W. N.U. Release t® V
Duity King and Lew Gordon were joint
owners of the vast King-Gordon range which
jtretcbed from Texas to Montana. When
building up this string of ranches, they con
tmually had to fight the unscrupulous Ben
Thoii e- He rivaled King-Gordon In wealth
• »
CHAPTER VII
These men whom Roper now gath
ered about him hated a particular
man, not only as lawless as them
jelves, but a man who was more
(ban one man. Ben Thorpe was a
thousand men; operating under
CJeve Tanner in the south, and Walk
Lasham in the north, his innumer
able retainers filamented the plains
from the Rio Grande to the Big
Horn. That Roper’s men hated Ben
Thorpe was no coincidence; Roper
had picked men of personal grudge.
Most of them had first been out
lawed because they had not suited a
single organization the organiza
tion of Ben Thorpe.
Up and down and across half of
Texas, constantly in the saddle, Bill
Roper threaded his new organiza
tion. Sometimes Dry Camp Pierce
was with him; more often he trav
eled alone. These famous gunfight
ers and outlawed men whom Roper
gathered were just youngsters, most
ly, Some of them were true killers;
some merely reckless kids who had
got off on the wrong foot. All of
them were badly wanted by what
little law there was.
One night in early June, Dry Camp
Pierce and Bill Roper sat in the
back room of a saloon, deep in
Texas.
"Look,” Dry Camp Pierce said.
"I’ve stole cows until I could pave
my way to hell with their hides.
But—l don’t know—to steal cows for
Dusty’s kid—”
Bill Roper’s teeth flashed clean in
his grin. “Whose cows?”
“I’ve stole cows—”
"You’re going to steal cows that
belong to me, now.”
“Figure you own these cows?”
“I’m half of King-Gordon, now
split. I’ve taken, out of King-Gor
don, seven camps without cows; now
I’m claiming the cows that Thorpe
took from Dusty King. And from
some other men that we’re going to
lend a hand to, pretty soon.”
Dry Camp Pierce—he was called
Shat because he hated to camp too
near to water—went to work for
Bill Roper as he had never worked
before; and thus the king of cow
thieves, the brand changer extraor
dinary, for once aligned on the side
of the law that was not.
Ten rustlers’ camps hooked into
Thorpe-Tanner territory . , .
But Dry Camp also helped in oth
er ways.
A hot June dusk, five days after
the meeting at Whipper Forks, found
Bill Roper at the Dry Saddle Cross
ing, where he was to meet Lee Har
nish; and this meeting, too, was ar
ranged by Dry Camp Pierce, though
by this time Pierce was already far
•Way,
Were ran the broad, many-chan
neied river, dividing two countries —
* liver whose split wanderings made
two miles of intermittent shallows.
At this border of a vast, impercepti
bly rolling prairie stood a narrow
•tring of adobe shacks. That was
the Dry Saddle Crossing.
Two men—Bill Roper and Lee
Harnish—sat in front of one of those
•bandoned shacks, and tried to get
together.
'T’ve always understood,” Roper
•aid, “that you were acquainted
lome, below the line.”
Harnish’s hard eyes studied Rop-
W, and for a little while nothing
could be heard except the mourn
hig of doves in the willow scrub by
the water. Next to Dry Camp Pierce,
Lee Harnish was the oldest of those
k> join Roper; he was twenty-eight,
be was tall and lank, sun-baked al
most to the color of an Indian; his
tmen eyes were curiously blank, im
penetrable, and he liked to look his
m& n in the eye with the peculiar
fcdty seen in the gaze of hawks.
"I’ve been down there some,” he
admitted. “I’ve made a few drives
Chihuahua; one drive to Mex
ico City.”
‘Tf you had a big wet herd run
w you just below the line, would
ycu know ho to get rid of it?”
I can’t make out your hand,”
“armsh said. “King-Gordon never
•wung the long rope yet, that I
heard of.”
"I’m not King-Gordon now. My
itunt is to smash Cleve Tanner; and
I don’t care what it costs.”
"What’s wrong with backing him
nto a shoot-out, if that’s what you
want?”
