by Alan Lemay
"The sheriff and the United States Marshal just left," Gordon said. "You ought to have tried to be here, Bill."
"Anything get done?"
"Well, no; nobody knows anything, beyond what we all guess."
"I just talked to a man," Roper said, "that saw the killing."
Gordon was instantly alert. "Who was it?"
"He's a man that can't come forward, because he's already an outlaw in his own right. But Dusty was killed by Ben Thorpe, and Walk Lasham, and Cleve Tanner, the three working together. Walk Lasham bore down Dusty's gun."
They looked at each other for a long moment.
"I figured they hired it done," Gordon said.
"Seems not."
"This man that told you this-we've got to get hold of him; his story has to go to the authorities, Bill."
Roper shook his head. "He'll hang if they lay hands on him. Anyway, nobody would believe him against these three."
Lew Gordon made a gesture at once impatient and weary. "Wherever we turn we hit some snag of lawlessness," he said. "There's too many men afraid to stand forward and face out the law. Seems like nothing is done open and aboveboard any more."
"Never was, since I remember," Roper said.
"I suppose," Gordon said at last, "this is just another case where there isn't anything we can do. But I swear to heaven, Bill, I'll get Ben Thorpe in the end! Somehow I'll find ways to drag him down, some day, if it takes my last cent."
"I've got a couple of ways in mind right now," Roper said. "I'm going on the warpath, Lew."
Gordon had been fiddling with a pencil, and now he threw it on the table in front of him. "We're figuring you to take over the Crying Wolf, Bill. Dusty's half of King-Gordon naturally will stand in your name now; Dusty never paid any attention to any other kin. But the Crying Wolf was where he figured for you to go and work; and there isn't any call to change that, now."
"You can count me out of the Crying Wolf, Lew."
"What do you want to do?"
"We're going to branch out a new way," Roper said. "We're going to have a warrior outfit. And I'm its new boss."
"I don't get you."
"We're going to carry the war into the other camp, Lew. For every outfit that Ben Thorpe has grabbed by force of arms, he's going to lose two; for every head that has come into his herds by rustle and raid, two head of his are going to be missing when he makes his roundup count. First thing, I'm going to break Cleve Tanner down in Texas. After that-"
Lew Gordon looked Bill Roper hard in the eye, smiled a little, and shook his head. His voice was slow and deep, stubbornly emphatic, as a granite cliff is emphatic. "No. We've never gone outside the law yet, and while I live we never will. We play the straight game always; and if we lose that's in the hands of things beyond us."
Bill Roper angered. "I know how you feel about it," he said, keeping his voice down. "You swayed Dusty that way always. If you'd looked at it different, the guns would have been out years ago and it would have been Ben Thorpe that went down. As it is Dusty King is dead. Now you want me to drift on as we always drifted on, and I'm supposed to forget that Dusty's out there under a pile of stones. Well, I'm not going to play it that way, Gordon."
"While you're with King-Gordon," Lew said slowly, "you'll play it as I say you'll play it."
Their eyes met and held, and Roper knew that he still respected this man. Quiet, peaceful, seeking always the unwarlike way, Lew Gordon was sometimes misunderstood. But Bill Roper knew now, as he had always known, that there was no fear in this man, and no weakness, but only a tremendous, unshakable loyalty to a set of principles for which the plains were perhaps not ready.
"If you want to buy me out," Roper said, "you can do it at your own price. Because I'm going to do exactly what I tell you I'm going to do; I wouldn't run a sneak on you, Lew."
"You figure," Lew Gordon said incredulously, "that you, one youngster on horseback, can smash up Ben Thorpe? You wouldn't last forty seconds longer than a celluloid collar on a dead gambler."
"There'll be a few go with me," Roper said.
"Who?"
"Dry Camp Pierce for one; Lee Harnish, Tex Daniels, Tex Long; in all, maybe fifty men that I think I know where to get."
