Cody looked at the cold-eyed man who stood in his room, his pistol trained on Cody.
‘I guess you’ve got a reason for being here,’ Cody said evenly.
‘I guess I do. It’s called gold.’
The man waved Cody to his bed, where he sat while the stranger sat in the wooden chair opposite him, one leg crossed over the other, his Colt revolver still in his hand.
‘You’ve got something I want,’ the stranger said. He kept his hat on, kept his hand firmly on his pistol. ‘I think you know what it is, so don’t play the fool.’
‘Why me?’ Cody asked. ‘I can’t possibly have anything of yours. I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?’
‘My name,’ the intruder said, leaning back slightly in the wooden chair, ‘is Billy Post – ever hear the name before?’
‘I don’t think so …’ and then Cody believed that he had heard the name. Wasn’t Billy Post the name of the wrangler who had been riding back to Triangle with Ned Pierce to deliver the army’s payment for the steers Triangle had driven up there?
‘I see you have,’ Post said. He had a rough, somehow crooked face and a sharp chin heavy with trail-stubble.
‘I don’t know what you want,’ Cody Hawk said, glancing toward the partly open door as a pair of drunk men, probably the two he had seen in the lobby earlier, passed noisily by. When they were gone, their voices quieted by the slamming of their room door, Cody said, ‘If you’re who I think you are you should be talking to Ned Pierce or Frazier, not me. What have I got to do with it?’
‘Everything that matters. There’s no point in me talking to Ned Pierce. I’d kill him before he got a word out. As for Frazier, he has nothing to do with it. You’re the one who has the money, Tucker.’
‘I’m not Wayne Tucker.’
‘That’s the name you signed in the hotel register,’ Post said with a sly glint in his hard eyes. ‘I looked in the book, trying to find who the last man in was. The man who’d just trailed in from Triangle. I’ve been trailing you a long way, friend.’
‘Since Rios Canyon?’ Cody asked, remembering the mysterious man who had been dogging their trail the whole way.
Billy Post nodded. ‘Since you left the cabin, Tucker, or whatever your name is.’
‘Hawk. Cody Hawk.’
‘Since then, Mr Hawk. Because you have something I want. Something I’ve paid well for these last two years.’
‘It’s Triangle money,’ Cody protested.
‘Then why didn’t you give it to them? Because you’re a thief. I think all men are thieves. Some of them just deny it because they’ve never found themselves in a prime position to help themselves out.’
‘I think you’re wrong about that,’ Cody said. ‘What I want to know is this – what makes you think you have any claim to that money? And where have you been for two years?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ Post asked, his mouth tightening, ‘All right, I’ll tell you. You remember that army post that used to be up along the Saginaw River? We drove a herd up there to keep the boys alive over the winter. It was tough work, I can tell you, through hard weather and over rough terrain. Ned Pierce was giving the boys hell constantly for things that could not be helped.
‘When we were paid, most of the men took their pay and drifted off, saying they’d never work for Triangle under Pierce again. Me, I had a steady job and I got along with Pierce well enough. I stuck with him. We stopped over in McCormack for a rest, you know the town?’
‘I do. I used to ride for Domino.’
‘Ned got to drinking pretty heavily. He always did like his whiskey, but this was real heavy drinking. Maybe he was thinking about how he was going to tell Ernest Frazier that nearly his entire crew had quit on him. And I guess he started seeing some woman, too. And gambling a lot. I tried to talk to him, saying we ought to be hitting Long Pass before heavy snow started falling.’
‘He wouldn’t listen, of course,’ Cody said, knowing Ned Pierce.
‘No. One night I was asleep in our hotel room and something woke me. I saw Pierce kneeling on the floor. He had taken the saddle-bags with the money from the cattle sale from under his bed and opened it. I asked him what he was doing and he told me to shut up. He was drunk, of course.
‘It seems he had gotten into an all-night card game and he was down on his cash. He was going to borrow some Triangle money to catch up. Of course he never did.’
‘He lost about two hundred dollars more that weren’t his,’ Cody said.
