Cord 8, page 10
“Sure,” Chi said. “From ducking it all your life.”
“I was a bad one,” Arrowsmith cheerfully agreed. “But I mended my ways. That’s what I told them, anyway, and as I wasn’t wanted in Idaho and they needed someone who could handle himself and work cheap, I got the position. But that ain’t here nor yon. The thing is, Eudora tracked me down somehow and sent me a wire, offering me a job.”
“You had a job,” Cord said.
“Hers was better. All I had to do was come out here and live on the ranch, take care of matters.”
“What sort of matters?”
“The idea I got was, matters having to do with some sort of trouble. Well, that was all right. I’ve known trouble in my day. And there was the money—five hundred a month.”
“For doing nothing?”
Arrowsmith grinned. “Yeah, I thought it was peculiar, too, son. But it seemed fair, seeing as how I had secrets of my own. I already knew I was gonna die sometime before I saw my next winter. I’d been having odd pains, and not two weeks before I got Eudora’s wire, I’d taken them down to a doctor in Twin Falls. Young fellow, not a year out of Boston. Oh, he knew every little thing about cancers.”
Arrowsmith stubbed out his cigarette. “I wanted to die under a roof, near family.”
“Family?” Cord echoed.
Arrowsmith hesitated a moment. “The boy.”
“What boy?”
“My boy. Felt.” Arrowsmith coughed. “He is my natural son.”
Cord opened his mouth.
Arrowsmith pointed a long bony finger at him. “You be goddamned careful what you say next.”
Cord shut up.
“He’s a good boy. It ain’t his fault he’s ... how he is. Nothing wrong with it, neither.”
“Okay,” Cord said.
Arrowsmith stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then shook his head wearily and closed his eyes. “I never knew how bad it would be. I admitted death, but I did not know it would cripple and debase and humiliate before it took me. If I had, I never would have let it go this far.”
He opened his eyes again. “But someone had to be here. Someone had to take care.” He turned his head to Chi. “You know what I want, mi amiga.”
“We’ll stay.” She flashed a look to Cord that said, Trust me. We will talk. “Until ... something happens.”
“That’s not it.”
Chi frowned, then looked alarmed. “What do you want, viejo?”
“It’s all right now,” Arrowsmith said in a low voice. “You will see that the right thing is done.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But there is the other—I want you to stop it.”
“What?”
“Kill me, goddammit!” Arrowsmith bellowed with startling strength and volume.
“Hold on,” Cord said, startled.
“Do it, mi amiga,” Arrowsmith begged. “Do this thing for me.”
Chi looked frightened. Neither of them had faced the likes of this in all their years of living on the violent edge.
Insight flashed all at once into Cord’s mind: Francie’s dopey, drunken, teasing warning about the Craven woman’s cooking; and Funk, the gentleman rancher in his rimless specs, running a crew of the likes of Baldeen and Peltry; and finally some cattleman in Buffalo, Wyoming, widowing the Craven woman not so many months ago …
Cord stepped forward and bent to Arrowsmith. “Maybe you are asking the wrong woman.” Arrowsmith smelled like death. “Maybe your salvation is close at hand.”
Arrowsmith went into a coughing fit, and Cord pulled back out of the line of fire, feeling a little guilty. The dying man might get his wish—they could kill him by accident with talk. But slowly, painfully, Arrowsmith recovered, dragging himself back from the terrible edge.
“Congratulations, boy,” he said when he could speak. “I knew you wasn’t so dumb as you looked—no one could be. Or maybe you are a lucky guesser. Don’t matter. You hit right.”
“Tell it, old man. Tell it while you got the wherewithal.”
“A couple of weeks after I got here,” Arrowsmith said, “before I started looking too poorly, before anyone knew, I got to drinking with them two piss brains Lud and Virge. I figured if I got them babbling, I might learn a hint of why their mom was paying me five hundred iron men for doing nothing. Well, it worked.” Arrowsmith chuckled. “This fellow in Buffalo wasn’t the first husband to our Eudora. There was one in Miami, Florida, and another in Ames, Iowa.”
