CUTLASS fingered the small object, was fascinated as it glittered with all the blended colors of the sun despite the blue-green shadows that fell everywhere about it. It was the shape and size of an old-fashioned cigarette-lighter, and made of some hard, smooth metal that doubtless was of Doc’s own forging. The only break in its smooth surface was a round, countersunk button colored like a ruby.
“No matter where you find yourself in Space or Time,” he heard Doc saying, “press the button—hold it down hard. And ITA, I know you’re cither bored or—” the withered old face smiled gently, “in trouble that you can’t battle your way out of! I’ll have you in another space-time within seconds.”
“You’re a crazy old coot, Doc. You know that.”
“Don’t you think it, boy! And there is no need to fear my—my death, in the interim. Depending upon the time-phase in which you find yourself, anywhere from ten to a hundred years in your continuum will mean perhaps a minute to an hour in mine. But—as to what you’d be—well . . .”
“Go ahead! Tell me,” Cutlass laughed. “As long as I’ll be alive!”
“It is actually impossible for me to answer you. I don’t think I can change the blood in a man’s veins. And the blood of pirates has coursed in yours through generations!”
Cutlass laughed loudly, and it was a defiant, careless laugh that told the Universe and its entire white picket-fence society to go to blazing Hell.
“OK, Doc! You win! You hide me good!”
Cutlass belted the small signalling device around his body and stepped inside the cylinder. The dull black sheen of his tunic lent a peculiar matter-of-factness to the underacted drama, yet Cutlass knew it was as Doc said—hide out, or die.
“Good hunting, Robbin Cutlass!”
* * *
A half-light-year beyond Pluto, floating at the edge of Deep Space in a creaking freighter hull that was disguised with the shades of night itself, a withered Martian scientist touched a series of relays with his short, reddish fingers. There was a gentle humming, the faint odor of ozone, and that was all. Robbin Cutlass, last of the Space buccaneers, had vanished completely.
* * *
A hot wind rushed across his face and there was the taste of salt on his lips. His head hurt as though he had been struck; how they had come upon the French merchant was puzzlingly hazy in his mind, but there was no doubt in it as to what course of action to take.
“Two shots from your long-gun across her bow, Mr. Treach!”
Cutlass glanced briefly upward as his colors were raised quickly to the tip of the spanker-gaff; then he watched with satisfaction as the captain of the merchantman laid his mainyard aback and hove to.
In a moment he could lower a boat, and this time there’d better be something more aboard to his liking than a cargo of salt! If it were coffee that he could sell at Rio Medias, he would not sink her, and if it were gold, he’d spare her captain’s life.
Cutlass had parted his lips to shout an order to lower a boat when he stopped his voice in his throat. He could not remember ever having given chase after sail but what the fleeing prize, upon sighting his black flag, would simply heave-to and surrender. But a hint of screened movement at the edge of the merchantman’s middle deck had caught the corner of his eye—
“The Frenchman feigns surrender when his intention is to scuttle us!” Cutlass howled. “Mister Treach! Prepare a fitting answer to such an ill-planned deceit!”
“Aye sir!”
Cutlass watched his men as they scrambled to obey the first mate’s order and brought their cannon to bear for a broadside. Some with laughs on their lips, all with sweat glistening from their scarred bodies, the gunners of the Black Talon grasped the lanyards of their already-shotted guns even as the Frenchman opened fire.
“Sink the lily-livered swine!” Cutlass bellowed, and drew his sword to flash it down in a glittering arc as the signal to fire. Half his starboard battery flamed in response to the merchantman’s unsuccessful stratagem, then the other half as the first was reshotted. A ball from the Frenchman’s battery tore away the brig’s fore top gallantsail but Cutlass was warming to the fray and flashed the sword again in the burning rays of the hot West Indies sun.
“The Frenchman shall strike his colors, Mr. Treach, and I’ll shoot the man who fights as anything less than a devil!” he roared, a great laugh forming in his throat as the merchantman’s volleys became increasingly ragged and her planking began to fly in splinters from beneath the very feet of her crew.
