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  THEY HIRED CORD AND CHI TO PROTECT THE GOLD.

  Now the freedom-loving outlaw and his tough lady partner must fight for their lives.

  A hardscrabble Dakotas mining town struggles to keep its glittering payload from the murderous grasp of thieving road agents.

  And that, by luck, is where Cord and Chi come riding in.

  But they do their job so well that the locals force Cord into a high-stakes showdown with notorious gunslinger Cash Culhane—in a duel to the death that neither renegade wants!

  CORD 3: THE BLACK HILLS DUEL

  By Owen Rountree

  First Published by Ballantine Books in 1982

  First Digital Edition: February 2019

  Copyright © 1982, 2019 by William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauzer

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover Painting by Gordon Crabb

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the authors.

  For Kenneth P. Bangert May 7, 1947-January 23, 1982

  and

  For Cinda Purdy October 21, 1950-April 1, 1980

  Chapter One

  Cord jerked the big bay gelding back onto his hocks and waited until the echo of the rifle shot faded. Just ahead the canyon walls were closing together, the wagon track curving off to the left and out of sight behind a field of red-rock boulders big as haystacks. It was a bad place to be taken unawares. Then the rifle sounded again, maybe a hundred yards off, judging from the sound.

  Cord drew his own Winchester from its saddle scabbard, levered a cartridge into the chamber, and eased the gelding in amid the boulders. From there he could see ahead aways. The road beyond straightened, and as Cord had figured, the canyon walls closed up tight, nearly vertical and fifty or so feet up to the rimrock on either side. There the dusty track of road was barely wide enough for two wagons to pass.

  A buckboard was stopped at the most narrow point, the four-horse team snorting and blowing as though they had just been pulled up from a hard run. Cord could make out some kind of tarp-covered load on the wagon’s flat rear deck. The teamster and his shotgun guard sat stiffly on the bench seat, the reins hanging slack in the teamster’s hands. Behind them another seat had been rigged for two passengers. One was a man dressed all in black. He sat rigid and erect, staring straight ahead. Beside him sat a woman whose face was hidden under a gingham sunbonnet.

  Five riders surrounded the wagon. Three were out front in the road, their backs to Cord, the middle one pointing a rifle up at the cloudless sky. Two others sat their horses beyond the wagon, intent on the moment and oblivious to Cord.

  The man with the rifle lowered the weapon so the shotgun guard could look into the muzzle and said, “Throw down that goddamned double-barrel. I ain’t going to ask a third time.”

  The guard tossed the shotgun off the side of the wagon and sat staring at the toes of his boots.

  “Now climb off there, all of you. Nice and easy.”

  Cord stepped his gelding out full into the roadway, held his long gun on the leader’s back, and shouted: “Hold quiet, right there!”

  For a long moment no one moved, except for the shotgun guard, who looked up, narrowing his eyes against the sun.

  “Scabbard that rifle,” Cord called. “That’s the first thing. Then keep ’em high and we’ll work this out.”

  The leader started to wheel his horse.

  “Don’t do it,” Cord warned. “There are other guns on you.”

  All five of the road agents looked quickly from side to side. Then one of them pointed up at the rimrock to the left and said something to the leader.

  Up there stood Chi, Cord’s partner, her legs slightly apart, tall and dark and lean in her black sombrero and wool serape. Two long braids of shiny ebony hair hung almost to her waist, and her leather britches were tucked into hand-tooled boots with knee-high uppers. A Winchester held steady in her hands.

  “Come around now,” Cord called. “But move easy.” The leader turned his horse and stared at Cord impassively, as though this wasn’t working out the way he had figured but it didn’t matter all that much. He wore a close-trimmed black beard, and his face was creased and sun-darkened.

  “It’s this way,” Cord told him. “You and your two men beside you there, you move on past the wagon and group up over there with the rest of your bunch. You keep between me and them, so I’ve always got a clear shot on you. You do that, and then you ride on, and there’s no more trouble for anyone.”