“She is running out of country,” Cord said. “She could maybe marry one more in Seattle, but after that she will have to ship for the Sandwich Islands, or Japan.”
That tickled Arrowsmith into gales of laughter and coughing. “Could you see it?” he said, gasping. “Her and some Jap?”
“It’s not that funny,” Chi said.
“Not for them who married her,” Arrowsmith agreed.
“She killed them all?” But Cord knew the answer.
“Fed them arsenic. Their hearts blew up like grenades.” Arrowsmith considered. “ ’Course there are worse ways to go.”
“What about her boys?”
“Oh, they’ve stuck with her through thick and thin,” Arrowsmith said. “No one else’d care for them, and they’re useless at caring for themselves. Anyway,” he continued, “after I got worse and was fixed for good and proper, I asked her. She told me the truth. Maybe she needed to tell someone, and I was a damned safe bet.”
“No one else ever knew?” Chi asked.
“She picked ones who lived outside the towns, and when they went, she buried ’em quick. There wasn’t ever any trouble.”
“Until now,” Cord guessed. “Until this one in Buffalo. I’ll bet you a drink you don’t recollect his name.”
“Don’t ever take up gambling full-time, son.” Arrowsmith took the drink. “His name was Funk. You don’t look surprised.”
“Sorry,” Cord said. “I didn’t mean to be a poor sport.”
“Funk had a brother—I guess you knew that. This other Funk couldn’t nail her for the murder—not so she’d stay nailed in a court of law—but he didn’t figure to let her get off free and clear. He engaged the Pinkertons to find her-—he didn’t say why—and by and by they did. Then, a month ago, he showed up on the front porch.”
“This Funk,” Chi said, “he has cojones.”
“That’s what I thought,” Arrowsmith said. “He told her he knew and demanded all the money she’d taken.”
“What did she say?”
Arrowsmith smiled. “She told him to go fry himself, and then she told Lud to kill him. He would have, too, if I hadn’t pulled myself to that window there and got Lud’s shoulder blades in the sight of my Winchester. I told Lud that if he moved, he got it first. Naturally, Eudora took exception to the interference, but Funk saw it as an omen. He got the hell out of here.”
“But he came back.”
“Yeah, and with muscle. Persistent son of a bitch, ain’t he?”
“Of course, she did kill his brother and steal two hundred thousand dollars,” Cord pointed out. “You can see Funk’s side of it.”
“He didn’t want Pinkertons for the rest of it,” Arrowsmith said. “It could get uncivilized, he figured, and Pinkertons are too much like police. He asked around and hit on the name of Baldeen, who turns out to be a one-time regulator from up north of here, around the Judith Basin. Rode with Granville Stuart’s stranglers, or so he claims. Supposed to be right quick with a rope or gun. Baldeen gathered up some boys and rode in yesterday.”
“How do you know this part?” Chi asked.
“My boy,” Arrowsmith said. “Felt. Mark me. He’s more than he seems at first. He came when I called, all the way from San Francisco. I needed one I could trust and one who could handle himself, and Felt is both. If you are his way, a lot of shit gets dumped your direction. You don’t want to carry its stink all the time, you learn to defend yourself.”
Arrowsmith’s eyes glowed red in the lamplight. “Felt went into that saloon. He talked to Rey, Francie, whoever else wandered through. He found out someone had put Funk onto Baldeen, and it wasn’t hard to guess what for. I had to tell the others.”
“Why?” Cord asked. “Funk has nothing against Felt, and you sure as hell aren’t afraid of dying, not now. Why did you have to side with the Craven woman?”
Arrowsmith stared back for a long time. His eyelids drooped, and the rest of his face sagged as well, as if life were dimming like an ember. “You see what is happening here now,” he said. “I am asking you to back them, for me. There is money in it.” He looked at Chi. “You decide.”
“You answer me, old man,” Cord said.
“Not now,” Arrowsmith said weakly. “Too tired. Go away, and leave that bottle.”
Cord started to speak again, but a sharp look from Chi stopped him. “Sleep, Viejo.” she said, kissing Arrowsmith’s forehead. When she steered Cord out into the corridor, her hand on his arm felt warm through his shirt, warm and alive. There was the key word—alive.
