The Smoky Years

by Alan Lemay

  "A notch? I hadn't thought anything about it."

  All her bitter contempt of the lonely-riding men of violence came into her voice. "Isn't that what the gunmen and the cow thieves always do?"

  He was motionless a long time. Then he drew the skinning knife that always swung at the back of his belt in a worn sheath. Its blade was lean and hollowed, worn almost out of existence by a thousand honings. He stood looking at the knife; he tossed it in the air, and caught it by the handle again.

  "I wouldn't go cutting marks on the handle of a gun," he said at last. His voice was thick. "Nobody cares what anybody does to the handle of a gun."

  Roper stepped forward, and with the keen blade cut a notch clean and deep in the left arm of Dusty's cross.

  When he looked at Jody she was staring at him strangely, almost as if she were afraid.

  LL through the afternoon Jody Gordon had ridden the barren trails above Ogallala, on a pony that forever tried to turn home. Thaw was on the prairie again, and the South Platte was brimming with melted snow; in the air was something of the damp, clean smell which had marked another spring, in this same place. But it was now more than six months since Jody had seen Bill Roper; and she found it no help that she was forever hearing his name.

  Ogallala had grown. The loading chutes along the railroad had more than doubled in two years, and the town itself sprawled farther over the prairie. But the tall white house still stood alone, its foolish wooden towers commanding the long flat reach of the stock corrals.

  Wherever Jody rode she could still see that tallest of the three lookout towers on her father's house - the tower in which she and Bill Roper had sat together through another spring twilight, on a day that now seemed long ago. Nothing could ever remedy the unspeakable emptiness of that house to which Roper would probably never come again; so it was with reluctance that she at last rode up the rise upon which it stood, unlighted, in the dusk.

  She unsaddled her own pony, booted it into the muddy corral, and threw the forty pound kak onto the saddle-pole with the easy, one-handed swing of the western rider. As she turned toward the house she was trying not to cry.

  Then, as she walked through the stable, a figure rose up from the shadows beside the door and barred her way.

  Jody Gordon's breath caught in her throat. She said, evenly, "Looking for someone, Bud?"

  The spare-framed visitor took off his hat and held it uneasily in his two hands. "Well, I tell you, Miss Gordon could I speak to you for just a minute?"

  "All right. Come on up to the house."

  "Well, now, you see-" He kept peering into his hat, flustered by the steady quiet of Jody's fine eyes. "To tell you the truth, Miss Gordon, I'd rather just speak to you here, if it's all the same to you."

  Jody said sharply, "There's nobody there but the Chinese cook, and his Mex wife."

  "Well, I'll tell you, Miss Gordon I'd just as leave not be seen around too much, if I can dodge out of it. There's a couple of little misunderstandings has come up, between me and your father a couple of times; and anyway well, I'll tell you the fact of the matter. I'm a Bill Roper man."

  Jody Gordon's heart jumped like a struck pony. "Billy sent you to me?"

  "Well, no; I haven't seen Bill Roper for quite some time."

  "Oh."

  "I'm Shoshone Wilce," the man said. "I rode with Bill Roper in Texas."

  There was a little pause, then, in the shadowy dusk of the stable.

  Jody said suddenly, "Are you trying to tell me that Billy that something has happened to Bill Roper?"

  "This thing is about your father," Shoshone said.

  "If Billy Roper wants anything from my father-"

  "I haven't seen Bill Roper. But I've seen Ben Thorpe. Miss Gordon, tell me one thing: Is your father backing Bill Roper? I mean, is he backing this plowing into Ben Thorpe?"

  "My father," Jody Gordon said, "has quit Bill Roper in every way he possibly could. Not one penny of my father's, nor any help of any kind, is back of Bill Roper."

  "That's what I thought," Shoshone Wilce said. "Only trouble is, people that don't know the difference, they don't none of them believe that any more."

  "You mean, they think-"

  "I get around," Shoshone Wilce reiterated. "I drink with a lot of different people, and they talk. I've drunk with Ben Thorpe himself, in Dodge. I've drunk with"

  Jody Gordon interrupted him sharply. "What's happened? You didn't come here to tell me the history of hard liquor in the West!"

