The Crimson Hills
Page 18
The judge dropped a hand on Wall’s arm. “It’s been a trail few men would have been big enough and generous enough to travel. Remember, given time, all things pass. And even the darkest shadows are formed by the sunlight that lies beyond.” The judge brought out a heavy gold case watch, snapped open the cover, and glanced at it. And for the first time Cole Ashabaugh could remember, he heard Judge Masterson swear.
“Damn! It’s ’way past my suppertime.”
The judge hurried out. Cole Ashabaugh pointed to the bunk in a far corner. “Get over on that and forget everything,” he ordered. “I’ll take care of your horses. When was the last time you had a real night’s sleep?”
Dave Wall stretched and yawned, moved stiffly over to the bunk. “I’ve forgotten.” He pulled off his boots and flattened out. Sleep hit him like a club.
* * * * *
Morning’s sunlight filtered the room when he awoke. Cigarette smoke was in the air. Dave Wall turned his head and saw Tres Debley sitting in Cole Ashabaugh’s desk chair, his feet cocked high. Tres said: “Time you woke up. I been hearing the damnedest things. Are they all true?”
Wall grinned. “Depends. Man, I’m hungry.”
Tres said: “Same here. There’s a place up the street that looks pretty good. Come on.”
Over their belated breakfast they swapped stories. Tres’ was brief enough. He’d found nothing out at the Crimson Hills headquarters and after returning to Crater City had got the message Wall had left with Charlie Ring. “So then,” ended Tres, “I headed for Basin. And missed all the fun,” he added disgustedly.
“No fun,” said Wall bluntly, then told Tres all about it. “You can forget Hippo Dell … or, better, George Yearly. He’s got a ride ahead of him I wouldn’t want to face. Now me for a bath and a shave and a new outfit of clothes. Got to mark a fresh start all around.”
Tres spun a cigarette, inhaled deeply. “Nearly forgot. Got a message for you. Had a visit with some friends of yours back in the Crimson Hills country. The Suttons. I was told to tell you not to forget them. It was a pretty emphatic order.”
“Yeah,” murmured Wall. “Who gave it?”
“Tracy did,” said Tres with studied casualness.
Wall thought about that while he dickered with By Tellifer for the new outfit of clothes. He thought about it while he lay back in Sam Lange’s barber chair while Sam’s shears and razor worked busily. He thought about it while he soaked and steamed for an hour in Sam’s bathroom out back. Later, feeling a new man inside and out, he went in search of Tres and found him swapping idle talk with Cole Ashabaugh in the latter’s office. Cole shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Can’t be the same feller, Debley. This one shines.”
“You go to hell.” Wall grinned. “Tres, you can drift out to the ranch and kill time there for a week or two. You’ll hear from me. Tell Judith and Jerry I’ll be along to see them before too long.”
“You,” said Tres, as though he didn’t know, “sound like you were going somewhere.”
“And you can join Cole on the same journey,” retorted Wall. “Be seeing you.”
He went away, heading for the livery barn, a tall quick-striding figure, keen with the vital essence of life.
Cole Ashabaugh spoke softly. “I like that man. But I can’t figure his hurry.”
“I can,” said Tres laconically. “He’s luckier than you or I will ever be. But he’s earned that luck. I’ll buy a drink, Ashabaugh. It’s about that time of day.”
* * * * *
He came up out of the desert with the same driving eagerness that had carried him into it. His glance ran steadily ahead of him as he climbed the long slope that led to the bench land where Bart Sutton’s headquarters at Sweet Winds stood. The ranch house shone white while the trees that surrounded it loomed green and cool, rustling lazily in the breeze that gave the ranch its name.
He remembered the other times he’d ridden up to this same headquarters and of the action and reaction that had met him there. An awful lot had happened since that first visit. The stars of some men had risen, while those of others had fallen. Fate, luck, and some sound reasoning had tossed a great many things into the pot, but out of it all had come at last a sane, bright balance to life.
He saw her while still far off. A slim and motionless figure on the ranch house porch, and when he drew closer, she dropped lightly down the steps and came to meet him. He thought back to the first time he had seen her, on that distant day when she had ridden past him, his not knowing who she was and she entirely unaware of him. The way the wonder of her had stayed with him.
She wasn’t any different now. She was the same in his eyes as she had been that day, and as she would always be. She was crisp and cool and immaculate, and her eyes were shining. She spoke simply.
“Dave. I knew that if I waited and watched the desert trail long enough, then one day you would come riding.”
He swung down and she stood close to him, her hands in his. “A greeting like this … for me … for Dave Wall?” he said.
A little tremor was in her soft, glad laughter and a swift mist touched her eyes. “I know all about Dave Wall. Tres Debley told Dad and me all about you … why you rode for Luke Lilavelt … everything. But that wouldn’t have mattered anyhow. Nothing would have.”
They walked over to the ranch house, hand in hand. Bart Sutton, looking much his old self, stood in the doorway and his deep voice rang gladly.
“Boy … you’ve come home!”
the end
About the Author
L. P. Holmes was the author of a number of outstanding Western novels. Born in a snowed-in log cabin in the heart of the Rockies near Breckenridge, Colorado, Holmes moved with his family when very young to northern California and it was there that his father and older brothers built the ranch house where Holmes grew up and where, in later life, he would live again. He published his first story—“The Passing of the Ghost”—in Action Stories (9/25). He was paid half a cent a word and received a check for $40. “Yeah … forty bucks,” he said later. “Don’t laugh. In those far-off days … a pair of young parents with a three-year-old son could buy a lot of groceries on forty bucks.”
He went on to contribute nearly six hundred stories of varying lengths to the magazine market as well as to write numerous Western novels. For many years of his life, Holmes would write in the mornings and spend his afternoons calling on a group of friends in town, among them the blind Western author, Charles H. Snow, who Lew Holmes always called Judge Snow (because he was Napa’s Justice of the Peace in 1920–1924) and who frequently makes an appearance in later novels as a local justice in Holmes’ imaginary Western communities. Holmes produced such notable novels as Somewhere They Die (1955) for which he received the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. The Sunset Trail (2014), a California riverboat story, marked his most recent appearance. In L. P. Holmes’ stories one finds the themes so basic to his Western fiction: the loyalty that unites one man to another, the pride one must take in his work and a job well done, the innate generosity of most of the people who live in Holmes’ ambient Western communities, and the vital relationship between a man and a woman in making a better life.