Cord 7 Read online

  “Where are you heading, Miss Chi?” It was Stark, the reporter.

  Chi looked at him as if he were a verminous insect. “Who is the cabrón with the big mouth?” she asked, speaking to Cord.

  Cord shook his head. She was charged with rage, and Stark was too blithe to see how deeply he was digging his own hole. To head her off from pointlessly abusing him might require some confrontation with her on Cord’s part, which he did not relish. But then, at Chi’s feet, the surviving road agent stirred and lifted his shaggy head. He was unshaven. His mouth opened and closed; he didn’t seem to have teeth, but his gums were white as bone.

  Chi kicked him in the ear. The outlaw stiffened like a sledgehammered steer, shuddered, and drew into a little convulsion before lying still again. Cord wondered if he was dead. The businessman gasped and even Stark looked concerned.

  Chi looked up at Cord: Here we are again, the same old trouble you never asked for, dogging you wherever you go. Cord had no argument with that, but there was no longer any simple riding away from this one, especially not with Chi in this dangerous frame of mind.

  Staring awful fire at them all, Chi stalked to her mare, threw up a stirrup, and began to check the cinch. “Get in,” the driver said to the businessman and the reporter, not pleasantly. The only response came from within the coach, the blonde’s whimpering and the awkward ineffectual murmurings of the older woman, ancient sounds echoing human frailty. Cord stared at Chi’s back, dreading the sense of misadventure possessing him.

  Two

  The brown palace hotel oozed luxury. The lobby was all potted plants, Doric columns, and leather-upholstered divans stuffed fat as babies’ cheeks. The rug had strange Chinese-looking characters worked into the border, and traversing it was like walking through dewy grass. The desk clerk was old enough to have seen some things and cautious enough to refrain from commenting on the dust on a man’s boots, or the way he happened to wear his gun.

  Cord was established in a two-room corner suite on the fifth floor. The bedroom was larger than the cabin in which Cord had been reared. Its centerpiece was a double-size bed, with crackling stiff sheets, huge plump pillows, and a quilted coverlet that might have cost someone’s grandmother months of close work. There were gleaming brass spittoons on either side of the bed; you never could tell who would need to spit, or when.

  The sitting room had lace-framed windows on two sides, brocaded armchairs, red velvet wallpaper, oak tables a rich man would not spurn, and another deep Oriental carpet, brought over on sailing ships from the markets of China. There was a fireplace with a painting of a rosy plump woman above the oak mantel, and opposite, a full-length mirror of fine beveled crystal.

  Cord examined himself in its clean gleaming perfection. Some fine outlaw, he thought, wallowing in elegance like a hog in mud. But Cord had to smile, and his reflection smiled back: he would make a fine millionaire. Take about five minutes to get used to this sort of thing.

  For years Cord had felt crowded and half suffocated when sleeping inside, and would wake up gasping from dreams about falling from great heights into bottomless icy water. There was still nothing finer than sleeping under a sky bright with summer stars arranged in their orderly constellations by nature’s artful hand. On the other hand, this Brown Palace Hotel wasn’t bad for the odd night. Cord raised an eyebrow at his reflection, like a French farceur flirting with the crowd.

  Maybe Pell’s mine would strike big and they really would be rich, have all the money there ever was—what then? Would Chi stick with him, or maybe bring her money home to some dying village deep in Mexico? Cord shook his head at himself. Old habits, like never counting on what a person might do, died hard. Chi seemed happy enough to be with him these days, even willing to take a look at that Bitterroot country in Montana, knowing he was toying with notions of settling in, knowing he might ask her to kick in a few thousand toward the land and the cattle

  Cord stood at a window and looked down at the corner of 17th Avenue and Tremont Place. The cobblestone streets were clogged with fancy four-horse teams drawing lurching buckboards and trams, the drays of dairymen and butchers and greengrocers making their daily deliveries. Men in somber suits marched briskly along the raised sidewalks to meetings and all sorts of important dealings; women in velvet hats and veils carried woven straw shopping baskets in the crook of the arm as they stared through plate-glass shop windows. The stores in this part of downtown were mostly expensive, vending luxuries that few Westerners would ever have, or miss: a millinery, haberdasher, barber salon, a cocktail bar with discreetly tinted windows where a banker could take a bracer without upsetting any skittish depositors. Panhandlers moved against the current of pedestrians with palms outstretched; street merchants sold hot chestnuts, Frankfurt sausages, neckties. At the corner, a slick-haired sharper ran a monte game on a folding stand, while loafers leaned against the stone buildings with one leg up, chewing at match sticks and soaking up the spring sunshine.