Lew Gordon looked as if he would explode. "You're naming the most vicious outlaws on the plains," he said. "If you ever get those men together, it will be the most infernal wild bunch that ever"
"By God," said Bill Roper, "I'll show you how to clean a range or break a range; I'm telling you I don't care which."
Lew Gordon slapped his hand on the table; it fell with a dull and heavy wallop, but so hard it seemed the top of the table would split.
"No! No, by God! Not under my brand. Not in a hundred years..."
"Then draw up the terms of the sale."
Lew Gordon studied him, then. "You're all lathered up, Bill," he said. "You're lathered and upset-"
"Am I?"
Gordon made a gesture of futility, for Bill Roper looked as hard and cool as anything he had ever seen. "If you want to split off, I can't stop you," he said at last. "But you're leaving behind you a great opportunity, and the beginning of a future any man might envy. You could be a cattle power, some day, in your own right; or governor of a state; or anything you wanted to be. You're throwing over all that, and other things. Bill, are you thinking of that?"
"I'm thinking of a man," said Bill. "A man that's dead."
Gordon was silent again, for a long time. He seemed very old, very tired. "Reckon you're man enough to make your own decisions, Bill."
"Thanks, Lew."
"But do me one last favor will you? Don't decide here and now. Take a couple of days to think it over. It's for your own good. But I'm asking it as a favor to me...."
Bill Roper dropped his eyes, and for a moment or two he hesitated.
"I'll take an hour," he decided in compromise.
ILL ROPER walked slowly to the Gordons' tall house, on its rise at the edge of the town, and let himself in softly. He wanted desperately to talk to Jody Gordon; but it was nearly midnight, and he couldn't make up his mind to wake her.
As it happened, decision was unnecessary. In the fireplace some lengths of cottonwood log still burned, and before the fire Jody lounged upon a buffalo robe, wide awake. She was stretched full length, her hands clasped behind her head; but as he came into the room she extended both arms to him, and smiled.
"You've been a long time."
"I know." He stopped beside her, half raised her in his arms, and kissed her lingeringly. Her arms and her lips clung, making it difficult for him to think of the road he had chosen. But presently he sat beside her on the buffalo robe, and turned his eyes to the coals.
"There's some stuff we have to talk about, Jody."
"I can think of better things to do with firelight than just talk."
"Jody King-Gordon is splitting up."
Jody brought herself up on one elbow. "Why, Bill what do you mean?"
"Dusty's share comes to me, as you know. I- I'm taking it out."
"You're-Bill, you must be loco!"
"Maybe. I'm going against Ben Thorpe."
"But but--" Jody was at a loss for words.
"Since the trail began, he's stood for everything we're against. Four of the biggest rustling gangs in the country are directly hooked up with him, if it could be proved. He's stopped at nothing, and where he couldn't force his way he's bought his way. But now-he's gone too far."
He glanced at her, and her startled face was very lovely, high-lighted by the little fire. He laced his hands together to stop their shaking. "Tonight I told your father what I'm going to do. My idea is to give Thorpe his own medicine, and force it down him until he's finished; a wild bunch of our own, tougher than his, made up of men that hate him to the ground."
"And then - 7
"Raid and counter-raid, and what he's taken, take back! Until his credit busts, and his varmints drop from around him, and he's just one man, so that another man can walk against him wit
h a six-gun, and know that when that's done he's finished for sure..."
"Bill, are you crazy? You can't-you can't-"
His voice was bleak; it could hardly be heard. He was looking at his hands, "We've talked too many years of what couldn't be done, or how. Until now, Dusty's out there tonight, under that stone pile - and still nothing to be done, I reckon it's my turn to ride, now."
"You'd quit King-Gordon-quit Dad-to go on a crazy wild-bunch raid"
"There'll be more raids than one. A hundred raids, if I live. Jody, I swear to you, I'll never quit until this thing is done."
