by L. P. Holmes
“All right,” said Ashabaugh. “You want to fight Lilavelt. There’s your chance … the chance to hit at him and still be in the clear. Go tie in with Sutton. Get on the right side. And if Luke Lilavelt gets his ears shot off while trying to hog another man’s range, then that’s his hard luck, and there can be no comeback at anybody.”
Dave Wall threw his legs off the bunk and sat up. A hard shine was in his eyes. “Cole,” he said, “with your head, you ought to be governor.”
Chapter Six
When Dave Wall rode out to the Connell Ranch he found his sister elbows deep in the snowy suds of a washtub. She came hurrying over to him, drying her hands on her apron. Her face was pale, her eyes big with worry.
“Jerry … where is he, Dave?”
Wall stepped from the saddle, put an arm about her shoulders. “Locked up,” he said quietly. “It’s for the best, old girl … and I’ll tell you why.”
As they walked slowly over to the wash bench, he told her. He told her about Judge Masterson and all that had taken place in the judge’s office. “The judge is on our side, Judy, and he’s going to do his best by Jerry. But he’s right about sticking strictly to the law in trying to clear Jerry. It’s the only way to settle this thing finally and for good. Once Jerry is cleared by the law, then it’s a clear trail for him and you and the kids. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?”
Judith sat on the end of the bench, beside her tub full of wash, and her shoulders drooped and her lips puckered and trembled and two big tears ran down her cheeks. At the moment she looked like a forlorn, scared little girl. She choked a little.
“B-But Jerry … my Jerry … in jail …”
“It’s still for the best,” Wall comforted. “He’ll live like a king and you can go visit him any time you want. But don’t you see that Judge Masterson couldn’t do anything else without advertising where his sympathies lay? This thing is going to take a little time and during that time we’ve got to keep Luke Lilavelt fooled. Suppose Judge Masterson had let Jerry go on his own recognizance, say … what do you think Lilavelt would think of that? I know. Lilavelt would set up an awful howl and stir up a lot of talk and feeling that wouldn’t do Jerry’s case a bit of good. No, it’s better this way.”
“What about the ranch … the cattle … the work to be done?” argued Judith. “I’ll try … but I can’t take care of everything.”
“That’s taken care of. Holt Ashabaugh will be riding out this afternoon. He’s a good, dependable man. He’ll keep the work up and keep an eye on you and the kids, too.”
Judith began to flare. “If he’s anything like his brother Cole … I’d rather not have him around. That Cole … arresting Jerry …!”
Wall laughed softly. “Don’t you go throwing rocks at Cole, Judy. He’s a good sheriff and a friend of ours, as you’ll find out.”
She considered this for a moment, then said: “If you’re bringing Holt Ashabaugh out here to run the ranch, that means you’re not going to be around, Dave. Where are you going?”
“Back to the Crimson Hills country for a time. Got business up there. Oh, I’ll keep in touch with you … I’ll write regularly. And you’ll be able to reach me, general delivery, at Crater City. As soon as Judge Masterson gets some real developments on Jerry’s case, I’ll be right back here at your side, Judy.”
She looked up at him. “Dave, you’re positively all through with Luke Lilavelt?”
“Through working for him … but not through with him,” said Wall grimly. “Before I’m through with him, he’ll curse the day he ever heard the name of Wall.”
Judith came to her feet, swift concern in her eyes, her fingers going up to touch Wall’s lean jaw. “Dave. You’re bruised … cut! Oh … I hadn’t noticed. How …?”
“Mister Oren White,” explained Wall dryly. “For a long time his mouth has been too open. I shut it for him. Oh … he’ll live. It was just a case of fists. But I think he learned his good lesson. And now … how about a little grub? I’m always hungry when I get near your cooking.”
She wasn’t to be put off this lightly. There was a fine and gentle sweetness in Judith Connell. “I know that Oren White has been making a lot of unfair talk, but it wasn’t hurting anybody, really. Did you have to fight with him?”
“At the time it seemed like a good idea,” said Wall slowly. “I think it did a lot more good than harm. Besides …”—and here he grinned down at her—“your brother is a rough and ornery scoundrel. Didn’t you know that, Judy?”
