Chi appeared at the edge of the roof. She was okay, and not half treed; one end of sixty feet of strong hemp rope was tied around the chimney. She glared at Cord and shook her head no. Cord nodded assent: soon as he gave himself up to Ryker, they were in the fat.
A bullet cored through the water trough. Cord ducked down, pressed his face into the dirty water.
Ryker was in the doorway now, backlit by the fire’s flow, ducked down behind Kelsey. He held her arm cranked up toward her shoulders, and the muzzles of the shotgun jammed into the underside of her chest. Her child’s face was screwed up with the pain of it.
“I’m edgy, Cord.” Ryker was grinning madly. “My nerves are all a-jumping.” He jerked Kelsey’s arm and she yelped.
Cord thought sickly, he will do it.
“Say your prayers, bitch,” Ryker growled.
Cord threw the carbine over the trough, stood and moved toward the porch.
Ryker laughed again. He whipped Kelsey around and flung her through the door behind him. She sprawled on the floor. Ryker kept the shotgun on Cord.
From the corner of his eye Cord saw Chi move back from the edge of the roof.
Ryker gestured with the gun. “Come ahead, boy.” Cord stepped up on the porch and Ryker moved to one side, ramming the shotgun painfully into Cord’s kidneys to shove him inside.
Kelsey was on hands and knees, her head hanging groggily. Kyle Greer perched, immobile, on the edge of one of the armchairs, was squeezing his hands between his knees and staring at the floor. The last Payne cousin covered him. There was blood on his jacket where Cord’s slug had creased his ribs, but he was not hurt badly enough to matter.
Bernard Pearl was behind the bar, where he could watch the whole room. He wore the same clothes as he had in Denver a week earlier, and he stank all over. His greasy hair was clotted with trail dust, like bugs on lantern glass. Cord stared at him until his Adam’s apple bobbed in his chicken neck and he looked away.
Kelsey picked herself up, angrily ignoring Cord’s proffered hand. The pressure in his kidneys went away, along with the weight of his holstered Peacemaker. Ryker stuck the revolver in the front of his belt and gestured Cord over toward the fireplace next to Greer, who was muttering inaudibly.
“Got you good, Cord,” Ryker said thickly.
“Get it done with,” Pearl spat. “We want away from this goddamned stink. Place smells real nasty.”
“You’d know,” Cord said.
“Kill him,” Pearl said flatly.
Ryker spun around and fixed the shotgun on Pearl. “Kill you, you freak. Kill you right now if you don’t shut your mouth.”
Pearl threw up both hands.
“Do this right,” Ryker muttered to himself. He turned back to Cord. “Call your woman down.”
“You call her down,” Cord said. “See what happens.”
“Tell what will happen.” Ryker moved to the foot of the stairs, raised his voice. “I’ll shoot your leg off.” He craned his neck and called up the stairwell in a giddy thrill-crazed voice. “You hear that, bitch? I’ll put one load in his knees and the other in his balls, unless you are down here double-quick.”
Ryker ran his forefinger along the ridge of the scar on his cheek, where Chi had cut him five years before. “Gonna do her first, this time for sure. You’re gonna watch, smell her sweat and lather.” Ryker’s voice was singsong, as if he were reciting. “Then I will shoot you a piece at a time, her turn to watch. Do her again before I kill her.”
Spittle flecked from Ryker’s thick lips. Even Payne looked at him strangely.
“Last chance, bitch!” Ryker screamed up the stairs.
Kyle Greer moaned like a tormented soul and toppled face forward off the edge of the armchair, stiff as a stick. He hit the floor and rolled on his back, his eyes up in his head, and began twitching all over as if possessed.
Cord dropped to one knee beside him. Ryker stared with irritation at the interruption. Greer was gasping like a fish on a hot rock. Cord held his mouth open and tried to feel if he had swallowed his tongue.
But Greer could breath after all, because the gasping stopped for a moment and Cord heard, “Front desk.” Cord drew up and stared, but Greer was gulping for air again, and jerking his arms and legs like a holy roller.
“Help me with him,” Cord said, thinking, Greer’s shotgun, nowhere in sight...
“I’ll help him,” Ryker said, and shot Greer.
Greer moaned and flopped over on his stomach, leaking blood and not moving.
