by L. P. Holmes
“We’ll fix that, easy,” declared Tres. “You look like you could stand being away from a saddle for a little while. You stay put right here, and I’ll do the prowling around Crimson Hills. I know that country better than you do, anyhow. I can be out there by sundown and dark’s a good time to prowl.”
“That would help a heap, cowboy,” Wall admitted. “Only, should you get a look at Hippo Dell, don’t you go trying to throw a loop on him. He’s the one to lead me to Lilavelt. Your chore with Dell can wait until later.”
Tres stood up. “I’m a patient man. I’ll be back here sometime tonight.”
“I’ll be looking for you,” promised Wall. “Remember, you’re to see, but not be seen.”
The chuff of Tres’ spurs died away in the dust of the street, and then, too, faintly the departing clump of his horse. Dave Wall settled a little more deeply on his heels, sagged more fully against the wall at his back. There was a deeper weariness in him than he had thought. It lay across his shoulders and down his saddle-leaned flanks in a steady ache. Tough and hardy as he was, he had driven himself remorselessly over the past several days, and too much riding and not enough sleep had piled up its inevitable total. But he couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest. Pounding all the time at the back of his brain was the realization that time was vital. Judge Masterson would get all that he could for Jerry, but the judge himself had admitted a limit to what he could do. Maybe a month, the judge had said. After that, well, once John Ogden got Jerry back to Round Mountain …
Wall shook himself, driving the thought from his mind. He’d get Lilavelt and Lilavelt would talk if he had to burn it out of him. And even if what Lilavelt had to say did not lead immediately to Big George Yearly, just knowledge that Yearly was alive and able to be located was bound to help Jerry’s case. It might be grounds that would enable Judge Masterson to win further delay of some kind.
That was the way Wall’s thoughts ran, but in a little while they grew sluggish and faded out altogether, and before he realized it he had slipped off into an uneasy doze; his head dropped on his chest, his shoulders falling slack and loose. Without the support at his back, he would have toppled over. The sun dipped lower, shadows lengthened and deepened. A blue gloom filled the alley and Wall was only a part of the motionless shadow there.
He awakened suddenly, yet with dulled senses. It came down through the blur of his mind that he’d heard a horse go by along the street. The significance of this dragged heavily across his fatigue-drugged mind, then sharpened into sudden focus. He came erect suddenly and the protest of his stiffened muscles was a knife edge of pure pain that wrung a muffled curse from him. He steadied himself, then limped to the corner of the building at his left and peered carefully along the sunset street.
A saddle mount was at the hitch rail before the general store, so recently left that it was still restless, not yet settled down. Well, what did that mean? Just a saddle horse that could have been ridden into town by any one of a hundred persons. But it might have borne the man he was looking for—Hippo Dell.
A wry and mirthless smile pulled at Wall’s lips. That would be asking too much of luck or the smiles of a fortune which so far had not been overly kind toward him. Yet, from now on any horse or any rider that entered this town of Crater City had to be watched and reckoned with. As he had told Tres Debley, what Wind River had told him was the only lead he had so far been able to pick up and he had to ride with it, gambling that the old cook had heard right and told him the same. Wall tumbled a sack of tobacco from his shirt pocket, rolled a smoke, lipped it, and searched the band of his hat for a match. But he did not strike it.
Movement on the store porch, movement in the blue shadow there. The bulk of a man. A heavy man, a fat brute of a man. Hippo Dell. Coming down off the porch in that ponderous but queerly light way of his, carrying a sack of provisions in one fist. He put the sack across the pommel of his saddle, swung up, and came riding back up the street.
Dave Wall flattened back against the side of the alley. His first impulse was to step out, throw a gun on Dell, with the half-formed thought of thus forcing Dell to lead him to Luke Lilavelt. But instantly he knew that this would not do. He had seen enough of Hippo Dell to know that here was a man with unguessed depths of toughness in him, a man you might trail, but never force. There was only one way—the slower, more cautious one.
