by Alan Lemay
The shack in which she now found herself was a cramped makeshift, intended only as a shelter for cowboys, storm-caught while riding the northern limits of the Fork Creek range. Nobody had had a stove to waste on this place, nor the ambition to haul one here, but a shallow recess of stones and sods served as a fireplace, filling the little room with an unnecessary heat. A single lantern hung from a roof pole; and now, by its yellow light the two men studied her with an unconcealed amazement.
"By God," said the older of the two, "it's a girl, all right!"
In the dull lantern glow this man's eyes were of an indeterminate greenish color, but sharply clear, and steady as stone in a bony, almost emaciated face. His voice trailed off now as if sheer wonderment had taken away his breath. "It sure is! Yes, sir, it sure-"
The other man, tall enough so that the door at his back looked small, was much the younger of the two. His face was prematurely hard-cut-the face of a man who even in youth had learned an effectiveness in action upon which he could well rely. He spoke sharply.
"Jim you know who this is?"
The older man's eyes rested steadily upon Jody's face, sober and impartial. "Seems like I seen her before," he decided. "Can't seem to place her, though. She's a good looker, all right, ain't she?"
"This is a hell of a time to be thinking about that," the other said edgily. "Jim, that's Lew Cordon's girl!"
"Good Lord Almighty! I believe you're right!"
"It's her, sure enough!"
"Just don't seem possible she'd be-"
"Ain't possible. But it's her!"
"So you know me?" Jody said.
"I seen you once in Ogallala, and another time in Bandera."
The older man shifted his eyes to his partner. He had a trick of moving his eyes sharply without moving his head, and it gave him a curious aspect of listening keenly listening with the complete attentiveness of an animal whose whole business of life depends upon the sharpness of its senses.
"Damnedest queer turn of the cards," he said, "I ever seen in all my born days!"
The younger man's voice was sharp and strained. "Jim, we got to get her out of here, and get her out quick!"
The man called Jim appeared to consider intently, his eyes still on the other's face. "I ain't so sure," he said after a moment.
"Then you better get sure," the hard-faced youngster said impatiently. "We had a mighty sweet setup here until she horned in. The quicker we get her out of here-"
"I ain't so sure it ain't sweeter now," the older man said slowly. He had the assurance of one who knows his decisions will hold good; undoubtedly he was the leader here. "I was just thinking..."
"Well?" Jody prompted him.
She stood straight and still, her hands in the pockets of her sheepskin. In this unexpected environment her face looked extraordinarily sensitive and delicate, framed in the soft tumble of her hair; but it was as expressionless as any cowboy's could have been, and her eyes were dark and cool.
"You talk like a fool," the younger man snapped at his superior. "Look what we got! We got the law back of us. We got the most powerful cowman in the West back of us. We got one of the biggest rewards that's ever been hung up, right ready to drop into our hands. We've located Roper's main shebang, after working on it for months. We got all the odds in the world in our favor and here comes this girl and bogs the whole works!"
"Just how do you figure she bogs it?"
"We got every chance of nailing our man, right here, any hour now. But don't ever think we'll nail him without a hell of a sharp fight. Suppose this girl gets hurt in this fight, or gets loose and loses herself, or runs out of luck some other way?"
"Can't see as we owe nothing to Lew Gordon, or any of his kin," the older man said grimly.
"What the hell has that got to do with it? This girl's old man is known the whole length of the Trail. What happens to us if she gets herself in dutch, and it's blamed on us? Every backing we got will drop out from under us like a shot pony Ben Thorpe first of all. Half the West'll be out to hang us higher'n a buzzard, and the reward goes to hell in a whoop!"
"I see that, all right."
"You sure by God better see it! This is plumb poison, Jim. There ain't a girl the length of the Trail whose name is better known, or who'd work out worse medicine for us if anything went wrong. The quicker we get her out of here-"
"Can't."
"What's the reason we can't?"
"We got the bear by the tail. She's dynamite so long as she's here. I grant you that. But what if we leave her go? She warns Roper off. Then where are we?"
Jody Gordon's throat constricted. Lots of cowmen were named Jim. But now suddenly she knew who the older of the two men must be.
"You know," she said slowly, "I believe I remember you, now."
"Why, it hardly seems likely that-"
"You're Jim Leathers," Jody said.
Once more there was repeated the exchange of glances between the two men. Then the older shrugged.
"I guess you're right," he admitted. "I guess that's my name."
She knew well enough who Jim Leathers was. She did not know how he had first got started on the trail that had led him through the smoke of so many guns, and given him a record which put him on a par with such famous gunfighters as Hat Crick Tommy and Tex Long. But one fact stood out clear and definite Jim Leathers had been a Ben Thorpe man always gunfighter, night rider, leader of warrior outfits for Ben Thorpe.