She surveyed him intently, then showed a small glimmer of a smile. “I wouldn’t have him different.”
While Judy got a meal together, Wall played with the twins, two sturdy little chaps, full of life and mischief. He went in for another look at the curly-headed little girl, still asleep in her cradle. And when he contrasted the warm, fine rightness of this little home against Luke Lilavelt’s malignant cold-bloodedness, his hatred for the man rose dark and bleak within him.
When the meal was done, Wall went out to the saddle shed and fixed up a bunk there for Holt Ashabaugh, who came riding in, soon after. Like his brother Cole, Holt was tall and raw-boned. He was an impassive, slow-spoken man with steady blue eyes. He stowed his war bag under the bunk in the saddle shed, and while they put his horse away, Wall explained the situation briefly.
“Reckon I can take care of things to suit you, Dave,” said Holt quietly. “Cole told me a few things when he rounded me up to come out here. You aim to put a few nicks in Luke Lilavelt’s hide?”
“That’s right, Holt. And, knowing the man, when he begins to smart a little, I wouldn’t put it past him to hit back at me through this ranch. You’ll keep an eye open for that sort of thing?”
“Lilavelt wants his scrawny neck twisted, let him come out here and start something.”
Holt Ashabaugh had never met Judy Connell, so Wall took him over to the ranch house and introduced him. Judy stood in the kitchen door, the twins clinging to her skirt, eying Holt soberly. Holt took off his battered hat with a quaint courtesy.
“Honored, ma’am. Any chore you want done, just holler.” His glance went to the twins and a strange softness touched his leathery face. “Those little fellers … you think they’ll friend up with me?”
He dropped on one knee, his slow grin touching the twins, who wriggled and squirmed, then suddenly dashed in and swarmed all over him. He hoisted one to each shoulder and walked up and down with them.
Wall met his sister’s eyes and she nodded and smiled a little mistily. “He’s a good man,” she murmured. “Trust a child’s instinct.”
Wall set about his own preparations. He had a long way to ride and many things to do. He had the feeling of girding himself for a long, tough battle. But he was looking forward to it with an almost exultant eagerness. After those dark, stultifying years in Luke Lilavelt’s besmirching service, with their hopelessness and morbid reactions, this was a great, fine freedom that he’d found. There was a new and eager energy in him and an astonishing sharpness of mind. It was as though a coating of rust and corrosion had been rubbed off, leaving the clean brightness of untarnished steel.
At parting, Judy clung to him briefly. “You’ll be careful, Dave?” she entreated, a little choked up. “I know you wouldn’t want me to hold you back, so I won’t try. But it will be lonely and … and uncertain with both Jerry and you …” She reached up, kissed him, and pushed him away. “Good luck.”
As before, Wall led a pack horse behind his saddle mount. His first intention had been to take to the desert again and ride directly for the Crimson Hills, but, after thinking matters over, he decided on a few other tactics. So his first stop was in Basin, for he wanted a final word with Jerry.
Cole Ashabaugh, loafing about his office, let Wall into the jail, where Jerry lay on a bunk, smoking endless cigarettes. “This,” said Jerry, “is going to be tougher than I figured, Dave. J
ust this damned bubby and time, time … time! I’ll go loco if Judge Masterson takes too long to get action of some kind.”
“Think it’s going to be easy on Judy?” reminded Wall. “This is something that just has to be taken and stood up to, cowboy. When Judy comes to see you, she’ll have her chin up. Don’t you let yours be dragging.”
“I won’t,” promised Jerry. “Cole Ashabaugh says you got his brother Holt to keep the work up out at the ranch?”
Wall nodded. “And a damned good man, too. You won’t have a single worry there. I stopped in here to let you know that.”
Outside again, Dave Wall made another call at Luke Lilavelt’s office, only to find it locked and silent and empty. His lips curled. Lilavelt, having loosed the law against Jerry Connell, had skinned out somewhere, afraid of the wrath of the man he had once held a club over.
When Wall went over to his horses, Cole Ashabaugh, who’d been watching from his office door, came sauntering up. “Not going back on our agreement, are you, Dave?”
