by L. P. Holmes
THE CRIMSON HILLS
THE CRIMSON HILLS
A Western Story
L. P. HOLMES
Copyright © 1947 by Fiction House, Inc. © renewed 1975 by L. P. Holmes
Published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing
Book design by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Kurt Jones
Cover images © Atomazul; mdesigner125; sara_winter;
honcharr; ysbrandcosijn / Adobe Stock
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-5047-8739-0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
CIP data for this book is available
from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
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Chapter One
The yellow glow of the hanging lamp threw hard highlights across Luke Lilavelt’s bony head and shoulders, emphasizing the beaked predatoriness of his nose and chin while leaving his narrow gash of a mouth and his small, cold eyes in shadow. Restless under the solid impact of Dave Wall’s settled hatred, Lilavelt stirred and jabbed a finger at the crudely drawn map spread on the table before him, while his words seeped out, thin and nasal, between lips repressed to a miserly economy of movement.
“Sure you got all this clear? I want that stretch between the Monuments and Stinking Water opened up once and for all. I’m tired of having to drive twenty miles out of my way every time I move cattle in or out of my Crimson Hills holdings. I can’t seem to get any action out of Burke, so I’m sending you in to take over. Here’s my written authority for that move. I want action, Wall … and I want it fast.”
Lilavelt tossed a folded paper across the desk and Dave Wall pocketed it without even glancing at the contents, while he spoke with a slow, sarcastic emphasis.
“Maybe you’re not paying Tom Burke enough money, Lilavelt. Or maybe he’s fed up on doing your dirty work. Chances are, you’re not fooling Burke any more than you’re fooling me. You talk of opening up the barrier range between the Monuments and Stinking Water, but that’s not what you’re really after. What you’ve got your sights set on is Bart Sutton and his whole Square S layout. Someday, Lilavelt, you’re going to start slipping on your own slickness and before you quit sliding, you’ll end up neck deep in hell.”
Lilavelt got to his feet, tall, lank, stoop-shouldered. “Any time you want to quit me, you can, Wall.” Then he added, acid in his voice: “I understand there’s been a new addition to the Connell family. This time a little girl. That makes twin boys and a girl. A nice family, Wall … Yeah, a right nice little family. Be a pity to break it up, wouldn’t it?”
Dave Wall was sprawled deep in his chair, all the long, rugged length of him slouched and relaxed. Only in his sun-blackened face was there a suggestion of tension and it was a settled thing that pinched the corners of his eyes slightly and compressed his wide lips with a vague bitterness. Now he said, his voice perfectly even: “Keep your mealy mouth off that family. Someday, for the sake of Judith and Jerry and the kids, I’ll probably kill you.”
Luke Lilavelt shrugged. “You’ve said that before. I’m not worrying about it. Not while I got the story of Jerry Connell’s past locked up in Judge Masterson’s safe in his courthouse chambers. In case of my sudden and violent demise, Judge Masterson has instructions to open that sealed envelope and act on the contents.” Lilavelt’s words ended on a note of glib and taunting mockery.
Dave Wall got to his feet. “Luke, you’re a damned dirty, greedy, crooked rat.”
It was said of Luke Lilavelt that his hide was as thick as his conscience was thin. Yet no man could have taken the whipping scorn and contempt in Dave Wall’s words without some reaction. So now Lilavelt slapped an open hand sharply on the desk and his nasal drone lifted to a tight, high note.
“Cut it fine, Wall … cut it fine. There’s nothing to stop me from sending word to Judge Masterson to open that envelope right now.”
Dave Wall laughed harshly. “Oh, yes, there is. Because if you did that, it would end all reason for me letting you go on living. As things stand right now, you’ve got me by the short hair. But by the same token I’ve got you by the throat. So, if I want to call you a rat, you’ll just have to take it and like it.”
Which was true enough, as Lilavelt well knew. So, while with his little, sunken eyes he hated Dave Wall wickedly, Lilavelt changed the subject abruptly.