Ten
The craven woman and felt were still in the parlor when Cord and Chi came down the stairs, and tension still flavored the air, but they were no longer arguing. The woman and Felt looked up, and Cord guessed that the topic had turned to them, to him and Chi.
Lud and Virge had joined them. As Cord and Chi came in, Lud drained the last of a bottle of beer and grabbed another from the side table. Lud cupped his palm over the crimped tin cap, gave it one quick, hard wrench, and the cap popped off with a hiss. Here was a boy who did not know his own strength. At least he didn’t bite off the bottleneck, Cord thought.
Virge stood in the shadowy corner where he could watch the rest of them in semi privacy. Cord revised his opinion of Virge. While no mastermind, he was not quite the dumb lummox his bigger brother was. Lud inherited his mother’s size, while Virge got her elemental shrewdness.
“What did he tell you?” the Craven woman said. She looked from Cord to Chi. “What did he want?”
“Company,” Chi said. “Someone to talk with while he waits to die.”
Lud gulped down beer. His jug ears twitched, and he gave the impression of not entirely comprehending what was going on, though he sensed botheration in the room the same way a dog sensed anger or fear. Perplexity creased his coarse, shaggy face and his broad, sloping forehead.
“It’s the fever,” the Craven woman said reasonably. “You can see how it gets him. He is in and out of his head all the time.”
“No, he’s not,” Chi said.
The Craven woman looked pained. Virge moved into the splash of lantern light. “You can’t tell with him,” he said. “He don’t even know himself. He can’t cut out the true facts from the sickness and the laudanum vapors and the rot all through his brain.”
“Shut up,” Chi snapped.
Virge pointed a finger at the ceiling and advanced another step. “That old man up there, he ain’t at the center of this. He ain’t hardly a part of it. He is good as gone.”
Cord saw plainly what was coming next, but Virge Craven missed it altogether. Chi was deeply angered by this talk and very damned close to turning this fight into something physical, and perforce deadly.
But before Cord could step in, the front door swung open to admit a breath of cool night air, followed by Francie. She was falling down drunk, doped up, or most likely both. Her slouch hat was missing, her brown hair was a tangled nest, and one shirttail flapped free. An old Starr army-model .44 revolver was tucked into the waistband of her britches.
“Well, here we all are,” Francie said, her voice slurred and arrhythmic. She peered through glazed eyes at the six people in the room, devoting several seconds to each. Her brain seemed to take that long to process each face.
“Silence,” the Craven woman bellowed.
Francie smiled at her. She swayed like a sapling in a breeze when she shut the door behind her, and as she lurched past Lud, she plucked his beer from his hand and took a deep swig. Lud started to protest.
“Come on,” Cord muttered to Chi, figuring to take advantage of the interruption.
“Wait,” the Craven woman ordered.
Chi looked at her defiantly. Chi’s forbearance had run out, and now she was ready for any fight.
“Please,” the Craven woman said in a milder voice. “If there is anything you must know, ask me. I will tell you what you wish.”
A smile spread slowly across Chi’s dark features.
“Bueno.” Chi said to the Craven woman. “Tell me how it is to watch a man die from poison. Does he twitch and scream?”
The Craven woman gasped and stepped back as if she had been struck. Lud began to whimper. From the corner of his eye, Cord noted Felt against the far wall, watching this with a look of satisfied anticipation, like a scientist about to see an experiment bear fruit.
Francie threw back her head and laughed.
The Craven woman whipped around and gave Francie a black murderous scowl. She advanced, her massive bulk swaying across the too-close room.
Considering how drunk she was, Francie moved with admirable speed, clubbing the beer bottle and swinging on the Craven woman.
The big woman caught Francie’s wrist and twisted, and Francie opened her fingers. The bottle rolled across the rug, gurgling out a trail of beer. The Craven woman bared her teeth and twisted harder, and Francie went down to one knee, moaning with sudden pain.
“Stop that!” Chi’s Colt was in her hand, cocked and ready.
