Cord 9 Read online

  “You are determined to murder me dead,” Wee Bill said. “Nothing I can say nor do will change that.”

  “You got that part reckoned right.” The speaker, astride a black horse, was disguised as the others in the night rider’s uniform of hood and duster, but he stood out for his size: his bulky mass was nearly a match for Bliss’s. He rode a horse big enough for him, with three white-stockinged feet. Cord noted his boots—he’d seen the like before: of heavy stiffened black leather, with big brass buckles on the saddle straps and blocked-off toes that were likely lined with sheet steel. These were fighting boots, designed to give the wearer the edge soon as the brawling started, and to inflict maximum bone-breaking damage as it progressed.

  Bliss leaned in the saddle and said something in a low deep voice to the man in the fighting boots. The man laughed. Bliss jerked angrily away from him, shook his head. The other man laughed again and twisted around in the saddle to look over Cord. Behind the hood’s peepholes, the man’s eyes sparkled in the torchlight; he looked like something carved for Halloween, and Cord thought of the Headless Horseman in the boys’ tale.

  The man at Cord’s back said, “Guess how you end up?” Cord started. He had not thought it through that far, had not credited the perverse notion that a nighttime ride could lead to the end of a rope. But they figured him for Wee Bill’s partner—or not, maybe only a passing rider who’d already seen too much to be left alive … it came to the same thing. The darkness of real anger began to fall over Cord’s eyes. Jesus Christ—it was too pointless: hung dead for bad timing …

  “Hey now,” Cord said.

  Bliss pulled his horse back, stared down at Cord. “Bind him,” Bliss said.

  The rifle barrel stayed hard into Cord’s back while someone tied his wrists with a bit of rope, jerking the knots tight. Cord’s eyes watered.

  “I told you to be still, sir.” But a faint tinge of regret had crept into Bliss’s tone.

  Cord’s captor said, “Let’s go take in the show,” in Cord’s right ear. The gun came away from Cord’s back, but then the man jerked up hard on his bound wrists, pushing Cord forward and levering pain from his shoulder joints.

  Bliss had forgotten him. He stared down at Wee Bill Blewin from a great calm distance. “Now sir, is the time to speak in your defense.”

  Wee Bill worried at his lower lip with his teeth, as if considering how to tell it. “Them horses ...”

  “Yes?”

  “You hear of Albert Canaday?” Wee Bill asked. “Runs maybe eight hundred head of cows and horses near Buffalo, Wyoming?”

  “No sir,” Bliss rumbled. His voice, when calm, sounded like a storm beyond a far mountain range.

  “This Canaday has sold them horses to a Rocky Boy Indian, name of Petey Greentree, up on Milk River. Me and my partner is hired to trail them up there.”

  Bliss cocked his head toward Cord and kept his eye on Wee Bill. “This man,” he declared.

  Wee Bill looked around. “Anyone got a smoke?” he asked.

  “Where is your partner?” Bliss demanded.

  “Went into town.”

  “What the hell?” the man in the square-toed boots growled. “We come here to do business or to powwow?”

  Bliss said to Wee Bill, “You can produce a bill of sale?”

  For the first time, uncertainty colored the little man’s features. “My partner’s got it.”

  Bliss’s bushy dark eyebrows furrowed in a deep V, but the rest of the men burst into laughter. Wee Bill smiled as if in on the joke. “You do mean to string me,” he said softly.

  “Save yourself.”

  Wee Bill snorted.

  “Name your partner—if he exists.”

  Wee Bill seemed to consider the offer. “I guess I won’t,” he said.

  “We shall do what we came for,” Bliss announced.

  “I figured,” Wee Bill said, almost amiably, “starting about when you blew my door in and rousted me out of bed.” He looked around at the hooded men. “Wish there’d been a little more warning, give me time to pull on my britches at least.”

  “Proceed,” Bliss called out.

  “Anyway,” Wee Bill said, “soon as it begun, I could see clear through to the end.” He reflected. “Though I will say that knowing how it comes out don’t make it easier to live through.”

  But Bliss had backed his horse away, and no one was listening to Wee Bill now except for Cord.