“I’ve sent word out to Spayd at Gravelly to start a gather of five hundred two-year-olds. In three weeks that gather will be moving in to the Crimson Hills range. I’ll expect you to have the trail open by that time.”
Lilavelt turned to a rack and lifted down his battered old sweat-greased hat and the threadbare old coat that he’d worn as far back as Dave Wall could remember him. Studying the man with shadowed eyes, Wall wondered how one human carcass could hold all the miserly greed, the venom, the lies, the sly and slimy trickery, the utter and callous ruthlessness that was bound up in Luke Lilavelt.
This man, so far as Dave Wall knew, had no living kin of any kind. To spend a dollar made Luke Lilavelt actually writhe. Yet the man was enormously wealthy. White-faced cattle, carrying Luke Lilavelt’s Window Sash brand, fed on the grass of four counties. Their numbers ran into the many thousands and the combined range he controlled, if all blocked together, would have measured forty or fifty square miles. He had the power that such possessions always gave, and, well aware of this, he used that power shrewdly and without pity. Politicians listened when Luke Lilavelt spoke and lesser men of many kinds jumped at his word. Nobody liked Luke Lilavelt, but many feared him.
He had started from scratch with a shoe-string outfit. There were old-timers who claimed that Luke Lilavelt had registered the Window Sash as his iron because it was so easy to run a Window Sash out of Hutch Horne’s Double H and Bert Pryor’s Cross in a Box. Be that as it might, the fact remained that Hutch Horne and Bert Pryor were long since dead, their once big and flourishing outfits just memories. And the range they once controlled were now integral parts of Luke Lilavelt’s cattle kingdom.
Other big outfits had got in the way of the tide of power and control that was Luke Lilavelt and his Window Sash and had been rolled under. Little outfits were sucked in and swallowed. Their choice was simple and tragic. Sell out to Window Sash at Lilavelt’s own price or be smothered and rubbed out by the power of a range piracy they did not have the strength to combat. There seemed to be no way of stopping Luke Lilavelt and his rapacious machine.
For a lot longer than he cared to think about, Dave Wall had been part of that machine, despising Luke Lilavelt and all that the man represented, despising himself equally for the part he had to play, yet knowing that his helplessness in the matter was that of an autumn leaf in the grip of stormy winds. Now Wall built a cigarette and spoke slowly.
“Sometimes, just for the hell of it, I’ve tried to figure you out, Luke. You haven’t a friend in the world. Oh, I know there are plenty who give you lip service, but in their hearts every one of them hates your guts. Like me. I work for you, I do your dirty work, but I despise you clear past hell. You’ve got more money now than any one man could spend legitimately in five lifetimes. Yet no dollar gets out of your hands that isn’t squeezed out of shape. When you die, there’ll be a celebration and men will go out of their way to spit on your grave. So far as I know … and I’v
e watched pretty carefully … I’ve never seen you show or speak a kind or generous word. Just what the devil do you get out of life, anyhow?”
Lilavelt opened his office door and waited for Wall to go out for, if possible, Luke Lilavelt never let any man stand behind him where he couldn’t be watched. A sardonic light burned in his crafty eyes.
“I’m not paying you to read my make-up, Wall. But as long as you asked, maybe I get quite a lift out of seeing wise hombres like you jump when I snap the whip. You’ve got your orders. Hit the trail for the Crimson Hills range and do the job I’ve sent you on.”
This was one of the things Luke Lilavelt liked best of all—to lay the lash of his authority across the backs of other men. Dave Wall’s big shoulders swung restlessly under the impact, and the ever-present but useless revolt made his words brittle.
“In good time, Luke … in good time.”
Lilavelt locked his office door and turned off downstreet, throwing a reedy reminder over his shoulder. “You’ve got a job to do. Get at it!”
