Cord 9

by Owen Rountree

  “We didn’t know,” Fiona Cobb said.

  “Convenient.”

  “We told him his father had probably ridden by in the night,” Carlisle said. “He didn’t believe it, and neither did we. But he went on south anyway.”

  “I went to Mallory and demanded to know the truth,” Fiona Cobb said. “Mallory knew by then; Stringer had bragged. Mallory told me the old man had no business drifting through his valley, not these days. But in his eyes I saw that knowledge was returning. Maybe he was coming to understand after all …”

  “You make it sound like a mistake,” Cord said. “Call it by its real name: murder. If Wee Bill Blewin was telling the truth—and I mean to find out someday—that’s two murders, two innocent men killed dead.”

  “If you had known,” Chi asked quietly, “would you have told that boy the truth about his father?” Cord regarded her: in the quiet light her olive face glowed like the Madonna’s. “What could it accomplish?” Fiona Cobb said.

  “It would have shown backbone,” Chi said, “and that maybe you weren’t as crazy as Bliss.”

  Fiona Cobb’s face fell. She suddenly looked to Cord as if she had gone too long since her last drink.

  “You two are his collaborators,” Cord said. “You deserve your troubles.”

  “You haven’t heard all of them yet,” Carlisle said mildly. “There is one more odd item. Since Stringer and his thugs have been in these precincts, Bliss’s losses to rustling has gone up. Nearly a third of his calves seem to be getting lost lately. What do you make of that?”

  “Maybe it is the two of you,” Chi said.

  “You know who it is.”

  “So Stringer has cut in for a hunk of Bliss’s business. Don’t expect us to feel sorry for him.” Cord grinned. “I can see why it would make you nervous, though. You and Bliss have lost control.”

  “Stringer means to bleed this basin dry,” Carlisle said.

  “And that gunfight in the bar will force his hand,” Fiona Cobb said. “He knows you—what sort of man you are. He will figure you have allied yourselves with us, so he will act immediately, before you have a chance to form a plan or recruit others.”

  “He’s got some wrong ideas.”

  “But he doesn’t know it. It’s as I said: Like it or no, you must decide whether to fight or run.”

  “Well, now,” Cord said. “We have come to the point at last. You want us to stop Stringer for you. You want us to restore your emperor to his throne.”

  “Not exactly,” Chi emended. “You want us to save his bacon—yours as well.”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Fiona Cobb said.

  “Show me your money,” Chi snapped.

  Fiona Cobb colored. “He will pay. I guarantee he will.” Chi glowered at her.

  “Wait up a minute.” Carlisle paused, looked from Chi to Cord, and when he went on, the irony and subtle toying tones were gone from his voice. “This woman here has had some tough breaks in her life.”

  Fiona Cobb looked at Carlisle and frowned but said nothing.

  “Facts are facts, and we have laid them out for you honestly,” Carlisle went on. “Bliss has gone wrong, and it’s backfired on him. And if he loses, so does Fiona. Loses everything.”

  “And you,” Chi said. “You have a stake as well.”

  “Sure,” Carlisle agreed. “I like it here. But running is enough of a habit with me that I can do it one more time without it hurting too badly. Besides, I haven’t invested much time or trouble in making a place for myself here.” He glanced at the doctor. “It doesn’t make so much difference either way for me.”

  “Richard,” Fiona Cobb said in a soft voice.

  “Forget me.” Carlisle looked away with some difficulty. “But this lady here has already eaten her helpings of bad times. Now she has something, something she worked for, and by my lights she deserves a chance at keeping it. This basin could be her last good road to daylight.”

  “If Stringer is stopped,” Cord said.

  Fiona Cobb put her hand on Carlisle’s arm near the elbow. “I’m not a brave man,” Carlisle said to Cord. “Don’t depend on my work with that rifle in the bar. I can handle guns and think quickly; you got to do both in some of the lines I have pursued. But inside I am scared spitless, and because of that, I can’t ever count on myself in a fight. That’s why I tend toward running out.”

  “Then run out,” Chi said.

  Carlisle shook his head. “I guess I won’t.” He put his hand over Fiona Cobb’s. “You back this woman, I’ll side you best I can. That’s my last best offer.”