‘How did you know?’ Billy Post asked.
Everyone kept referring to the missing amount as $4,000, yet when Wayne had counted it at the cabin, there was exactly $3,800. The other $200 Pierce had gambled away in McCormack. Now Pierce would have to explain not only how he had alienated the entire trail crew but lost a part of the money gambling. He would have been feeling the pinch.
‘Just a guess. How did you get Pierce out of McCormack?’
‘Practically dragged him,’ Post answered. ‘He was determined to win the money back. Said Frazier would skin him alive.’ Cody nodded. From what he had heard about Ernest Frazier before he had gotten ill, he had been a real heller.
‘But you got him started down Long Cut before the heavy snows hit?’
‘We started down, yeah, but the storm just kept building. Pierce was brooding all the way, He was mad at me, the men he had gambled with, afraid of Ernest Frazier. And he didn’t like riding sober.
‘We camped out one night in the snow, huddled near a small campfire. Pierce looked at me across the fire and said, “I could tell them that we got hit by bandits and they took the money.” Of course, that wouldn’t do, would it? Why would any bandits take just part of the money? Then I began to see what Pierce had in mind. He meant to take it all and return with his tale.
‘He was inviting me in, of course, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to stay on at Triangle and didn’t think I could stick to a lie facing Frazier. I didn’t answer Ned.
‘The next day, in the thick of the storm, he halted his horse and I rode alongside and stopped.
‘“I’ve got to save myself, Billy,” Ned Pierce said. “I mean to marry Jewel and take over Triangle one day. I can’t let Frazier know what’s happened. Are you with me, or not?”
‘I told him I couldn’t get involved in his scheme,’ Billy Post told Cody. ‘So without another word he shot me from my horse. He shot me four times and left me for dead on that mountain.’
Cody Hawk shut his eyes tightly for a moment and shook his head. He knew that Pierce was dangerous, but had not realized just how cruel the man was. Billy Post went on:
‘I couldn’t rise; I couldn’t move. The snow kept falling. Every part of my body hurt. He had gotten me in the chest, in both legs and my right shoulder. I don’t know how long I lay there, my blood staining the snow. I couldn’t describe that day to anybody who would understand. I know what the word agony means now.’
‘How’d you survive?’ Cody asked, for Billy Post had fallen into a silent, gloomy reverie that lasted many long, dark minutes while lantern-light flickered weirdly on the walls. All this time Cody had been trying to figure a way to reach his pistol, which was hanging in its holster on one of the iron bedposts. He knew that Post had not come here only to unburden his heart. Cody eased over that way and Post came fully alert again and answered him.
‘The rarest of chances. An army patrol was cutting up the Long Pass on their way back to the Saginaw post. They picked me and took me back with them. None of them thought I would make it. The post surgeon was a regular doctor, not one of these saw-and-pill docs you find in these remote places. But he just bandaged me up and put me to bed, that was all.
‘It was a while before things were explained to me. I needed a lot of surgery and he couldn’t be wasting all that time on a civilian while he had other work to do. I had to be a soldier to get that kind of attention.
‘Well, Cody Hawk,’ Post said with a short laugh, ‘those were my choices – enlist or die. Which would you choose? The commander swore me in for a two-year hitch in the US Army, then told the doctor he could start cutting.
‘I was a long time abed that winter, a long time healing. A long time hating. As soon as I got to my feet I started thinking about desertion, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to make it. And I didn’t like the idea of facing a firing squad if I got caught.
‘Come spring we got the word that the post was being abandoned and we were all going to Montana. I went along, resigned now to just doing my two-year enlistment. Pierce would still be there for the killing when I got out.
‘When eventually I was discharged, I started looking in McCormack town, but no one had seen Pierce. Why would he be up there? The army post had been abandoned and they no longer needed cattle. If Pierce wanted to gamble, he would ride to Baxter. I decided to try Triangle first, of course. Now I was risking being lynched by angry cowboys if I killed Pierce instead of having the army firing squad end my life, but my anger remained strong enough to make me reckless.’
