Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 36, DeMotte, Jasper County, 17 July 1941 — THE SMOKY YEARS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE SMOKY YEARS

By ALAN LE MAY

W. N.U. Release

INSTALLMENT 5 THE STORY SO FAR:

Dusty King and Lew Gordon were joint owners of the vast King-Gordon range which stretched from Texas to Montana. When building up this string of ranches, they continually had to fight the unscrupulous Ben Thorpe. He rivaled King-Gordon in wealth

and power, .but had gained his position through wholesale cattle rustling and gunplay. One afternoon King was killed by Tharpe and his two assistants. Cleve Tanner and Walk Lasham. King's adopted son. Bill Roper, decided to start a cattle war

against Thorpe In Texas. He made this decision against the strong opposition of his partner. Lew Gordon. Bill's sweetheart. Jody Gordon, pleaded frantically with him to turn back, but could not change his grim determination.

CHAPTER VII These men whom Roper now gathered about him hated a particular man, not only as lawless as themselves, but a man who was more than one man. Ben Thorpe was a thousand men; operating under Cleve Tanner in the south, and Walk Lasham in the north, his innumerable retainers filamented the plains from the Rio Grande to the Big Horn. That Roper’s men hated Ben Thorpe was nq, coincidence; Roper had picked men of personal grudge. Most of them had first been outlawed because they had not suited a single organization the organization of Ben Thorpe. Up and down and across half of Texas, constantly in the saddle, Bill Roper threaded his new organization. Sometimes Dry Camp Pierce was with him; more often he traveled alone. These famous gunfighters and outlawed men whom Roper gathered were just youngsters, mostly. Some of them were true killers; some merely reckless kids who had got off on the wrong foot. All of them were badly wanted by what little law there was. One night in early June, Dry Camp Pierce and Bill Roper sat in the back room of a saloon, deep in Texas.

“Look,” Dry Camp Pierce said. “I’ve stole cows until I could pave my way to hell with their hides. But—l don’t know—to steal cows for Dusty’s kid—” Bill Roper’s teeth flashed clean in his grin. “Whose cows?” “I’ve stole cows—” “You’re going to steal cows that belong to me, now.” “Figure you own these cows?” “I’m half of King-Gordon, now split. I’ve taken, out of King-Gor-don, seven camps without cows; now I’m claiming the cows that Thorpe took from Dusty King. And from some other men that we’re going to lend a hand to, pretty soon.’’ Dry Camp Pierce—he was called that because he hated to camp too near to water —went to work for Bill Roper as he had never worked before; anti-thus the king of cow thieves, the brand changer extraordinary, for once aligned on the side of the law that was not. Ten rustlers’ camps hooked into Thorpe-Tanner territory . . . But Dry Camp also helped in other ways. A hot June dusk, five days after the meeting at Whipper Forks, found Bill Roper at the Dry Saddle Crossing, where he was to meet Lee Harnish; and this meeting, too, was arranged by Etey Camp Pierce, though by this time Pierce was already far away'. Here ran the broad, many-chan-neled river, dividing two countries—a river whose split wanderings made two miles of intermittent shallows. At this border of a vast, imperceptibly rolling prairie stood a narrow string of adobe shacks. That was the Dry Saddle Crossing. Two men—Bill Roper and Lee Harnish.- sat in front of one of those abandoned shacks, and tried to get together. “I’ve always understood,” Roper said, "that you acquainted some, below the line.” Harnish’s hard eyes studied Roper, and for a little while nothing could be heard except the mourning of doves in the willow scrub by the water. Next to Dry Camp Pierce, Lee Harnish was the oldest of those to join Roper; he was twenty-eight. He was tall and lank, sun-baked almost to the color of an Indian; his green eyes were curiously blank, impenetrable, and he liked to look his man in the eye with the peculiar fixity seen in the gaze of hawks. “I’ve been down there some.” he admitted. “I've made a few drives into Chihuahua; one drive to Mexico City.” “If you had a big wet herd run to you just fielow the line, would you know ho to get rid of it?” “I can’t make out your hand,” Harnish said. “King-Gordon never swung the long rope yet, that I heard of.” “I’m not King-Gordon now. My stunt is to smash Cleve Tanner; and I don’t care what it costs.” “What’s wrong with backing him into a shoot-out, if that’s what you want?” “That comes later. If I bust Tanner I can bust Thorpe. But if Tanner is gunned before he’s busted. Thorpe will take over in Texas, and the chance to break up his Texas layout will be gone.” “You ain’t going to bust him by running off a few head of cattle. This river crossing is slow work, kid.” “I figure to cross five thousand head within the next three months,” Roper told him. “Five thousand head won’t even scratch the hide of Thorpe and Tanner, son.” “I know that as well as you. What it will do, it’ll draw Tanner to throw his warriors onto the border. That’s what I want. Because by then I’ll be working somewhere else.”