  Afterward, you could almost always pin the moment when you were in all the way and no looking back. In earlier times it would have come the instant Cord came back to consciousness, after those bastards made the mistake of changing their minds about killing him. But now Cord realized that all the way to here, at least a part of him had toyed with the idea of giving up his vengeance, turning on this basin and riding out.

  It wouldn’t have worked anyway, Cord saw. He would have hated himself mightily for an endless time.

  Cord cleared his throat to break the moment of awkward silence. He looked at Chi for a sign, but her face was blank and she was watching Carlisle and Fiona Cobb, standing hand in hand. “Say we agree to take care of Stringer’s bunch,” Cord said. “Who takes care of Bliss?”

  “I can handle him,” Fiona Cobb said.

  “Can you handle us?” Chi asked.

  Fiona Cobb gave her a perplexed look.

  “You people started out with a few unorganized rustlers, stray gatherers who weren’t much more than an annoyance. You traded them for a bunch of professional thugs who are about ready to take you over. Now you figure to trade them for us.” Chi smiled wickedly. “We could be the worst yet.”

  Fiona Cobb was startled. “Should we worry about you?”

  “Not unless you cross us up,” Cord said briskly. “¿Qué piensas?” he said to Chi.

  “I think,” Chi said, “that we should accept Señor Bliss’s invitation. I have never seen an empire before. Anyway,” she went on, “we will have everyone’s story in hand. Maybe then we can sort out the bullshit from the barley.”

  “I doubt it,” Cord said, suddenly weary. “But let’s try it out.”

  Chapter Seven

  Off to the east on the near slope of A little fold in the contour of the basin floor, a herd of twenty or so cows and calves grazed at peace amid a flock of four or five dozen white-tailed prairie deer. The cattle Cord and Chi passed watched incuriously as the deer, almost dainty in their quick graceful movements, flitted among the stolid oblivious cattle. The calf and the young lion and the fading together, Cord thought, remembering Isaiah. But where was the little child who would lead them. No one in this valley but mad old men ...

  The hot dry wind coming from the mountains off west was constant, mechanical, and a little alarming; here was the sort of wind that wicked water from the creeks and stock tanks, raised clouds of topsoil, and swept the sky clear of rain clouds, a wind that could send the flames of a careless campfire over the grass with the speed of an express train. If this strange spring wind kept up through much of the summer, it could do a job of devastation that would put Stringer and his bunch to shame.

  The wind had spun the blades of the tall windmill as Cord and Chi rode beneath it, and it continued to pluck at them as they headed north on the stage road. An hour further on, a wide track forked off northwest, toward the windbreak sheltering the headquarter of Bliss Ranch. Most of another hour of riding had brought them here to where they could make out individual structures behind the row of tall cottonwood.

  Cord reined up and peered up that way, pretending to be taking a cautious look-see. Actually, there were things he wished to get off his mind before this business passed into its next stage. Chi’s mood had improved since Livingston, but far as he was concerned, it still had a ways to go. “You pushed things pretty hard, back in that saloon,” Cord said.

  “Piss on
it,” Chi said. “Two less night riders to concern ourselves with. Isn’t that what we are doing here?”

  “Not entirely,” Cord explained patiently. “We are doing what we have to.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m still working on figuring that out.” But that was only partially true, and she knew it. He did not have to explain that this Stringer had to be killed, face-to-face in a fair fight, if possible, but killed for certain. Ten years on the outlaw trail had taught this much at least: This sort of conflict never healed itself but festered and putrefied. Stringer knew the rules as well—knew at least that there were men like Cord who lived by them—so Stringer would force the fight anyway, knowing it inevitable, preferring to take the advantage of his force. If he didn’t simply attempt a bushwhack ...

  “The longer we ride, the more baggage we seem to pick up.” Chi could have been reading his thoughts, and maybe she could … “If there’s any unfinished business in with it, figure on it jumping out to bite you every time you try to unpack.”

  “Well, sure,” Cord said. “Once we get that place of ours, I don’t want to be wondering every time there is a knock on the door if it is someone looking for trouble, someone we forgot to kill. Hell on the appetite.”