"But all his outfits his sheriffs, his men-"
"They'll quit, as he breaks. I'm going after Cleve Tanner first, in the Big Bend; and when I'm through with him, Thorpe won't be able to throw a feeder herd on the trail. Then Walk Lasham, in the north, where they're already hurt for lack of the Crying Wolf until-"
His words were monotoned, but Jody Gordon, bred and born to the gaunt Texan plains, knew what a wild bunch was, and what it meant to go against Ben Thorpe by his own means. Perhaps in the flicker of the firelight she could see the silent night-riders moving in the starlight, their rifles in their hands; and perhaps for a moment the distant bawling of cattle, which came to them even here, became the voicing of hard-pressed herds, moved on the dead run between dusk and sunrise.
Jody said, "And what about us?"
"Us?"
"You and me?"
"Jody, I was hoping - I was hoping you'd swing with me."
"What way is there for me to swing with you?"
"This may take a long time; but it won't take forever. Some day all these war clouds will be cleared away. And if you could see it my way, maybe you'd let me come back to you then."
There seemed to be no breath in Jody's voice. "I'm supposed to wait around, and think well of you, while you gang with the wild bunch in a crazy, useless feud that you can't win?"
In the uncertain light of the fire Bill Roper's eyes could not be seen; his face was a mask painted by the embers. He found nothing that he could say.
Suddenly Jody flared up. Her eyes blazed, and her hair streamed back from her face as she sat up, as if she rode in the wind.
"You can't, you can't! I won't let you it isn't fair, nor right, nor decent--"
"It's what I have to do."
Jody stopped as if she had been struck. When she spoke again her voice was low and even, and so stony hard that he would not have recognized it.
"I don't believe you. I think tomorrow you'll be telling me that all this isn't so. But if you do mean it if you go on and do as you say-then you and I are through, and I don't want to see you again, or hear your voice. We-we had everything; and you're throwing it all away...."
The firelight caught the glint of her tears, and she turned away, head up, with a toss of her hair so that its brown mist hid her face from him.
Bill didn't say anything. He had turned greyfaced, and he stared into the coals. Presently, as he watched the fire, he saw again a rift of brush, in which a little boy hid like a rabbit; and a gently grinning face, that was through with grinning now. He thought of Dry Camp's story: "Seemed like he'd never fall...."
Roper got up silently, and went out of the house.
EW GORDON was playing solitaire when Bill Roper got back to the little shack by the loading pens. Roper took off his hat, tossed it aside, and sat down.
"We can just as well figure up the terms of the split."
"What did Jody say?"
"She's quitting me, Lew."
"What the devil else can you expect her to do, if you go on with this wild, stubborn-"
"I couldn't expect anything else."
Lew Gordon looked baffled; obviously he had counted on Jody to turn back Bill Roper.
"You ready to draw up the terms?"
"Hardly seems it can be done in a minute. It'll take a few days to-"
"I'm leaving in the morning. My terms are few and simple. You can work out the details any way that suits yourself."
Once more, as if needing time, Lew Gordon got out the worn tally book, and put his glasses on. For a moment or two he thumbed through the dogeared pages. Then abruptly he flung the tally book away and spread his hands on the table before him.
"Let's hear your idea of it."
"I don't figure to take much with me," Roper said. "But there are some things I need. First thing, I want seven of our camps in Texas."
Lew Gordon stared at the table, picked up a pencil, fidgeted with it. "Which ones?"
"I want the Pot Hook campj and the winter camp of the Three Bar, and the southwest outpost of the old Bar-Circle. I want two of the border camps; Willow Crick will do for one, and the Dry Saddle Crossing will do for the other. I want the new Bull Wagon camp, and the K-G horse ranch at Stillwater."
"The brands are going to be terrible mixed up," Gordon said.
"I'm only taking such cattle as are running under odd brands; all our regular brands stay with you. I've placed my camps so that your stock can be worked as before. Except maybe the Pot Hook, and we'll come to some special deal-"
Gordon threw his pencil down. "You're not getting anything out of this that anybody can use," he declared.
"I think I'll know how to use it. Later on I'll send you a list of the northern camps I want; they'll amount to about the same as the ones I want in Texas."
"It sure sounds to me like you're wanting me to buy you out in cash," Gordon said. "And if that's what's in your mind I can't do it, Bill. There just ain't the money."