And knowing who their leader was, she could no longer doubt why these men were here. Already the belief was all up and down the Trail that it was Bill Roper who was harrying the Thorpe herds under Lasham in Montana. Men were saying that his raiders moved in and out upon the Lasham herds like wolves, executing a damage against which the Lasham riders seemed helpless. Small wonder if Thorpe had sent these picked fighting men perhaps with the badges of deputy United States Marshals, for all she knew-to comb the north for the hard-riding outlaw leader, with orders to rub him out at all costs.
"Of course," Jim Leathers said to Jody, "we never would have blazed out at you the way we did, if we'd known who you was."
Jody's head had cleared now from the dazed shock of the gun action and the smash-down she had received from the fall of her horse; and she angered.
"It seems to me you blaze out mighty free without knowing who you throw down on!"
"Well, you know the truth is we was expecting somebody else."
"You were expecting Bill Roper," Jody said. "Naturally you'd rather bushwhack him in the dark than risk his gun, wouldn't you? Well, you're wasting your time. This was Roper's camp once it evidently isn't now. You ought to know by this time that he camps only a little while in one place. And if you mean to wait until Roper rides into a trap like this you'll wait a long, long time!"
Except for a perfunctory glance, the men appeared to ignore her. "When we picked her up," Jim Leathers asked his partner, "what was that she said? Didn't she use Bill Roper's name?"
"I didn't catch it all. Something about Bill Roper would sure get us for drilling her horse."
The two men stared at each other for a long moment, oddly preoccupied, as if each sought in the other the answer to an unspoken question.
Jim Leathers' jaw muscles contracted, so that the slanting light of the lantern outlined a flat lump of tobacco in his cheek.
"Once," he said, "I heard that Roper and Lew Gordon come mighty close to a bust-up on account of Gordon's girl. Some folks thought they did bust up. Do you guess-could it just happen to be that-"
The eyes of both men shifted to Jody's face. Behind Jim Leathers the shadows from the fire were diluted by the lantern light so that they appeared the half seen ghosts of shadows; but they weaved and shifted in a wavering phantasm. In all that room only Jim Leathers' eyes seemed completely steady. They had turned as frigidly metallic as any ore that ever came out of the rock-bound hills. Jody had a creepy feeling that animals were staring at her.
"What time," he asked, "were you expecting Bil
l Roper?"
"I have no reason to expect him at all," Jody said.
The younger man's eyes were keen with a repressed excitement. "Jim you figure she come to meet Bill Roper here?"
"She didn't come here by accident," Leathers said with conviction, "any more than you or me. And she sure didn't come here to throw in with us."
"But, God, Jim if she's run off from her old man to throw in with Roper, then it must be that Gordon ain't backing Roper, after all! Why should she come gallavanting clear out here, if Gordon and Roper are hand in glove? We always thought-"
"That's no bother of mine," Leathers said. "Roper's the man I want." His voice turned soft and happy. "Just kind of begins to look like I'm going to get him!" He turned sharply on Jody. "You can just as leave speak your piece. We'll get the whole story, anyway, when the boys bring your side rider in. He'll talk, all right, before we're through!"
"You'll learn nothing from him," Jody said. "If he didn't get clear I have no doubt he's dead. You'll never take him alive-that I know."
Jim Leathers grinned a little. It did not improve his looks. "Suppose they bring him in only about half alive?" he suggested. His tone changed as he added, "Of course, as for me, I'm sure hoping he got away."
A swift panic struck Jody with the shock of a blow in the face. If Jim Leathers wished, he could hold her here-literally as bait with which to draw the man whom it was his mission to kill. If Shoshone Wilce had got clear, and could reach Roper, Roper would certainly attack, as soon as the best ponies of the raiders could bring him. Or, failing to locate Roper, Shoshone Wilce might even bring her father and what orders Jim Leathers had in regard to Lew Gordon she could only surmise.
"I'm getting sick of this," Jody told Jim Leathers. "You owe me a horse; there can't possibly be any argument about that. I'll have to ask you to rope a pony and bring him to my saddle and I'll be on my way!"
"Awful bad job, catching up these Sioux country ponies in the dark."
"For more than five years," Jody said, "neither you nor your men have camped out the night without ponies waiting under saddle. Right now you've got caught-up ponies standing outside. You owe one of them to me."
Jim Leathers spoke mildly, measuring his words. "You've rode a long way in the cold," he said. "The boys'll get you some coffee and grub, and bring your bedroll in. I guess you better figure to stop the night." He grinned again, not reassuringly. "We're a little crowded here, and maybe not so stylish as you're used to; but that ain't going to hurt you none."
"I don't want your coffee, and you know it," Jody said.
Leathers ignored that. "Who was this side rider of yours?" he demanded.
"You'll learn nothing from me neither that nor anything else. I'll take a pony and I'll take it now!"
Slowly Leathers shook his head.
"You won't give me a pony?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to wait until your friends come, lady."
