Cord 4, page 5
Cord wished he could put aside the rules of obligation and debt and ride out with Chi and the money they were packing, back to Juarez and warm afternoons with the good Mexican beer. But by his lights that was simply not an alternative. You paid your debts; that was a rule. So Kinsolving owned his loyalty for this little while.
“There are already too many players in this hand,” Cord said. “Con James and that crowd of hoodlums stinking up that soddy. Bowen comes into it too. God knows how it fits together.”
“How long?” Chi said.
Cord frowned. “Huh?”
“How long have you owed him?”
“Twelve years.”
“He was a viejo even then?”
“Not altogether.” Cord had been thinking about those days all the ride north, and now it was time Chi knew about it. But before he could begin a gust of wind caught the heavy door and slammed it all the way around into the wall. Aggie stood framed in the opening, her spooked eyes fixed on Chi. She was shivering.
“Come in, niña,” Chi said gently. She came around the bar toward the girl, and the girl moved to meet her, passing Cord like a sleepwalker. Cord pushed his chair back impatiently, and at the sound the girl jumped away from him. Snow lashed Cord’s face when he shut the door.
Chi sat the girl near the stove, but Aggie pulled loose and sat as far from Cord as she could get. Her fingers worried at the frayed material of her skirt. She began to shiver again, so every part of her trembled.
Chi fetched whiskey and a glass, but even with two hands the girl could not hold it without liquor slopping over the table. Chi guided the glass to her mouth. The girl swallowed the smoky whiskey and then shuddered once more, so violently Cord thought she had suffered some sort of seizure. But then she sat immobile, staring at the swaybacked deck of cards.
Chi pushed a matted rope of hair from the girl’s pale face, and whispered something Cord could not hear. The girl took Chi’s hand in both of hers.
The child spooked Cord; children often did, even if they were not crazy like this one. The trouble was that so many people treated them by special rules, as though youngsters deserved more than they had earned. That went against the code by which Cord lived. He wondered if Chi saw something of herself in this girl, or if she reminded Chi of another child from a faraway Mexico past. Whichever, her instant empathy was as disquieting as the child herself.
“They are out there.”
It was the first words the child had spoken.
“Who is out there, chica?” Chi asked in the tone she might use to gentle a young horse.
Aggie’s huge eyes bored into her. “You saw them. I can tell.” She muttered something Cord missed.
“What is she going on about?” he snapped, more sharply than he’d meant.
“‘The dark men,’” Chi repeated. “Diablos?” she wondered.
“They are out there on the prairie, waiting.” Aggie’s tone was suddenly almost rational. “You know who I mean. They are coming for us, today or tomorrow or whenever. For all of us, and the old sheriff and the young sheriff and the dark lady.”
“What lady?”
Aggie ignored Cord. “We will all disappear like this.” She made a fist, then let her fingers fly open.
“It is all right,” Chi murmured.
“Oh, no.” Aggie was perfectly calm. “It is not all right.”
“Forget it,” Cord said, unaccountably angered. “She rode out some time and ran into that crowd in the soddy. Who wouldn’t be frightened by those vultures? But there is no need to turn it into some kind of campfire ghost story.”
Aggie’s hands shot out and she grabbed the open whiskey bottle. She managed two thick swallows before Chi could grab it away. Aggie flinched as if she had been struck. Chi reached for her but Aggie slipped under her hands and scuttled to the door, throwing it open.
Cord swore, and Aggie fixed him with her mad stare. “They will not let you be, you know.” Again her voice had gone matter-of-fact. “They will not let you be until you are dead.” The girl stepped out into the blowing snow and was gone. Cord blinked twice. He followed Chi out the open door.
They could see nothing but grayness from the boardwalk fronting the store. The street was empty in either direction.
Back inside, Chi shut the door and stood with her back against it. Her fine features were creased in a thoughtful scowl.
“Well,” she said finally, “the muchacha had the last part right enough.”