For the Frenchman’s cargo, whatever it was, Cutlass knew he cared but little. The Talon’s hold must be full to overflowing with jewels pillaged from the galleys of the Great Mogul—hard specie from the hulls of the East Indiamen—no, the plunder was for the satisfaction of the crew. But this—this, pure taste of revenge was for Robbin Cutlass!
SOMETHING stirred peculiarly in his mind—something that for the moment caught his breath from his lungs and left him shivering, then sent the blood racing hot through his body. There was an anger there—a long-smouldering anger for which he could not accurately account, but which was undeniable. His sword flashed again in the blaze of the sun.
And once more he shivered.
“Cap’n Cutlass sir! It’s a trap!”
His palm was suddenly cold and slippery on the corded hilt of the glittering blade in his hand.
“Sail ho! Sail to stern sir!” the lookout was bellowing. “Three o’ the King’s men-o’-war!”
Cutlass watched them as they bore down, shouted orders to the helmsman to bring the brig about. The cries of the drowning merchantman’s crew were totally wasted on him as he prepared to meet the new menace. Ordinarily, so far as his hazy memory would account for him, there had never been much to fear from the Jamaica fleet. Now it seemed they had been especially enjoined in the Frenchman’s aid for the sole purpose of taking his head for the 500-pound reward on it. Or perhaps the British King had added a couple of hundred—because for less, who was there who would dare bring the attack to Robbin Cutlass?
The men-of-war, under a smart press of canvas and now within cannon range, were already lowering boats.
“Mister Treach bring your muskets to bear!”
“Aye, sir and the guns are reshotted!”
“Keep your fire until I give the order to loose it, Mr. Treach! And strike the black flag—you shall hoist American colors in its place. We mistook the Frenchman for a Spaniard, d’ye hear?”
CUTLASS knew as he gave the order that the strategy was far too thin, but it would give heart to the crew until the English swarmed over the side. Had he kept his witless anger and secured the merchantman and her guns rather than sunk her . . . But it was too late to correct the error now—and if this were a premeditated trap, then the English were tardy, and had permitted their decoy to pay too high a price.
There was the crack of musketry as the crew of the Talon fought to turn the boats’ advance, but it was answered with vicious accuracy from the decks of the men-of-war themselves. Then one of the King’s ships tacked about, bringing her cannon to bear while her sister ships bore down on the brig.
The Talon’s broadside was simultaneous with that of the gun-boat, but it was a matter of 40 guns to twelve. And even as the main top gallantmast was sheared and came tumbling crazily through the brig’s already sagging top-rigging, the British war vessels had come alongside to both starboard and port.
“All hands repel boarders!” Cutlass thundered, and armed his left hand with one of the pistols from the brace suspended bandolier-like from his neck.
They were too many. Because of the nearness of her sisters, the cannonading ship had ceased firing and had brought about to join the boarding fight; and there could be no running. He, Cutlass, had never given the order to—
He shook his head. This had happened before. Somehow it had happened before and yet of course that was impossible. It was his rage at the English and their price upon him that was addling his thoughts.
And with half
her rigging torn asunder, the Talon, a sorry sight now, could not run her own length.
In seconds the Talon’s decks were slippery with blood from poop to forecastle; Cutlass drew and fired his pistols with his left hand as he crossed swords with his right—three of his attackers went down howling in agony, and the swordsman he had killed outright with a ball in the face had been replaced by two more.
“We’ve come for your head, Robbin Cutlass!”
“Then you’ll parry this to get it!” Cutlass gritted savagely. The Englishman was a split-second late, and the corsair’s sword split his throat from chin to collar-bone.
But they were too many. Was it to be ever so?
Desperately, blood coursing from a reopened old wound in his left shoulder which for some reason had never healed completely. Cutlass groped for the last of his pistols. His clawing fingers slipped on something hard at his waist. He must—must—
Press it!