For Jody Gordon's white flash of anger there was no outlet whatever. She turned away to hide from them the furious tears that sprang into her eyes. She took off her sheepskin coat and flung it on the table, for the room was very hot; but because her fingers were still chilled to the bone she pulled off her gloves, tucked them in her belt, and went to the shallow fireplace to hold out her hands to the flames.
The two men watched her with a detached admiration. Her slim figure was clad in the rough blue clothes the range riders wore; but the firelight glinted from silver belt conchos which were carved with intricate traceries, and her boots were the finest that money could cause to be made. Neither of the men had ever seen anything stranger than this girl's presence here.
"Damnedest deal of cards I ever saw in all my born days," the younger man marveled again.
"It's happened before. Some rattlehead girl is always running off after some saddle tramp. This time it's just a lucky turn for us, that's all."
Their voices were low but not so low that Jody could not easily hear what they said. They were discussing her as if she were a horse.
"You're wasting your time," Jody Gordon tossed over her shoulder. She knew well enough that no argument could be of any avail against Jim Leathers, that practiced killer, with his casual deceptive voice and his sharp and perceiving eyes; but she had to try. "I don't know where Bill Roper is any more than you do, and neither does my side rider; and Bill Roper doesn't know I'm here."
They did not answer her, but their silence implied disbelief, and she spoke again.
"It's true that I came here looking for Bill Roper," she said. "I had my own reasons for that, and what you think about it doesn't matter to me in the least. But evidently he isn't here; and I don't know anything more about it than that. The quicker you give me a horse, the better it's likely to be for you. Range war or no range war, there still is a general opinion among a whole lot of people as to how Lew Gordon's daughter is to be treated on the range. I don't think it will bring you any luck to go against that, any more than anybody else."
Leathers made no comment. Obviously he had no way of testing the truth of what she said except to wait and see if Roper appeared.
They went on talking now in the drawling, wellconsidered speech of the trail, long pauses marking every interchange. Whatever else they might think of her, they evidently did not consider that she implied any necessity to secrecy.
"Do you reckon," the younger man suggested, "that rider could've been Bill Roper himself?"
Jim Leathers was contemptuous. "Bill Roper would have stood his ground; he sure would never have run off and left the girl with her horse down. Might be it was some little squirt of a King-Gordon cowboy. There's always plenty of weak-minded little mutts that some girl like this can wrap around their finger even up to taking 'em to another man. But more likely it was a Roper man; and if he's alive he'll bring Bill Roper here if he ain't already on his way."
"If Roper is on his way," the younger rider said thoughtfully, "and this side rider of hers has got loose and meets him, so that Roper knows what he's up against-that might be kind of bad medicine, Jim. If he's got his war-riders with him-"
"I've missed hooking up with Roper twenty times when I thought I had him," Leathers said. "I'd sooner meet up with him on any terms, than carry back the word that I fell down."
A shiver ran the length of Jody Gordon's body. Casually, as if they were talking about getting breakfast, these quiet-faced men were speaking of a proposed death the death of a boy who had once been very close to her, and very dear. Suddenly she was able to glimpse the power and the depth of the ani mosity 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 existence.
Behind that vast malignance was reason enough. The Texas Rustlers' War, still fresh in everyone's minds, had not only placed Thorpe in definite hazard of financial collapse; it had been a crushing humiliation as well. In his war upon Tanner in Texas, Roper had accomplished what all men had called impossible. But now, inevitably, there rose against Roper all the outraged power that Thorpe controlled; a relentless and implacable hunt-down that could only end with Roper's death-or the destruction of Ben Thorpe himself. The band of killers into whose ambush Jody had ridden was undoubtedly only one of several, perhaps many, already in the field; later there would be more, and more, until the day should come when there would no longer be any place for Roper's raiders to turn....
She thought, "If only I could have found him in time; if only I could have got him back into KingGordon.. .1 could have got him back into KingGordon."
"Jim," the younger rider said soberly, "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 l
ow and bitter. "You're set on holding me here?"
To answer her, Jim Leathers seemed to have to rouse himself, it was as if his thoughts had run ahead, deep into the next forty-eight hours, perhaps living in the smoke of expected guns.
"No call to put it that way," he said mildly, almost gently. But his eyes denied that mildness, so that behind him Jody sensed again the vast animosity built by the Texas Rustlers' War-the malevolent power for which this man was only a cutting edge.
"I want a flat answer," Jody said. "Are you going to give me a horse, or not?"
Once more Jim Leathers' canine teeth showed in his peculiarly unpleasant grin. "Hell, no," he said.
ERHAPS 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 possibility 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 disappearance and the old cattleman, haggard from the effect of a sleepless night upon a physique no longer young, 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 daughter was being done; the strong KingGordon outfits in Montana had thrown aside all other work, that every available rider might be devoted to the job of tracing out every imaginable possibility. The complete failure of his organization to learn anything whatsoever chafed Gordon as a saddle galls a raw-backed bronc.