Six
By midday the snow had picked up, dry brittle flakes slanting relentlessly across the street, driven by hard gusts. A drift was piling higher against the front of Kinsolving’s office, while some of the street had been blown clear to reveal ruts of frozen mud. Chi drew the thong holding her sombrero tighter; and Cord held the brim of his Stetson with his gloved left hand, ducking his head into the frigid wind.
A path was beaten into the snow from the back door of the sheriff’s office to Kinsolving’s cabin, a tight log building that told Cord the people of Prine County were once willing to take trouble to attract a good man as sheriff. Kinsolving must have been watching for them, because he swung open the door and squinted out into the blow as they approached.
“Come in,” he said. “Shuck the heavy duds and I’ll fix us some warming.” Uneasiness cut his hearty tone.
Cord shrugged out of the heavy lamb’s-wool-lined coat, hung it on a hook near the door, and stomped snow from his boots. Chi looked around the room with open interest, her eyes settling on Kinsolving. He stood it a moment, then rubbed his hands together briskly for no reason and turned away.
In the cabin’s front room were a table and four chairs, a sideboard with bare wood showing through worn spots in the varnish, and a low two-shelf bookcase with a Holy Bible and a pile of yellow-covered dime novels. A lamp and a stack of four thick white plates sat on the table, and an unopened whiskey bottle and four glasses on the sideboard, reflecting firelight from the isinglass woodstove door. On the wall between the doors into the back rooms hung a calendar with a colored picture of a proud, prosperous-looking farmer in spotless coveralls standing in front of an endless field of golden wheat. Under the picture, in block letters, was printed SUNSHINE SEED CO., 273 SUMMER STREET, TOPEKA, KANSAS—JUST ADD SUNSHINE, OUR SEEDS WILL DO THE REST.
Kinsolving was at the sideboard, worrying the cork from the fresh bottle. This country would drive any man to a more or less steady routine of drinking, but it seemed to Cord that Kinsolving lived for the bottle.
“Sit down.” Kinsolving poured the last of three drinks. “Grub will be ready in a few minutes.” Cord took a chair with his back to the front door From the kitchen came the odor of frying meat. Four plates, four glasses; the child Aggie had mentioned a woman, and there was that extra horse in the stable. So Kinsolving had a lady friend.
Cord let his whiskey sit. Kinsolving cleared his throat and did not say anything. Awkward discomfort was palpable in the room, though Chi seemed untouched by it, composed and relaxed. But Cord had some personal experience with bourbon whiskey, and he knew how it could push a man through changes. You could never keep up with the moods of some hard drinkers; it was like sharing a room with six different people, one of them always coming on to you and you never knowing which one would start in next.
So Cord expected to accomplish only the simple task of finding out what Kinsolving had in mind. Later he could figure out what to do about it. But one thing was certain: The bond between them was long in the past. All that remained was an unpaid debt.
Right then the door from the kitchen opened and a woman backed through it, forks and spoons in one hand and salt and pepper shakers in the other She was tall, slim hipped, and small-breasted, her angular figure little softened by the white shirtwaist and apron over a straight black skirt. Her dark hair was pinned up, the errant strands damp from the cooking steam.
The woman’s gaze was hard and somehow predatory, like that of a gambler staring at poker hands and figuring odds. What do you mean to me, her look said. What is the measure of your worth? Can I use you, or are you a threat? Her eyes were ebony-dark, and she held them on Cord as she set the table, before glaring at Chi.
Over the years Chi had grown used to the idea of other women excluding her from their notion of society. Women looked on Chi with disapproval, suspicion, condemnation, or fear. Even with envy, but never with friendship, never with acceptance. That was all right though, long as they let her be. Cord had a hunch this one would not.
He stood, and Kinsolving, taken by surprise, almost knocked over his chair in following. “This here is Mae. Miss Mae Cornell. These are Mr. Cord and Miss Chi, that I was telling you about, Mae.”
Chi nodded. Cord said, “Hello,” and got the same back, along with a thin-lipped smile no warmer than the Kansas gale. Mae’s eyes were too small, or maybe set too close.
She looked to be in her twenties, about half Kinsolving’s age.