  “You and you.” The man in the fighting boots picked out two men. “See if there is anything we can use in that cabin.” He looked around at the others. “You-all know what to do.”

  The night riders moved with concert and precision now, as if they had drilled at the payoff to this drama or played it out enough before to have it down pat. Two men rode around to the side of the corral, bent in the saddle, and worked one of the fence rails loose from either end. Raising it over their heads, they propped it across the six-foot space between the cabin’s flat roof and the top of the wall of the open-sided feed shed. It formed a crossbeam maybe eight feet above the dirt yard.

  Two men came out of the cabin: one carried a lantern, the other a tin can of coal oil.

  “No!” Bliss said. “Do you wish to burn down this basin?”

  “Just this rustlers’ roost,” the man in the fighting boots said. “Look around.” The soddy was surrounded by bare yard on every side. “This ain’t grass-fire weather anyway,” he went on. Before Bliss could object further, he barked orders: “Couple of you get them horses out and down the road apiece. We don’t want them spooking on us.”

  A hangman’s noose had already been fashioned in the thick hemp rope that another man flung over the rail. He took several turns of the loose end around his saddle horn, backed his horse so the loop hung about head-level off the ground. Across the corral, mounted men got the last of the horses out and moved them down the dirt track, careful to keep them well away from the torch fire.

  The men flanking Wee Bill had his little wrists tied up tight and were hustling him over beneath the beam. No one made jokes now or spoke at all as a man settled the rope over Wee Bill’s head and around his neck, jerked ragged stray strands of his hair out of the way, slipped the knot up tight under his right ear. The night riders had come to see the life choked out of a man while he hung kicking like a frog, and now it was about to happen. The hangman backed his horse another step to make the rope taut and pulled Wee Bill erect but not quite off the ground. The mob watched in awed silence, fascinated at the fragility of life and their power to stop it cold, easy as smashing a watch with a hammer. Faces shined brightly in the irregular light, impassioned at the forbidden sight of death, and relieved: It was not them. The little man’s mortality was not theirs, so from his death they drew some dark, half-formed, perverse reassurance of life. They were of that sort.

  Cord felt sick.

  Wee Bill rose on his toes to take the pressure off the rope.

  “Wait one minute.” Cord’s voice sounded tight, as if the rope girded his own throat. He spoke louder. “One goddamned minute.”

  Someone snickered, and someone else said, “Getting ready to piss his pants,” but for the moment they were watching him. Bliss frowned with distaste, raised his saber high over his head. “Prepare to carry out justice,” he ordered, and the moment was broken.

  “You are in one hell of a hurry to murder,” Cord said desperately.

  The man with the kerosene began splashing it over the wood facade of the soddy, tossed what was left onto the shed.

  “Lock him up,” Cord pressed. “Check his story, find this Canaday ...”

  “There is no Canaday.” Bliss’s fervor was rising, and Cord felt that at this moment all of this business tottered on an edge, below which lay abyss. “There is no bill of sale. There is only this rustler, his crime and his condemnation, and God’s mercy on his soul.”

  But Wee Bill had awakened to this last slim chance of salvation. “What he said.” He jutted his chin in Cord’s direction. “
There are ways you could learn if I am smoking you.”

  “We came for hanging,” the man in the fighting boots insisted.

  “Listen.” Now, finally, Wee Bill was pleading.

  “Do him.” There was threat and command in the voice of the man in the fighting boots, and Bliss heard it and the message it conveyed: He could exercise his authority or have it seized. Bliss stared back from under his thick eyebrows and brought the saber down in a broad sweep.

  The hangman jerked hard on his reins and his horse raised up its head, snorted, and abruptly backed away several surprised steps. Wee Bill was jerked off the ground so quickly and violently his head banged against the beam. The hangman held his horse and Wee Bill’s weight fell against the rope’s tension. That did it: his neck snapped, and he was hanged.

  The hangman walked his horse forward, and Wee Bill’s corpse collapsed liquidly to the dirt. A rich stink rose from him. Someone worked the rope from his neck. A bit of blood flowed between Wee Bill’s lips. Another night rider was crouched beside him; when he rose and stepped away, Cord saw the placard pinned to the front of Wee Bill’s union suit: HORSE THIEF.