  "Miss Gordon, your father is in a terrible bad fix. I'm afeard-I'm afeard he's going to die before this thing is through."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Most people think Lew Gordon is backing Bill Roper maybe you know that? Well, now there's a feller rode to Ben Thorpe from Miles City-a feller that was a foreman with Thorpe's Montana outfits under Walk Lasham. Maybe this feller had some kind of fight with Lasham-I don't know nothing about that. But this feller swears to Thorpe that Lasham is letting the Montana herds drain away to the Indians, and to the construction camps, and Ben Thorpe never seeing a penny of the money from beef or hide."

  "How do you know this?"

  "I was there when this feller come to Ben Thorpe. I stood as close to them as I stand to you, when this feller tells Thorpe that Walk Lasham is double-crossing him, and that everything he has in Montana is being gutted out. Thorpe rares up fit to overset the bar. `You lie!' he says; and this boy says, `Go count your herds!' And he laughs in Thorpe's face!"

  For a moment or two Shoshone Wilce stared empty-eyed into the dusk, as if he were seeing appalling things.

  "But is that true?" Jody demanded.

  "Which?"

  "Is Bill Roper gutting the Thorpe outfits in Montana?"

  "Don't know, myself. But they say he's raising blue hell. They say he's swarming all over Montana, with a bunch of kid renegades behind him, riding like crazy men, and raiding night after night. Some say nobody knows how hard Lasham is hurt, Lasham least of any; and some say Lasham has sold out to Bill Roper, or your father or both."

  "What does Thorpe himself think?"

  "Thorpe thinks your father has bought Walk Lasham. Just the same as he thought your father bought Cleve Tanner in Texas, until Bill Roper gunned Cleve down. And Thorpe is fit to be tied. If he loses out in Montana, on top of losing out in Texas, God knows where he'll turn. A man like him - he's terrible dangerous always, Miss Gordon; but now he's ten times more dangerous than he ever was in his life."

  "You mean you think Ben Thorpe willwill-"

  "Miss Gordon, I know. Ben Thorpe is going to kill Lew Gordon, just as sure as-"

  "He wouldn't dare! My father is-is-"

  "He'd dare anything. The Texas Rustlers' War put such a sting on his hide as no man can stand him last of all! Nobody ever seen nothing like Roper's Texas raids maybe nobody ever will again. You'll see plenty things in the West that couldn't of happened before that! Nobody ever had such a hate as Thorpe has for Roper he'd kill anybody to get at him. He'd grab you, even, and use you for bait!"

  Jody Gordon's eyes had darkened in the dusk, making her face seem very pale. She knew something about the ways of the hard-riding, self-sufficient men of the saddle. The swift action of the guns was as much a part of the background of her life as the fluctuations of the beef market, or the drought which killed the herds.

  When she spoke, her voice could hardly be heard. "When is this thing supposed to happen?"

  "I don't know. I don't even know where Ben Thorpe is. It might happen tonight, or tomorrow, or next week. But child, it's going to be soon!"

  There was a silence, while the eternal bawling of the cattle in the loading pens came to them across the flats.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  Shoshone Wilce shrugged. "That ain't hardly up to me, Miss Gordon. But I'll tell you this: many's the time I've seen your father go stomping down the board walk right here in Ogallala, alone, and not even armed. That won't do, Miss Gordon. If I was in your place, I wouldn't n
ever let him out of the house without his gunbelt is strapped on, and the iron free in its leather. And wherever he goes, there ought to be three or four good hard-shooting cowboys with him; because, if I know Ben Thorpe, he isn't going into any gunfight alone!"

  "It isn't so easy to boss my father," Jody said. "Even when he's here in Ogallala, which he's not, I often can't change what he does in any way."

  Shoshone Wilce moved restlessly in the thickening dark. "Well, I figured I'd better-"

  Jody peered at him intently. "What made you bring this word to me?"