Another gunshot sounded quick as an echo and a window shattered. Ryker and his man Payne turned and ducked.
Cord had been waiting for Chi’s move. He launched himself over the top of the front desk. One shoulder crashed painfully into the letter rack as he went down, but there on the shelf was Greer’s God-blessed shotgun.
A rifle fired inside the room and an answering shot broke more window glass. Someone cried out. By that time Cord was coming up, both barrels of the shotgun cocked.
The last Payne cousin fell over backward and his right arm flopped into the fire. Bernard Pearl squealed and ducked behind the bar. Cord unloosed one barrel in his general direction, and Pearl screamed and began to sob.
Ryker was gone. Cord went through the archway to the dining room. It was empty, but the back door of the kitchen rattled loose in the wind.
Chi was coming in the door as he returned to the lobby. Kelsey came out from behind the cover of a sofa. Greer lay still as death, and Pearl went on weeping like a child, out of sight behind the oak bar front. The Payne boy lay open-eyed with the blood all over his chest. His smoking coat sleeve burst into flame, and the char of burning flesh rose above the sulphur fumes. Chi dragged the body clear and put out the flaming jacket with a throw rug.
Kelsey cried out and knelt by Kyle Greer. Pearl sobbed, “Help me, for die love of God.”
The hell with him. Cord went back into the dining room and through the kitchen to the open door.
“Goddamn it, Cord, you wait.” Chi stood arms akimbo on the other side of the high counter.
Cord knew: she hated Ryker for many things, but most of all for making her the object of his filthy fantasies. She wanted him for herself.
“You see to Greer and Pearl,” Cord ordered in a hard voice. He was cutting her out of this now; she was too wound up, enough anyway to let anger cloud good sense. “Just shut your mouth and do what I say.”
She glared back for three seconds, then turned and went back into the lobby. Cord could not have been more surprised if she had stripped naked. There remained only one piece of unfinished business.
Cord went out the kitchen door into the rain, in time to spot Ryker, across the yard and turning behind the livery barn, raising a flurry of chickens. Bastard is carrying my gun, Cord thought, and thought about turning back for more firepower.
There was no time. Unless Ryker was turning dumb, he had horses picketed on the other side of the ridge.
Cord meant to have him; letting Ryker escape was out of the question. This fight was going to be finished; they would divide the murder charges afterward over coffee. Ryker, the conniving son of a bitch.
“Ryker!” Cord shouted into the rain.
At the corner of the barn the sawed-off shotgun’s muzzle flared. Pellets from the wasted shell rained on the yard between them. Ryker fled behind the barn toward the bathhouse.
Cord cut in front of the barn and saw Ryker duck inside the bathhouse. He heard the heavy tattoo of Ryker’s boots on the decking and followed the sound, running outside along the canvas wall.
Cord ducked up the stairs beside the woman’s dressing room, his finger taut against the shotgun’s back trigger. Ryker was gone. Cord stood still and strained his ears. From the rush of the springs cascading over the terraces and the hiss of rain turning to steam, he sorted out another sound: something scraping wood.
Ryker was halfway up the three-foot-wide trough of the empty aqueduct, climbing to the ridge less than a hundred fee
t above. He turned and tossed a pistol shot at Cord, hitting five feet wide, then scurried on, scuttling on all fours like a crab.
There were six terraces, giant stairsteps a yard high and five yards deep, covered in a thick coating of egg-yellow slime; the wooden aqueduct ran diagonally up one side at perhaps a twenty-degree angle. Each terrace was covered with a broad sheet of flowing water, and at each crossing a sluice gate was set into the uphill side. Cord tucked the shotgun under his arm and started up after Ryker.
Ryker shot a look over his shoulder. He scrambled up another couple of steps and opened the sluice gate at the third terrace. A few inches of steaming water came pouring down and washed over Cord’s boots. He got a grip on one edge of the flume, pulled himself up, and went after Ryker.
Ryker opened the sluice gate at the fourth terrace and moved on. The water rose above Cord’s ankles, and the wood planking grew slick as if greased. He held on against the flow and peered upward, but a billow of steam obscured Ryker. Cord plowed up into it.
