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// By ALAN LE. MAY ' W. N.U. Release V
INSTALLMENT 13
THE STORV SO FAR:
Dusty King and Lew Gordon had built up
• vast string of ranches. King was killed
by his powerful and unscrupulous competi
tor, Ben Thorpe. Bill Roper, King’s adopt
ed son, was determined to avenge his death
to spite of the opposition of his sweetheart,
CHAPTER XVll—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 great 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
Leathers 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 his 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
I 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
laid:
“One of you must be made to see
yeason. 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 be 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 anr 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.
Bifl 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 ,*ctuality, of
•Dew Gordon’s dead partner. But a
definile 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
■•rd and extremely competent, old
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.
• ,
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 I 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.
“When I get 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, tc 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?”
AM Anr D f fINE lICIION
HOUSTON HOME JOURNAL, PERRY. GEORGIA
Jody had set out with i|hoshone Wllce to
find him. They were attacked by some of
Thorpe's men hiding In Roper’s shack.
Wllce escaped but Jody was captured. The
men decided to hold her as bait to bring
Roper to them.
• •
“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 youi
head, my boy!”
“Quite a tidy little nest egg,” Rop
er agreed. “I’d like to have it my
self.”
A trick of the wind sent a great
whirl of papers across the room a *
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 the 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 th«
pony had followed a line of leasl
resistance through the hills—a line
that had the Fork Creek rendezvous
at its far end. His discovery tola
him that there had been fighting a'
Fork Creek within the last forty
eight hours. If he was right ir,
believing that Jody had come U
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 anc
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 reappeai
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 the*
ways were retraced by two othiv
riders.
“Outposts,” Roper decided.
“Somebody's keeping a hell o i
careful watch.”
(TO UF. COMlNtlF.fi
\\PATTEQNSIL I
SEWING
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O-" fv.
\ ASK ME *} j
I ANOTHER I ’
7 B 7
P A General Quiz \
f'-O-O-O-O-C'-O- O-O-O-O-fV-O-. (V.(V. (v, (\- (V. <v.
1. What Roman emperor made
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2. Do forest fires kill fish, and
if so, how?
3. How much pressure is exert
ed by the atmosphere at sea
level?
4. What is an apocryphal story?
5. How does the Black sea com
pare with Lake Superior in size?
The Answers
1. Constantine (the Great).
2. Yes. The alkali ash washed
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3. Pressure of 14.7 pounds per
square inch.
4. One of doubtful authority.
5. The Black sea is five times
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Don’t worry about what to send
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first of all from the folks back
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• * *
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Enclose 15 cents in coins for
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Paste a layer of blotting paper
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They will not then scratch your
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• * *
A few tablespoons of chopped
sweet red and green peppers
makes cole slaw and other salads
attractive and adds much to their
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* • •
To keep books on shelves or in
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• • •
To clean fireplace bricks, cover
them with a paste made of pow
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* • •
Glycerin will remove tea and
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Columbia football V
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Hot Mulled Cider or jßf'J " 4 ,fevjs;
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Brave Man soul its fear subdues, and bravelj
The brave man is not he who dares the danger nature shrink*
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ra 1
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America has furnished to the
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TONIGHT=-
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Use as directed. rILPIk I ImV
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The business of the head is U
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Money, which is of very uncer
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