Hippo Dell rode on past the alley mouth, as light in his saddle for a big man as he was on his feet. He went straight through town and out into the open country beyond. Once sure of this, Wall went back through the alley with long strides, to where he had left his horse beside an old freight corral out back. He tightened the girth he had loosened, swung up, and cut around the fringe of town, past some old shanties and tin-can littered flats.
Through the false glow of sunset he picked up Hippo Dell’s bobbing figure breaking well down into the open country, on a line that would take him somewhere near the Stinking Water-Monument gap. Realization struck Wall that it wasn’t going to be easy to follow that trail. In less than an hour it would be dark, and that was a wide, wide, country Dell was heading into. And the man was just sly and foxy enough to set one trail direction, then swing to another, once it was fully dark. No, it wouldn’t be easy. But it had to be tried. It still wasn’t dark enough to start following directly. If he could see Dell, then by a backward glance Dell could see him. He would, Wall realized, go faster by going more slowly. Here was a place where he had to use his head. So he sat his still horse and watched, watched until Hippo Dell vanished into the clotting dusk, leaving only two things to mark his way—a direction that did not deviate at all, and the tracks his horse left on the slowly cooling earth.
Wall turned then and rode back into town. At the livery barn he ordered his horse a full feed of oats and hay and a rub-down. For himself, he went into Charlie Ring’s hash house and took on a full meal, eating slowly and making the most of the chance to rest. Before he finished, he had Charlie make him up a couple of thick steak sandwiches and put them in a small sugar sack. And then as he paid and got ready to leave, he said: “Tres Debley will probably drop in here later tonight, Charlie. Tell him the man came to get the mail and that I’m on my way. Tell him I’ll see him in Basin. And tell nobody else I said anything.”
Charlie nodded and said shrewdly: “Hope you find what you’re after, Wall.”
Chapter Ten
Miles out from Crater City, Dave Wall watched the moon come up. This he had counted on. He knew what the full moon was like on a still, warm night out in the open country and across the desert, so bright and full-glowing it threw definite shadows. To this trail he was bringing the full concentration of knowledge and experience and observation. Men, he knew, unless trying to throw a false trail, traveled from one place to another by as straight a line as natural obstacles would allow. And the more he thought of it, the stronger the conclusion that Hippo Dell was not out to throw a false trail. The man, apparently, had felt that no one was concerned in his business in the slightest way. The confident manner in which he had ridden into and out of Crater City proved that. Hippo Dell had been around the Crimson Hills country for some time. He had been in Crater City on many occasions, no doubt. His coming and going would mean nothing to the people there. Night, distance, the desert—these things would cover up all that Hippo Dell had to hide. So, decided Wall, would Dell reason.
With the true line of Dell’s departure fixed solidly in his mind, Dave Wall had already stopped several times before the moon showed and, leaning close to the earth on foot, had, by flickering match light, quartered back and forth until he had found what he looked for. Fresh hoof marks. Now, while the moon climbed and laid its full effulgence across the world, he again discerned the trace and could go steadily ahead.
In several places, after moving away from the harder upland earth, he struck stretches of red sandy where he was able to move his horse ahead at a jog, for cut deep against the moon’s
smooth earth reflection, the hoof gouges of the horse ahead loomed plain.
He saw the Monuments rise spectrally off to his right and drift behind him. The trail crossed above the Stinking Water swamps, drove straight on into the desert. The going was better than he hoped. He had, at the start, figured on a fairly good lead for a part of the night, then a few hours of sleep and a fresh attack on the trail in the morning. But at this rate, there seemed a fair chance that he might come up with Hippo Dell’s objective before the night was done. This, thought Wall grimly, he would prefer, for the night would offer an element of surprise attack that daylight would not.
He had no idea what sort of hideout Luke Lilavelt would have, here in the desert. Hardly a comfortable one, at best. Just a frugal, dismal camp in some dry wash probably, where an isolated pool of brackish water made life possible for man or animal. And it was reasonable to believe that it would not be too distant from Crater City, for the desert was the desert, and a man, with any luck at all, could do as good a job of hiding ten or fifteen miles into it as he could a hundred. But no part of it was ever pleasant enough to call a man into it unless by necessity. There were plenty of areas in it that did not see a single rider once a year.