‘Why follow us if it was Pierce you wanted?’
‘A funny thing happened, Cody Hawk. I came across tracks in the snow and was curious. I followed them back to a trapper’s shack. I knew that was what it was by the frozen hides I found there. There was still smoke in the fireplace, though the fire was nearly dead. And on the fire was a pair of saddle-bags. I fished them out with the poker and stamped out the flames. They were empty, of course, but I flipped one of the bags over and there were the initials “N.P.” burned into the leather.
‘That got me to thinking. Then I saw something that looked like a skeleton hand in the corner under the old hides. I flipped the hides aside and saw that this particular dead man had been a card player, and that he had been dead long enough for the flesh to disappear from his bones. Say two years at the least.
‘I didn’t know what had happened, but if the dead man was not Ned Pierce, then Pierce had killed him. Somehow I didn’t think it was Ned lying there. It seemed more likely that Ned had killed someone over the missing money. I went outside and stood there watching the sun glitter on the snow-bound trees and decided that it might be to my benefit to follow whoever had been in that cabin trying to burn Ned’s saddle-bags.’
‘What did you learn?’ Cody asked.
‘Not a lot at first. But you were riding in the direction I intended to go anyway, so I tagged along.’
‘I need to know,’ Cody said, his face now nearly as grim as Billy Post’s, ‘was it you who killed my friend, Wayne Tucker, back on the Stanton place? Was it you who shot Charlie Tuttle on our way to Baxter?’
‘Does it make a difference?’ Post asked. Cody thought he again saw movement out in the hallway through the partly opened door, but he ignored it and answered Post.
‘Yes, it does. To me.’
Post stifled a crooked grin. He needed Cody’s cooperation if it could be had. His answer was succinct.
‘If I did shoot them I wouldn’t admit it,’ the man said with a sly expression.
‘If I shot you, I’d admit it and be proud of it,’ the voice at the door said. Cody first saw the threatening muzzle of a Winchester rifle intrude into the room, and then Lonnie Stanton entered on bare feet, her hair now let down, her cocked rifle to her shoulder. ‘Throw away that pistol or I’ll take your head off.’
Billy Post hesitated for only a second before letting his revolver clatter to the floor. He said, ‘I believe that you would. I know who you are – you’re that wild mountain girl.’
‘That’s right,’ Lonnie replied, ‘and Cody Hawk is my friend. I think you’d better get out of here, mister.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Billy Post said, eyeing the small woman and the big Winchester in her hands. ‘I’ll just pick up my pistol and be on my way.’
‘Leave it. You won’t be needing it,’ Cody said.
Billy Post sneered at him. ‘I can get another,’ he said.
‘You won’t be needing that one either. Why don’t you just clear out, Post? We won’t be doing any business together.’
‘We could have you arrested,’ Lonnie told the ex-soldier.
‘Sure you could,’ Post said mockingly. ‘But they’d have a lot of questions they’d want answers to. You’d tell your side of the story; I’d tell mine. Then while they figured it out, they’d seize the gold as evidence and tuck it away so that no one could get to it.
‘I don’t think you want to go to the law, either of you. I can see this isn’t the time for talking. I’ll be back another time.’ He paused. ‘With a new pistol.’
‘I’ll be wearing mine next time,’ Cody said.
Post looked Cody up and down. ‘I don’t think you’d have a chance, cowboy, without your little watchdog here.’
Then Post walked out of the room, smirking.
Lonnie said: ‘I almost wish I had shot him.’
‘I know, but that wouldn’t have done us any good, would it? We’ll just have to figure out some other way to get rid of him.’
Lonnie looked doubtful, weary. She sat down on the chair that Post had just vacated and asked Cody quite seriously, ‘Do you want me to spend the night here to watch out for you? You’re dead tired, Cody, I can tell.’
‘No. You’ve got your own room and your own bed. I will be sleeping with my Colt near at hand on this night, though. If Billy Post could find us, others can too.’
‘Ned Pierce, do you mean?’