“No. But I want to see Lilavelt. I want to tell him right to his teeth what I’m setting out to do. I want him to know that I’m going to start knocking the props out from under him, one by one. I want to make him start worrying, start losing sleep at night, put the fear of God into him. All that man has in the world, Cole, are his organization and his miserable, shrunken soul. I want him to know that I intend to smash up the first before I squeeze the life out of what’s left.”
“Ambitious chore,” murmured the sheriff. “Will take considerable doing, my friend.”
“Sounds like a big brag, doesn’t it?” agreed Wall. “But I’m going to take a man-size cut at making it good. Be seeing you.”
Wall rode out of Basin, the hoofs of his horses chopping up a fine cloud of dust that made a tawny haze in the afternoon’s westering sunlight. It was, he concluded, a pretty safe bet that he’d find Luke Lilavelt at one of his several cattle headquarters. Probably not at Crimson Hills, for that was a long ride and would serve no particular purpose at the moment. More likely, Lilavelt would be some place closer in, organizing for an all-out drive to the Crimson Hills, aiming to throw enough cattle and riders that way to start the big rollover of Bart Sutton and his Square S holdings. Lilavelt had mentioned Gravelly as the range where a herd was being gathered for the Crimson Hills drive, so perhaps that was where Lilavelt was now. Dave Wall headed for Gravelly.
Early dark found him on the flats along Powder Creek, so he threw his camp there, cooked his small supper, and, after eating, lounged on his blankets and watched the fire gutter out until the last ruby-red coal had turned to gray ash. The night world was big and still and the stars sifted down a moist coolness to freshen and sweeten all the land.
Dave Wall thought of other solitary nights along this trail or that, when riding to the orders of Luke Lilavelt. There had been no savor to most of them—they were just pauses to rest and eat and carried no significance beyond that. But this was different. A shadow had lifted from him, letting in a newly found freedom that had alerted all his senses of appreciation once more. And he found himself reveling in the simple gifts of life.
The small song of the chuckling creek waters, the stamp of a hoof and the champ of jaws as his horses foraged lazily under the stars. The shrilling of the tree crickets, the boom of a bullfrog from some backwater upcreek, and the lonely, rolling hoot of an owl from some gaunt sycamore top. Little things, common things, the breath of a land and the things that lived on or above it. Things that cost nothing, but which filled a man’s cup to full and running over, when he was free to treasure them …
At midmorning, Dave Wall rode up to Luke Lilavelt’s Gravelly headquarters. It lay at the head of a small basin in a grassland of rolling, rounded ridges. A rich property, well watered, and well below the arid touch of the desert that lay to the north. Cattle grazed along the ridge tops and slopes and there was a faint stir of dust lifting to the north and east that indicated a considerable gather being thrown together up there.
Like all of Lilavelt’s spreads, Gravelly had been held down to the barest essentials in buildings, and Wall thought again that there was no comfort for a man, either in his mind or his body, if he rode for Luke Lilavelt. Not if he was a man who in any way treasured his self-respect.
Wall came up slowly past the corrals and thought the place empty of life until Cube Spayd, the Gravelly foreman, came out of the bunkhouse. Spayd was a short, powerful, and broad man, heavy-featured. He came over toward Wall at a heavy, stolid walk, showing neither surprise, welcome, nor any other animate expression.
Wall had never liked Cube Spayd, though he had worked with him several times. There was a large chunk of the crass brute in Spayd, and he would carry out any order of Luke Lilavelt’s with a thorough ruthlessness. There was no conscience in this man, nor the slightest tinge of mercy for man or beast.
Dave Wall gave him a slow nod. “Lilavelt here, Spayd?”
“Was, but he’s gone now,” grunted Spayd, watching Wall with unwinking, dead-flat eyes.
“Where’d he head to?”
Spayd shrugged. “How would I know? He’s always heading somewhere. What d’you want him for?”
“A little manner of business,” Wall murmured. “Where’s your crew?”
“Out gathering that herd we’re to take up to the Crimson Hills. We’ll be pulling out with it in a couple of days. You got that country open between Stinking Water and the Monuments? That was your chore, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” murmured Wall. “It was my chore.” He put just the slightest emphasis on the word.
Cube Spayd had lifted his left hand and was scrubbing his black bristled chin with thumb and forefinger. His blank eyes flicked just the barest of glances at the bunkhouse door.
