Cord 9

by Owen Rountree

  Carlisle came back out, shrugging into his suspenders. “Get dressed and wait for us,” Cord told Fiona Cobb. He grinned wryly. “Wear old clothes.”

  Ahead of them, as Cord and Carlisle dog trotted back up the street, the line of fire was no more than a few miles beyond the little knoll where they’d buried Wee Bill Blewin. Five, ten minutes and no one would ever find his grave again. The wind clawed at their faces, thickening with soot. Carlisle shouted, “Well, what is the plan?” His words seemed to be coming from the far end of a long tunnel.

  By then they were in front of the mercantile. Cord gestured. “Get shovels, axes, buckets, burlap sacks, whatever you can find. Pile the gear out here. Dump flour and sugar if you must for the bags—this whole place will be burned to the ground before the hour is out anyway.”

  For a moment Carlisle stood where he was, and Cord thought he was about to argue. But then Carlisle said, “Your partner …”

  Cord stabbed a finger at him. “Get moving!” Carlisle stumbled into the mercantile, coughing a little. Cord headed up toward the windmill. What about Chi, out at the ranch with Oakley? What had this fire to do with them and their plan for stealing back horses? Answers didn’t matter if you could do nothing about them.

  Big pully wheels controlled the head gates to either side of the big tank at the windmill’s base. They were half-open and some rusted, and Cord felt a moment of panic; the wind carried some of the fire’s heat now. Cord threw his weight against the first wheel, felt it budge. More water began to sluice through the gate feeding Fiona Cobb’s ditch. Cord strained, and the wheel gave some more.

  If Chi had run into trouble, it was over by now. A wave of terrible hopelessness sapped at Cord’s strength. He drew a deep dirty breath. She could be all right; getting out of scrapes whole was her specialty, or he would not have let her go. Let her go? She did what she wanted. Anyway, there was still his own hide. He could still live. Cord heaved at the wheel, keeping that thought central.

  The blade of the axe bit deeply into the base of the trunk of the cottonwood sapling, setting shivering waves of pain through Cord’s bad hand. The cut was most of the way through the tree, and when Cord threw his shoulder against it, it broke free and splashed into the water. It was the last one; the rest of the windbreak around the back and sides of Fiona Cobb’s house was already down. Cord dragged the leafy trunk around downstream, jammed it into the narrow ditch where the rest of the cut trees formed a rough dam.

  Behind it, the ditch was brimful and overflowing into the low yard around the house. A sheet of water mostly covered it now, no more than an inch or two deep. Cord hoped to God it would do.

  He could hear Carlisle and Fiona Cobb shouting to each other, but he could no longer see them, or anything but the outline of the house, through the thickening smoke. He soaked his neckerchief in the water, tied it over his nose and mouth.

  Carlisle was on the roof, slapping down wet burlap sacks that Fiona Cobb handed up. As Cord came around the house and caught sight of him, Carlisle stamped on a spark as it landed. The horses stood tied to the porch post, hock-deep in the water.

  Carlisle climbed down, coughing. “What now?”

  “Fill those buckets. Pray for rain.” And hope, Cord added silently.

  Soot clouded over everything. The flames were no more than a half mile away now and closing fast, their roar now audible, loud as some great infernal engine. Hooves pounded nearby, and Cord whipped out his gun. Bawling cattle came stampeding out of the south end of the main street and raced out onto the prairie, the little herd that had been grazing near to town among the whitetails. Far behind them, other animals screamed. Somewhere out on the prairie, cows were afire.

  Carlisle came out of the house with two rifles, propped them on the porch. Fiona Cobb had changed to a baggy pair of jeans and a man’s flannel shirt. More animals approached but off from the west. Cord spun that way, looking for targets.

  Chi and Nick Oakley rode out of the smoke.

  She leaped her mare over the ditch, perfect in the saddle. Oakley’s jump was not as smooth, but he made it. Cord felt immense relief.

  Chi sat her horse a moment and looked around, then smiled down at Cord. “Looks like you know what you are about with an axe, working ditches,” she said. “It’ll come in right handy on that new place of yours.”