Dave Wall moved out to the edge of the board sidewalk and stood there, sucking uselessly on a cigarette gone dead. He swung his head to follow the diminishing scuffing of Lilavelt’s run-over boot heels. Luke Lilavelt was a man abnormally long between ankle and knee and he walked with a queer, high-kneed shuffling. He appeared constantly on the verge of stumbling, but he never did. The man, thought Wall morosely, was completely unlovely any way you looked at him, but he held the power and he snapped the whip. Wall spun his cigarette into the pale, starlit dust of the street and turned uptown.
It was fairly late but the lights were still on in Reed Howell’s eating house and Wall, realizing abruptly that he’d had no food for upward of eight hours, turned in there. Reed Howell’s greeting was casual but remote and with no real friendliness, and this, mused Dave Wall bleakly, was just another example of the stigma his association with Luke Lilavelt inflicted. He ate with silent hunger, though without relish.
How long since the simple savors of life had been his? It seemed an eternity, while actually measuring the better part of four years. Luke Lilavelt had also done that to him, robbing him of the friendship of decent men, pushing him into a world of half-light. He had forgotten how to laugh with real enjoyment because there was no one to laugh with him; he had become an automaton that went through the motions, no more. He functioned, but he did not live. The things that counted seemed to have dried up inside him, leaving him only a husk.
He finished his supper, paid for it, built a cigarette, and then, with something almost wistful in his manner, paused, hoping for some word of friendliness from Reed Howell. But none came, and, as he moved to the door, he said: “Good night, Reed.”
Howell’s answering, “Good night,” was purely automatic and held nothing at all, closing Wall out completely, and Wall, as he stepped into the outer darkness, wondered if he looked as furtive as he felt.
This town of Basin had once been Dave Wall’s town and he could, in those days, count a friend behind every door. Now, although every black-shadowed angle and starlit roofline was familiar, he felt the outcast, the pariah. It was impossible not to know revolt over this, even though he knew the fault was his own. His mood was darker than usual when he pushed through the swinging half doors of Mize Callan’s Empire House.
Callan was behind the bar, shaking dice with Pat Shea and Hub Lisenbee. A solo game was going on at a corner table and Oren White, dealing, looked up and went completely still, a card in suspended motion between his fingers. It was a deliberate thing, done deliberately by White to draw the attention of the other players to Dave Wall’s presence, and Wall, seeing and understanding it as such, knew a surging gust of cold anger. He half whirled and started for White, his voice lashing out ahead of him.
“Go on … go on. Finish the deal, damn you.”
Mize Callan’s heavy growl was an echo to Wall’s words. “That’ll be all, Dave. Let it lay.”
Wall stopped, looked at Callan. The saloon owner held a dice box in his left hand, but his right was out of sight under the bar. Callan’s broad, veined face was expressionless, but his eyes were not. They were cold, challenging, unwavering.
Wall had rolled up on his toes, like something ready to leap, or a spring tensed to uncoil violently. Fat Hub Lisenbee swallowed heavily, licked his lips, and began to sidle along the bar front, out of the line of fire.
Then Wall shook his head as though to clear it and sagged back on his heels. “All right, Mize,” he mumbled wearily, “all right.” He turned and went back through the doors.
Damn them … damn them all! They might treat him as if he were a mangy dog, but there wasn’t one of them who had the nerve to fight Luke Lilavelt openly. And what did they know about how his own hands were tied?
For a moment Wall played with the thought of heading out to the Connell Ranch to see Judith and Jerry and the kids, but then he knew there would be no profit in this, either; it would only make more difficult his leaving for the Crimson Hills. The thing to do in his present mood was get out of town, out into the desert, and know a few hours of peace even at the cost of his ever-deepening loneliness of spirit. He went down to Hub Lisenbee’s stable, where he’d left his horses.
The stable was dark, but it was a familiar place, and he had no trouble in locating his gear, saddling up, and setting the pack. He added half a sack of oats to the pack horse’s load, and when he rode out of town, he cast no backward look.
