ByALAN LE. MAY V/.N.U. Release INSTALLMENT 17 THE STORY SO FAR: Dusty King and Lew Gordon had built up a vast string 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 by 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. Both Thorpe and Lew Gordon placed heavy rewards upon Roper's head. He was captured by Leathers and Kane, two of Thorpe's men. Leathers' girl, Marquita, loved Roper. She made a des perate but futile effort to save him. The men were preparing to hang Roper when they heard the sound of running horses. CHAPTER XXII—Continued Jim Leathers, in spite of his warn ing to Kane, made no effort to move out of the light. Standing square in the door, he drew his gun. A bul let splintered into the casing beside him as the report of a carbine sound ed from somewhere beyond. Jim Leathers fired twice; then stepped inside, closed and barred the heavy door. For a moment the eyes of Kane and Leathers questioned each other. “Dry Camp Pierce,” Kane said. “Naturally.” “If it don’t beat hell that they should land in at just this minute—” Leathers was very cool and quiet now. Deliberately he pulled on his sheepskin. “Get out the back, un tie the ponies and get your man aboard.” “Jim, seems like we stand a bet ter chance here, way we are, than running in the open, what with—” “They'll burn us out if we try to hold. Get going, you!” Dragging Roper after him, Kane plunged into the dark of the back room. He swore as he rummaged for his rifle, his sheepskin. Leathers neither swore nor hur ried. Moving deliberately, he blew out one lamp, hobbled across the room to the other. Then all hell broke loose at once. The single frosted pane of the ten inch window at the end of the room smashed out with a brittle ring of falling glass. In the black aperture appeared the face of a boy, pale and wild-eyed, so young-looking that he might almost have been called a child. The heavy .44 with which he had smashed the window thrust through the broken pane; it blazed out heavily, twice. Jim Leathers, staggering back wards as if he had been hit with a log ram, fired once, from the level of his belt. The face vanished, but a moment after it was gone the hand that held the gun dangled limp within the room. Then the gun thud ded on the floor, and the lifeless hand disappeared. as j_,eamers wem down, a urunen roar of guns broke out in the store room. Leathers groped for his gun, tried to rise, but could not. Roper, who had been dragged into ) the dark storeroom by Red Kane, felt the swift sting of the wind as the back door was smashed open, and was able to tear free as the guns began. He stumbled over piled sacks, and flattened himself against the wall. The blind blasting in the dark of the back room lasted long enough for three guns to empty themselves. Their smashing voices fell silent with an odd suddenness, as suddenly as they had opened. In the dark a voice said, “In God’s name let’s have a light!” After what seemed a long time a match flared uncertainly, and Rop er’s quick glance estimated the changed situation. In the back room now two men were down—Red Kane and another whom Roper immedi ately recognized as an old King Gordon cowboy called Old Joe. The dim flicker of the match was augmented to a steady glow as a lantern was found and lighted. Rop er did not recognize the other man in the room—the cowboy who had lighted the lantern with one hand, his smoking six-gun still ready in the other. The stranger stooped over Old i' Joe. “You hurt bad?” “It’s only my laig, my laig.” The ether stepped over the inert body of Kane to the door, and sur veyed the silent kitchen. “Jim Leathers! Somebody got Jim Leathers, and got him hard!” He stepped back into the rear room. "You’re Bill Roper, aren’t you? Where’s the others?” “There aren’t any others. They all went out on Dry Camp’s trail, after his raid day before yesterday.” “No others here? You sure?” “Kane and Leathers are the only ones here.” Old Joe, both hands clasped on his smashed leg, spoke between set teeth. “Where’s Jody? For God’s sake find Jody!” The King-Gordon cowboy whom i Roper did not know, went out, his spurs ringing with his long strides. “Jody isn’t here,” Roper told Old Joe disgustedly. “She got loose two days ago.” “The hell she isn’t here! She come here with us!” “With you? But you’re from Gor don’s Red Butte camp, aren’t you? I thought Jody went to Miles City with Shoshone Wilce.” “She never went to Miles. She knew Leathers was bringing you here, from what she’d heard him 8 say. She come to us, because we was the K-G camp nearest here, and she wouldn’t hear of nothing but we come and try to crack you loose. Shoshone Wilce—he’s daid.” Bill Roper was dazed. “I thought —I thought—” The other cowboy now came tramping back into the cabin, an awkward burden in his arms; and this time Jody Gordon herself fol lowed close upon his heels. Her j face was set, and the sharp flush ' across her cheekbones did not con ceal her fatigue. * Bill Roper started to say. "Jody, how on earth—” Jody did net seem to see him; she, appeared to be thinking only of the slim youngster whom the cowboy carried. The cowboy laid the limp figure on the floor of the kitchen, ripped off his own neckerchief and spread it over the youngster’s face. Jody Gordon methodically shut the door. Then she dropped to the floor beside the fallen youngster, lifted his