  Cord was abruptly aware of himself, sleeves rolled up, sweating, and leaning on the axe while he caught his breath. It wasn’t funny. None of this was funny.

  He flung the axe aside. “What the hell happened?” He was staring at Oakley.

  Oakley shrugged and climbed down, took Chi’s horse when she dismounted and led them over to the other animals. Carlisle stood there on the porch, his arm around Fiona Cobb’s waist.

  Cord listened while Chi told him the story. He tried to imagine the great house burning, and somewhere inside it, Bliss curled around himself and charred like a cinder baby. He was surprised to feel regret.

  Chi gave him the rest: Near as they could see, Stringer was down to four boys: Sheeny, Bronson, Turk, and one other. “Their horses would not have run far,” she said. “Figure those men were out catching them before the fire got general.”

  “We’ll see them soon,” Cord guessed. “Right after the big burnout.”

  “Then we won’t have long to wait,” Oakley said.

  He was right. Through the sooty haze shading the stars, the red glow of the fire line was almost to the north limits of the town.

  It was an awesome and terrifying sight. The miles-long line of flames was about to close around the town like open arms. The basin had become Hell, and the empire of Mallory Bliss was his damnation.

  The first flames reached the windmill, raced up the four legs, flared from the platform. The whirling blades fanned it and then were afire themselves as they continued to spin, throwing long streaks of flame into the night like some great carnival display on the Fourth of July.

  Above the fire-front’s great roar they heard the massive crackling rending sounds of wood giving way. The windmill was a great torch reaching above the smoke one hundred feet into the sky, teetering and twisting. It toppled majestically, almost elegantly. But that was the end of the elegant part.

  The holding tank burst, sluicing water out with a huge steaming hiss, though hardly slowing the fire’s progress; it was like shooting at a bison with a .22. Buildings flared one after another, in twin lines running down either side of the main street. Last year’s hay in the livery fed the conflagration there, and the building’s roof collapsed. Across the street, the granite bank building seemed to be afire as well; at least wooden trim and the doors were burning. Then a window exploded, and another, and fire sluiced inside them.

  “Madre Dios,” Chi breathed.

  “No shit,” Cord said. What a stick-stupid way to die. You could not face down or grapple with an enemy like this. Fire could sweep you away, as it had Bliss and all his life’s ambition.

  The two-story Enterprise House was engulfed now. Windows burst; the balcony splintered, sagged, and then fell to the street amid pluming sparks. The schoolhouse was burning as well, and fire licked over the granite walls of the adjacent library.

  “The hell,” Carlisle said sadly.

  The roof of the Enterprise House buckled and fell into the gutted interior, and then the watching was over and the fire was on them. A great roaring wall of flame reared up before the ditch, flames fifteen feet high, pawing in air angrily as if momentarily nonplussed at the barrier formed by the brimming water sizzling at its rim, searching for some path across as to either side of the little house lot the arms of fire raced on to the south.

  They were surrounded then. Cord spun around and saw flame everywhere. He could not find breath in the hot air, and sweat burned at his eyes. The fire was a great roaring hammer. Chi, he thought suddenly, and his panic washed away in concern for her. He could not see her through the smoke, but then he heard her call his name and staggered in that direction.

  Fi
re lit the way ahead. Chi called, “Cord!” once more, and he saw her, ran to hold her.

  But as he reached her, she thrust a bucket into his arms, and he realized that the side of Fiona Cobb’s house was veneered with a thin sheet of flame. He stumbled to the ditch, moving toward the fire wall and fighting instinct. Carlisle was there already, dipping his bucket. He ran back past Cord, water slopping. Cord filled his own bucket, followed, flung the water against the house’s siding. Fiona Cobb was slapping at the flame with a burlap sack, dropping to her knees in the muddy water to resoak it, beating angrily against the flame as if personally affronted. Off to the front of the house, the horses nickered out high terrorized whinnies.

  Cord went back for more water. Out back the privy was lost, covered with fire. Chi was beside him, grabbing the full bucket, handing him an empty. “It’s going to be all right,” she shouted in his ear. He did not have the wherewithal to consider to what she referred. He dipped more water, dimly aware that the fire by the ditch was diminishing.

