Cord 3, p.3
Cord 3, page 3
His life was like stories, to ponder and fit together into a history. Cord stood poised, the whiskey glass in his hand, deep in himself and this his fifth shot, and that was when the black man came in.
Cord sensed his presence before he saw him, a strong, quick big man walking light, and when Cord turned he saw a for-real cowhand, the hard calluses and rope burns on the thick lighter palms of his hands, and the turned-under and tapered heels of his riding boots. The black man wore a clean woolen shirt and serge britches, and when he took off his buff Stetson Cord saw he had straightened his hair and slicked it back with some kind of greasy dressing. It was a Saturday night, after all. This man would be in off one of the big ranches out in the hill country, and this the only place that would serve him drink.
“Hey there, friend,” Cord said easily. “What’s your name?”
“Name is Flint.” The man’s voice had a deep edge to it, and little trace of the drawl Cord had expected. “And I ain’t your friend.”
Cord’s grin went broad as the Missouri. “Take a drink with me, Mr. Flint,” he said casually.
The black man eased down the bar and took Cord’s bottle of bourbon by the neck. Cord was aware that the other half dozen men in the room were watching all of this with slack-jawed anticipation, like children hearing a favorite story they knew by heart.
“I’ll take a drink,” Flint said, “if you tell me one thing.”
“Sure.”
Flint upended the bottle, and air bubbles rippled through the liquor. Two inches of bourbon were gone when he put the bottle down.
“What’s a good-looking dark gal like her”—he gestured with the bottle toward Chi—“doing with an ugly white son of a bitch like you?”
Cord looked over his shoulder at Chi. She was staring straight down into her shot glass, knowing there was no stopping things now, and nothing to say which would be to the point.
“You ever have any real dark meat, sugarcake?” Flint spoke over Cord’s shoulder. “You feel like showing the boys here what you’d do with a real man.”
Chi gave no sign she heard.
“You got any objections to me using your gal to show the boys a trick or two?” Flint demanded of Cord.
Cord cupped his shot glass in his left hand.
“Well,” he said. “Yes.”
“Well,” Flint aped. “Maybe I don’t give a good goddamn ...”
Cord whipped his left hand around and caught the man in the middle of his dark face, just at the bridge of the nose. The shot glass inside Cord’s fist shattered and he felt broken glass cutting into his palm, but he also heard the satisfying loud crack of the black man’s nose breaking.
Flint took a step backwards and sat down hard on the floor. Blood gushed from his nose in a heavy stream.
Chi had taken a few steps away. Cord grinned at her, but the gaze she returned was utterly expressionless.
Then Flint was on his feet again and closing on Cord. The black man came around with a lunging right, but Cord stepped inside the blow and hit him twice in the stomach, then caught him on the point of the chin. Flint tried to butt Cord in the face and Cord danced back—but not quite quickly enough. The hard top of the black man’s greasy head caught him on the shoulder with enough force to send a hard blot of pain through it, as if something had broken.
At the far end of the bar someone blew a shrill whistle three times.
Cord went back off balance and Flint’s huge fist caught him on the point of his jaw. The punch rocked Cord’s head, but the black man left himself open, and Cord got in two hard jabs to the kidneys and a clubbed fist to the temple. Flint had lost a lot of blood by now and he was starting to slow. His big shiny head was down, and his eyes were dull and glassy. Huge drops of his thick red blood plopped to the floor.
Then, suddenly, Cord saw it ending, pictured himself pounding his fists into the other man’s face until Flint was sprawled out in the filth on the floor, snorting and bubbling, and the image soured the whiskey in Cord’s stomach. He put both hands on Flint’s shoulders and pushed hard. Flint bounced over a chair and it splintered under his weight as he went down. Before he had stopped twitching, Cord was on his hands and knees, puking out an acid gutful of curdled bourbon.
He was trying to get back to his feet when something cracked across the back of his skull. Brilliant flashes of light burst before his eyes and he went down again, but not completely out.