  From the rimrock came the sharp clacking of Chi working the action of her rifle. The bearded man looked up at her almost curiously, then nodded at Cord.

  “We’ll ride,” he said, “but this isn’t over.”

  “It is for now,” Cord said.

  The bearded man muttered something to the man on his left and started past the buckboard. Cord let out breath. Even with the drop, two on five was short odds. He would be glad to see this unexpected facedown done and behind them.

  Then Cord saw the teamster lean forward in his seat and snatch at something in the box at his feet. When he straightened there was a rifle in his hands.

  Damn the fool, Cord thought, starting to bring up his Winchester.

  The bearded leader reined up hard, slapped at the revolver on his hip, and shot the driver in the middle of the chest. The man flopped back onto the woman passenger, and she screamed and fought her way out from under the weight of the convulsing dying body, throwing herself into the lap of the man beside her. But he sat impassive, as if unconscious of, or unwilling to acknowledge, the violence flaring around him. He did not flinch from the gunfire, nor from the spray of blood which fell across his face in fine drops.

  The shotgun guard dove from the seat and hit the ground rolling. He got his hands on the shotgun he had thrown down, then scuttled under the wagon bed. Atop the rimrock Chi’s rifle barked, and one of the outlaws flipped from the saddle and landed on his back, bouncing hard and lifeless.

  Then the bearded man and his pard kicked their horses quickly past the wagon, and for a single frozen moment Cord stared at the leader’s back over his rifle’s sight.

  Then the moment broke, and Cord lowered the rifle without firing. He watched as the dust and powder smoke rose to block his sight of the four retreating horsemen. There was no profit in shooting men in the back, and Cord was anyway already beginning to regret getting involved in this fracas in the first place. He sheathed his rifle and stepped the gelding toward the wagon.

  The woman seemed composed already, despite the blood of the dead teamster smeared across her dress. She untied the string under her chin and took off her sunbonnet, revealing pale blond hair and fine high-toned features. As Cord rode up she eyed him with open interest. The dead man draped over the seat beside her might not have been there.

  Boots scraped on the hard-packed dirt of the roadway and the shotgun guard scrambled out from under the flatbed of the wagon. Cord looked down at him and pursed his lips in surprise. The man was about Cord’s age, but there was a paunch above his belt which testified to easy living in trail-head towns and nights spent dipping into buckets of beer. His boots were new and hardly broke in, and his rolled-brim Stetson had been steamed and blocked not so long before.

  Cord cross
ed his hands on his saddle horn and said, “Howdy, Nolan. You are surely looking prosperous.”

  The man gave Cord a sheepish grin, then looked down at the shotgun in his hands as though he had forgotten he was holding it and wasn’t quite sure what it was for.

  Cord had crossed trails with this man once or twice in the past. Mart Nolan had lived for years on the softer fringes of outlawry, working as a front man or hostler for a gang when they would have him around, rustling the odd horse or steer, even raiding some nester woman’s kitchen garden when that was all he could manage. There were plenty like him in the West these days, and taken as a bunch they weren’t worth a mouthful of chewed-out tobacco spittle.

  “Much obliged, Mr.—” Nolan brought himself up short. He at least had the sense not to speak Cord’s name in front of the man and woman. Nolan fidgeted uncomfortably, then looked to the dead outlaw sprawled face up in front of the wagon, as if he was trying to figure how close he had come to not living out this day.

  “Didn’t see there was much I could do to help, once the shooting got started,” he muttered, as if talking to the corpse. “Thought I had better lie low until the lead stopped flying. You see how it is.” He looked up to Cord.

  “Yeah,” Cord said. “I see how it is.”

  Cord looked over his shoulder at the sound of a rider approaching, the quick staccato of hoofbeats in a long trot. It was Chi, her dark braids bouncing behind her. She reined beside Cord and took her time looking over the pretty blond woman, who returned her gaze steadily. Chi frowned at the man in black, still entranced beside the woman. Her frown deepened when she turned it on Nolan.

  “What’s he doing,” she said to Cord, “showing up in this place?” She glared at Nolan, as though his paunch was an insult to her idea of character.

