The Smoky Years

by Alan Lemay

  The man with the wounded arm spoke thickly. "You'll never get out of here alive," he told Roper.

  "I wouldn't worry about that, was I you," Roper said. He slammed another harmless shot over the speaker's head, interestingly close to the man's scalp. He needed a continued sound of action at the cabin to draw the outposts in, so that Shoshone and Jody Gordon would have their chance to get clear.

  After that a full minute passed and stretched to a minute and a half. Evidently the outposts had been farther away from the cabin than Shoshone had calculated; but Roper heard none of them fire.

  He thought, "If I can keep them interested just ten minutes more-"

  Now a furiously ridden horse was coming up. Roper flattened himself against the wall beside the open door, and waited until he heard the man drop from his pony just outside. He stepped to the door, fired once; and a man crashed face downward upon the door sill itself to lie utterly motionless.

  With his boot Roper pushed the inert heap off the door sill, so that the door might be closed at need. Because there were only two more shots in his gun, he picked up one of the weapons he Had collected, and checked its loading.

  "I'd stand real still if I was you," he warned the two who stood with their hands up. He fired one more shot between them, for purposes of general discipline. "I ought to kill you; maybe I will in a minute haven't decided yet."

  Now another horse was coming in fast; in another second or two it would string into view around the corner of the cabin.

  Roper cast a quick glance to see that his captives were where he thought they were. They had not moved. He dropped to one knee beside the door and fired twice quickly as a shape, dark on darkness, whirled around the corner of the cabin.

  That was all the end of the one-man war he had started to cover the retreat of Shoshone. He never remembered the shock of the blow that downed him. All consciousness ended at once, as sharply as if cut off with a knife.

  He never knew which of the two men behind him sprang forward to smash him down; but he knew as soon as he knew anything at all, that a long time had passed more time than he could afford to lose.

  OBODY but an old range rider could have located in the dark the brush corral where Shoshone Wilce and Jody Gordon were supposed to wait for Bill Roper. What would have been a simple problem by daylight, in darkness became a test of scouting ability and cowman's instinct. Yet somehow, by the throw of the land, and by his deep knowledge of the habits of thought of cowmen, Shoshone Wilce nosed out that circular corral of brush, in a darkness so thick that he was uncertain he had found the landmark until he had touched it with his hands.

  A faint line of grey was already appearing on the rim of the world, and a whisky jack was calling raucously somewhere in the scrub pine.

  "It's almost daylight already," Jody Gordon said, fear in her voice. "If he doesn't come soon if he doesn't come"

  She broke off, unable to go on. "Half an hour," Shoshone Wilce said. "We'll wait half an hour."

  "And then-T'

  "We've got to go on."

  "I can't! Not if he doesn't come. We'll have to go back. We'll have to try-"

  "He said go on. We have to do like he said." Shoshone's voice dropped to a curious fierce whisper. "Whatever happens you remember that! You have to go on!"

  They waited then, while five minutes passed. Shoshone Wilce kept his pony moving slowly up and down to prevent its stiffening up by too rapid a cooling after its run, and Jody followed his example.

  "Listen here," Shoshone Wilce said at last. He dropped his voice, and sat motionless. For a moment or two there was no sound there except the rhythmic breathing of the hard-run ponies. "I want to tell you something," Shoshone resumed, his voice low, husky, and strangely unsteady. "It looks like I run away and left you when your pony was shot down. I see now it looks like that. But I want you to know I didn't go to do nothing like that, Miss Gordon."

  "I know," she said, "it was the only-"

  "I shouldn't have done it," Shoshone said. "I wouldn't do it if I was doing it again. I figured I'd be more use to you if I could keep my horse on its feet. I figured I could best handle it like an Indian would pick 'em off one at a time, and make sure. But I'd do different if I had it to do again."

  "What else could you have possibly done? There wasn't any chance for anything else."

  "I should have stood and fought," Shoshone said. "Like he would have done."