Hands under his arms lifted him, and a young clean-shaven face drifted into focus. Below the face was the blue uniform of a city policeman. So, Cord thought fuzzily, jail. Sometimes it came to that.
The night air outside brought him around some. “No tricks now,” the cop said, “or I’ll have to use my billy club again.” There was a nervous tremor in his voice, as if he had not been in this line of work for long. “That nigra Flint is a bad ’un,” he went on, like he was trying to make friends. “But he rides for Mr. Martin, and Mr. Martin don’t like us to ...”
The unsteady voice and the supporting hands fell away and Cord came down in the alley darkness beside the body of the young cop. Before he had time to cipher on that, Chi’s voice was in his ear. “Goddamn you, Cord, you walk. You get up right now and you walk, or I’ll leave you where you lie, swear to God on it.”
Cord did not remember much about the rest of that night. Somehow with Chi’s help he got to his feet and made it to horseback. When the gray dawn broke, he came aware of himself on the vast treeless high plains of eastern Wyoming. He’d been out in the saddle most of the night. His head was pulsing with sharp spasms of pain from the beating and the whiskey as well, and his left hand, where he held the shot glass, was stiff and puffy and crisscrossed with cuts. It would be useless for days to come. At least he’d had the sense to not swing with his gunhand. When you began to forget that sort of caution, even if drunk, it was time to give up the whiskey, or figure on being dead.
Chi was cantering along a ways ahead of him, and Cord thumped the gelding in the ribs and rode to catch up, heading into the rising sun. When he came alongside she looked at him with neither pity nor anger, and nodded as if satisfied he was in more or less one piece for another time.
Chi did not have much to say about his carrying-on in the railroad bar. Cord knew she wouldn’t; there were things he did that she hated at the time, but she did not hold them against him later, like a score on some grudge tally. If Cord could work out a path through life that bypassed that sort of craziness she would have been happier, he knew. But she at least understood that sometimes it had to be this way for him and she would not use his bad spells as a weapon.
So when she did speak, all she said was, “He didn’t even know who you were.”
Cord blinked at her. “That Flint?” His tongue felt thick and swollen as his head.
“The policia.” She surprised him by suddenly laughing. “When he saw you and the black he near to wet himself. I don’t think he was much more than twenty, a muchacho.” She looked up at Cord and grinned. “But muy simpatico. I didn’t hit him very hard.”
This was anyway an improvement, Cord thought. He recalled how coming back into the open space of wilderness always did wonders for Chi’s spirits. Despite the aches and pains, he was feeling better himself. The edge of the sun had climbed above the flat horizon now, and the day would be clear and cloudless and plenty hot enough.
“Fine,” Cord said. “We’re away?”
“No,” Chi said. “Not just yet.”
She turned in the saddle and Cord followed her eyes. Far back across the grassy plains, at least three miles off, a puff of dust hung in the air and he could make out the vague images of mounted men. Maybe the young cop hadn’t recognized them, but someone else in that bar had put together the drunken fist fighter and the hard-bitten woman in the serape and come up with Cord and Chi, the bank robbers—and worth ten thousand dollars each, dead or alive, anywhere. Cord watched the posse for a moment, then turned and scanned the country ahead, figuring timing and chances.
There was no question but that they would run. One of the rules was that you did not trade bullets with lawmen, because that was a fight you could never win. If you happened to kill one, even if he was just some town marshal, every other man with a star tended to take it real personal, and after that there was no peace for you no matter where you went.
There was also little concern that they would not get clear. Cord’s bay gelding and Chi’s big mare were bred for speed and stamina, and they had been cared for. It was an old habit, ingrained in Cord ever since his trail-driving days: take care of your animal first, then see to your own food and drink.
It was not a sentimental notion. In the borderless expanses of the West a good horse in strong condition was the primary tool, much more than transport, the main help you had for getting your work done. For riders like Cord and Chi their horses were survival, even more than their guns.
And Cord and Chi had plenty of practice in outrunning other riders; it came with the territory they had staked out. They had this edge as well: the chase only took them nearer to wherever they would end up next, but it took the men in pursuit mile after mile farther away from home cooking and a roof and a wife-warmed bed.