  “Got me a job, miss,” Nolan said proudly, as though he sensed nothing wrong. “Shotgun guard on the freight run. They needed an hombre who could take care of himself—and the merchandise,” he added self-importantly. Nolan nodded at the man and woman. “We don’t usually carry no passengers. We got more valuable property to deal on.” Nolan stopped abruptly, as if he had just remembered who he was talking to and wished he’d shut up two sentences back.

  “Finish it,” Chi said. “What are you hauling?”

  Nolan stared up at her moon-eyed, unwilling to tell the truth and too dull-witted to contrive a convincing lie. Chi snorted with disgust and impatiently rode past Nolan, up close to the wagon. The blond woman turned in her seat to follow Chi, watching her with open interest, like an explorer come upon an exotic new species. Chi stared back. She held until the blond woman looked away, somewhat flustered. Then Chi leaned over in the saddle and flipped back the edge of the tarp.

  Beneath were three canvas bags, each maybe half the size of a fifty-pound sack of flour. The tops were secured with leather buckles padlocked shut. Chi hefted at one, grunting with the effort. The bag dropped to the planks of the buckboard deck with a solid thwack.

  “Gold?” Chi said to no one in particular, turning the notion over in her head. But then she looked at Nolan. The man smiled in a sickly way.

  “Let’s have a look.” Cord drew his thin-bladed stockman’s knife from the scabbard on his belt and tossed it to Chi. She caught it deftly by the haft and bent to one of the bags.

  “No need,” Nolan said quickly. “It’s gold all right.”

  The blond woman spoke for the first time. “Are you planning to steal it?” she asked artlessly, her curiosity apparently impersonal. She smiled faintly, showing white even teeth.

  Chi ignored her and turned to Nolan. It was clear he was worrying the same question. “You tell us a story, Little Man,” Chi said.

  “It come out of Virtue,” Nolan said quickly. “The gold, I mean, it come out of the camp, they call it Virtue, maybe ten miles back along the trace, and it’s a pretty rich strike, too. Mr. Rawlins, he sure is going to be pleased you two come along like you did, saving everything and all. He’ll want to shake your hand.”

  “Who is this Rawlins hombre?”

  “Ladd Rawlins, that’s his full name. This is his freight line.” Nolan prattled on, as if maybe his story were compelling enough to distract Cord and Chi from coming to the idea of making off with his precious cargo. But Cord was only half listening. He regarded the blond woman. She was maybe twenty-five, and her long linen dress was cut just a shade tight to emphasize the swell of her breasts above her tight-corseted waist. Her face was very fair, almost pale, and Cord wondered if she had the city woman’s fear of sun on her skin.

  “Thank you for what you did,” the woman said. “We are enormously in your debt.” She glanced at the man beside her, who still had not moved so far as Cord could see. “We ... my name is Katherine Paine, and this is my husband.”

  “Undertaker?” Chi asked, not politely.

  “A man of God.” There was a hint of challenge in Katherine Paine’s smile. “May I present the Reverend Zachariah Paine.”

  At his name the man turned his head slightly to glare out at Cord from beneath the brim of his black hat. Cord felt a sudden jolt of recollection, not for the man but for days long past. It had been years since Cord had given any thought to godly matters, but the heated intensity of the preacher’s stare took him back to fervent boyhood churchgoing in east Texas, a time he had not known to still be a part of his memory.

  Cord’s father was a dark Germanic Lutheran, and Sundays under the hot Texas sun, sweating in whatever church-boy clothes his mother made for him, holding to his father’s calloused hand on their way into the settlement and its peeling white creek side church, all that had been hell for the little boy Cord remembered as himself. For a moment, Cord could smell the gritty air and the somber sleepy horses tied at the hitch rack, and hear the whir of locusts, and see his father’s anger and final sadness at the defeat his hard life had imposed upon him.

  For a brief time when he was maybe thirteen, Cord had somehow come to an adolescent sense of himself as inhabited by God, to such a degree that even his father looked upon him with fear. Cord had testified before all of them there in that white-painted church, and he remembered looking out at the little congregation of thick-wristed farm people and knowing their fear of him, a boy brimming over with right-minded fervor.