  "I'm a Bill Roper man," Shoshone Wilce said. "God knows, Miss Gordon, stringing with Bill Roper has never done anything for me. But well, I just thought Bill Roper would want you to know. I kind of got the idea he thinks a heap of you, Miss Gordon."

  Jody Gordon's gloved hands reached out to touch this stranger. She said intensely, "You think he does?"

  "Why didn't aim to speak out of turn. Didn't realize there was ever any doubt."

  Jody dropped her hands. "Plenty," she said in a dead voice.

  And now another pony came slashing up to the corral, and they heard the wooden ring of the gate bars as the rider kicked them down. One of the loading foremen had come in to file his way bills.

  "I got to be getting along," Shoshone Wilce said quickly. "I don't know if you understand; but I wouldn't want Lew Gordon to hear anything that

  "I understand," Jody said.

  She turned away, but instantly turned back again, and gripped Shoshone's arm just as he was sliding out of sight.

  "Stay around," she ordered him. "Stay here until"

  "Miss Gordon," came the quick whisper, "I've got to get on to Miles City. I"

  "I thought so. Bill Roper's somewhere up there, isn't he? Yes. Well, I'm going to join my father there I'll ride with you in the morning."

  "Four hundred miles! And no coach until-"

  "Don't worry about that. It takes saddle ponies to make time."

  "But-I'm afraid your Paw might think-"

  "I don't know how Bill Roper ever used you," Jody said with contempt.

  Shoshone winced. "I I'll be around."

  He faded into the shadows as Jody walked out of the stable, her eyes hard and bright in the dusk.

  ILL ROPER sat alone at a rear table in the Palace Bar, in Miles City the young, turbulent center of a vast, raw range, the possibilities of which were still unknown. A swamper was going about the great square room, lighting the swinging oil lamps, and the foot rail along the bar was beginning to fill. Roper pulled his slouch hat over one eye and watched the goings and comings of the rope-and-saddle men. The Palace Bar had faro, roulette, and girls; Roper could rest assured that every cowboy in Miles City would at least look in here in the course of the evening.

  For three months Roper had ridden through the bitter Montana winter. It had been no trouble for him to sweep together a dozen malcontent cowboys who hated Lasham, or Thorpe, or both. Already they knew Bill Roper's name. Against their common enemy these youngsters could be led, wild, reckless and crazy for raid; and Roper had led them as Texas had taught him.

  His new northern wild bunch faced conditions in many ways bitterly adverse. Here in the north were no ousted cattlemen, no established population to which he could look for help. The Canadian border was far away, and no market awaited the hard-pushed herds on the other side.

  What Montana had that Texas did not have was a concentration of Indian tribes, principally Sioux and Cheyenne, deprived of their hunting grounds, and dependent for food upon beef which the government was pledged to supply. It was to this circumstance that Roper had turned.

  The giant beef contracts which the government threw upon the market had inevitably attracted more than one kind of graft. Indian agents sent from the east, without experience in either Indians or cattle, made easy dupes for unscrupulous cattlemen of Walk Lasham's stamp. Others less readily cheated, but willing to retire rich, had cooperated with Lasham in sidetracking beef which the government paid for but which no Indian ever saw. The result was famine pitiful, relentless. Starvation stalked through the lodges of the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Crow and with it, Roper's opportunity.

  Scouring the country, Roper turned up four Indian agents who were already badly scared. They had overplayed their hands, and were now faced with a loss of life among their charges about which they could do nothing without revealing their own corrupt inefficieny. These men had connived with Lasham in bringing about a condition of tribal starvation; they were willing to connive with Bill Roper to cover up their position in any way they could.

  By delivering beef to the reservations under these highly irregular conditions, Roper's wild bunch could little more than make expenses. But the advantage was this-a beef herd delivered to an Indian tribe disappeared over night, leaving little trace. A thousand hands skinned out the beef, destroying the portions of the hides containing the brands.