So some of those riders down there had to be thinking twice. Cord and Chi had reputations with their guns, if ever they were treed. On the other hand, the idea of twenty thousand dollars’ worth of rewards could block out desire for the usual comforts and fill men with forced courage.
In the end Cord and Chi got shed of the good citizens of Cheyenne, but it took nearly three days of hard riding before they finally foxed the posse in the badlands south of the Black Hills. They made a cold camp that night, but the next morning, after Cord had scouted through the surrounding hills enough to satisfy himself they were clear, they brewed coffee. Later, as they moved up into the scrub timber country, Cord brought down a white-tailed deer. After another three days, when the monotony of a coffee-and-venison diet was starting to tell, they agreed it was safe to move out of hiding, at least so far as it took to provision up.
Now, standing at the bar of the Gilded Palace Casino, Cord told himself Chi was right, and it was time he stopped locking horns with her. He would put the whiskey and the reckless trouble-making and all that went with it behind him—at least for a while, he compromised in his mind—and begin looking at prospects. She accepted a lot from him, but she demanded a good deal in return. That was the fair bargain they made, and when he stopped holding up his end it was all over. Right there was a notion Cord did not care to consider.
Trouble was, this trip had already gone way beyond simple. Breaking up that holdup, that was the kind of involvement Cord and Chi spent a lifetime avoiding. Running into Nolan and recognition just made it worse.
“Okay,” Cord said. “Let’s finish up and ride on.”
“Bueno,” Chi tossed back what was left of her tequila. Cord put down his glass, still half filled, but as he turned he found himself toe to toe with another man, a slim-waisted dandy wearing a tailored coat and matching trousers, and a boiled white shirt with a ruffled front beneath a four-in-hand tie. He was hatless and his dark hair was pomaded.
“State your business,” Cord said. Over the man’s shoulders he could see miners eyeing them.
“I’m Ladd Rawlins. They tell me your name is Cord.”
They, Cord thought; and just who the hell were “they.” But he said nothing. Too often, men knowing his name was the prelude to trouble.
“I’d like to buy you a drink, talk to you,” Rawlins said. He glanced around the room.
“We were just on the road,” Chi said.
“Upstairs. I own this place.”
“Good for you.”
Rawlins smiled politely at her. “You did me a good turn, so I owe you. Give me a chance to make good on it.”
Chi looked at Cord. Like her, there was nothing about this he liked much, but they both knew no one ever profited by turning away from information or opportunities. Chi tossed her head impatiently and looked away.
“Come on,” Cord said to her. “We’re already knee-high into this. We might as well see how much deeper it gets.”
Chapter Three
Ladd Rawlins’s office was somewhat like his saloon: Whatever attempt had been made to gussy it up had more or less missed the mark. The roll top desk set against one wall was crafted of hand worked oak, but the finish was chipped and scarred with cigarette burns and scuffs from the shoes of the clerks in whatever express office it had spent its early years. Beside it stood a small safe. The spiral-pattern oval carpet was worn and dirt was ground into the thin nap; the pictures on the walls were of the same school as the ones downstairs in the saloon, except the women wore more clothing. Over the desk hung a calendar from “The Galvanized Hardware Company, Akron, Ohio.” It featured a lithograph of two miners by a creek bed, one holding a big shallow-sided pan, the other a long-handled spade.
Rawlins sat in a wooden swivel chair as beat-up as the desk. At the other side of the window fronting the outside balcony was another chair, this one covered with crushed velvet, with several tears from which tufts of kapok were trying to escape. The man sitting in it looked up with amusement as Cord and Chi came into the office, like a theatergoer who had just heard the first notes of the overture. He was maybe forty, short and stocky and somewhat soft-looking, and he wore a soiled white shirt buttoned to the neck, without necktie or collar. Over that he wore a linen vest. Baggy britches, high-top shoes, and a narrow-brimmed derby hat completed his costume. Cord could feel the heat in the look Chi gave this hombre. There were some men who rankled her from the git-go.