  Inhabited by God. That was what the preacher said.

  Listen to this boy. He is inhabited by God.

  Then it passed like exorcised possession, and Cord had long since forgotten the ways religion could turn your head. But for that moment, alongside the wagon in that dusty canyon, Cord had a brilliantly disconcerting vision of the boy he had been.

  “Cord,” Chi said. She had been watching him with impatience touched with amusement. Cord looked over at her and knew she was thinking about the possibilities inherent in a wagonload of gold, and nothing between them but a woman, a minister, and a coward, and his mind came back to the issue at hand. If they tried it and got away clean, the gold could mean months, even years, of living any way they wanted, anywhere. Cord thought of San Francisco, and a bait of grilled oysters and bacon at one of the fine hotels.

  But getting clear, anyway clear enough so there was no nagging impulse to keep checking on your backtrail, that was the part that made the notion wrongheaded. Cord and Chi had survived years of living beyond the law by careful planning, not whimsy. For one thing, this was not really their kind of job; almost since they had begun running together they had specialized in banks to the exclusion of other targets, maybe because banks were hard to feel sorry about.

  Second was that Cord had learned from experience the best fighting chance came in knowing every angle. He believed in planning, escape routes, and, if possible, no shooting. This Dakota badlands territory was new country to them, but Nolan and this Rawlins character had to know it well. There was no telling what lay ahead along a trail on which they would be slowed by the weight of gold. Third, there were those four hijacking road agents, waiting around some corner nearby, feeling cheated, await
ing their chance.

  That was plenty enough to make it a bad job. And Cord also had the uneasy feeling that he’d already gotten them more involved with Nolan and this blond woman and her crazy preacher husband than he should have. He frowned at the Paines, man and wife. Cord was constantly surprised at how something as simple as a daylight ride through wilderness country could so quickly turn complex.

  “No,” Cord said aloud, Chi shrugged and looked away.

  “You riding on to Virtue?”

  Nolan’s vast relief was evident in his tone. “Ride with us, if you’ve a mind. Mr. Rawlins, he is sure going to thank you. Why, I’ll bet he’ll have some kind of reward, soon as we get there and he hears the story of what you done.”

  “This wagon is going to Deadwood.” It was the Reverend Paine, his voice thick and deep and rich as sorghum, stating a pronouncement of the incontrovertible.

  Nolan pulled himself away from the preacher’s stabbing gaze. “We are like hell. This wagon ain’t going nowhere but straight back to Virtue, fast as them horses can make the trip.” Nolan looked pleased at himself, now that he had someone to bully around. “And I’ll lay you that Mr. Rawlins won’t be sending it out again until he can rustle up a mess of gunhands to hold against them road agents.” Nolan looked up to Cord. “It ain’t going to be easy to recruit men. There’s a plague of gold fever in that town.”

  Cord gave Chi a questioning look. She shrugged again. “We’ve got to provision up somewhere. Those gold camps don’t usually run much to law.”

  “No law at all, ’cept what the miners make,” Nolan said. Cord knew he was angling for two free guns to back him on the trip home.

  “Just so as we don’t waste a lot of time taking in the local sights,” Chi said. Cord wondered if she meant this blond Paine woman or the taverns of Virtue.

  “We have no need for your kind.” The preacher spoke again. Nolan started to answer and thought better of it. “The mark of Cain is upon your brow, sir.” Paine aimed an accusing finger at Cord, and again Cord heard the discordant ranting he’d grown up with, each Sunday in that east Texas church. It was too familiar, and jabbed at childhood anxieties like a hot needle. The preacher’s eyes smoldered with devoutness, or a sort of madness Cord knew to work out to the same thing. “The Lord said to Cain, ‘And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.’” The Reverend Paine stood suddenly and shifted his accusing finger to the dead teamster slumped beside him on the wagon seat. “Genesis, chapter four, verse eleven.”