INSTALLMENT II TIIK STOKY SO K- AK: Dusty King and l ew Gordon had built up a vast string of ranches In the West. Kmc was kilted by his powerful and unscrupu lous competitor. Bon Thorpe. Bill Roper. King's adopted son. was determined to avenge his death in spite of the opposition of his sweetheart. Jody Gordon, and her father Darin?; raids upon Thorpe's Texas hold: . s wiped Mm out of the state Roper then prepared for a great raid upon the vast herds on Thorpe's Montana ranches. Several thousand Indians had gathered near the Canadian border to take every beef that was driven across. Shoshone Wile**, one of Roper's men. told J. dy that her father's life was In danger, so she rode to warn him. He was surprised to see her tor from home. ( II.M'Ti: It XV ? Continued When Lew Gordon spoke, his voice was so quiet that its wi v bmuucos carried threat of imminent destruc tion. "Bill Roper sent a man to you?" ??I didn't say that. He's a man who ?U with Bill Hoper in the Texas Rustlers' War; he doesn't seem to be in the Montana raids." "Who was it?" Lew Gordon rum bled. "What's his name?" "Shoshone Wilcc." ? "Wilce! I know that name. 1 know it well. I'd rope and drag him in a second, if I caught him talking to you!" "This man has talked with lien Thorpe in Dodge." Jody told her father. "A lot of strange news is working down to Thorpe from up here in Montana. Some bands of rustlers are slashing up and down Montana throwing lead and leather into the Thorpe outfits under Lash am: they say he's badly hurt al ready nobody will know how badly until the winter breaks." Her father waited, his eyes angry. "The word from Dodge explains half the trouble that King-Gordon is up against," Jody said. "Thorpe can't believe that one lone cowboy, deserted by everyone who should have been his friend, could manage to smash his Texas holdings, and go on to cut away his herds in Montana. He thought that we were backing Billy Roper in the Texas Rustlers' War. And he believes that we're backing lum now." "Well?" Lew Gordon said. "You mean to say you came all this way to tell me that?" "Ben Thorpe means to kill you." Lew Gordon's face showed no change of expression. But he did not reply at once. "I don't doubt it," he said at last; "what would you expect? You bring war into a range and anybody is likely to go down." Jody's face was white. "You know what's at the bottom of all the trouble we're having," her father said. "You know as well as I do that two years of nothing but trouble lays square at the door of Bill Roper." Jody sprang up to face him. "I certainly do not know anything of the kind!" she answered him. Lew Gordon stared at her. "It's an everlasting shame upon the cow country that Dusty King's killers are still in their saddles. I tell you, Billy Roper is the only man I've seen with courage enough to ? " And now her father angered as she had seldom seen him anger. "You'll tell me nothing!" he roared. "Rop er! I'm sick of hearing his name? a dirty outlaw whelp that knows noth ing but kill and burn and raid!" Jody's eyes narrowed and filled with tears. "You may as well know this," she told her father. "The day that Billy Roper dies I want to die too." For a moment Lew Gordon seemed bewildered; he stared at his daughter as if the devil had come up through the floor. The girl who faced him was entirely strange to him. He heard her say, "If you had stayed by him, as Dusty King would have done, Thorpe would have been whipped and through, long ago." "Child," he said queerly, "what arc you talking about?" "If you'd only take Billy Roper bock into King-Gordon?" "That'll never happen while I live," her father said flatly. A silence fell between them, pres ently broken by the girl. "He asked me to ride with him once, when he first took the outlaw trail. I wish I had. To the last day I live, I'll wish I'd ridden with him then. And now I'll tell you something more. If ever he asks me again, I'll go." "By God." he said, his voice un steady with the repression he put upon it, "that closes the deal! I've kept my riders off him because of Dusty King, and I let him run on and on, rousing up a range war that has close to busted King-Gordon. But when it comes to tampering with you? it's the end! I'm through!" He caught up his battered sombre ro, and his spurs rang as he turned toward the door. "Dad. what are you going to do?" ?'Thorpe has a reward on Bill Rop er's head. King-Gordon is going to double that reward." He went storming out. his face black and violent with portent of war. For several moments Jody Gor don stood motionless where he had left her. Then she turned and went out of the house to the long shed like stable. Shoshone Wilce was loitering there in the shadow of the rear wall, an uneasy and restless figure. "Did you find out where Billy Hop er can be reached?*' Jody demand ed. "Yes, mam, I kind of did. I guess; and I got to ho getting on there. Miss Gordon. If you'll just give me ?nv mps . you want me to take. I'd sure like to be pulling out of here, before ? " "All right. You be here with two good horses just after dark." "If you could just as leave give me the message now, I'd sure like to ? " "There is no message. I'm goin{; with you to Bill Roper." Shoshone Wilce looked like a man entrapped. "I can't do it! Your fa "I'd sure like to be pulling out o( here, before ? " ther ? I just won't do it, Miss Gor don!" "All right. I'll make the ride by myself." "Hey, look! You can't ? " "Bill Roper isn't going to like this, Wilce." Shoshone studied her searchingly, but found nothing to reassure him. It was in his mind that this girl would do exactly as she said. "My life ain't worth a nickel, either way," he almost whimpered. "You be here with the horses," Jody said. She turned and went into the house, leaving Shoshone Wilce standing unhappy and uncertain, an kle deep in the wet snow. CHAPTER XVI The rounding up of the wild bunch of riders lost Roper a few days; but within the week Bill Roper and Tex Long rode into the plains of the Lit tle Dry. Here around a spluttering fire the riders crouched in their sodden blan kets, like