Lud Craven took a bearish step toward her.
Chi turned the gun on him. “Right there,” she said, “or I will decorate the walls with your guts. Cord …” she said, keeping her eye on the big, slow boy.
“She will do it, Lud,” Cord said, sounding almost regretful. “She will put the first bullet in your belly, and from then on it will hurt like the Devil as long as you live, which won’t be long.”
“Bastard,” Virge spat, his gun already clearing his holster.
Felt’s leg shot out gracefully, and the toe of his boot cracked into Virge’s wrist. Virge screamed and dropped the weapon. Felt bent and scooped it up, casually setting it on the side table beside Lud’s beer.
“Why not finish up?” Felt suggested to Chi. “Virge first, then Lud.”
“And after that?” Chi snapped.
Felt frowned.
The Craven woman released Francie, who scuttled away. “And then?” she said to Felt. “Then me?”
“Maybe.” Felt looked up and met her gaze. “It could happen.”
The Craven woman turned her head slightly and spat on the carpet. “Bawd,” she catcalled at Felt. “Libertine.”
Felt shook his head as if she were the one who merited pity. Chi helped Francie to her feet. Francie wore a crooked booze-dumb grin. “You going up to stay with him?” Chi asked.
Francie nodded.
“All right, then,” Chi said. No one objected. Francie went up the stairs, stumbling and bouncing off the wall and the bannister.
“Guess we’ll be moseying along ourselves,” Chi said with a nasty smirk. “I am ready now.”
“Fine,” Cord said. “That’s fine.” He kept both eyes on the rest of them as he and Chi edged out the front door.
Felt clattered down the porch steps and caught up with them in the middle of the yard. “You talked to him,” he said.
“Your father?”
Felt licked his lips, his face pale in the indirect light from the house. “That isn’t what this is about.”
“No? Tell us what this is about, chico.”
“It’s about two hundred thousand dollars. All ours, if her and her two boys are gone.”
Chi leaned forward so her face was very close to Felt’s. “So kill them,” she hissed.
Felt’s head snapped back, as if she had spat in his face. “Not me ... I don’t do killing.”
“But we do,” Cord said, just as annoyed now that the booze was wearing off. “Is that what you are saying?”
“She is a murderess,” Felt insisted, “and her boys were in on everything. They probably held those men down, her husbands, held them down while—”
“That’s enough,” Cord said. He wished he hadn’t left the bottle, but he did not want another drink badly enough to face Arrowsmith again, not tonight. “I am gut-full of all of you,” Cord said, “and I won’t hear one more word about any of it.”
Felt opened his mouth.
Cord slapped his face, not hard. Felt’s face reddened, and his stiff jaw quivered with humiliation.
“Not one word,” Cord repeated. He turned his back on Felt and stalked into the barn, knowing Chi was covering him just in case. Still, Felt did not strike him as a back-shooter.
Cord lit the lantern and looped the handle over a hook screwed into one of the roof beams. He settled wearily on the pile of clean hay, back to the wall, forearms on knees. When Chi came in, Cord pushed back his hat and regarded her. She smiled. At least it was all right between them.
Chi reached under her serape and produced a flat pint bottle. She tossed it to Cord, who unscrewed the top and drank. It was cheap bourbon, not quite as tasty as Jim Beam but bourbon.
“That was nice, giving the viejo your bottle. Muy simpático. I found this in the house.”
“Gracias,” Cord said. The whiskey calmed him.
Chi crouched on her haunches before him.
“Now what?” Cord said.
Chi took the bottle and drank.
“We going to fight against this man Funk?”
“What do you think?” Chi asked.
“I think we got a problem.” He gave her his pouch, and she began to make cigarettes. “I think that all things considered, if we had to get into this foofaraw for some reason and we had our choice, we’d be fighting for Funk, not against him. In fact, there is no question.”
Chi lit two cigarettes and gave him one, stuffing the pouch back into his shirt pocket.
“Easy way to solve it, though,” Cord said, taking a leisurely pull on the smoke.
“What way is that?”
“We give the Craven woman to him.”
Chi studied the glowing tip of the cigarette.