Wall got a grim satisfaction in the thought of Luke Lilavelt’s seeking its harsh sanctuary through fear of the man he had once pushed and ordered around in mean and dominating arrogance. He had been sure of his power over that man and taking advantage of it. He imagined Luke Lilavelt, whose way it was to complain even in comfortable circumstances, sleeping on the ground and finding only discomfort there, while other men, inured to it, found rest. Lilavelt, following some thin line of shade around a sage or greasewood clump, or against some sun-scorched cutbank, would have sought a comfort and coolness that simply wasn’t there, eating rough and frugal and monotonous food under rough conditions.
These were things that bigger-souled men knew how to accept without complaint, buttressed by the stoicism of their strength and courage. But Luke Lilavelt didn’t have that courage. The brackish water would scour his throat and rest uneasily in a queasy stomach. The sun would burn and ache in his eyes and Lilavelt would curse it and find no ease anywhere. And all of this he would endure because of fear—fear of one man. Of Dave Wall. It was something to find a raw and macabre pleasure in.
Wall struck the first wide stretches of stunted sage and clumps of greasewood. He stopped at the edge of this, located those hoof marks once more, fixed their direction, and went ahead. This was a chance he had to take. The trail would go through and somewhere beyond hit an open stretch where he could locate it again.
For a full mile he rode the scanty but persistent brush, and here the moon seemed less bright, for the cover drew in the light and did not reflect it back. Abruptly a furrow of shadow lay at right angles across the way. Wall’s horse stopped of its own accord, tossing its head. Here ran one of the numerous washes that cut and gouged the desert, starting nowhere in particular, then meandering on perhaps for miles before frittering out with the same lack of plan with which they started.
Wall sat his horse for a long time, all senses sharp and reaching as he keened the night. The world was utterly still, except for the faintest brush of air, drifting from south to north. Wall dismounted, let himself down over the edge of the wash, and prowled a distance up and down, moving with the greatest care, using the tricky light to locate places where the north bank of the wash was sloped or caved down enough to permit easy entrance by a horse.
He took off his hat and scratched matches and shielded them in the tall crown, using these brief flickers of truer light to study these spots. He found four before he came to another that showed the fresh-cut, gouging slashes of descending hoofs. He went directly across the wash from this spot and began looking for places there where a horse had climbed out. But though there were a number of such likely spots, none showed the betraying hoof marks. Instead, nearly a hundred yards east of where the trail led into the wash, he found tracks following the bottom of the wash itself.
He went back to his horse, increasing eagerness in his stride. He fell back a good seventy-five yards from the wash and then rode slowly, paralleling its north bank. A thin and coiling tension ran up and down his spine. The end of this trail wasn’t very far away. Instinctively he knew that, was as sure of it as he had ever been of anything. Water holes in the desert were always in washes and the trail had led definitely into this one. Somewhere out there was the camp—and the man.
That lazy push of air from the south was a tricky and wayward thing. Sometimes it was steady, then it would come in little puffs, and again it would die out altogether. When this happened, Wall would rein in and wait for it to come on again. For he needed that drift of air. On it would come evidence of the camp.
He rode so far he thought he must have missed it and was considering retracing his route. And then he got it. It came abruptly and sure, on one of those wayward puffs of air. The acrid odor of a dying campfire, part smoke, part the bite of charred wood. There might have been something else, or perhaps that was just a touch of an overly stimulated imagination. But it seemed to Wall that he could pick up the tang of tobacco smoke.
He was out of his saddle swiftly, ground-reining his horse. From the scabbard under the stirrup leather he dragged his Winchester rifle. He took off his spurs and hung them on his saddle horn. Then, crouched low, he went in, making sure of every step before he put his weight down. The odors of the camp grew stronger as he drew closer to the wash. The final twenty yards he made on hands and knees, placing his rifle carefully before him with each movement. The last ten feet he was snake-flat on his stomach, his hat discarded, until he was able to inch his eyes over the crest of the bank.