Indians, while Roper gave out his orders. Thirty-two men and six outlaw leaders were now in the field against Walk Lasham's power ful Montana outfits in the Great Raid. It was Roper's plan that he and Tex Long, with twelve men between them, should make the most daring raid of all; a raid upon the big herds which Lasham held between the headwaters of Timber Creek and the Little Dry. Of all the ranges in which the wild bunch was inter ested, this was the nearest Miles City ? the most accessible, the most closely watched, the best protected. How many cattle he could transfer from this range to the starving Ca nadian Sioux, Roper did not know; but it was his hope to raise such a conspicuous and stubborn disturb ance as would mask the operations of the rest of the wild bunch, and permit Pierce to work unimpeded. "The fourteen of us will split sev en ways," Roper told them now. "I figure Lasham's look-out camp for this range is about twelve miles southeast. We'l! comb every way but that way. I'm not telling you how to gather stock. Hunt 'em like you know how to hunt 'em. Move out one day's ride, spotting your cow bunches. Next day pick 'em | up and work 'ein this way. And on the third day throw your gather against a coulee or something where one man can hold 'cm, and the oth er man of each pair ride back and meet me here, i figure this range is heavy with cattle. I don't see any reason why two good men can't easy throw together three hundred head in a couple of days. That gives us a nice bunch of anyway two thousand. The more the better ?but with two thousand we'll make our drive." They slept that night under the slowly falling snow. Roper himself made coffee and routed out his rid ers two hours before the first light. For two days Roper watched the enemy camp while the snow held on, piling a deeper and deeper mat: then on tin* third day he returned to the rendezvous as the roundup men began straggling in. Tex Long was the first one back. "This range is plumb solid with stock," Tex declared. "How many head do you figure me and Kid Johnson scraped up, just us two?" "Well," Roper grunted, "upwards wi u UU4CH ? I >tuiii!u liupe." "Better'n six hundred head! Lord Almighty. Bill! Figuring they're worth twenty dollars apiecc, and al lowing that all the other boys do as good, we're liable to get out of here with around eighty thousand dollars worth of cattle! You realize that?" But Roper was thinking of the lot tor in his pocket; the appeal of a girl who needed him in some unknown way, and who did not even know why he couldn't come. All the next day they worked to throw the little bunchcs together into a trail herd. Not all of them had done as well as Tex Long and Kid Johnson, but most of them had dore well enough. And then, at last, the first herd privateered in the Great Raid began to roll. A long unstead ily moving river of cattle poured northward, a dark welter in the thin ning fall of the snow. White-faces, mostly, blocky and heavy, well win tered on the prairie hay ? Roper counted two thousand six hundred odd! Pressed hard by the heavy force of cowboys, the cattle bawled but humped along northward into the valley of the Prairie Elk. Rounding up within a day's ride of Miles City itself. Roper's men had taken this herd almost out of the very corrals of Lasham's outposts; and yet, so far as any of then* : knew, that swift-moving drive repre sented a harder blow than had ever been struck a cattleman in a single raid. In all their months of effort the winter wild bunch had been un able to achieve an equal reprisal upon Lasham, and now they could hardly believe their own success. The cattle that broke the way through the snow kept dropping back, blown and tired ; but as fast as they failed, others were forced for ward to take their places. Long horned, stag-legged steers of the old Texas strain fought the riders, breaking the heavy column repeat edly in their wild-eyed thrusts for liberty, and these were allowed to get away. Gaunt, weak cattle lagged back, unable to keep up even under the snapping rope ends of the tail riders; they also were allowed to drop out, promptly forgotten. Yet, in that first day, the side riders swept in enough north-roaming cat tle to more than make up the loss. Roper went with the herd as far as Circle Horse Creek; but when they had forded the shallows, crash ing through the rotten ice. he turned back. With him he took four men who he believed would do what he said. The cattle were moving more slowly now, plodding doggedly through the heavy going; Tex Long and the remaining eight men could hold them to their way. What was needed now was work of a different kind, and Roper thought he knew how that was to be done. It was his intention to fight a rear guard action ? not only for this first herd, which would be delivered with in the week to the Indians who would spirit it away, but for the protec tion of all the rest of the wild bunch raiding to westward. But now as he neared the head of the Little Dry, a rider came drop ping down a long slope upon a racing horse. His carbine was held above his ragged sombrero in Bign of peace; and as he came near they saw that it was Hat Crick Tommy. Roper jumped his horse out to meet Hat Crick. "What is it? I? there any word? Did she ? " Tommy's face was haggard with fatigue. "She's gone!" he jerked out. "She's been to Miles City ? and now she's gone!" "Gone? Gone where?" "Nobody knows. She's missing ? disappeared ? strayed or lost or rus tled, I don't know which! Her fa ther's wild crazy, and every K-G outfit in the north is combing the trails ? " Roper sat staring for a full half minute. Then his hands fumbled for his reata, shook out the loop. "Turn that roan pony! I've got to have a fresh horse ..." (TO tlF. CONTINUED) Vinegar added to dried glue will nuikc it usable again. Put a drop or two of oil or some su.ip on those squeaky door hinges. ? ? ? Pongee must be dry when ironed. It will spot and streak if ironed when damp. A serve yourself center piece for the table is a time saver. 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