In the next hour the road took him past the edge of the mountains; he took a fast, paved side road toward the high country, and by four-fifteen was climbing through long gentle meadows hip-deep in yellow grass. Dark spots on the hills were beef cattle, slowly browsing.
The sky was vast, cobalt blue, serrated at its edges by jagged peaks of crystalline clarity. He had forgotten how beautiful this country was-back East he always got to thinking of Arizona in Eastern stereotypes, as if it were all desert, sand and cactus. Easy to forget about the high country, the grass and hills and those high peaks where the snow hadn’t melted in a thousand years. The road lanced up the center of a valley, and he didn’t meet another car in twenty miles, and when he did, it was a pickup truck driven by an Apache Indian. Out here you didn’t have to prove anything to anybody, and you could leave your doors wide open. No use for the horn on your car.
This was Judd’s land now; he had been on Judd property for miles. The barbed-wire fences ran gleaming along both sides of the road, shiny wire and orange-painted steel posts, fading ahead of him with perspective, two parallel lines joining at infinity. At five thousand feet on this plateau it was cool enough to turn off the temperature control and throw the windows open to the wind. He pushed the car up to eighty and enjoyed himself.
In the back of his mind he was thinking about Judd. Lewis Downey had said he was in excellent health; it was the kind of thing he would say if he suspected the phone was tapped, and a man in Judd’s position always had to assume his phones were tapped; that was the way of the modern world, and Hastings had no liking for it. Maybe I ought to retire out here and hang out my shingle. Country lawyer. He grinned at the hills and breathed deep of the crystal air; it tasted as if no one had ever breathed it before. It made him think of the times he and Diane had spent out here, holidaying, visiting the old man. Diane had no affinity for the outdoors; her visits here had always been designed solely to please her father. But Hastings recalled long walks along the grasshills with Judd, jeep and helicopter rides across the vast acres, and now and then there had been the feeling he was as close to Judd as Diane was-and closer, in some ways.
The road lifted him now toward the summit of a long hill topped by a deep-green stand of planted cottonwoods. Inside the barbed wire a graded landing strip ran along with a lonely windsock and three parked crop-dusting planes. To make a landing, he remembered, you had to buzz the field first to chase the whiteface cattle off. Judd’s operation used jeeps and planes to do its cowboying.
Lewis Downey was standing by the front gate, a trim neat man with salt-and-pepper hair and a good tan, dressed in light slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. When he recognized Hastings he waved and opened the wire gate. Hastings drove in, wheels rumbling on the steel-slatted cattleguard, and stopped just inside. Downey latched the gate shut and got into the car; it was a quarter-mile ride up to the house. “Hi.”
Hastings said, “You’re looking fit.”
“This country’s good for you.” Downey propped his right arm in the open window. “Have a good trip?”
“Any air strip you survive is a good trip. Look, we’re not on the phone now. How is he?”
“Improving. But better prepare for a shock when you see him.”
He shot a brief sidewise glance at Downey, but the man’s cheeks revealed nothing. He didn’t seem particularly happy to see Hastings, but Hastings was no longer a member of the family; Judd had no real obligation to him; and Downey was a man who liked to keep things neat and exact, he didn’t like complexities and muddles. He was efficient, brainy, assiduously neat and clean-otherwise unassuming and capable of immense diffidence. A superb private secretary. And like a good butler, he knew his place. He volunteered nothing.
There was no point in pumping him; Hastings would learn from Judd as much as Judd wanted him to know, and he’d never elicit any more than that from Downey.
The house was not especially large. It was single-story adobe, built around a quadrangular patio in the Spanish style, with exposed whole-log beam ends protruding from under the eaves. They approached it up a blacktopped drive that crossed a sloping grass meadow. Here and there were blocks of salt; gnats and flies swarmed around warm piles of cattle dung; the thick brown backs of steers swayed above the rippling tall grass. Beyond the summit, timbered peaks reared tier upon jagged tier.