* * *
Far away, in another Space and in another Time, an old man’s eyes glittered. There was the signal, but the chances were that young Robbin Cutlass hadn’t given it from sheer boredom! Swiftly, his short, thick fingers flicked the breadth of a time-warp quadrant, altered the mass and continuum ratios as great banks of machinery seemed to float in their own blue-green glow and throbbed with the mighty power of the Sun itself.
But it was true, there were some things even science could not change.
HIS head hurt.
The Kid and Gonzales rode at a walk beside him, and the Kid was complaining about the heat again. Gonzales told him to shut up unless he could think of a better way to make a living.
Cutlass gestured with a nod of his head.
“Up there,” he said.
The trio reined off the bend of the road and almost at a leisurely pace wended their way up the gentle rise of a hill a scant 50 yards distant.
“They ain’t many trees,” the Kid grumbled.
“Ain’t gotta be,” Cutlass said. “I steer you wrong yet?”
“Reckon not.”
“Then button up and listen.” Idly, he stretched out his right arm, half-leaned from his saddle, and plucked the square of weather-beaten paper from the trunk of a scrubby cottonwood. “Long as y’do what I say, you’ll keep seein’ these. Soon’s you stop, they won’t have to be printin’ no more.”
“They raise the price a leetle,” Gonzales said. “But they still don’t draw our peectures worth a damn!” The rust-stained leaflet said that dead or alive, the person of one R. Cutlass, gambler, desperado, and stage robber, would bring the capturer the sum of $5,000 reward in gold. An additional $1,000 would-be paid the capturer for either of his henchmen alive, $500 dead.
“How soon’s it due?” the Kid asked. He brushed sweat from his forehead and from the inside band of his Stetson, and loosened each of his new Colts in their holsters.
Cutlass didn’t answer, but he pulled a gold watch from his pocket and studied it for a moment. He wondered what name the initials engraved inside its case stood for, gave the stem a twist and replaced it.
“That’s the best wan you ever get, eh boss?”
“OK, Chico. You get started. And keep those guns where they belong until the Kid an’ me draw ours, savvy? Last time you got that greasy trigger finger of yours in an itch an’ we had t’go killin’ t’get the stuff. Law in these parts ain’t about to forget the racket of six-guns when they hear it, and I ain’t of a mood for runnin’ to hide again.”
CUTLASS crumpled the reward poster and threw it from him.
It was getting so in the whole state of Texas you couldn’t draw a breath but what the law heard you and came tossing lead. Some said a kid named Bonny got a kick out of seeing his pictures strewn all over the landscape. Maybe. But it made Cutlass boil inside.
Gonzales was on his way back to the long bend in the road. Cutlass watched him detachedly as he turned his bronc loose, then sprawled full length and face down in the road so the Wells Fargo drivers couldn’t miss him. The big splotch of red paint on the back of his shirt was visible even from where Cutlass and the Kid waited.
The Kid shifted uneasily in his saddle.
“Relax,” Cutlass said. “Five minutes maybe. That ain’t long to sweat.”
Five minutes for a Dallas to Fort Worth payroll shipment that was supposed to be worth a hundred thousand. Travelling just like any other stage, if you could believe Toady. So as not to draw attention: Just two drivers, a couple of rifles, and maybe two or three regular passengers.
Hell. Gonzales and the Kid could have the hundred thousand. He had his pile. Robbin Cutlass couldn’t remember where the rest of it had come from exactly—the watch with the initials that weren’t his had puzzled him some. But he knew more by instinct than by memory how he’d got it, and that he had plenty more junk like it stached in a bank safe-deposit box in—yeah, Abilene, what the hell was the matter with him.
Sure, he had his pile. But it makes a man sore as hell when all the tin badges in Texas gang together just to hunt him down like a coyote and then hold up his hide for every gawk to hoot at. Who the hell did they think they were to give Robbin Cutlass any back-talk? When the Wells Fargo rig slowed up to have a look at Chico, noise or no noise, by God.
The Kid heard it when he did, took his hands from his moist gun butts in a play at nonchalance and adjusted the black kerchief over his thin nose.