  Cord gazed across the street and up at the six-and seven-and eight-story granite-faced neo-Gothic facades. He was looking at the advancing frontier of a new way of living in the West, and did not hate it so much as he might have. Still, it reminded him that if he wanted to reserve an unpaved piece of the country, he’d best get on with it. There were still ways to have it all—live mostly in the country but once in a while, a couple weeks of the year, succumb to a taste of life in Seattle or San Francisco, maybe winter a month or so in Arizona or the northern fringes of Old Mexico. Take the train, spare yourself those long, rump-busting days in the saddle

  Chi rapped sharply on the door and let herself in. She did not look to be in any mood to discuss settling down or any other romantic foolishness. “Look here,” she ordered, and shoved a copy of that day’s Rocky Mountain News at Cord. The story was in the left-hand column of the front page.

  YESTERDAY’S OUTRAGE

  Road Agents’ Depredations on the Colorado Springs Stage

  NOTORIOUS DESPERADOS TURN SAVIORS

  The Day Is Saved by the Most Unlikely Hand

  by J. Pete Stark Correspondent

  April 27, en route to Denver—Not since the days preceding Statehood, and not often then, has the Denver to Colorado Springs Post Road witnessed such spoliation, nor absorbed into its ruts such quantities of life’s crimson ichor, as occurred this day at the 24th milepost, just off the turnpike near the ranch of Karl Baumgartner.

  With uncanny prescience, this correspondent was attached to the party on the Wells, Fargo coach which was set upon by three road agents a few minutes before the hour of two, post meridiem, this day. Indeed, we were not only witness but willing combatant in the revolt that overthrew the bandits, and our account is therefore unimpeachable.

  Cord skimmed several paragraphs about how the stage was ambushed, the driver forced to pull off the highway, the passengers off-loaded and robbed of their pocketbooks and watches. Stark had a fine time writing about the valiant death of the shotgun guard when he tried to get the drop, and hit a real lick with the part about the “unwanted attentions” paid to the young widow, whose name was Rachel Wright.

  “I am going to pay that newspaper boy some ‘unwanted attentions,’ ” Chi said darkly. She had come from visiting with the Wright woman.

  “How is she?”

  “How would she be?” Chi snapped. She looked out the window, her back to him. “I can’t stand that kind of business. It makes me want to kill. Shooting scum like those men is natural as scraping manure off your boots.”

  “All right.”

  “She’s starting to come back to herself, and learned something about being tough. She’ll have to stay tough all her life.”

  “Like you,” Cord chanced.

  She turned and her expression finally relaxed. “I can’t help staying tough. Like a horsemeat steak.”

  Cord continued reading. Stark’s prose grew more breathless when he got to the sudden appearance of Cord and Chi.

  At once the first ruffian’s head
separated entirely from his shoulders and his pestilent hands fell away from the woman. In the blink of an eye the second ruffian clutched at his chest and tumbled from his mount. We saw to the third ruffian ourself, bolding removing his shotgun and thrashing the coward with his own weapon.

  Imagine our astonishment when we looked fully upon the visages of our providential saviors and beheld faces we had seen previously—upon the Courthouse wall, lithographed on wanted posters. We beheld the notorious Cord and Chi.

  Could they have reformed? we wondered. They had been our deliverance, so it was with no little relief that we learned from Mr. Cord that he and his “sidekick” were, by virtue of amnesty or time’s forgiveness, no longer fugitive from either the Federal Government or the several States and Territories.