  Constantly changing horses, perpetually in the saddle, Roper's saddle hawks swung across Montana. They first struck at Muddy Bend, picking up four hundred head of steers in the breaks of the Yellowstone. Three days' hard driving delivered these to a village of Assiniboine. Only four days later they were on the flats of the Little Thunder, far away. Here, struggling through a soft blinding snow, they ran off five hundred head, and a few days later three hundred more. They Christmased in company with a herd of lifted steers somewhere between Three Sleep and the Little Powder; and New Year's found them sifting the pick of Lasham's cattle out of his Lost Soldier range.

  By the end of January they had moved three thousand head-the very cream of the wintering stock. Repeatedly they had driven cattle incredible distances in impossible time; they had gathered fat steers under the very noses of Lasham's winter riders, and their raids had covered an area of country which reasonable men would not even have attempted to travel. Roper, looking back over the winter as he now sat in the Palace Bar, knew he had done the best he could.

  Yet he knew his work had only begun. All their hard riding would fail of effect unless he could strike such a smashing blow as would cause a split between Lasham and Ben Thorpe.

  In a vast country that seemed to crawl with Lasham's herds, serious inroads seemed impossible; but now, for once, the times had fitted themselves to Roper's purpose. The beef market was unsteadying at the very time it should have strengthened, and the Rocky Mountain silver booms were draining away the capital upon which the cowmen had relied. Rumors of disaster were running all over the West; no man could tell now what the spring would bring. Any appreciable damage to Walk Lasham might turn the tide against him, leading to his smash-up with the melt-off of the snows.

  And Roper had a plan rash in scope and method, but savage in effect if it could be fulfilled. Already he had enough riders in sight to strike this last desperate blow. But the men available to his purpose were wild-eyed fighting kids who could not be driven and could scarcely be led; Roper could not captain his campaign alone. So now he fretted in Miles City, seeking three or four outlaw leaders who would make his preparations complete.

  He could not stay here long. The heavy rewards Thorpe had upon his head were less dangerous to him than the inevitable appearance of Lasham himself, who was sure to be well supported by good gunfighting riders, too many for any one man to face.

  Still studying everyone who came into the bar, Roper broke open a deck of cards and laid out a hand of solitaire.

  Now one of the dance hall girls came to his table, slipping uninvited into a chair. This was a girl whose attention bothered and embarrassed Roper every time he came here. She no longer hung upon him as she had at first, but it seemed that when Roper was in the room she could think of nothing else. Her name was Marquita.

  He didn't know what attracted her to him; he didn't know what attracted any particular woman to any particular man. Undoubtedly she had discovered who he was, and perhaps the stories about him that had come up the Trail from Texas-stories already exaggerated to the magnitude of whoppers-part
ly explained her notice. Or perhaps she would have noticed him if she had not found out his name at all. To the Palace Bar came all manner of the lean-carved saddle men of the Trail hard-drinking, swaggering men extremely interested in the dance hall girls. But Roper, who drank steadily, alone, without ever becoming drunk, never swaggered at all; and his eyes, which quietly missed nothing, habitually passed over this girl without interest. It may be that his very dis interest was what caught her attention first, and later gave him the desirability of the unobtainable.

  She spoke to him now in a quiet, lifeless voice. "Why don't you like me?"

  He swung his head to look at her, as expressionless as a horse. He neither liked nor disliked her. He had known a good many girls of her particular status at both ends of the Long Trail. Some of them he knew to have left homes in which they should have been glad to stay. It was his belief that some wild gypsy strain in these girls prompted them to choose the tumultuous adventures of the unknown, rather than the hard, drab lives that fell to the lot of cowmen's wives. Certainly any one of them could have married off, in the beginning. If they found out later that what they had chosen was arduous and tawdry, by that time it was too late.

  "I like you all right," he said.

  "No, you don't. You don't even see me at all."

  He noticed now that she looked different tonight; and after a moment he recognized that this was because there was no paint on her face. That would be because he disliked paint though he had no idea how she had found that out. Her washed face was a perfectly symmetrical oval set with black eyes a little slanted, and her black hair, parted in the middle, was drawn back severely, in the fashion of the mestizo girls of the Texas border.

  She leaned toward him now, and spoke rapidly, her voice low and compelling. "Listen - I hate Walk Lasham, too."