  "It was better this way," Jody told him. "Don't you worry about it, Shoshone."

  Shoshone said vaguely, "I want you to tell him about it. I want you to tell him I'd do different if I had it to do again."

  "Why don't you tell him yourself?"

  "Maybe I will. But if anything comes up-so's I don't get the chance-"

  "Of course I'll tell him."

  They fell silent, and after that a long time passed. Shoshone stopped walking his horse, and sat perfectly motionless close to the wall of the brush corral. The grey light increased, while they waited for what seemed an interminable time. It seemed to Jody that in a few minutes more they would have to admit that daylight was upon them; it seemed to her that an hour, two hours, had passed, instead of the half hour which Shoshone had decided they could wait. But still Bill Roper did not come.

  "Do you suppose he could have ridden past?" Jody asked.

  "No," Shoshone said, very low in his throat.

  When she could stand the suspense no more, Jody Gordon dismounted; the inaction and the cold was stiffening her in the saddle, and now she led her pony while she stamped and swung her arms.

  She thought, "I'll lead my pony fivte times around the outside of the corral. He'll be here by then; he must be here by then."

  She wondered, as she slowly led her pony around the circle marked by the walls of brush, what she would do if Roper did not come-if he never came. Perhaps go on? Perhaps go back...

  Jody Gordon was fighting back an overwhelming, impossible panic. She knew the cool, hard sufficiency of the men against whom Roper had pitted himself. From the standpoint of her father, who had turned against him, she knew the unassuageable bitterness, the vast sinister malevolence which Roper had raised against himself by the miracles of the Texas Rustlers' War. If he were caught now in the grip of that malevolence

  It took all her will power to restrain herself from breaking into a run, or from mounting her pony and racing him-where? Any place, if only her highstrung nerves could find expression in action. But she forced herself to lead her pony slowly, measuring her strides while the daylight increased.

  Then, as she completed the circuit of the corral, and came again to where Shoshone's pony stood, she saw that Shoshone Wilce no longer sat the saddle. At first she thought that he had tied his pony and walked away; but as she came nearer she saw that the little man was down in the snow, huddled against the rough brush of the corral barrier.

  She sprang forward, calling out his name; and there was a meaningless, nightmarish quarter of a minute while her pony reared backward from the sudden jerk upon its bridle and had to be quieted before she could advance again.

  "Shoshone! What's the matter? Are you are you-7

  Shoshone's eyes were half open; he was not asleep, but he did not answer. And now as she dropped to her knees beside him in the snow she saw that a bright trickle of red had traced a line from the corner of his mouth, crookedly across his chin.

  "Shoshone!"

  In the ugly panic that swept her it was many seconds before she could fully comprehend that Shoshone Wilce was dead.

  E'RE making a big mistake, not to hang him and be done with it," Red Kane said.

  They were two days from Fork Creek now. This long and narrow room, which Jim Leathers paced so restlessly, was the kitchen of the main house at Walk Lasham's southwest camp-a convenient stopover on the way to Sundance, where Roper was to be turned over to Ben Thorpe.

  Even though Walk Lasham himself was not here, this camp held a peculiar interest for Bill Roper. Since the day when Roper had taken
the southward trail from Ogallala, at the beginning of his own long war, he had seen Walk Lasham only once; yet that dark, long-faced man with the lean, stooped shoulders had been a figure very often in his mind. The great power of Ben Thorpe in the north was inseparable from Walk Lasham, who himself had built it. All through the northern raids Lasham had remained a shadowy opposing force, so deeply entrenched as to seem unbeatable, sometimes. It was interesting to Roper now to sit in this lonely cabin which, ordinary though it might be, served as the headquarters of the man he had worked against for so long.

  "The quicker we hang him, the better we'll be off," Red Kane said again.

  Wearily, doggedly, Jim Leathers rolled a cigarette. He took his time about replying. "Seems like you already said that once before."

  "I'm liable to keep on saying it," Red Kane told him. "Things is different now."