  Chi was reading over his shoulder. She stabbed at the last paragraph with a forefinger. “What’s this? I didn’t read this part before, was afraid this Stark’s writing was curdling my breakfast in my gut.”

  “Neither of our rescuers knew that the Wells, Fargo company had posted with officials of Denver County a $2,000 reward for the capture or carcass of each of the road agents,” Cord read aloud. “ It was our pleasure to so inform them. Mr. Cord, whose manner is surpassingly polite and gentle, demurred. “The satisfaction of aiding the legal order and helping justice prevail,” he told us, “is reward enough.””

  “What the hell?” Chi demanded. “You turned down six thousand dollars without saying anything to me?”

  Cord folded the newspaper and slapped it against his thigh. “In a way of speaking. It didn’t seem like something we wanted to get mixed into.”

  Chi stalked to the door. “We’re going to turn the money over to the woman—she needs it more than Wells, Fargo. I’m going to send that newspaper boy a message.”

  “I already did.” Cord looked sheepish. “I changed my mind.”

  She stared at him. Cord cleared his throat, knowing she would hate the next part. “The sheriff is coming around tomorrow morning with a bank draft. We can change it to currency right after, be out of town and halfway to Wyoming by sunset.” He avoided meeting her scowl. “One more day. I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to deal with the sheriff or any bankers.”

  “When do we give the money to the Wright woman?”

  “We don’t. My three thousand is going to buy land in the Bitterroot Valley.”

  “Blood money,” Chi spat.

  “Just money.”

  “You say so.”

  “Those boys were trash, should have been shot a long time ago. They were giving the profession a bad name.” It was halfway a joke, but true just the same. “It’s legal money,” Cord insisted, “ours free and clear.”

  “You think what it will buy,” Chi pressed. Not me—it won’t buy me. She opened the door and stopped with her back to him. “Rachel Wright can get by with three thousand,” she said. “That’s more than anyone ever gave me.” She turned and stabbed a finger at him. “Just try not to act too much the fool when you take that money, querido. I don’t like to see your name attached to foolishness. Makes me look foolish too, for partnering with you.”

  She waggled the finger. Cord gaped at her and muttered, “Do my best,” but by then she was on her way.

  Three

  Cord kept a careful eye on the people jostling past on the sidewalk along California Street, and one hand over the bulge in his vest where the $6,000 in new banknotes rode. Here was something new: afoot in the middle of a metropolis and worried about some petty pickpocket getting lucky.

  In Cord’s other hand was a bright bouquet of spring flowers. The old woman holding down the street corner, surrounded by baskets full of great sprays of yellow and golden and purple blossoms, had smiled at Cord when he handed over his four bits. “Going to call on your sweetie?” She smirked. “She sees you coming with them flowers, she’ll pull the drapes and be first up the stairs.” The woman’s breasts rested on her flaccid belly. She winked hugely. “I would, anyway.”

  Cord could stand that too; he’d been feeling the fool most of the morning. The day’s business began in the editorial chambers of the Rocky Mountain News, where blue tobacco smoke drifted near the ceiling. The sheriff of Denver was a thick man with a huge star of real gold and a hearty handshake, probably quite a popular fellow with the ladies and the voters and the boys at his drinking club. He was, anyway, politic enough not to bring up Cord’s early history when he handed over the money. Pete Stark grinned at the ceremony over his Remington typewriter, while a quick-sketch artist flashed charcoal over a pad, fashioning a likeness of the scene for the late edition.

  Cord took the check, told Pete Stark that he was about as interested in cooperating on a series of articles about his life as he was in being gelded, and got the hell out of there. He left the sheriff standing with his right hand proffered, looking like a bride abandoned at the altar.

  At the First Bank of Colorado, Cord stood on line behind a woman wearing a straw hat with a wire-and-crepe-paper flower sticking out of the crown. On one cocked hip she balanced a fat little boy. The kid stared over his mother’s shoulder at Cord. Cord disliked children, because he never knew how to react to them. He wished the woman would wipe the brat’s nose so decent citizens were not disgusted.