  Chi smiled tentatively. Cord had guessed lucky: it was the right tone to take with her right now.

  “But this finishes it,” Cord went on more firmly. “I am done with this nomad life. It is a long odds proposition, and I have already won my share. I am cashing in my checks.”

  “Some people are magnets for trouble,” Chi said. “Maybe trouble is in your nature, and you will never get away from it no matter how far you ride.”

  Cord stared across at the ranch. “I could be killed today,” Cord said. “I don’t expect it to happen, but I hate the possibility. The fastest gun in the world—and I’m not him, even right-handed—is no match for a bullet in the back of the head.”

  “Hey, querido.”

  Cord looked at her.

  “I won’t let anybody shoot you in the back.”

  “I appreciate that,” Cord said, “but it could be that you are somewhere out of range—like the other night when I almost got hanged.”

  Chi looked away, and Cord knew this was his chance. “I tell you now, Chi: When this is over, I am done.” Cord drew a deep breath. “I am taking my share of what we got put away, and I am retiring. I want you to be with me, now and always, but I am done no matter what.” Done and buried alive if you leave me, he thought, tried to say it, and could not quite get it out.

  But she knew that, because she was regarding him with no outrage, her handsome dark eyes shaded by the wide brim of her sombrero. She said his name sweetly, and Cord waited for her to go on.

  But then her eyes shifted and she was looking past him. Cord let out breath he had not realized he was holding and turned in his saddle.

  A half mile or more off west across the prairie, a lone figure sat a dark horse. Cord could not make out the rider at that distance, but Chi could always out see him, and when he turned back and saw her expression, Cord knew another joker had been dealt into this hand, from a deck from which plenty enough had already come.

  It wasn’t one of Stringer’s men; they did not ride alone. Suddenly Cord got a hunch that bloomed into something like certainty. The missing character in this drama who was bound to show up—and what perfect goddamned timing. Chi said nothing, and the moment they had shared was broken. She thumped her mare and rode on. Cord followed, swearing to himself.

  Up ahead a high arch of gnarled scrub logs woven together formed a gate over the road, with a shingle hanging from rawhide thongs proclaiming this Bliss Ranch. No one challenged them as they rode beneath it.

  And into as fine a spread as Cord had ever seen, one that would make any stockman sick with yearning. It was an oasis, a sprawling patch of spring green, maybe two thousand acres of irrigated hay land. Long straight-arrow ditches ran in from the river to the north, filling stock tanks dug here and there, and a line of troughs along the yard.

  Sitting a little uphill, the ranch house was built of heavy logs that must have been skidded in at least a dozen miles from the high timber country in the Little Belt Mountains. It was a huge sprawling affair, with junipers planted low around the walls and deep verandah porches. The shingle-roofed bunkhouse was over on the other side of the clean yard by a blacksmithery. Set to one side was a log stable for upward of thirty horses. Between the bunkhouse and stable fifty feet of rail fencing formed a stockade, divided up into a couple of horse-breaking and -working corrals. Surrounding the compound was the triple windbreak, tall cottonwood lined with willow and Lombardy poplar.

  Cord’s offhand guess was that this place would run somewhere in excess of five thousand head of mother cows, with a fair herd of horses. A dozen or so head of fine-looking saddle stock ran in a willow-lined pasture by a tank, solid strong animals, dark bay and high in the back. Cord could envy the man who owned this place, but still he wondered how greed could drive you when you already had the world.

  Chi reined up abruptly, and Cord came up beside her. A bunch of shouting men were mobbed up in the ranch yard, and Cord felt a momentary jolt of alarm: he’d assumed that this bright spring daylight would be enough to keep Stringer’s bunch out of sight, or at least out of action. Then Cord spotted F. X. Connaught, Bliss’s dour foreman, leaning back against a wagon box facing the half circle of men, holding both hands up palm out for silence.

  Cord and Chi rode on into the yard. The dozen or so men around Connaught wore chaps and worn boots, except for one older man with thin white hair wearing an apron: a cowhand crew and their cook, looked to be. Connaught called, “Silence! Every man will get to speak his piece by and by.” It was some sort of meeting.