  By the time he got back to the house, water splashing over his pant leg, it was over, quickly as it had come.

  The fire wall was fifty feet past and screaming off to torment the southern half of the basin. Cord flung water against the house and steam billowed up, but the fire there was about extinguished as well. A little lick of it ran up the corner, and on the roof Oakley met it with a sack, beating it back. Most of the side of the house was scorched, but it was not going to burn down after all.

  Cord dropped his bucket. It splashed in the ankle-deep water at his feet and turned over on its side, floated there.

  “You okay?” Chi said quietly.

  “Huh?” Cord stared at her as if she were a stranger. There was a smudge of soot across one of her cheeks. Cord wanted to wet his neckerchief and wipe it clean. Instead he said, “Yeah, terrific.”

  Oakley swung over the porch and plopped down into the water, looking soiled but whole. Carlisle licked at a livid red burn across the back of his hand, but he seemed all right as well. A thick strand of Fiona Cobb’s dark hair had come loose and was plastered across the side of her face, and her shirt and jeans were smeared with mud. Cord realized he was mostly soaked himself, and shivered, though the hot wind blew unabated.

  Out back of the house, the privy fell over, putting itself out with a sad hiss.

  Chi took Cord’s arm, and he almost jerked away. “Easy, querido,” she murmured.

  He looked at her. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “Okay. All right.”

  The town that had called itself Enterprise was a smoldering ruin, shrouded by drifting smoke. Every building was leveled save the hulk of the brick bank building and the granite block that was the library; no telling how the latter had fared. Behind them the fire receded, its cry diminishing like a train already a good ways out of the depot. “Oakley?” Cord said, staring north across the town’s rubble.

  “I’m all right,” Oakley said tightly.

  “Let me look at that hand, Richard,” Fiona Cobb said.

  “It’ll have to wait,” Cord said.

  Oakley came up beside him and Chi. “I am with you,” he said, peering through the smoke.

  “What is it?” Fiona Cobb said behind them.

  “Look there,” Chi said.

  Starlight began to filter down to the basin’s floor once more as the hot wind drove the smoke into their faces and on back, toward the fire flowering toward the mountains at the south rim. Still, acrid haze drifted everywhere. Fiona Cobb looked, holding Carlisle’s hand tenderly.

  At the far end of town, before the steaming ruins of the fallen windmill, Stringer and his four boys sat their horses, gazing on the end of things.

  Stringer said something. Men dismounted, slapping their animals off to the side of the road. Cord blinked the sting from his eyes, fighting abiding weariness.

  “Let’s finish up.” Chi was checking the chambers of her Colt. Her tone was matter-of-fact, just business. She looked up at Cord and gave him a little tight smile.

  She was his strength, and he drew it in. She was waiting for him to set the play and give the orders. She could have done it, likely had some ideas, but she was waiting for him.

  “I’ll …” Carlisle began.

  “You’ll stay here,” Cord interrupted. “Where are those two rifles of yours?” He turned and saw them on the porch. “You take one of them, Oakley.”

  Oakley tugged at his black leather gloves. “I can protect myself.”

  “Take the damned rifle,” Cord said. He smiled to take the edge off. “Protect me, if you want.”

  Oakley considered. “Fair enough,” he said, and went to the porch for the long gun.

  Chi nodded, a tiny gesture of encouragement. Cord felt okay; he felt good. “Carlisle!”

  Carlisle presented himself.

  “You handle the other rifle,” Cord said. “You and the Doc stay here. We might need a safe place to fall back to.” Cord took Carlisle’s measure. “You feel the horrors coming on you, push them back. Take a drink—a little one—and remember how you did fine with those thugs in your saloon.”

  “Worry about yourself, Cord.” He was a little mad, and that’s how Cord wanted him.

  Cord watched Fiona Cobb push hair out of her face. “You keep your head down,” he said. “We’ll maybe want some doctoring when this is done.”

  From up toward town, Stringer bellowed, “Cord!” The word drifted like a curse on the hot filthy wind.

  Cord gave Chi back her smile, then looked over to Oakley. “Like the lady said,” Cord told him. “Let’s finish up.”