‘Him and your brothers,’ Cody replied, bending stiffly to pick up the revolver Post had dropped.
‘They’re not my brothers except in name,’ Lonnie objected, ‘but yes, Amos and Daltry could mean trouble if they found us. Except that I don’t think they will. They’re far too lazy to walk all this way through the snow.’
‘Weren’t they speaking of trying to steal some Triangle horses from the outriders?’
‘Oh, they were always coming up with grand plans,’ Lonnie said dismissively. ‘Once I heard them sitting around the table discussing how to rob a train, although there is no railroad within a hundred miles.’
‘Lonnie?’ Cody asked seriously as he lowered himself onto the bed with some difficulty. ‘Did they know about Uncle Morris’s fortune?’
Lonnie looked at the floor and then up again, apologetically. ‘I thought I told you. Uncle Morris told me to never say a word, but one night I was so angry with them, with everyone, that I blurted something out about how I would be leaving soon because Uncle Morris was going to give me some money, a lot of money.’
‘Did they believe you?’
‘Enough so that Amos and Daltry traipsed up to Long Pass and visited the cabin. They said they searched everywhere but there was no money hidden in Uncle Morris’s shack. They came back madder than anything. They told me I’d sent them on a wild goose chase.’
Cody nodded thoughtfully. ‘Did they tell you Uncle Morris was dead? If they searched the entire cabin, they must have found his body.’
‘They told me,’ Lonnie said, ‘and I cried myself to sleep that night and for many nights afterwards, because I knew that Uncle Morris was gone and that he had taken my dreams with him.’
‘Then they no longer believe in the fortune?’
‘I don’t think so. Not enough to come all the way to Baxter chasing after it.’
‘What about you, Lonnie?’ Cody asked. ‘Would they come all this way for you? To take you back?’
Lonnie laughed lightly, sadly. ‘Why? I’m just one more mouth to feed to the Stanton clan.’
Cody nodded, figuring that that was probably so. Their immediate problem, then, was getting rid of Billy Post and hoping that Ned Pierce – who knew that the fortune was no myth – wasn’t looking for them.
‘I can’t think straight anymore, Lonnie. I’ve got to get some rest.’ He moved his injured leg carefully onto the bed.
‘How bad is it?’ Lonnie wanted to know. She couldn’t help but notice the way Cody had been favoring his leg.
‘Not bad,’ he answered, pulling his boots off. She could see the tight bandaging around his ankle and winced with sympathy.
‘Sprained, is it?’
‘Or broken. No one could be sure,’ Cody answered with what he hoped was a cheerful smile. ‘But it doesn’t bother me so much as my knee. It locks up from time to time.’
‘Let me have a look at it,’ Lonnie said, rising.
‘Let you what?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Cody, I have seen a man’s leg before! I want to see if I can do anything for you.’
She was serious and quite firm. So was Cody when he answered. ‘Not now. I don’t want a woman looking at my leg. Go on back to your room and get a good night’s sleep. I intend to try to do the same.’
The look in her eyes was slightly hurt. Cody knew that many women were nurses by nature, but that didn’t mean he wanted this one probing, poking and commenting on his torn knee. Lonnie nodded and, with that hurt expression still on her face, she went out of the room, closing the door firmly. Following her that way, limping as he went, Cody inserted the key and locked it. Then he rolled into bed, and with his Colt under his pillow he closed his eyes, trying not to think about what further trouble morning might bring.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
Walking stiffly to his window to greet the new morning, Cody saw a town heavy with snow, few people yet moving around to disturb the even blanket along the main street of Baxter. But there, opposite his window, standing on the plankwalk, gazing up at the hotel, stood Jewel Frazier.
She wore a fur-collared green jacket and matching green skirt. Her hands were concealed in a heavy fur muff. If she was there, could Ned Pierce be far away?
Cody cursed softly and began to dress. Today was the day that it was all to end one way or the other. The chill along his spine was still there: a cold, warning tingle as if the skeleton himself had finally come to collect his dues.