Abruptly every sense in Dave Wall’s body was sharp and singing, shouting at him that something wasn’t right about this setup. Nothing was right about it, but everything was wrong. The place was too still, too empty. With that cattle gather going on to the north, Cube Spayd shouldn’t be here—he should be out there supervising the job. For as Dave Wall knew him, Cube Spayd was a man very jealous of his authority, liking it and asserting it at all times. No, Cube Spayd shouldn’t be here unless …!
Wall gathered his reins in his left hand, lifted them slightly. “Not like you, Spayd … to be loafing around headquarters, when there’s a gather of selected critters going on. As I recall it, Lilavelt said the cattle were to be all two-year-olds. Who’s out there picking them who can do a better job at it than you can?”
“No trick to that,” Spayd growled. “Any damn’ saddle hand halfway worth his salt can pick a two-year-old.” Spayd’s eyes were going harder and meaner by the second. “Reason I’m here is because we’re expecting you.”
He said this last swiftly, and he acted just as swiftly, bringing his left hand away from his face, down and back in a short, hard gesture that could be nothing else but a signal. And his right hand was streaking to his gun.
Before Cube Spayd’s move was halfway through, Dave Wall was acting. His spurs drove home and he was reining up and hard to the left. Grunting and lunging under the bite of the steel, his horse whirled to the drag of the reins, smashing into Cube Spayd, knocking and spinning him to the ground.
Over at the bunkhouse door a rifle crashed sharply and Dave Wall clearly felt the heavy jar of the speeding slug. But it hadn’t hit him and he kept his horse, whirling and rearing. He had drawn his gun when he first went into action and now it was poised, high and ready.
In the door of the bunkhouse a man stood, swinging the lever of a rifle as he pumped a fresh shell home. The man was Joe Muir, the rider who had slipped away from the Crimson Hills layout during the night after the shootout in Crater City that had come so close to costing Bart Sutton’s life.
Muir snapped closed the lever of his rifle and was whipping the weapon into line again. Dave Wall,
coldly intent, drove a slug into the very center of Muir’s body. Muir jackknifed and fell forward on his face like a man cut in half.
Cube Spayd, roaring with a sort of animal fury, was scrabbling around like a wounded bear, trying both to recover his jarred wits and the gun he had dropped when Wall’s horse had smashed into him. Wall drove his frantic horse past Spayd, leaned far over, and chopped wickedly at Spayd’s head with the heavy barrel of his gun. The blow landed, full and solid, and Spayd piled up in a heap.
Wall came fully erect in his saddle once more, setting his horse, while his bleak glance ripped the layout apart, watching for any slightest move of anything, anywhere. There was none, and Wall waited out the taut and stunned seconds.
Inside, he was coldly raging, mainly at himself for not guessing earlier that this was the sort of thing to expect. Luke Lilavelt had been here and had correctly figured that Dave Wall would also show. And Lilavelt had given the orders and planned the trap. And why it had not worked successfully, only the gods of chance knew.
Maybe Lilavelt was still here. Maybe he had waited to see Wall cut down, and then gloat over the fact. With the thought Wall sent his horse right up to the bunkhouse door. He didn’t waste a glance at Joe Muir, who lay half in, half out of the doorway. When men went down like Muir had, they were done.
Wall swung from the saddle, stepped past Muir, had his look at the bunkhouse. It was empty. Back in the saddle again he swung up to the cook shack. There had been a Chinese cook at this headquarters. There still was, but the Oriental eyed Wall impassively over a pan of biscuit dough, showing no emotion at all, neither friendliness nor animosity. Evidently the cook felt that what happened beyond the door of his cook shack was of no concern to him.
Wall rapped: “Lilavelt? He here?”
The Chinaman shook his head. “He come … he go.” That was all, except an Oriental shrug.
Wall rode back past Cube Spayd’s sprawled figure. The man wasn’t dead, but he’d really been hit and he wouldn’t be taking much interest in things for a while. Wall took another look at that thin dust cloud. Whether the reports of the guns had carried that far he couldn’t tell. But he knew that there was only one wise thing for him to do—which was to get away from this place and do it now.
