Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 13, Number 8, DeMotte, Jasper County, 1 January 1943 — ACE IN THE HOLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ACE IN THE HOLE

by JACKSON GREGORY

©GREGORY

W.N.U. RELEASE

CHAPTER I | Old Early Bill Cole knew full well in the fullness of his) years that his days, held by some filled with iniquity and general hell-raising, were numbered and his sands were running fast. He had known for six months and with a sort of devilish flicker of glee in all that he did, had gone about making the final arrangements. He was a rare old lone eagle and in him was a stripe of Satan a yard wide, at infrequent times something almost saintlike, and on many a joyous occasion a dash of Santa Claus. “Even if I got to die like other fool folks,” he consoled himself, ‘Tm going to get me my mite of fun out of it! Hell’s bells, yes, sir!” With his preparations pretty well in order, Early Bill Cole of the King Cole Ranch still estimated that his course had a few weeks to run, but that was before this particular morning had blossomed in shining gold out of the pleasantly cool, shadowy dawn. It was always his habit to be astir before the new day. He had no great fondness for the night time. The things he loved with all that wild old heart of his were the good earth and green things growing, and the earliest hours with the last stars winking out rather like the twinkle In his old, hard, steely blue eyes, and the little dawn breeze and the sunup and the glorious unfolding. And of late he was up and out of his enormous old adobe ranch house each morning earlier than was even his habit. He didn’t > want folks to see him and realize what he was up to. For each day he was telling some part of his wide spread acres, the whole of his world, a last adios. For many the year he had inhabited all alone the ancient, picturesque adobe building which long before his days had been the home of the Spanish-California Estradas. At first, being younger and even wilder then than at the end, he had always had a house full, and very colorful accounts of proceedings under the red tiled roof and within the thick white earthen walls leaked out But now, no. A quarter of a mile from the old adobe, beyond a big grove of cottonwoods, were outbuildings, stables and corrals and barns and quarters for hired hands. His latter years he wanted to be alone, like an old wolf, except when he himself went out in quest of company. Thus, this morning, he should be sure of going about whatever his own business might be, with no fear of a spying eye. He stepped along under the fading stars with his horny thumbs hooked into his cartridge belt, his battered old black hat pushed far back on his thatch of white hair, his high-heeled boots stepping briskly. He was darned if he’d crawl about like an old man, seen or unseen. The house was on a gently bosomed site with big oaks all about it; to the west, miles away, towered the mountains; between the house and the mountains were little rippling green hills where many a tall pine and many a tight clump of young pines grew. He walked toward the nearest hill with the three nobly tall pines on its crest. Here was a place of vantage well above the slopes where chaparral and manzanita wove themselves into thickets for rabbits to hide in. It was still half dark when he came to the one pine which, with no one in the least suspecting it, he had loved with a deep, still, fragrantly romantic love for nearly forty years. There was a reason, locked away in his own heart In the half dark, and with no eyes to

see, he pulled off his hat and looked up at the one star, still bright, laughing down at him through the branches! ‘ He put his long, thin, sinewy arms as far as he could about the He pressed his grizzled cheek agaihst the bark, so rough yet to his feeling so tenderly sost — Then a rifle shot, clear and vicious, cracked through the still loveliness of the hour, and old Early Bill Cole felt a stab of pain. For a moment he clung to the pine tree, gripping it tight for support. Then, quick and erect, he stepped/ree of it and as he did so dragged4)oth of his old guns, almost as old and worn and deadly as himself, up from their loose leathers. His shrewd old wintry eyes barely discerned a puff of smoke like a wisp of vanishing mist hanging above the thicket where a fiercer animal than brush rabbits was hiding this morning. And not waiting for any sure target he started blaz-

set his long, lean back against his tree and cursed, and when old Bill Cole cursed in such rage as now his words would have drawn rapt attention from a congress of mule skinners. What made him . mad wasn’t so much having a man try to dry gulch him; hell’s bells, he had been used for a target more than once in his stretch of years. But that a man should sneak up on and hide and spy on him when he thought himself alone with memories and an old pine— It was a wickedly wrathful Early Bill Cole making his staggering, lurching way back to the house.; The return over the brief distance which had taken him some few minutes required a tortuous hour. He got his door open, got halfway into his living room and fainted. After a time—it must have been upward of an hour, for the sun was glancing in at his windows —he heaved himself up, moved shakily to a big chair, slumped down

ing away with both guns. What amazed him was that no second shot was winged his way. So still was the hour that small sounds carried far and distinct; he heard a man crashing his way through the bushes, and prayed through clenched teeth for a fair sight of him. None was afforded however until his assailant, having run to a horse tethered under the crown of the slope, went up into the saddle. The distance was great, the light none too good; Early Bill leaned against his old pine and steadied himself and was very deliberate about his next shot. And then, with a catch in his throat, he laughed; there were times when the old man could laugh like a wolf snarling. He had come within an inch or two of shooting the other man through the head; he had shot his hat off! That’s what made Early Bill, contending with the pain of a bullet in him, laugh. The man threw up his hand and by a lucky chance caught his hat in the air—and then departed like something shot out of a gun. Early Bill bolstered his weapons,