  “Fire ’em up?” One of the torch men looked around and blinked, the first violation of the silence that had descended on the clearing.

  “Not just yet.” It was the man in the fighting boots, and he was looking at Cord. Bliss stared fervently at the body and did not seem to hear.

  “Your turn,” the man behind Cord said, and pushed him forward.

  Bliss jerked his head up. There was possession and ardor in his dark coarse face, and something that could have been madness. “Now then sir,” he said, and closed his mouth, as if he had lost the thread.

  “Forget that shit,” the man in fighting boots said. “We got to string him, whatever.”

  “Is that so?” Bliss said dangerously.

  Cord listened to them talk about murdering him and tried to marshal his thoughts into a search party for solutions. He had faced plenty enough deadly situations and walked away whole, mostly because he kept his head and did not give up, partly because he’d had some luck. But right now no plan came to mind because none existed, and luck had gone south at the last fork.

  “Listen close, old man,” the man in the fighting boots said. “Figure out whose balls get squeezed if we let this hombre live. Whose name does he know, whose name and whose face?” He laughed. “How do you like it, Captain Mallory Bliss?”

  “You cur,” Bliss said.

  “Sure,” the other man said amiably.

  Cord heard agreement in the murmurs of the other men. “We already hung four of these bastards this week,” one said. “Another ain’t gonna hurt.”

  “We finish up,” the man with the lantern said, “then get outside a drink of whiskey.”

  One good idea, Cord thought desperately. There was a path out of this madness, and all he need do was discover one good idea for finding it. Hands prodded at him and walked him forward and got the coarse stiff rope over his ears. As it passed before his eyes, Cord thought he saw where one turn of the hemp was wet and dark with Wee Bill’s blood. It settled around his neck, the knot tight against his jugular.

  Cord saw Bliss, staring back at him up there horseback, his dark eyes blank and bottomless. To one side, a man whirled the lantern around his head, whooped, and flung it into the soddy door. The lamp disintegrated in an explosion of glass and a splash of liquid flame that washed the front of the cabin. A rider threw his torch into the old dry hay on the floor of the shed. Fire climbed its wall.

  The hangman stepped his horse back. Cord tensed the muscles in his neck, tried to make them hard as iron against the crushing pressure. Strands of the rope prickled his flesh like needles. Above him, the fires had reached either end of the beam over which the rope was dangling. The insistent pull lifted Cord’s bootheels from the hard-packed dirt. He stumbled, and the rope held him upright and dug into the softness beneath his chin.

  A horse squealed at the fire and pawed the ground, kicking up gravel. Cord felt bits of it against his pants leg. The hangman pulled his horse back and Cord stood on toe tips, twisting at the rope’s end. The fire enveloped the walls to either side, seared at him, toasting his skin red. Above, flames walked along the beam to a meeting where the rope hung. The hangman laughed, and the rope jerked sharply.

  Cord’s windpipe closed up, and he was lifted part of the way clear of the ground, and then he was hanging free and could not breathe at all. He swung in the air and heard the fire crackling and men calling out and horses blowing, all against the roar of blood pounding and rushing in his ears.

  The blood had colored his vision as well, or perhaps it was the fire, but when Cord glimpsed Bliss, it was through a crimson veil. Involuntarily, Cord swung backward at the rope’s end. Bliss jerked away from another man, slashed wildly with the saber at Cord. The blade swept past Cord’s eyes, flashing blood-red in the firelight, and came around again backhand to meet Cord’s body as he swung forward.

  Someone cursed. The blade passed over Cord’s head and the rope jerked hard. He saw men struggling above him, saw the saber’s blade cross his field of vision another time; the rope twanged once more and let him down. Cord fell, crumpled hard to the ground; loose rope puddled atop him.

  Still he could not breathe; the noose was vise-tight around his windpipe, and he could not draw air past it or get his hands out from behind to loosen the rope’s coil. Sweat burned his eyes. It was like drowning in lava …

  Above Cord, the fire-weakened beam crackled and tore. He looked through the sweat, and fire was raining down in his face. He tried to roll free but could move hardly at all, so the flames came down all around him and very close, enveloping him in their scorching heat. He felt burning pain but dimly, dully because numbness was taking over, starting at his closed throat and racing everywhere through his body.