Kinsolving put an arm around her waist, then took it quickly away, like he’d been caught at something improper. To occupy his hands, he picked up his glass. “Drink up, folks. We got something to celebrate.”
“I’ll have coffee,” Chi said to Mae Cornell.
The thin woman’s eyes went darker. Despite the apron and housewifely trappings, Cord had already figured out that Mae Cornell was not the sort to cook some man’s meals and scrub his floors by day, and then lie passionlessly supine while he did his quick, rough business at night. Not and call that a life. So she would not like this game of serving maid, especially not for another woman—not one like Chi.
“Coffee sounds fine,” Cord said, mildly as he could manage. Mae Cornell turned on her heel, returning from the kitchen with three cups and a tin pot. She set the cups at each place but Kinsolving’s, so the older man reached across and grabbed Cord’s glass and drained it, almost defiantly.
The meal was salty bacon and beans and stale hardtack. A man needed fresh meat to keep up his strength in weather like this, and it didn’t look to Cord like he’d be seeing any in this Weed town. “There we go,” Kinsolving said pointlessly when Mae set out the food, and after that no one spoke. Mae Cornell kept sneaking studying looks at Chi, but Chi seemed done with the woman and did not glance up.
Kinsolving pushed away his half-full plate and reached for the whiskey bottle. “What about her?” he said suddenly.
Cord’s fork was halfway to his mouth. “How’s that?”
Kinsolving inclined his head in Chi’s direction. “I got things to say now, things that don’t want to be nosed around. So we got to decide right here if she is in, because if so she has got to pull all the way.”
Chi slapped her palm down on the table. “What about her?”
“Easy,” Cord said. He pushed his own plate toward Kinsolving. “There is no question,” he told the other man.
“Cord, we are talking serious money.”
Chi snorted. “Speak your piece, hombre. Tell us the story we have come six hundred miles to hear.”
“I don’t think—” Mae Cornell began.
All Chi did was point a finger at the other woman, but it worked good as a slap across the face. Mae went a shade more pale, and Chi smiled a killer smile; “That’s right,” Chi said. “You don’t think, and you stay quiet. Whatever happens in this town, I’ll never have any need for you. I’ll hurt you. Believe in that, puta.”
Mae Cornell opened and closed her mouth. Then her head whipped around and she turned her angry glare on Kinsolving. He licked his lips and said nothing. She stood, shaking with anger, and was turning away when she thought of how to save the situation for herself.
She looked down at Kinsolving and laughed.
There was loathing and derision and no humor in the sound, and it seemed to echo for a moment after she had shut the kitchen door behind her. Backed into a corner, this woman would bite the head off a snake, Cord figured. She had turned on the weakest person at the table with the coyote instincts of a carrion eater.
Kinsolving looked miserable, deflated. He drank his drink, and then he squared his shoulders with the resolve of a man about to dive into an icy creek.
“Most times,” the old man said finally, “trains don’t stop in Weed during the winter. They don’t stop much any time, unless there is a boxcar of supplies for the merc, or some piece of special-order farming equipment from Saint Louis. In June and at the end of the summer there is flatcars for the wheat sacks, but that’s only three or so weeks a year. Rest of the time the place is only a whistle-stop, when someone wants off.”
“Sure,” Chi said blandly, “but who would want off here?”
Kinsolving had been talking in a low, almost toneless voice, but now he spoke with a little heat. “Well now, miss, you might be surprised.”
“Surprise me.”
“There’s people coming tomorrow, about midday. And we are going to be mightily glad to see them.” Kinsolving poured and drank and wiped the corner of his mouth on the side of his wrist.
“One week ago,” Kinsolving went on, “I was informed by telegraph about this train. It’s going to be in the yard half an hour maybe, whatever it takes to lade on wood and water.”
“Here in Weed,” Cord said, half to himself.