  But the bank teller was pretty as ever a working girl would be, her silvery blond hair shiny clean and halfway down her back in a daring fall. Cord gave her the bank draft and a smile. “Bet you’re from Dakota.”

  The girl held the draft by the corner with two fingers. She examined it, then Cord, with the same fish-eyed distaste. “Why?” she said finally.

  “Because you look like the handsome daughter of some north-country Swede.”

  She gave him a narrow glance, as if he had spoken in Hebrew. “Why does someone of your sort have this much money?”

  “Good luck, I guess.” Turning up the smile won him nothing.

  The teller showed him the look reserved for her most trying situations. “A bank draft for six thousand dollars is not a matter for levity,” she announced witheringly.

  Cord flexed his jaw, as if trying to find the right words behind his wisdom teeth. “No reason to cry, either. That’s drawn against the County of Denver.”

  “For what?”

  Cord was running shy of patience. His experience with banks ran mostly to unauthorized withdrawals, but he knew when his reins were being jerked. “See here,” he said, beginning a speech about the rights of common citizens.

  “Do you have any identification?” the girl interrupted.

  Cord’s mouth dropped open. He looked around, as if he might find an ally close by. The snot-nosed kid, waiting for his mother at the writing desk, extended his right hand, thumb and forefinger out stiff, the other three folded into a fist. The kid waggled the thumb and said, “Bang. You’re dead, Mister.”

  On the wall above the kid, a sheaf of papers was pinned to a cork board. Cord riffled through them, found what he wanted near the bottom. He ripped the poster down and slapped it in front of the teller. “That’s me,” he said. It was year-old Federal paper offering $5,000. The line drawing wasn’t a bad likeness, actually.

  “You will have to speak with the president,” the teller said to the poster, and disappeared through a door at the end of the counter. She came back thirty seconds later and said, “Step aside, please.”

  Cord lounged against the counter beside her cage while she served other people. Maybe five minutes passed. “Are you?” Cord asked.

  The girl blinked eyes blue as a frozen tarn. “What?”

  “The daughter of a Swede from Dakota?”

  She thought about that. “I am a woman who works for every dime she sees.”

  Cord smiled hugely. “We could make a deal along those lines.”

  Her icy blue eyes widened and her mouth clamped shut. A uniformed bank guard came up, cleared his throat, and said his name, and Cord was saved.

  He followed the guard through a gate at the end of the r
ailing and into the office of a smiling handsome man in a pinstriped suit. He was about Cord’s age, too young by Cord’s stereotype of a bank president. They shook hands. Cord’s $6,000, in hundred-dollar notes, was stacked neatly on the banker’s desk.

  “I understand you have faced flying lead many times, Mr. Cord,” the banker said cordially. “How did that compare to facing our Miss Winter?”

  Cord opened and closed his mouth.

  “Three days ago,” the banker said, “Miss Winter’s fiancé ran away with a cocktail waitress from the Buckhorn Casino. The experience sharpened an already finely honed disposition.”

  “I got away without being cut,” Cord said. “Born lucky.” The young banker laughed with genuine humor.

  The banker had packed the cash into an envelope for Cord, and now as he entered the lobby of the Brown Palace with his fistful of flowers, Cord touched at it again. The clerk was right about one thing. Six thousand dollars was no joke.

  Look what you’ve become, Cord thought. A goddamned goat for money! He had to smile at himself, and he nodded jauntily to the desk clerk and went up the stairs two at a time. He knocked on Chi’s door, and she called, “Ven”. Cord turned the knob, took the envelope of money from his vest pocket, and pushed the door open with the toe of his boot.

  Chi was not alone. Cord felt foolish once again, and this time, angry at himself as well: coming through a door with both hands full was the sort of stupid error that could cost you a fraction of a second of speed, and your life.

  A bony little man sat with his pigeon rump perched on the edge of one of the brocaded armchairs in Chi’s parlor. He leapt to his feet and advanced on Cord. He didn’t seem to realize that Cord’s mitts were occupied until he stuck out his own right hand. Cord stared at him. The little man wiped his hand on the front of his coat. “You’re Cord, right?”