  This camp had a separate bunkhouse for its heavy force of riders, but the cabin in which they sat, nevertheless, had a second room a small store room which also contained three or four bunks. In its doorway, behind the two men who watched Bill Roper, a girl now appeared, a slim, full-breasted girl, whose dark, slanting eyes had sometimes troubled Bill Roper before now.

  He had not been surprised to find Marquita here in Walk Lasham's southwest cow camp, to which his captors had brought him. He had guessed, when he had last talked to her in Miles City, that she was Walk Lasham's girl; and in spite of her expressed eagerness to leave Lasham and ride with Roper, he realized that Marquita still had to live in some way.

  Girls of her stamp could not afford to throw down such a man as Lasham, until more interesting opportunities offered.

  Her face was impassive now, but one of the slanting dark eyes narrowed in a definite signal to Roper. The combination of Spanish and Indian blood in this girl from the Texas border gave her a lithe, lazy grace, and a haunting depth of dark eyes; and the same blood made her unaccountable sometimes stoic and smouldering, sometimes livened by the lightning flashes of an inner fire. Undoubtedly she was capable of a passionate devotion, and an equally passionate cruelty. Anything could happen in a situation which included Marquita-with Marquita in love.

  For a moment Bill Roper resented the fact that he couldn't be interested in any girl except Jody Gordon-a girl who didn't want him or need him. All the worst aspects of his own situation were apparent to him, then. He was an outlaw wanted the length of the Trail; probably would be an outlaw all the rest of his life, which gave every promise of being a short one. That even Marquita wanted him, or had any use for him, was a gift which he should have been glad to accept. What he had to think of now, though, was that Marquita was extremely likely to precipitate a lot of immediate disturbance.

  Troubled, he wished to shake his head, or in some other way caution her that she must make no attempt to interfere. Roper had no intention of ever coming into the hands of Ben Thorpe alive. Somewhere between this place and Sundance, where Thorpe waited, he would make his play, however, slim the chance. Yet he would rather take his chances with some unforeseen opportunity later, when they were again on the trail, than to be plunged into some helpfully intended situation which the girl might devise with danger to herself and questionable advantage to him. She had never brought him any luck.

  He was unable, however, with the eyes of his two enemies upon him, to signal her in any way.

  "Ben wanted him alive, if I could get him," Jim Leathers said stubbornly. "Well, I got him alive, and I aim to keep him that way. You bums ain't going to talk me into anything different just because you figure a dead man is easier to pack."

  Bill Roper listened sardonically. In the two days spent in traveling from the Fork Creek rendezvous, the scalp wound which had brought him down had nearly healed; but when he laced his fingers behind his head he winced and dropped his hands again.

  It was typical of the quality of his captors that his hands were not tied or manacled. They told him where to sit and they made him stay put, and they were careful that no opportunity was given him to snatch a gun from an unwary holster; but these were merely the routine precautions of sensible men. For these riders - were the picked gunfighters of Ben Thorpe's scores of outfits-and a lifetime spent in the handling of fighting outfits had enabled Thorpe to pick men who were the equal of any in the West. They did not fear Roper, would not have feared him had he been armed.

  Bill Roper had no doubt that Red Kane and perhaps one or two of the others would kill a doomed prisoner for no more reason than Jim Leathers had suggested. He could see, though, that Red Kane was wasting his time. Jim Leathers was the type of man that nobody could bulldoze into anything; having decided what he was going to do, the opposition of the others would only increase Leathers' stubbornness, making it impossible for him to change his mind even if he should decide he had been wrong.

  "If only we'd found Walk Lasham here," Red Kane grumbled, "I'll bet, by golly-"

  Jim Leathers shot a hard glance at Kane, and Roper knew that Red Kane had not helped his case with Leathers by bringing in Lasham's name. Probably Leathers would like to fill Lasham's shoes, if the truth was known.

  "He'll be at Sundance with Ben Thorpe," Jim Leathers said drily. "You can talk to him then."