“Drink?” Rawlins gestured at an unmarked decanter atop the desk.
“No,” Cord said.
“I’ll have one,” the man in the derby hat said.
Rawlins looked at him abstractedly. “Help yourself.” The man in the derby strolled to the desk and splashed a couple of fingers of whiskey into a glass. He half raised it in the direction of Chi and Cord in sardonic salute before knocking it back. He refilled the glass before he returned to his chair, balancing it on his leg while he dug a cigar out of his vest pocket and lit up.
“I’m obliged to you,” Rawlins said, ignoring the man with the cigar. “Nolan told me what happened.”
Mart Nolan came into the room as though he had been called, and stood in one corner, leaning back against the wall. Chi shot him a glance. Nolan met it for a moment, then dug out a penknife, worried free a blade, and went to work picking at his fingernails. From the looks of them the job was long overdue.
“That’s not all Nolan told you,” Chi said, still watching the big man in the corner. “He also put a name to us.”
“That’s right,” Rawlins said tonelessly.
“Nolan,” Chi said, “has a goddamn big mouth.”
Nolan pushed off from the wall. “You don’t scare me, lady.” But he was muttering to his fingernails. “Not now that I’m back in town. You better remember I got friends here.”
“You keep shooting your mouth off, and you’re going to need more than friends. You’ll need eyes in the back of your head.”
“There is boys in town who could figure uses for you.”
“Yeah,” Chi said, “there’s uses for you too. Like food for the hogs.”
The man in the derby laughed.
“That’s enough, Nolan,” Rawlins cut in. “You get downstairs and have yourself a drink.” Nolan folded the knife and sidled toward the door. “And you make sure you keep clammed up tight, like the lady says.”
Nolan went out without answering or looking at any of them. Shouts and laughter and the clinking of glass came louder into the room before the door shut behind him.
“Sure you won’t have a drink?” Rawlins asked.
Cord fished makings from his shirt pocket, but Chi plucked the tobacco pouch from his fingers. She tapped the rough-cut into the creased brown papers and used her teeth to pull the drawstring tight again. Two wrinkled smokes took shape between her tapered fingers. She struck a lucifer on the seat of her leather britches, lit both, then handed one to Cord.
The man in the derby watched this ritual with interest.
“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of in Virtue,” Rawlins said.
Cord blew out smoke. “That sets my mind to ease.”
“What I mean,” Rawlins said, “is that there is no law here, except the miners’ court. And all they are concerned with is short-weighing, claim-jumping, and some general in-camp thievery.”
“But then,” the man with the derby hat put in casually, in a whiskey-thick gravelly voice, “there’s also that dead-or-alive money on you two. Twenty thousand dollars is what I hear. That’s federal money, now that robbing those banks, even out here in the territories, is a crime against the crown, so to speak. Federal money is a sure thing to collect, everyone knows that. Some of the boys would take an interest in you if they knew all that.” It was a long speech, and he spoke it with care, sounding sure of himself.
Chi dropped her cigarette and ground it out under her boot heel before moving across the room, her Spanish spurs making melodious metallic sounds. Both her hands were hidden under her serape.
“That kind of talk,” she said, “can get people killed.”
The man in the derby hat gave Chi a broad smile.
Chi’s right hand came out into the open. She held her long-barreled Colt Peacemaker in front of the man’s face, the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, so one practiced flick of the wrist would track the weapon down into the man’s face. His smile melted away.
“Who is this hombre?” Chi demanded.
“This is Maxwell Prentiss,” Rawlins said. “He’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
“That’s right,” Chi said. “You tell him to remember that.” She lowered her revolver slowly and slipped it under the folds of her serape, then abruptly turned away.
“I didn’t need Mart Nolan to tell me who you two are,” Prentiss said to her back. “I knew soon as you rode in ahead of the wagon. It’s a big country, but how many men partner up with a woman—’specially one who looks like you?” Prentiss drained the whiskey from his glass and eased to the desk for a refill. “It’s my business to know that sort of thing.”