The stars were high and bright, and black shadows flowed along under him and the animals as they moved down the long slope into the desert and headed due north, where, a round hundred miles distant, lay Luke Lilavelt’s Crimson Hills range. A year before Wall had made this same trip and, knowing what lay ahead, realized there could be no hurry, so he let the horses find their own settled, jogging, long-travel pace.
Ahead the desert ran out its distance under the stars and lost itself in far darkness. It had its own character, this land had, and its own breath that was a compound of silence, space, and the flavor of sage’s pungency.
Wall had made many such long and lonely trips to various holdings in the interests of Luke Lilavelt and knew how to achieve the locked-away stoicism to carry through the slow hours and long miles. He rode this night out and reached the first water hole along the trail just as gray dawn began fading out the stars. He made a frugal camp, and unsaddled, watered, and grained the horses. He built a minute fire of dead sage roots, cooked coffee and bacon, had a smoke, then crawled into the lee of a clump of sage, and slept until the prying heat of a climbing sun reached and woke him. Again he saddled and packed and moved on.
Recalling his first trip to the Crimson Hills, he knew that this would be an empty, lonely, weary day, just the desert and his thoughts. Time and the steady slogging pace of the horses would take care of the first and, no matter how they ran, he would have to bear with the latter. For, however far and long a man rode, he could never get away from himself.
The sun climbed to its zenith and laid a harsh and powerful touch across an empty world. Sweat started and ran and dried, leaving a crusted rime on the hides of the horses, and the salt of its bitterness stung a man’s eyes and his lips. The desert’s bleached and unceasing glare beat at a man’s eyes and pinched them down to narrowed slits, and the heat was a baking weight across his shoulders. By midafternoon all spring had gone from the horses’ stride and the first blue and welcome tide of dusk found them completely jaded. But Wall kept them to it, aiming for a certain dry wash he remembered, where, beneath a high cutbank, a small and brackish water hole lay.
Coming in on the place, the slow plod of the horses muffled by the reddish sandy earth, Wall abruptly straightened in the saddle, for the still air now held the dry pungency of wood smoke, and then Wall, peering ahead, picked up the faint reflected radiance of the fire. Instantly Wall pushed aside the torpor that the long and lonely ride had settled on him, and
he rode, high and alert, as his horses slid down a bank into the dry wash and their hoofs rang loudly on the bleached and alkali-whitened cobbles of its bed. Now Wall saw the fire clearly and he saw the two figures, that had been hunkered beside it, straighten up and drift swiftly beyond the reach of its thin glow.
Wall sent in his hail. “Hello … the fire!”
There was a long moment of silence before the surly reply came. “Keep on driftin’. This camp is taken!”
Realizing that mounted, he made a solid outline against the fading sky, Wall went swiftly from his saddle and then, past the bulk of his horse, laid down his purpose, flatly harsh and with no compromise. “This is the only water within miles and it’s free. I’m coming in!”
The horses smelled the water and were eager for it. They needed no urging to move up and Wall still used the shelter of their bulk as he moved in. He stopped just beyond the reach of the fire glow. “Well?”
Moving in, he had marked things as best he could and he felt he had those two slinking figures pretty well placed, so now he put the pressure of decision on them. It was his way, the combination of recklessness, stubborn courage, and a harsh knowledge of men gleaned down through some rough and perilous years. He waited them out, alert for anything, while the tension built up. One of them weakened under it.
“Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter. I need this water and I’m throwing off here. Your move!”
There it was again. That pressure—direct, grim, unrelenting. They began to hedge.
“There’s more water, five miles west along this wash.”
“Not interested,” rapped Wall. “You can head for it if you don’t like my company. Here is where I stop.”
There was a stir of movement farther along the wash and a slim figure in jeans and jumper came out of the shadows and up to the fire and a girl’s fresh voice rang clearly.