head into her lap, and gave way to a violent sobbing. The high keyed nervous excitement that had sustained her through the hard ne cessities of action was unstrung abruptly, now that her work was done; it left nothing behind it but a great weariness, and the bleak con sciousness that this boy was dead because of her. Roper and the King-Gordon cow boy stood uncertainly for a moment. Then the cowboy picked up Leath ers where he lay struggling for breath, carried him into the back room and put him down on a bunk. For a moment he hesitated; then closed the door between the two rooms, leaving Jody alone. "Seems like the kid got Jim Leath ers; but Jim Leathers got the kid.” "Daid?” Old Joe asked. “Deader’n hell! Jody takes it aw ful hard.” The cowboy cut loose Bill Roper’s hands, and together they lifted Old “Now you go and keep Miss Gordon company.’’ Joe onto the other bunk. Roper cut Marquita free. “Get me that kettle of water off the stove,” Bill Roper ordered Mar quita; and when she had brought it he said, “Now you go and keep Miss Gordon company for a little while.” Marquita left them, closing the door behind her. Old Joe k£pt talking to them in a gaspy sort of way, as they did what they could for his wound. “The kid was scared to death to come. Jody seen that, and tried to send him back, with some trumped up message or something. Natural ly he seen through that and wouldn’t go. Now most likely she blames herself that he’s daid. Lucky for us that Leathers’ main outfit wasn’t here.” “You mean just you three was go ing to jump the whole Leathers out fit, and the Walk Lasham cowboys, too?” “Not three—four,” Old Joe said. "Don’t ever figure that girl don’t pull her weight. We been laying up here on the hill since before dusk. She aimed we should use the same stunt you used at Fork Crick—bust into ’em just before daylight. Then somebody fires off a gun down here, and she loses her haid, and we come on down. It was her smashed her horse against the door, trying to bust it in. She blindfolded him with her coat—threw it over his haid— and poured on whip and spur, and she bangs into the planks. Broke his neck, most like; cain’t see why she wasn’t killed—” “Just you four,” Roper marveled, “were going to tackle the whole works, not even knowing how many were here?” “We tried to tell her it couldn’t be done. But you can’t talk any sense into a woman, once she gets a no tion in her nut.” CHAPTER XXIII Marquita, closing the door of the storeroom behind her, for some mo ments stood looking down at Jody Gordon. Jody still sat on the floor, upon her lap the head of the boy who had downed Jim Leathers. The sobs that convulsed her were dying off now. leaving her deeply fatigued, and pro foundly shaken. “You might as well get up now,” Marquita said. Her soft Mexican slur gave an odd turn to the blunt American words she used. “The fight’s over; and that boy you’ve got there is dead as a herring.” With a visible effort Jody Gor don pulled herself together, and gen tly lowered the head of the dead boy to the floor. She got up shakily, and for a moment looked at Mar quita. “Why did you come here?” Mar quita asked at last Her voice con tinued gently curious—nothing more. “I knew Billy Roper was alive,” Jody told her. “Because I was watching when Leathers left Fork Creek with him. I already knew they meant to take him to Ben Thorpe at Sundance, for the reward. That would be death, to him. And I knew they meant to stop over here on the way. So I got the boys, from our Red Butte camp, and I come on . . .** “You are a very foolish little girl,” Marquita said. “Luck saved you; but if this camp had been full of men, it would have been suicide.” “Wouldn’t you have done the same?” Marquita shrugged impatiently. “I feel very sorry for you,” she said. “Why?” “Because I think you are in love with this Billy Roper.” “Why do you say that?” “Es claro,” Marquita said. "It Is plain. And it’s a pity; because this kind of man is not for you.” At first Jody Gordon did not an swer. But behind the softness of Marquita’s voice was a cogency as strange as her American words—a cogency that would not be ignored. Here Jody found herself facing a woman whom she could not possibly have understood. Marquita’s care less, even reckless mode of life, her uncoded relationships with men— there was not an aspect of Mar quita’s life which did not deny ev ery value of which Jody was aware. Marquita appeared to thrive and flower in a mode of life in which Jody incorrectly believed she her* self would have died. “I don't understand you.” Marquita’s glance swept the room —the bare chinked walls, the dead boy. Her glance seemed to go be yond the door, where they were dressing Old Joe’s wound; beyond the walls, to the cold wind-swept prairie, where men still rode this night, though morning was close. “What do you know,” she said— “what can you know of the lives of these men? Jody lifted her head, then, and looked at Marquita; and again the simple words and the mask-like face of Marquita seemed to have a mean ing for which she groped. In the silence that followed, it came to Jody that the night’s fighting was not yet over, that she must still fight for herself and for Bill—and some how for that foolish house in Ogalla la, with its tall tower overlooking the plain. “Do you ride with them?” the gentle, inexorable voice went on. "Do you share their blankets? Do you ride under their ponchos in the rain? Where are you when their guns speak? Who prays for them at dawn, knees down in this God-for saken snow?” Marquita paused, and her body swung, lazily assured, across a shadowy angle of the room toward the closed door that had hid Roper, working now over the wounded men. the doorposts and it seemed to Jody, watching her, as if Marquita were a barrier between what might have been Jody's, and that she had lost now. “You don’t have to bar the door,” she said. Marquita’s hands came away from the doorposts. “I know I don’t.” The words were so indolently ca denced that they might have been spoken in Spanish. And at their soft assurance something awoke in Jody Gordon . . . Something was still worth fighting for. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Bill Roper, but it flowed deep into the roots of her life; deeper than her life with one man—with any man—could ever flow. As Jody looked at Marquita, strange things came to her, that she herself could not have put into words. She knew that Marquita and all her kind would presently pass. Perhaps Bill Roper, like all the rest of his bold riders, must also pass; but now suddenly Jody knew that whatever else might vanish from this prairie, what she herself stood for would remain. When she spoke at last, she scarcely recognized her own voice. “I guess I was wrong,” she said. Her words had a strange echo of Marquita’s own directness. “You’re Bill Roper’s girl—is that what you wanted to tell me?” The dance hall girl’s words fell softly. “Si, that is what I wanted you to know.” (TO BE CONTINUED) R.A.F. Fledglings Train Here This is John Staples of London. He is one of a hundred British boys be ing fashioned into pilots for the Royal Air Force at the Lakeland school of aeronautics. There are some 550 such students in the U. S. altogether, all of tvhom are getting expert training far from the bomb-rocked airdromes of the homeland. Staples is typical of these sky fighters whose average age is 23. Air cadet Staples teas given this Uncle Sam bunny mascot by Horida admirers. • V'1 Young Britons who came to America because they tcanted wings to fly and. fight with the Royal Air Force are shmcn march ing back to the hangars after an instruction flight. Over in the bomb-cratered homeland they call it "tonic," but they like the pop they get in the canteen at the Lakeland school better than the home product. Above: This is the cadets' firct introduc tion to water melon. Billie Jones, an expert, suh, is showing the Britons the proper tech nique in disposing of Florida watermelon. Left: Students who are being fashioned in to sky fighters for the R. A. F. take time out for play. Cricket is tops with them. Marching to the mess hall for breakfast. i •€ s *, SEWING CIRCLE_L npHE dress which is practically a requirement for college en trance is the jumper. It’s the basis of every well-planned school wardrobe, for it can be worn with different blouses and sweaters in many interchangeable effects. Pattern No. 8018 presents a jump er which slim girls will like—it has a fitted waistline, marked with a shaped, wide belt. The top is supported with straps which cross and button in back. The regula tion convertible collar blouse is in cluded with the jumper pattern. Utmost Isolation Half way between Cape Horn and New Zealand a ship will find itself 1,200 miles from the near est land and in the center of the greatest space of open water on the face of our planet. Another almost equally great space of open sea is to be found in the North Pacific between the Aleutian is lands and the Sandwich islands. This is even more open than the first named, for in it there is not even an islet. The most re mote island is Kerguelen in the southern Indian ocean. It is rough ly 3,000 miles from the Cape of Good Hope and nearly the same from Cape Leeuwin in Australia. St. Paul’s island, 600 miles north of Kerguelen, is almost equally isolated. Pattern No. 8018 is In uneven sizes II to 19. Size 13 Jumper requires 3Va yards 33-lnch material or 2’i yards 54-Inch ma terial. Blouse with short sleeves takes 1% yards 33-inch material. For this attrac tive pattern, send your order to: First hand information from the men in the service show cigarettes and smoking tobacco first choice as gifts from the folks back home. Actual sales records from post ex changes, sales commissaries, ship’s stores, ship’s service stores ana canteens show Camel cigar ettes the largest-selling brand. Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco is . another big favorite. Local deal ers, quick to note this preference, are featuring Camels by the car ton and pound tins of Prince Al bert as ideal gifts for men in the service from the folks back home, —Adv. You pay less for Clabber Girl but you use no more ... Add to this Clabber Girl’s half century record of perfect baking results and you will see why millions of proud homemakers use Clabber Girl, exclusively. Order a can of Clabber Girl from your grocer today. You will be amazed when he tells you the price. You will be delighted with your baking results. You Pay LESS... but us* NO MORE I |_ Privilege to Listen It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.—Oliver Wendell Holmes. , MILDNESS (uJsN.CDI.Ne' fe^NE^SONI [ COUNTS WITH K you,too 100