This cutbank was fairly high, eight or ten feet, and it was fairly dark beneath, dark except for a thin scatter of dying coals. But men were down there, two of them, smoking. So abruptly that it was as startling as a gunshot would have been, the voice of Luke Lilavelt came up to Wall, droning and nasal and tight with a rasping, complaining anger.
“You sure there wasn’t any letter for you in Crater City, George? Hub Magley promised …”
“Hell with Magley,” cut in Hippo Dell’s voice, moist but slurred with anger. “Hell with you, too, in a minute. I’ve told you a dozen times there wasn’t any mail. And I’ve told you that many times not to call me by that name. I’m Hippo Dell, understand … Hippo Dell! Nothing else.”
“I keep forgetting,” mumbled Lilavelt sulkily. “If I lay out in this damned desert much longer, I’ll forget my own name. You needn’t get so proddy about it. The way you act you’d think forty sheriffs were listening in.”
“That’s not the point. The name George Yearly don’t exist any more. It’s done with … forgotten. If you and me were in a small boat alone in the middle of the ocean, you couldn’t call me George Yearly. I’d be Hippo Dell there, just like I am here. Now don’t you forget again or I’ll slap you butter-legged and leave you here to starve. And you’d do that, too … rather than go out and take your chances with Wall.” The words ended with a snap of vast contempt.
Dave Wall lay like a log, scarce daring to breathe. A name was rocketing through his head. George Yearly. Big George Yearly. It was the answer to so many things … the answer to everything. He was down there … not twenty feet away. Hippo Dell … but not Hippo Dell. Big George Yearly … It added up. It added up so perfectly that he wondered why he hadn’t guessed it before. The angle that Cole Ashabaugh had brought forth in Judge Masterson’s office back at Basin—how true it had been.
Luke Lilavelt was speaking again. “Maybe that letter from Hub Magley will show up tomorrow. Somewhere along the line some of my boys are sure to catch up with Wall. He can’t be as lucky all the time as he was at Gravelly. Cube Spayd and Joe Muir sure botched that deal. And they had Wall dead to rights. Well, they’re both dead now, and they ought to be … after that.” There was a heartless venom in Lilavelt
’s words.
Hippo Dell said: “You’re a pretty mean specimen, Lilavelt, about as mean as they come. A lot of thanks any man gets for laying his life on the line for you. You might as well understand one thing right now. It’s your money I love … not you. And forget this damned caterwauling about luck. It ain’t luck with Dave Wall. I’ve told you that before. I don’t like that man any better than you do, but I’m well aware of one thing. He’s a tough hombre and he’s no fool. After that deal at Gravelly, do you think he’s going to walk into a setup like that at any other of your spreads? Maybe you do, but I don’t. The reason we haven’t heard from Magley is because he’s had no word to send. Maybe he never will. If you had an ounce of guts, you’d head on out and take your chances with Wall.”
“Maybe I will,” muttered Lilavelt. “Maybe I will.”
Hippo Dell laughed scoffingly. “That’s something else you’ve said a hundred times. I don’t believe it.”
“You should talk!” shrilled Lilavelt in sudden mean anger. “How long have you been on the dodge? I don’t see you going back to Round Mountain and …”
“Shut up! Shut up, damn you … or I’ll throw a slug into you right here and now! Shut up!”
Dave Wall held his breath, waiting for the snarl of a gun, for its lancing tongue of crimson venom. For in Hippo Dell’s voice had been a wild, killing note. But the silence settled in and held for a long time. Then came apology from Lilavelt, which in its whining servility was more contemptible than his other meanness had been.
“All right, Hippo … I take it back. You and me, we can’t afford to row. There’s too much money ahead for both of us to start calling names and arguing over nothing. It’s tough waiting, all around. But things will straighten out.”