  Off to one side, near another bunkhouse backed up to the corral and watching with some amusement, lounged the one-armed man Pincus and the light-skinned Negro called Sheeny. As Cord and Chi rode up, another cowhand called out, “The man cooked up his own trouble, and now he gits to eat the mess hisself.” Other men muttered agreement.

  Pincus and Sheeny straightened up at the sight of Cord and Chi. Pincus said something to the Negro, and Sheeny eased off to where a saddled horse was tethered to a corral rail. He mounted up and rode away to the north.

  “Figure we know where he’s heading,” Cord muttered. “That’s all right,” Chi said. “It’s about time everyone got acquainted.”

  The white-haired cook wrung his hands. “Are you with us, F. X.?” he asked. “Will you represent our grievances to the man?”

  But Connaught was looking over at Cord and Chi. He lowered his hands. One by one, the men turned and fell silent at the sight of the tall gunman and the dark woman, death and dreams materialized in their midst.

  Their heads turned to follow as Cord and Chi rode up to the corral. Pincus came up as they dismounted and tethered their horses. “You are in our territory now,” he said. “You like to take chances.”

  “Not me.” Chi stepped out from between the horses. “I like sure things. Like if you don’t step aside and shut your mouth right now, I’m going to hurt you. Bet on that for a sure thing, pendejo.”

  It must have reminded Pincus of the bad news Chi had conjured in the saloon. “See to you later.” But he backed away, careful not to look toward the cowhands.

  Cord kept half an eye on them. Could be they’d figure Cord and Chi as reinforcements for Stringer’s bunch before anyone got a chance to explain differently. Cord didn’t want any extra trouble; these men were innocent bystanders, and let them stay that way.

  The cook said, “What the hell?”

  Connaught looked past Cord and Chi. “Be at ease, lads,” he said.

  Cord turned. Mallory Bliss stood out on the porch of the big house. Beside Cord, Chi said, “Our man,” and indeed it could have been no one else.

  Bliss stood rigid, taking it all in, the hot breeze whipping his long black hair. He should have looked imposing, but Cord
thought he looked rather lost. He was dressed impeccably in stovepipe pants, white shirt and collar, and a black vest. He wore no gun but carried his broad saber, leaning on it as a cane. Everyone stared back at him, as if his next word would name their fates.

  “Sir!” Bliss boomed. He pointed the saber at Cord like a wand, stared at him for a long beat before turning to Chi, the moves practiced and theatrical. But he seemed to find Chi not exactly as written in the script in his mind, for he regarded her with widening eyes and nostrils. “And madam,” he added, with a little bow of the head, lowering the sword. “Will you come into my home?”

  Behind Bliss, posed there on his verandah porch, the logs were sided over with gray clapboard, and bright red shutters hung to either side of wide French-paned windows. Two intertwined rails of elk and deer antlers flanked the porch steps, gray monuments to the passage of time.

  “You ever see anything like that before?” Cord said out of the side of his mouth.

  “Not outside an opera house,” Chi admitted.

  Bliss stepped aside and made a great ceremonial gesture of welcome with his sword, bowing slightly at the waist and indicating the yawning ornate hardwood front door. The steps between the horn banisters were a half-dozen huge logs sawn in half, and the porch was floored with straight-grain tongue-and-groove cedar planks. All the wood was gleaming with clean varnish thick as melted candy. Bliss had read of the lives of rich men in his books and created this in the image of that dream. The upkeep must be endless, Cord imagined. He followed Chi up on the porch.

  “Please enter,” Bliss said. He leaned on the sword when he walked and swayed a bit. Cord had only seen him horseback before and wondered now in what war battle he’d been hamstrung.

  But then there were more immediate items at which to wonder. The castle of Mallory Bliss was luxurious in the overstuffed horsehide manner of some English country house, perhaps slightly distorted by the imagination of the man who built it but tasteful nonetheless and graced with everything wonderful that money could buy in this age and world. Cord saw teardrop crystal chandeliers, Empire furniture, oriental rugs like museum hangings strewn carelessly over the hardwood floor.