Cutlass didn’t say anything until the stage had come tearing bell for leather around the long bend, started spurting little plumes of dust from under its iron-rimmed wheels as it ground to a halt. One of the drivers started getting down.
“OK,” Cutlass said.
ONLY it wasn’t OK. Even before they’d covered half the fifty yards, Cutlass saw the driver who had gotten down to go over for a look at Chico pull out his Colt and deliberately gunwhip the possum-playing Mexican across the head. Then he flopped flat on his belly and the doors of the stage slammed open even as the other driver was dropping from his perch, Winchester coming up as his boots slammed dust from the road.
Two full squads of U.S. cavalry were firing even before the Kid had been able to get his guns out. He went down with five holes in him before he could cry out. Cutlass was already out of his saddle and choking on sand. Before his first Colt was empty three soldiers and one of the drivers were dead.
But they were too damn many—Cutlass cursed through the dust in his teeth and lunged for the Winchester still holstered on his pony’s flank. The animal screamed as a slug tore through one of its legs but Cutlass had half emptied the Winchester’s clip before the big corporal had got a slug through the pony’s head and put it out of its misery.
There were two quick pains in his right arm, so he had to aim and fire the rifle with his left, pump the best he could with his right. There wasn’t any getting away.
“Yer all through, Cutlass! Stand up and toss yer guns down or we’ll save the state the cost of a trial!”
“Start savin’ blue-coat!”
Cutlass groped at his belt to claw another handful of cartridges from it. His bleeding fingers felt a hard, square object. Something stirred somewhere deep inside his boiling brain. He was supposed to—press it!
* * *
Far away, in another Space and in another Time, a smile spread slowly across an old man’s wrinkled face. No, you couldn’t change the blood in a man’s veins! But perhaps—
Swiftly, his short thumby fingers played over a row of relays . . .
CUTLASS swallowed the aspirin, picked up his brief-case and met his man in the spacious lobby.
“Sorry to’ve kept you waiting, Prescott! Hope you didn’t have a late deadline to make?”
“No, sir, that’s quite all right. Believe me, I’m pleased to have an opportunity for an interview with you at any time of day or night! You’ve made the best copy coming out of this town in many a column, sir!”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Prescott. I believe in speaking freely to the press—”
“I
’ve a cab waiting right outside, sir.”
“Suppose we take my car? A little more privacy, I think—”
Prescott followed the immaculately attired Cutlass through the Statler’s front doors to the sleek black limousine waiting at the curb. Its engine was idled to an inaudible purr, and the tonneau door was opened by a uniformed chauffeur as they approached. Cutlass nodded politely to a couple of alert Secret Service men. The Law. Friends now, of course.
Within soundless seconds the luxurious vehicle had pulled into Washington traffic, and it was Cutlass who opened the conversation.
“I thought perhaps you could better obtain what you’d like in somewhat more pleasant surroundings, Mr. Prescott. I’ve a little place just outside the city—prefer it, I assure you, to the Embassy room!” They both laughed, Prescott a little self-consciously, wondering just what kind of a write-up Cutlass was expecting. As if he didn’t know . . .
“Well sir, if I could get a little background to what happened on the floor this morning, before I attempt to go into too much detail . . . Your new tax bill—I understand there was rather, well—some rather spirited opposition this morning—” Cutlass laughed easily. “To be expected, Mr. Prescott. They thought my last one was too much to take, but it went through! As this one shall. I can assure you of that.”
“I see.” Prescott made a brief notation. “What reaction do you expect from the corporations? If, that is, the President—”
“Oh, they’ve a powerful lobby of course. But, my boy—and of course this is off the record—it’s simply a matter of putting the pressu—er, persuasion in the right places. The corporations will—I think they’ll come around all right.” Prescott added to his notes.
“Is this new tax bill, Senator, to be your last for this session, or do you contemplate—”
Cutlass’ chuckle was as velvety as the silent roll of the limousine’s white-walled tires.
“My dear young man,” he murmured, “I can’t answer that question for the record. It depends to such a large extent on the many—rather personal considerations involved. But of course for a political reporter that should hardly be news.”
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