Ryker’s shotgun boomed and pellets tore the steam. One stung Cord’s cheek, another tore across the back of his right hand. He let go of the sawed-off shotgun and it splashed into the roiling hot water. Cord lunged after it, got two fingers around the muzzle, and reeled it back in, wondering if the remaining charge was any good.
A pistol shot missed Cord by a foot. He looked up in time to see Ryker’s empty shotgun skimming down the aqueduct dead at him. Cord swung himself aside and the long gun flew past like a lance. By then Ryker had opened the gate at the fifth terrace. The water rose to Cord’s knees, plucking at his footing like an evil spirit. Ryker was no more than fifty feet above him. Cord pushed against the flow.
Ryker clawed his way to the top of the aqueduct and opened the headgate.
A wall of 135-degree water a yard wide and a foot high came frothing at Cord, and he dropped the shotgun and grabbed the lip of the chute with both hands. The water hit a moment later.
It was scalding hot; Cord felt his skin tighten, and felt the quick blistering pain. He got a leg over the edge of the flume, pulled himself mostly clear of the flow, and immediately began to shiver in the rain.
Ryker climbed over the headgate and got his footing. He turned and brought up Cord’s Peacemaker. Cord saw Ryker’s ugly grin above the sights, as he carefully lined the barrel on Cord where he clung twenty feet below.
A rifle cracked and a thin liquid line of red spurted from the center of Ryker’s chest. Ryker dropped Cord’s Peacemaker into the flume and it swept down the chute. He took a half step backward, overcompensated, and his knees caught the headgate.
Ryker tumbled forward stiff as a tree, face first into the flood of water pouring into the chute. He swept down head first like a log in a flume and rocketed past Cord, careening downchute. Cord turned in time to see Ryker fly over the lip of the pool and heard his corpse thump hollowly on the wooden bottom.
Cord stared up through the steam and rain, and there behind the headgate stood Chi, her Winchester dribbling black smoke.
Cord shook his head wearily as Chi shut down the water. He wiped at his cheek with the back of his hand and saw blood smeared there. His fingers made out the shape of a little lump of lead below the first layer of skin, and when he pinched, it popped out. Cord flung it away. By then the water flow had become manageable, and Cord dropped back into the trough and began to make his way carefully down, hand over hand.
Twenty-One
The lobby looked like a hospital ward, but no one was going to die. Kyle Greer was hurt worst: the heavy .45 slug had shattered his collarbone before passing out through his shoulder, and he had to be in considerable pain though he did not reveal it. His face was pale, but he was sitting up and breathing only a bit raggedly. Kelsey had bandaged the entrance and exit wounds and was rigging a sling from two kitchen towels.
“It was my fault,” Kelsey said to no one in particular, though Greer turned his head and looked up at her blankly. “I was keeping my eye on Kyle, right up to when Ryker stabbed that double-barrel into my butt.” She looked at Cord, leaning on the bar. “Kyle was acting up, so I took his shotgun and put it back behind the desk.”
“That was a break,” Cord said.
“I’m okay,” Greer said suddenly, his voice scratchy and mechanical.
Cord stared through him. “Ryker spotted me when I crossed to the bathhouse,” he reasoned aloud. “He sent the Payne cousins to keep me busy, while him and our Mr. Pearl here snuck up on the girl and Greer.”
Pearl moaned at the mention of his name. He sat slumped in an armchair.
“Shut up, Mr. Pearl,” Cord said amiably. “That fine bar is hurt worse than you.” One end of the fancy bar was splintered and bashed in, where most of Cord’s wild shotgun blast had lit. Cord remembered Buskirk’s admonition and shook his head ruefully.
“Lordy, I am dying,” Pearl groaned. “You are talking money, and I am dying.” The edge of Cord’s close-range shotgun pattern had stitched a six-inch crescent of buckshot into Pearl’s thigh. One of his stovepipe pant legs was tom off at the thigh, and from there to the knee the meaty part of Pearl’s left haunch looked like it had been chewed on by a large carnivore.
“You are not going to die, Mr. Pearl,” Cord said. “Not so long as you get to a doctor and have him dig the lead out before it starts to fester. My partner can’t work on you—her knife is likely to slip. Jesus!”
