Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1941-05-08
w. N.U. Release

''--~~--
contains all the speed and colorful detail
that is making him so popular today. It Is
his best work. Don't miss It'll
his old soft hat, nor the cracking
ring of the spurs he was believed to
sleep in.
The trail years had leathered his
face, but they could not diminish his
gay exuberance; just as prosperity
was unable to take from him the look
of the trail. Whatever Dusty King
wore, he always appeared to be
wearing disreputable saddle clothes.
Perhaps young Bill Roper had
picked up lot of Dusty Kings char
acteristics in the course of an asso-
citation that had lasted almost as
long as Bill Roper's life.
Everybody who knew King Gordon
at all knew the story of Bill Roper
and Dusty King. Fifteen years ago,
at the age of five, Bill Roper had
been found hiding in the brush, like a
little rabbit, beside wrecked outfit
on the old trail to Sedalia. 1t was
Dusty King who had found him
there; and it was Dusty King who
had buried the bullet-shattered body
of Bills father beside that God-for-
saken trail.
In the fifteen years since then,
Bill Roper had learned guns and
horses and cattle, and the tricks of
the trail as only Dusty King knew
Ia Oh IN
prairie signs before he could read
print, and if it had not been for
tomato can labels, perhaps would
never have learned to read print
at all. Everything he knew he had
learned with Dusty King. There
was every reason that he should
have grown to look something like
the great trail driver who had
brought him up.
Now, as they made their way
down the muddy street, before the
false-fronted wooden buildings, half
the cowmen that thronged Ogallala
hailed Dusty with comradeship and
delight; so that his progress was
that of a celebrated character, al
ready famous. The other half-they
were Ben Thorpe men-seemed not
to see him at all. 1t was hard to
tell which tickled Dusty King more
the warmth of his many friends, or
the bitterness of his innumerable
enemies.
The bidding for the Crying Wolf
lands was being held in disused
store, and here the sidewalk and
half the street were filled with knot
ted groups. Through this crowd
Dusty King and Bill Roper waded,
Dusty trying to look like something
bewildered, from the tall country.
Beside the door was posted hand
bill in black type, giving due legal
notice of the auction of leases, and
Dusty stopped to study this with a
grave empty face, at if he had
never heard of it before.
"Mr. King" somebody said,
They've been waiting for you, fully
an hour"
Dusty looked blank. Then he
clutched his hat to his head in a
startled way, and rushed inside
with a clownish representation of
haste.
Within, the crowd of plains-coun-
try men-bronzed men, saddle-faced
men, sometimes bearded men-gave
way as King, followed by Bill Roper,
shouldered his way to the back
els this the place." King asked,
"where the Teller is selling the
horse?"
The deputy commissioner took his
feet off his table. ''The sale was
supposed to start at two O'clock"
he complained.
A little tribute, there. The COM
Observation-Disclosures already in Ben
Thorpe's pay-hardly dared start an
important sale, without present this
slouching, nondescript-looking repre-
sentative of King-Gordon.
"No word has come from your
partner at ALL" the commissioner
said.
"He amt coming"
Three men who sat in chairs
grouped around one end of the table
looked at each other. They ignored
King and Roper, as hostile dogs ig-
more an enemy of whom they are
not yet keenly aware.
The big man in the light-colored
hat was Ben Thorpe - the Ben
Thorpe whose far-scattered hold
ings perhaps already exceeded those
of King-Gordon. Thick-shouldered
now, heavy-bodied, he was today
more than ever power feared in
the cattle country-still unscrupu-
lous, still menacing, but now of a
different sort-a power of wealth, of
organization, and of bought-up law.
Beside him, the tall man, lean and
narrow-bodied as Stat, was Cleve
Tanner; a hawk-faced man, keen
eyed, so clearly shaver that the
tight skin of his jaws seemed to
shine. Cleve Tanner was manager
of Ben Thorpe's Texas holdings, the
breeding grounds from which
Thorpe's whole organization drew
it's strength.
The other, the man who seemed
uncommonly dark, even among
these sun-darkened men, was Walk
Lasham. He was Ben Thorpe's man.
-, ,oV+t L :.