Downey said, “Those cattle pens are new since you were here last. The one off to the left is full of seventy- dollar cows, and the little one in back of it’s full of one ten-thousand-dollar bull. Funny when you think about it-it’s the cow that does the work, giving birth.”
Russ pulled up by the house and switched the engine off. The hot steel pinged with contraction. He heard cows lowing and saw a buzzard swoop silently across the treetops on motionless wings. Getting out of the car, Hastings was amazed by the loud crunch of his own shoes. Sweat rolled freely along his face but the heat was dry and not unpleasant.
The big front door swung open and Elliot Judd came forward, smiling warmly.
The old man emerged from the house with his hand outstretched and his thin lips creased back in a welcoming smile. “Russ, I’m glad to see a human face.”
The fragile old hand felt as if it would crumble to powder within Hastings’ fist. “How are you, Dad?”
“Still taking nourishment.”
“You look fine,” he lied.
The painful smile twitched. “Like a battery-it looks just the same whether it’s fresh or all used up. By God, I am glad to see you, Russ.”
Hastings tried to keep his smile steady. His breath was caught up in his throat. The old man had lost an alarming amount of weight. The skin hung in brittle folds from the gaunt, scored face. His color had turned to a cyanotic blue and his spidery hands, once firm and powerful, shook with the palsy of age or illness-they were mottled with small brown-blue spots. But Judd’s commanding features were dignified, if anything, by pain; the eyes were still fiercely blue against the dark skin. He was a tough old man whose pride, not arrogant, was the kind that took itself for granted, like a high-caste Brahmin’s. He managed to wear a white tennis visor and a disreputable herringbone Harris tweed sport jacket without looking at all ridiculous.
Downey went by them, taking Hastings’ suitcase into the house. The old man tugged at the flap of skin that sagged beneath his jaw. “Let’s not stand here all day staring at each other like two strange dogs off their home ground. Come inside and let’s relax.” He turned, not quite steady on the balls of his feet, and led the way, talking over his shoulder: “I talked to Diane a few days ago. A regular damn tycoon I raised there-I guess she’s doing fine with her art, and I suppose it’s what she thinks she wants. But I wish I’d made more of a woman of her. No disloyalty meant to my own blood, Russ, but I’ve always taken it for granted the break-up was more her fault than yours.”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
It was only a few steps, but by the time they entered the big front room the old man was trying to conceal the fact that he was breathing hard. Hastings felt uneasy alarm. Judd pressed a buzzer and waved toward a chair. He sounded hoarse when he said, “I know all about Women’s Liberation and all the rest of that Carrie Nation crap, but nothing’s convinced me yet that women are biologically designed to excel as hunter-gatherers. Physically we’re still a tool-making species of apes, and any woman who tries to hunt with the men has something wrong with her. Know what I’m driving at?”
“Sure. I’m almost old-fashioned enough to agree with you.”
The old man grinned at him. A chicken-necked old Indian woman, her parchment face as wrinkled as a prune, rustled into the room in response to Judd’s ring. Covered by a long severe black dress that was buttoned up to the chin, she carried a drink on a silver platter. Hastings scented it and watched the old woman walk out. “Always the best Scotch in this house,” he said. “Aren’t you joining me?”
“Not now,” Judd replied. “Diane’s got a wire down in her somewhere, that’s certain-and I don’t imagine she’ll find any real kind of satisfaction until she gets over trying to prove she’s better than a man.”
“Back in New York things never seem that clear-cut.”
“I know. That’s why it pays to live out here, where you can strip away the fog and see through to the core of things.” The old man, still on his feet, kept tugging at his chin. “Russ, I’m glad you came. I’ve had it in mind for a month to call you and ask you to come down.”
“About Diane?”
“No. That’s over and done with-I couldn’t handle her, and neither could you. Maybe someone else can, but it’s not up to us to meddle, is it? No, it’s something else.”
Hastings watched him with full attention. The old man sat down where he could see out through the huge plate-glass window, across the rolling miles of grass. “Russ, nowadays this country’s full of young squirts just burning to save the world from villains like me. Are you one of them?”