with a grunt and closed his eyes. Presently he stiffened will and body •together and got his shirt open. He had lost a lo.t of blood that he could not afford toUose. The wound was through his side, down low through the lower jdb«. Lucky F he judged, that he hadn’t already bled to death. Without getting up he ripped’ off his shirt and with badly shaking hands contrived a bandage of sorts. Then, half swooning, he sat for a long time, feeling light headed yet as grim of determination as he always was to get the better of a bad deal. Finally he rose and made his way like a drunken man to the door opening upon the old Spanish patio whence he could look down to the cottonwood grove just beyond which the outbuildings were. He saw a faint smudge of smoke above the tree tops. He filled his lungs and tried to yell; he snorted, though feebly, in disgust as the result He dragged out his guns; there was a shot left in one, two in the other. He fired all three shots, spacing them, and let the guns slip out of his hands. Then he sat down on the old green bench to wait Though

the earlier shots had evidently gone unheard, the distance now was less and the hour later, and he had hopes. It was one of his Mexican hands, young Gaucho Ortega, who came slouching up the slope, wondering what was afoot, and found him. “For the love of God!” cried the boy in his native tongue. , Old Bill licked his lips and beckoned the boy closer. “Get on a horse, Gaucho,” he said thickly, “and ride into j town. Tell Doc Joe I want him resl bad. Now, wait a shake! Darn you, can’t you stand still until a man finishes? Then you find the Judge. I want him, too.” “Si, si, Senor!” cried the excited boy. “I’ll ride Slim Jim, and I’ll go like the wind! But, Sencr! The first thing, I must get you to bed!” “Look you, Gaucho,” said the old Bill, Of a sudden patient, taking into consideration the boy’s youth and excitability, “if I’ve got to cash in, I can do it. standing up. And if I’m going to live, what the heck would I want a bed for? Now get out of here.” A wry grin twisted his hard old lips, and he added, “I’ll be here when you get back.” The little town of Bald Eagle, squatting untidily in its place in the sun with the cattle country lying to the south and southwest and the hectic mining country in the broken lands to the north, was afe lively as any cricket most nights ahd many a gala afternoon, but profoundly somnolent before what was conventionally termed first drink time. This morning you wouldn’t halve seen a horse tied to any of the hitching rails, nor a puff of dust in the road not playfully stirred up by the half-hearted morning breeze, nor would you have heard anywhere the echoing thump and jingle of spurred boots on the crazy wooden sidewalks. But on the porch o|f the Bald Eagle Hotel two old men sat in their rocking chairs and smoked their after breakfast stogies and locked with mild, complacent eyes alcross all that was to be seen of their town’s stark ugliness. These were the two men tor whom Early BUI had sent. They were alike in many respects and in some were like old Bill Cole himself, though they never could measure up to his stature. Younger than Bill, they were, too, by some few yearfc. “Doc Joe,” who had been christened Joseph Daniel Dodge; the “Judge,” for the other, Bald Eagle’s one and only lawyer at the moment, banker besides, and christened Arthur Henry Pope. Like old Bill, though some inches below his six foot two, they were lean and wiry and gray. Doc Joe was as bald as a door kijob, the Judge’s glinting white hair wjas long like a mane and both wore fashionable flowing white One an old bachelor, the other a widower for so many years that it was as though he, too, had never known a home life, they lived at the hotel, had their three meals together, and did their porch-sitting in the two chairs which the community conceded were their particular property by right of homesteading. They were sitting brooding, smoking ruminaritly and digesting their hearty breakfasts when the Mexican boy from the King Cole Ranch came racing into town. He saw them as he turned into Main Street, and began yelling at them before they could hear a word that he said. “Hmf!” grunted Doc Joe. “Some thing must have bit him*” “It’s that half-breed from Early Bill Cole’s place,” the Judge said, with his shaggy brows perked up. “And he’s riding old Bill’s favorite

saddle horse. Must be something wrong, Joe. Else Bill wouldn’t let any breed that ever lived fork Slim Jim.” Gaucho slung himself out of ihe saddle and poured out his story in a deluge of words. The two old men didn’t stir, didn’t say a thing until he had finished. Then Doc Joe said quietly, “Take it easy, Gaucho. Now tell me—” And this time he got the essentials. He and the Judge regarded each other with poker faces, and for a time no one spoke. Gaucho, jerking about, started to tell the whole thing over when Doc Joe interrupted him. “Here’s four bits, kid,” he said. “You go buy yourself a drink. You’ll want to let your horse blow ten minutes. Then you ride back to the ranch and tell your boss that we’re coming. Pronto, kid.” “Si, Senor,” Gaucho and touched his hat and moved away. And still the two old men sat as still as the ancient hills behind Bald Eagle. They didn’t look at each other again. The Judge cleared his throat; sounded as though some of that dust had settled in it. He tossed his cigar away, only half-smoked though it was, and gnawed off a hunk of his plug cut. “Looks like the old buzzard must be in pretty bad shape,' and knows it,” he offered. “Well, the old fool didn’t have much longer to live anyhow. I always told him I’d outlive him; fact is, we’ve got a bet on it.” “I know,” muttered Doc Joe. He looked his cigar over carefully, but instead of throwing it away started chewing it. “Sam/P with him and me; w r e’ve got a bet. Five hundred, like yours.” Then he did stand upland hurl his cigar clean across the street. “I’ll go bet my little old black poison bag,” he said cheerily. “You better fetch pen and ink and papers and any other legal junk a dying man might want.” Then he let out a whoop, calling back Gaucho Ortega who had progressed only as far as the near-by saloon door. “Get along first to the livery stable, Gaucho. Tell Luke to let me have those two young grays to a light buckboard.” (TO BE CONTINUED)

Then quick and erect, he stepped free of it.