“And you want me to take ’em on the other side—is that the idee?” “I want three dollars a head, American gold, paid off as the cattle come out of the water . . .*’ Roper’s ways of gathering his wild bunch were diverse, as diverse as the saddle men he gathered. One way or another, picking up a man here, three more there, he got all he needed, and more. But certain other things had to be done, in order that the wild bunch would have work to do, planned in such a way that something would be accomplished that would stay accomplished. On a steamy afternoon early in July, Bill Roper sat in Fred Maxim’s £an Antonio law office. Maxim was an attorney who, some thought, had worked under a different name, somewhere before; but here, assuredly he was in no one’s pay. “I’m not asking the likes of you what’s what,” Bill Roper said. “I

want to know who actually owns range rights on the Graham stand.” The hard-bitten little man across the desk from Roper was still cadgy. “When it comes to ousting a man from possession—” “You know who ‘ousted’ Bob Graham and his family from possession. Cleve Tanner took over that outfit by main horse-and-gun power, without decent cause or reason. Everybody knows that. I’m asking you now—” “Taylor and Graves are already doing everything that can be done to regain possession of Graham’s outfit,” Maxim said, smiling. It was the smile that Roper liked. “Suppose 1 hold the Bob Graham lands, and Bob Graham’s family are living on it. < < “Bob Graham hasn’t got possession,” Maxim said. “Suppose he did have?” “Never could happen. Ben Thorpe” “Shut up a minute,” Roper said. “I’m not asking you to put Graham back in possession of his range. I’m not asking you to save him from being put off again in the way he was before. What I want to know is, can you head off some cooked-up legal interference with Graham, after he’s in possession again?” Fred Maxim thought it over. “I can only promise you that I can cause considerable delay,” he said. “Months of delay?” “Providing you can show possession—l'll keep you clear until hell freezes.” “That’s all I want ...” Still July, at Willow Creek— A barren range of hills, sand hills; golden in the dawn, purple in the twilight, barren always. Beneath them, what had been the Willow Creek camp of the old King-Gordon. In the bunkhouse nearest the river, five men lounging around a little room. j “All right, you hard guys,” Bill Roper said; “you know who told you to come here. Dry Camp Pierce told you to come here. Maybe he told you what you could look for here, huh?” These four gunfighters who met Roper here were none of them older than Bill; yet each was famous as a killer in his own right. Of them all Bill Roper alone had no name, no reputation. Yet, in respect for the name of Dusty King, they had come to hear him out. Nate Liggett, a round-faced kid with eyelashes that looked as if they had been powdered with white dust, said, “Well, what seems to be your offer?”

• “I guess you already know Bob Graham,” Roper said. “You know how a warrior gang of Cleve Tanner’s jumped down on him, on some thin excuse, and run him off his range. They even took over his house and his windmill and his corrals. Now, I aim to hand back that range to Bob Graham; he’s waiting in Bigspring for the word. Your part of the job is simple enough—you just go and take it away from the Tanner bunch.” “Simple, huh? Just how do you figure this simple trick is to be done?” “A lawyer in San Antonio kept the Rafigers off when Tanner jumped Graham. Now we’ve got another better lawyer in San Antonio to keep them off when Graham jumps Tanner. The only question is, who’s got enough salt to grab that range—and then hang onto it?” “And what do we get out of all this?” . ■ “Graham takes over the outfit and runs it. You hang around and help him, and see that he doesn’t get run off again. For that you get a half interest in the outfit. You split it among you any way you see fit. I’ll back Graham with cattle, and what other stuff he needs.” Nate Liggett said, “Bill, I don’t see where we come in for no advantage.” “If you're satisfied with the lone wolf stuff you’ve been pulling, I haven’t got anything to offer you,” Roper admitted. “But I’U tell you this—the boys that string with me now will see the day when they’ll run Texas; and Cleve Tanner, and Ben Thorpe, too, will be busted up and forgot!” “It’s a hefty order!” “Maybe it is. This Graham business is a kind of experiment; it’ll work if you make it work. But if it goes through okay—it’s only the beginning, you hear me? You string with me a little while; and maybe, by God, we’ll show a couple of people something . . .”

CHAPTER VIII Hot, dry days of early August— As the first sun struck with a red heat across the plains, the Tanner men who held the Graham ranch were already saddling. All over Texas, cowmen were throwing together the last trail herds of the year; it was time for these Tanner men to roll their chuck wagons again, to round up the last of the trail-fit stock that remained in the herds which had belonged jto Bob Graham. Out from what had been the Graham corral, three riders swept through the dusty "dawn; but they had hardly left the pole fences behind when six other riders confronted them, rising into their saddles like Comanches, but of the brush. The strangers closed in a semi-cir-cle, unhurriedly, their carbines in their hands. In another minute or two the three Tanner riders were grouped in a defensive knoL while from the semi-circle of the raiders Nate Liggett jogged forward to talk it over. “I don’t think you want to go on,” he said. “I don’t even thipk you want to work for this outfit any more.” 7 no nights later, one hundred utid fifty miles atcay — With the approach of dusk, a peculiar light lay upon the valley of the Potreros. In a reach of open grass a herd of five hundred head bunched I’oosely—tame, heavy cattle, already well removed by breeding from the old, wild, long-horn strain. But they had not bunched voluntarily. They shuffled restlessly, watching the brush! something was happening around them that they did not understand. As the light failed, the figures of horsemen emerged from the brush, cutting mile-long shadows into the flat rays of sunset; the huge, heavyshouldered man who signaled to his spread-out cowboys by turning his horse this way or that, in Indian horse language, was Dave Shannon. They did not harass the cattle. Only, ’between sunset and the next daylight, no cow took a step other than in the direction of the Mexican border . . . Dry-grass season; Texas scorched by the hot uinds— All across the southern ranges a peculiar thing was happening. As word spread from twenty points of disturbance, certain of the older cattlemen began to sense that there was a curious, almost systematic order to what in itself seemed a widespread disruption. All over the Big Bend country, eastward almost to the well settled Nueces, westward beyond the barren Pecos, northward to the fever line, was breaking a spotty wave of raids of an unparalleled boldness. Far apart, but almost simultaneously, hell had busted loose in a great lumber of places, covering more tl an half of Texas. (TO BE CONTINUED)

Roper’s of gathering his wild bunch were diverse.