  “They are dead,” a man said.

  “Fried like tough Texas steaks.” It was the soft voice of Sheeny.

  “I want bodies!” Stringer hollered. “Find ’em, or make ’em.”

  Cord hunkered behind the high pile of charred lumber that had been the Enterprise House. Wisps of smoke rose from the still-warm wood. Among it, a few little flames licked up around the blackened cast-iron stove, and the faint smell of spilled whiskey perfumed the night air. Cord moved up in a crouch along the collapsed back wall. Haze diffused the starlight.

  “If they are alive, they’re likely holed up in that house,” Sheeny said, somewhere across the street.

  “With guns ready for us,” Bronson said. “Waiting us out.”

  “We’ll storm it if we have to,” Stringer snapped. “Ride ’em down like pigs. Now spread out and check around here. That’s first.”

  “Good way to get back-shot,” someone grumbled.

  “I will shoot you myself,” Stringer barked, “you don’t move out right this second.”

  Men’s boots scuffed in the dirt in different directions.

  Cord stayed where he was, his back to what was left of the wall, his gun ready, waiting, listening. After a minute or so he was rewarded by the small noise of someone edging toward the corner.

  The man looked uneasy as he came around, gun up and dropping fast into a crouch, looking for ambush. Cord pressed into shadow. The man relaxed, looked around again more easily. Cord watched him grin as he got an idea. The man eased down on his haunches, gun still in hand but looking pleased with himself. His plan looked to involve staying out of trouble until the worst of it was over.

  But on this night trouble was everywhere and time to get it rolling. Cord stepped out of the shadow and called softly, “Hey, there.”

  The man should have fired from his crouch, but he tried to stand, and Cord shot him in the chest. The dull crack of pistol fire cut above the last crackling sounds of burning, the echoes dying away as the man gagged and flopped on his back.

  “Call out!” Stringer shouted from somewhere down the street toward the house.

  No one answered. A single shot meant someone dead, no other way to read it. No one wanted to be next.

  Cord eased down the alley between the saloon and the wreckage of the mercantile, got to where he could see across the street. It was spotted with puddles left from the flood of water fro
m the windmill’s burst tank.

  Across the way, Chi stood in cover beside the hulk of the bank. She sensed him immediately, made a gesture. Cord understood, nodded: she had one of them treed, even if the man didn’t know it

  Smoke drifted from the near front window of the bank. Chi edged up along the side of the building. Cord rotated the cylinder of his Colt back two positions, wrapping his hand around the frame to muffle the sound. At the corner of the building, Chi waved her gun.

  Cord fired through the broken window, paused a beat, pulled the trigger again. The hammer fell on the empty cylinder. In case the sound were not loud enough, Cord swore, with feeling.

  A rifle poked out the window, and its muzzle flashed fire. Cord was already down and behind cover.

  The rifleman worked the lever, and Chi grabbed the barrel with her left hand, pulled hard. The gunman came half to his feet and Chi shot him in the face at point-blank range.

  Chi pulled again, and Turk came out of the window and flopped over the sill, blood trilling in a little stream from his mouth and nose.

  Cord covered her until Chi got Turk’s rifle unpried from his dead fingers. She brought it up as Cord moved around the corner, eased along the front of the saloon’s fallen balcony.

  Down the street a gun went off. The blond man, Bronson, stood and dove headfirst from the roof of the library. He hit the stone steps with a sickening thud and slid down them into the street.

  One wall of the schoolhouse stood precariously. Nick Oakley appeared from behind it, stared at Bronson’s broken body, worked the lever of the rifle.

  A gun went off behind Cord, the length of the street, and Oakley was hit. He stumbled backward, turned half-around, and went down on his side.

  Cord dove for the street, hit, and rolled. A shot puffed into the dirt a yard from his head. He saw Sheeny in front of the smoking mercantile, reshouldering a rifle and aiming at him. Chi fired at Sheeny and missed by inches, and Cord fired on the echo of her shot. Wood splintered beside Sheeny’s dark face. Sheeny dodged away, feeding another cartridge into his rifle’s breech.