  "And a fine time for it that will be," Red Kane argued, unable to abandon his point. "Here we got the chance of a lifetime to do something big. In place of taking just this one varmint in we could just as soon go back with the scalps of the big end of 'em. Suppose instead of just bringing Roper in we come in with the scalps of Dry Camp Pierce-Hat Crick Tommy, Dave Shannon, Tex Long?"

  Bill Roper could not resist taunting them with a loud snicker.

  Red Kane wheeled on him. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

  "Any one of those boys would eat you alive."

  "You were supposed to be top dog of 'em all," Red pointed out. "And where are you?"

  "Oh," Roper grinned, "you're hoping to get 'em from behind?"

  Red Kane stared at him a moment like an angry steer, and then ignored him, his mind holding steadfastly to his argument.

  "Here's this wild bunch playing right into our hands," he insisted to Leathers. "Last night not four miles from here, by God! they pick up five hundred head of Lasham's fattest stock. By morning, Bud and the Kid and the Lasham cowboys will have the lot of 'em cut off, no farther from here than the Big Coulee. The wild bunch are liable to be suckers enough to try to stand and fight a little bunch like that. We can get into it yet and you and me, with the others why, we can slam in there, and-"

  The Lasham camp had been boiling with news as Jim Leathers' men had ridden in at dusk with their prisoner. Much had happened on the range while Leathers had waited out Bill Roper at the Fork Creek camp. The news that had reached Lasham's southwest camp was broken, and seemed to have been little understood by the men who had brought it; but Roper, with his inside knowledge of the force he had turned loose against Lasham, could piece together its meaning well enough. Lasham's southwest outpost, with its big herds of picked cattle wintering in this deepest and richest of the Montana grass, had been more powerfully manned than any other Lasham camp. But twice in the past week frantic calls for reinforcements from the outfits to the east had drained most of this man power awayfirst five picked gunfighters, then a dozen cowboys more, until only five men had been left.

  The messengers who had killed their ponies to come for help had brought the camp a fragmentary story which gave Roper the deepest satisfaction. In their tales of incredible losses, of raiders who struck night after night at far separated points, driving cattle unheard-of distances to disappear weirdly in the northern wastes, Roper read the success of his Great Raid.

  Dry Camp Pierce was sweeping westward across Montana like a destroying wind; by unexpected daring, by speed of movement, by wild riding relays which punished themselves no less than the cattle they drove, Dry Camp was feeding an increasing stream of Lasham beef into the hands of Iron Dog's bands, who spirited the beef forever from the face of Montana. By the very
boldness of its conception and the wild savagery of its execution the unbelievable Great Raid was meeting with success.

  From his long experience he could picture every pony-punishing ride of the raiders, could see every long mile of the vast terrain they harried; he could see the weather-wizened little Dry Camp Pierce, cow thief extraordinary, now leading the way in the masterpiece of all his outlaw career. He could see the youngster cowboys, turning gaunt and haggardeyed in the relentless saddle grind, and he could see the long, heavy trampling lines of relayed cattle, heads down and quarters tucked under them, humping along at a swinging half-trot through cold dawns and dusks. Those things made a picture somehow somber in the immensity of its angry effort and the unparalleled damage of its effect; yet, by the breadth of its audacity, and the great sweep of its daring, it was touched with a red glory.

  And now Dry Camp had struck even deeper than Roper had planned, lifting the best of Lasham's beeves from almost within gunshot of Lasham's strongest camp. So well had Dry Camp planned, and so steadily did the luck hold, that a full day had passed before the loss inflicted by the raiders was discovered. The five remaining cowboys at the southwest camp were only tightening their cinches as Jim Leathers rode in.

  Most of the Leather's party had joined the Lasham men in pursuit of Dry Camp's raiders. Only Jim Leathers himself and the unwilling Red Kane remained to convoy Roper to Ben Thorpe at Sundance.

  Because of the confusion involved in the organi zation of the pursuit, the night was now far gone; already it was long past midnight.