number One Dam
Grand Coulee, biggest dam in the
world, is now in action. The Co
lumbia river, which has been
dammed, is one of the swiftest and
fiercest in the world, and to curb
it a barrier has been erected which
is three-quarters of a mile long
and 500 feet high.
The result will be a lake 151
miles long, the irrigation of 1,200,
000 acres of land, and sufficient
electric power to supply an area
five times the size of England.
Boulder dam, which harnesses
the Colorado river, with all its col
lateral works, was completed in
1935. It is thrown across a terrific
gorge called Black Canyon, which
is 2,000 feet wide, and the lake be
hind it is 115 miles long and took
three years to fill.
So tremendous is the weight of
water in this lake that geologists
have suggested that it may cause
a bending in the crust of the
I planet.
Habits of Salmon
A group of Pacific salmon, or
king salmon, that inhabits the
Northern Pacific waters, dies after
the breeding season (July to De
cember) is over, says Pathfinder.
These salmon never return to the
sea.
Other types of salmon, however,
return to the sea after spawning,
and remain there until the next
breeding season. All salmon live
partly in the sea and partly in
fresh water, breeding in the latter.
They ascend rivers and tributary
streams to spawn.
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