  Cord closed his eyes. For just a moment he saw red fire still, but then it winked out and was replaced by a long tunnel of cool blackness. Cord lunged forward and escaped into it.

  Chapter Two

  “Once upon a time,” Chi said, “There was a bandido. This was years ago, in another country.”

  The man across from her smiled vaguely and leaned back in his chair to cross his legs.

  “A robber,” Chi said. “Banks, trains, stagecoaches. His name was Rogelio Duro, but I am going to call him Hardiman.”

  “Why?” the man asked.

  “Because this is my story,” Chi said. “And I can tell it any goddamned way I please.” But she didn’t sound angry.

  “Yes you can,” the man said. He was clean-shaven and had regular handsome features and very white teeth.

  “Greed and sloth,” Chi said.

  The man looked at her narrowly.

  “The reasons most folk turn to banditry.” Chi frowned. “What is your name?”

  “Stern,” the man said. “I already told you, twice.”

  “I forgot,” Chi said. “Both times.” Late afternoon sun streaked through the greasy window above the table. Oasis Saloon was stenciled on it in an arch of four-inch letters that framed the railroad station across the street; the shingle hanging from the rain gutter over the station’s short end marked this stop as Big Timber. “But not Hardiman,” Chi said.

  Stern looked confused. “What about Hardiman?”

  “Hardiman turned to banditry for love,” Chi said.

  “I should have guessed,” Stern said, and waved his left hand. He had card player’s fingers, long and thin with clean, shapely nails.

  “He was young, and there was a woman. She was older than he, handsome and dark.”

  “Like you,” Stern said.

  Chi shook her head. “Not me.” She flashed a quick brittle smile. “I don’t like chiquitos.”

  But actually this Stern was not so much younger than she; somewhere around thirty, Chi guessed. He wore black gabardine trousers and a matching vest; a new brown felt hat with a narrow flat brim and a flat crown lay uprig
ht on the table to his right. He had nice hair, blond and wavy, and every now and then he smoothed the sides of it with the palms of his hands. She could stand that, but she didn’t like his ruffled white shirt.

  “This Hardiman,” Chi said. “He thought the woman would like him more if he had plenty of money.”

  “That works sometimes,” Stern said carefully.

  Chi shrugged. “Money never hurts.” The tequila bottle at her right elbow was two-thirds empty; the first sip from it had been breakfast. “Hardiman determined to steal enough to please her,” Chi said. “If he died trying, he imagined she would mourn him, which was another way to have her heart.”

  “Second best choice, though,” Stern said.

  “You find this too romantic to believe?”

  Stern shrugged.

  Chi held the bottle by the neck. The Oasis Saloon was pleasant enough for day drinking. There was a brass rail along the foot of the bar and sawdust on the floor, scattered around a fat cast-iron stove. Its firebox was cold, for this was a fine spring day. The bartender had a fringe of white hair like a tonsure and shiny fat white cheeks and cheerful pink eyes.

  Customers came and went. If any were bemused or titillated or annoyed by the presence of a handsome tequila-drinking brown woman, they had the manners or good sense to keep it to themselves. So no one had bothered her, except maybe Stern. He bothered her a little.

  Chi filled the shot glass in front of her, pouring a thin ribbon of tequila into the exact center of the false bottom until the meniscus of the liquor bulged up above the rim. “Well, it’s true,” Chi said, as if Stern had gainsaid her.

  Stern’s fluted double-shot glass remained half-full of Kentucky sour mash table whiskey. Here was the sort of man who did not like liquor and never had but learned to drink it so he could be around without attracting attention. “Tell your tale,” Stern said.

  “¿Tiene prisa?” Chi snapped.

  Stern shook his head no. “I got plenty of time.”

  Chi raised her shot glass in a rock-steady hand and drank down the tequila. “Your pard there, though, he’s starting to get skittish.” She cocked her head toward the bar and watched Stern.