“That’s right. And not because the place is so pretty neither. The folks on this train, they don’t want to be bothered by a crowd of people rubbernecking around. These are folks who like being left alone. Which is why I was informed, as the duly constituted law in Prine County. I was asked to assist in any way I could, make sure the townsfolk don’t get in the way of orderly railroad business. They suggested it would not be a bad idea, either; if I had all my deputies in the near vicinity.” Kinsolving barked a short laugh. “Good thing Tom got back when he did.”
“Some kind of brass hat,” Cord guessed. “A senator or a capitalist, or some other kind of heavyweight crook.”
“Sure. A onetime claim-jumper named J. C. Arbuckle. Except now he is J. C. Arbuckle Minerals and Metals, out of New York City. Not that he is going to be personally riding that train.”
Kinsolving grinned, warmed by his story and the whiskey. “This Arbuckle owns some paying mines in the high-mountain country north of Durango, around Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, those parts in Colorado. I don’t have to tell you it isn’t easy to get in there this time of winter, and this year has been especially contrary. It has been storming up there since October and Arbuckle’s people have not been able to deliver the Christmas payroll, which is now some six weeks overdue. The miners started out sullen, and now they have moved on to shooting-mad.
“Unless he pays them off quick,” Kinsolving said, “the best thing Arbuckle can hope for is a strike that would shut him down until spring. The worst thing would be for the boys to start blowing dynamite in the deep shafts. Being a man who will spend a dollar to save ten, Arbuckle has chartered a train from New York to Denver and over the Divide, where there is a pack-train crew of hardy men waiting to carry in the payroll, plus late bonuses.”
Kinsolving placed both hands on the table palms down. “There is two hundred thousand dollars on that train, give or take. We are going to take it, every goddamned penny.”
“Just like that?” Chi asked.
“That’s right.”
“There’ll be guards.”
“I hope to shout. Pinkerton detectives, one dozen of them.”
Mae Cornell was in the room again, standing with her back against the kitchen door. Cord had not seen her come easing through. “Three guns,” Cord said to Kinsolving. “Three guns against a dozen at least.”
“Four, with Bowen.”
Cord wondered what to make of that. Maybe the moody young deputy was tied to Kinsolving in a way like Cord, or maybe he was just willing to take a foolish risk for big money. Lots of men were.
“I told him about it this morning,” Kinsolving said. “He wants to come along.”
“All right, four. Those are still long odds.”
“Got to be.” Kinsolving wrapped both hands around his whiskey glass. “You see, Mr. Cord, you are the only one. Of all the boys in the old days, you were the one never went back on a man. You are here now: That proves it.”
Mae Cornell would not take her eyes from Cord.
Chi said, “You tell me how we are going to do this thing.”
“There is only one way to go, the way I see it,” Kinsolving said. “When the train crew gets down to unload, the Pinkertons can do one of two things: Either they climb down to stretch their legs, or they sit tight. If they do the first, we take them, easy enough. If they stay put, we take the trainmen and then we wait. The Pinkertons are holed up in there without food or water to last, and that train is going nowhere. Sooner or later they will come out. In any case, we are sitting pretty.”
“You are going to dry-gulch them,” Chi said.
“Call it what you want.”
“There are problems to it,” Cord said. “Apart from the cold-blooded killing.”
“Have your sensibilities gone too delicate, Mr. Cord?” It was Mae Cornell. “Have you put aside killing for money in your older days?”
Cord was not sure which was stranger, her outburst or that Kinsolving did not shut her up. Chi shook her head in disgust.
“First,” Cord said to Kinsolving, “those Pinkertons are generally men who know some things about guns and guarding and train robbers, and how to deal with them. They do not figure to be quite so easy as you are saying.”
Cord held up two fingers. “Second, Pinkerton detectives are a kind of lawman. Not official, but near enough to make it hard on anyone who goes up against them. Lawmen take it hard when one of their own is killed. They will let other things drop after a time, but not that. There would be heat on us for the rest of our lives, and none of us wants to take that on.”
“Not even for two hundred thousand dollars?”
“That’s right,” Chi snapped.
Cord felt the same. Not only did Kinsolving make a damned poor partner, but there was plenty else to this he did not like. “But you sent for me before you knew anything about this payroll train.”