"There won't be any trouble about that. In Texas I may need up to fifty thousand dollars; but I don't have to have it now, and I don't have to have it all at once. It'll work out easy enough, Lew."
Even the rough provisional terms that they were noting here provided innumerable complications. In the next few hours, as they worked it out, many a consideration came up that Bill Roper hadn't thought of. It was near morning before Roper left to seek out Dry Camp Pierce.
ILL ROPER headed south shortly after sunrise. He rode a tough buckskin pony and led a raw-boned black pack mule. In his pack and saddle bags were all the equipment and supplies he would need until he got to Bishop's Store, deep on his way. At his thigh was his forty-four six-gun, tied down with rawhide whang; in his saddle boot was the carbine he had used since he was fourteen years old.
Today Dry Camp would be going east by railroad, beginning the long roundabout way which would bring him to Texas long before Bill. With Dry Camp Pierce went letters to the foremen at Willow Creek and the Pot Hook, who knew him already. With these camps as a secure base, Pierce was to begin the missionary work which would lay the foundations for Bill Roper's wild bunch. On the same train with Dry Camp, but not with him, would go certain dispatches which would give Bill Roper temporary credit with Wells Fargo in the south, until the affairs of King-Gordon could be ultimately settled.
Roper himself took the direct but slow trail because on his way he wished to pick up word of certain men whom perhaps only he could find.
Lew Gordon had shaken hands with him gravely at his departure; an uncomfortable job for Bill, which he was glad to get over with. For all he knew, he would never meet Dusty King's old partner on friendly terms again. Half a dozen of the KingGordon trail bosses and range foremen had got wind, and come down to the corrals, and he had had to go through the dismal ceremony of taking leave of them all, to the tune of witticisms that fell flat in the mud and there died.
More pestiferous, but shaken loose in the end, were a handful of malcontents from various KingGordon outfits. In some mysterious way they had got the word that he was taking the war trail, and they rode with him a mile into the prairie, trying to persuade him that they ought to be counted in. He got rid of them all at last, and was able to head south alone.
But Jody Gordon he had not seen her again at all. He was thinking of her now as she had flared up at him the night before, warlike as a little eagle, but very lovely still, with the fire in her eyes; and the tun
e that he was whistling to his pony was a bitter tune, with cowboy words to it that did no credit to the song-maker's opinion of women.
Watchful always, as he had been taught to be almost before he could walk, his eye habitually caught the placement of distant dots that were grazing cattle or saddle stock; the far-off stir in the brush that was an Indian boy driving a cow; a full mile away, a drifting speck that was a scavenging dog. Thus he knew when, two miles off, a horseman dropped from a lookout just at the crest of a rise; and he knew that the rider had seen him and was moving to intercept his trail.
He thought, "I'll hear from this in between fifteen and twenty minutes."
No turn of events would have surprised him now that Dusty was dead. Since his intent was, evidently, already known, the sing of a bullet past his head was more to be expected than not. He shaped his track over open ground, that the unknown horseman should have the maximum difficulty in placing himself for a rifle shot from cover.
He did not have so long to wait as he had thought. No more than ten minutes had passed when the unknown rider came dusting around the shoulder of a sand hill and headed toward him at the dead run. Roper turned his horse broadside to the approach and waited. He slouched in his saddle, resting relaxed; but stiffened again as, at the furlong, he perceived the rider's identity.
The rider was Jody Gordon.
She appeared to have taken to the saddle in a hurry, for she wasn't wearing chaps, or anything else she should have been riding in, and her skirt was blowing back from her knees as she pulled up. What distance she had come she had come fast, for her pony's flanks were heaving.
"You sure punish that horse," he said.
"I've got no call to save him. I'm not going any place."
There was a little silence, awkward for Bill Roper, as she sat and looked at him. The lower lids of her eyes were violet, so that he knew she had not slept; but he could not read her faintly smoky eyes. She was more pale than he had ever seen her, and the passivity of her face made her look like a little girl again.