1 hat comes later. If I bust Tan
ner I can bust Thorpe. But if Tan-
Jjcr is gunned before he’s busted,
ihorpe will take over in Texas, and
, 6 chance to break up his Texas
* a yout will be gone.”
You ain’t going to bust him by
cunning off a few head of cattle,
kid ” r * ver cross i n g is S I° W work,
I figure to cross five thousand
't-fjci within the next three months,”
ttcper told him.
F ; ve thousand head won’t even
icratch the hide of Thorpe and Tan
ker, son.”
1 know that as well as you. What
!' do, it’ll draw Tanner to throw
warriors onto the border. That’s
I want. Because by then I’ll
working somewhere ei*e ”
INSTALLMENT 5
THE STORV SO FAR:
and power, but had gained his position
through wholesale cattle rustling and gun
play. One afternoon King was killed by
Thorpe and his two assistants. Cleve Tan
ner and Walk Lasham. King’s adopted son.
# Roper, decided to start a cattle war
And you want me to take ’em
on the other side—is that the idee?”
I want three dollars a head,
American gold, paid off as the cat
tle come out of the water ...”
Roper’s ways of gathering his wild
bunch were diverse, as diverse as
the saddle men he gathered. One
or another, picking up a man
here, three more there, he got all
he needed, and more.
But certain other things had to be
done, in order that the wild bunch
would have work to do, planned in
such away that something would
be accomplished that would stay ac
complished.
On a steamy afternoon early in
July, Bill Roper sat in Fred Max
im’s San Antonio law office. Maxim
was an attorney who, some thought,
had worked under a different name,
somewhere before; but here, assur
edly he was in no one’s pay.
“I’m not asking the likes of you
what’s what,” Bill Roper said. "I
Roper’s ways of gathering his
wild bunch were diverse,
want to know who actually owns
range rights on the Graham stand.”
The hard-bitten little man across
the desk from Roper was still cadgy.
“When it comes to ousting a man
from possession—”
“You know who ‘ousted’ Bob Gra
ham and his family from possession.
Cleve Tanner took over that outfit
by main horse-and-gun £ower, with
out decent cause or reason. Every
body knows that. I’m asking you
now—”
“Taylor and Graves are already
doing everything that can be done
to regain possession of Graham’s
outfit,” Maxim said, smiling.
It was the smile that Roper liked.
“Suppose I hold the Bob Graham
lands, and Bob Graham’s family
are living on it.
“Bob Graham hasn’t got posses
sion,” Maxim said.
“Suppose he did have?”
“Never could happen. Ben
Thorpe”
“Shut up a minute,” Roper said.
“I’m not asking you to put Graham
back in possession of his range. I’m
not asking you to save him from
being put off again in the way he
was before. What I want to know is,
can you head off some cooked-up
legal interference with Graham, aft
er he’s in possession again?”
Fred Maxim thought it over. “I
can only promise you that I can
cause considerable delay,” he said.
“Months of delay?”
“Providing you can show posses
sion—l’ll keep you clear until hell
freezes.”
“That’s all I want ...”
Still July, at Willow Creek—
A barren range of hills, sand hills;
golden in the dawn, purple in the
twilight, barren always. Beneath
them, what had been the Willow
Creek camp of the old King-Gordon.
In the bunkhouse nearest the river,
five men lounging around a little
room.
“All right, you hard guys,” Bill
Roper said; “you know who told you
to come here. Dry Camp Pierce
told you to come here. Maybe he
told you what you could look for
here, huh?”
These four gunfighters who met
Roper here were none of them older (
than Bill; yet each was famous as a
killer in his own right. Of them all
Bill Roper alone had no name, no '
reputation. Yet, in respect for the
name of Dusty King, they had come
to hear him out.
Nate Liggett, a round-faced kid
with eyelashes that looked as if they
had been powdered with white dust,
said, “Well, what seems to be your
offer?”
fin up BRIO
HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL, PERRY, GEORGIA
against Thorpe In Texas. He made this de
cision against the strong opposition of his
partner, Lew Gordon. Bill’s sweetheart,
Jody Gordon, pleaded frantically with
hdm to turn back, but could not change
his grim determination.