His right hand was palm-down on the bartop, and Chi was digging a small hole in its back with the tip of her knife. Cord swigged from the bottle of Old Vicksburg at his elbow. The fight was won, and he had the excuse of pain.
“Oh, Lordy,” Pearl whined.
“Goddamn it, Pearl, shut up,” Cord snapped. “Have a goddamned drink.” Maybe he was already moving toward drunk. Maybe, hell.
Cord pulled his hand away from Chi. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and took it to where Pearl sat slumped. Pearl’s celluloid collar was lost somewhere along the trail, and his cardboard shirt front was rain-soaked and curled up under his chin. Pearl licked his lips and reached for the bottle.
Cord jerked it back and clamped a hand around Pearl’s mutilated thigh. He kneaded the flesh and Pearl screamed. Cord let go and grabbed a fistful of Pearl’s jacket, jerking him up straight. Pearl bleated and Cord splashed whiskey over the open wound. Pearl screamed again, like a woman.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Pearl,” Cord said. “We are going to have you in the hospital in Greybull before dark. We are your guardian angels. We are going to trust you with a lot of money, maybe our lives.”
Kelsey shot a look at Cord.
“You are going to turn the bank money over to the law,” Cord went on in Pearl’s face. “Then you are going to tell them the story, the whole goddamned truth. You will leave out the girl and Greer here—you don’t know who playacted as us, because Ryker didn’t tell you—but you damned sure tell all the rest.”
“If I do, I am done.”
“If you don’t, I will kill you.” Cord drew his Colt, fished out of the pool and now clean and fresh-loaded. He laid the muzzle against Pearl’s forehead. “Kill you right now,” Cord hissed. He thumbed back the hammer.
Bernard Pearl looked into Cord’s hard eyes and fainted. Cord threw him back into the chair. Some of Pearl’s blood stained Cord’s hand. He wiped it off across the front of Pearl’s tight jacket and laughed.
“You done?” Chi inquired. She was waiting at the bar, her knife poised. Cord, a little sheepishly, put his hand back in front of her. She dug into him and then the pellet was glistening red on the point of her knife. The sum of the damage was a quarter-inch crater in the back of Cord’s hand.
He splashed bourbon over it and yelped at the sting. It was Chi’s turn to laugh.
She nodded at Pearl. “Will he do it?”
“He’d better,” Cord said grimly.
“Si,” Chi said, “but it still might not clear us.”
Cord shrugged. “We’ll see.” It was as good a plan as he co
uld come up with right now. Even with Pearl backing them, they could not risk surrendering to the law, not just yet. They were riding ahead of too much bad history, and Cord had no time to waste in someone’s jail. Maybe after the foofaraw calmed they could find a trustworthy lawman and tell him their side of the tale with half a chance of making it stick.
Chi turned toward the door and said, “Company is coming.”
Cord heard nothing, but then someone hollered, “Hallo, the lodge!”
“The viejo.” Chi went to the door. “Come ahead,” she called.
Buskirk stopped in the doorway and took a look around. He lingered on Kyle Greer’s bandages, Cord’s bleeding hand, Pearl’s tom-up leg. “Who is dead?” he asked cheerfully.
Cord was easing down from the blood-percolating charge of the fight and wearying of that sort of humor. “Ryker and two Payne cousins. Pearl here is going to live to tell the truth.”
“He is your alibi?”
“Yeah,” Cord said glumly. “He isn’t much, is he.”
Buskirk bent over his fine Long Bar and ran his fingers over the splintered end panel.
“Charge it to our bill,” Cord said.
“I will,” Buskirk replied mildly. “But maybe I will leave the damage as it is, for the tourists to goggle at. I’ll make up a story.”
“Don’t put me in it,” Chi warned.
“Well now.” Buskirk dry-washed his hands. “What happens?”
“Some burying,” Cord said. “Then we dump Pearl in Greybull and ride north.” Cord nodded at Greer and Kelsey. “Don’t know about them.”
“They’ll stay on here for a time,” Buskirk said. “Take a little resort vacation like real folk—do ’em good.” Kelsey nodded. Greer was gone somewhere in his head, had been since the moment he’d tipped Cord to the shotgun and been shot for his trouble.
“Me and Kyle will do the burying,” Buskirk said. “Give the boy something to occupy his mind.”
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