* *
“I guess you already know Bob
Graham,” Roper said. "You know
how a warrior gang of Cleve Tan
ner’s jumped down on him, on some
thin excuse, and run him off his
range. They even took over his
house and his windmill and. his cor
rals. Now, I aim to hand back that
range to Bob Graham; he’s waiting
in Bigspring for the word. Your part
of the job is simple enough—you
just go and take it away from the
Tanner bunch.”
“Simple, huh? Just how do you
figure this simple trick is to be
done?”
“A lawyer in San Antonio kept
the Rangers off when Tanner
jumped Graham. Now we’ve got an
other better lawyer in San Antonio
to keep them off when Graham
jumps Tanner. The only question is,
who’s got enough salt to grab that
range—and then hang onto it?”
“And what do we get out of all
this?”
“Graham takes over the outfit and
runs it. You hang around and help
him, and see that he do'esn’t get
run off again. For that you get a
half interest in the outfit. You split
it among you any way you sea fit.
I’ll back Graham with cattle, and
what other stuff he needs.”
Nate Liggett said, “Bill, I don’t
see where we come in for no ad
vantage.”
“If you’re satisfied with the lone
wolf stuff you’ve been pulling, I
haven’t got anything to offer you,”
Roper admitted. “But I’ll tell you
this—the boys that string with me
now will see the day when they’ll
run Texas; and Cleve Tanner, and
Ben Thorpe, too, will be busted up
and forgot!”
“It’s a hefty order!”
“Maybe it is. This Graham busi
ness is a kind of experiment; it’ll
work if you make it work. But if
it goes through okay—it’s only the
beginning, you hear me? You string
with me a little while; and maybe,
by God, we’ll show a couple of peo
ple something ...”
CHAPTER VIII
Tfot, dry days o/ early August —
As the first sun struck with a red
he«t across the plains, the Tanner
mf.n who held the Graham ranch
were already saddling. All over
Texas, cowmen were throwing to
gether the last trail herds of the
year; it was time for these Tanner
men to roll their chuck wagons
again, to round up the last of the
trail-fit stock that remained in the
herds which had belonged to Bob
Graham.
Out from what had been the Gra
ham corral, three riders swept
through the dusty dawn; but they
had hardly left the pole fences be
hind when six other riders confront
ed them, rising into their saddles
like Comanches, out of the brush.
The strangers closed in a semi-cir
cle, unhurriedly, their carbines in
their hands. In another minute or
two the three Tanner riders were
grouped in a defensive knot, while
from the semi-circle of the raiders
Nate Liggett jogged forward to talk
it over.
“1 don’t think you want to go on,”
he said. “I don’t even think you
want to work for this outfit any
more.”
Two nights later, one hundred and fifty
miles away —
With the approach of dusk, a pe
culiar light lay upon the valley o!
the Potreros. In a reach of open
grass a herd of five hundred head
bunched loosely—tame, heavy cat
tle, already well removed by breed
ing from the old, wild, iong-horn
strain. But they had not bunched
voluntarily. They shuffled restless
ly, watching the brush! something
was happening around them that
they did not understand.
As the light failed, the figures oJ
horsemen emerged from the brush,
cutting mile-long shadows into the
flat rays of sunset; the huge, heavy
shouldered man who signaled to his
spread-out cowboys by turning his
horse this way or that, in Indian
horse language, was Dave Shannon.
They did not harass the cattle.
Only, between sunset and the next
daylight, no cow took a step other
than in the direction of the Mexi
can border . . .
Ury grass season ; Texas scorched oy
1 the hot winds —
All across the southern ranges *
I peculiar thing was happening. As
1 word spread from twenty points of
[ disturbance, certain of the older cat
tlemen began to sense that there
was a curious, almost systematic
order to what in itself seemed a
widespread disruption. Ail over the |
Big Bend country, eastward almost
to the well settled Nueces, west
ward beyond the barren Pecos,
northward to the fever line, was
breaking a spotty wave of raids of
an unparalleled boldness. Far apart,
but almost simultaneously, hell had
busted loose in a great number of
1 places, covering more than half of
Texas.
(TO BE CONTINUEDI
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