There was sharp, urgent rapping at the hotel room door as Cody finished dressing, holstering his Colt and buckling his gunbelt. He opened the door cautiously to find Lonnie, her hair still down but knotted back in some fashion, looking up at him with startled eyes. It was so unusual to see the mountain girl with anything like fear in her expression that Cody frowned, opened the door and allowed her to slip quickly into the room.
‘You’ll never guess who I just saw,’ Lonnie said breathlessly. Cody thought that he could guess, nevertheless he asked:
‘Who?’
‘That Ned Pierce from Triangle. He was down in the lobby.’
Cody answered slowly, uncertainly. ‘We have to get to the bank. Be there as soon as it opens., Once the money is locked away there, they’ll have no reason to keep hounding us.’
‘But …’
But getting there was going to be the tricky part. First things first. ‘Let’s go down to the desk. I’ve got to claim my saddle-bags.’
‘He’ll be waiting for us outside. He’s a murderous man, Cody,’ Lonnie said with glistening eyes. ‘I know that.’
‘No matter. The sooner we move, the better. We can’t hole up in the hotel and hope they don’t find us – they undoubtedly already know we’re here.’
‘You keep saying “they”.’
‘Jewel Frazier has come along with him. If you look out my window you may still be able to see her across the street. She’s wearing green.’
‘Her!’ Lonnie said disparagingly. ‘I’m not afraid of her.’
‘She does carry a pistol,’ Cody warned her, remembering the little nickel-plated revolver Jewel had brandished in her house. ‘In her skirt pocket, or maybe tucked inside the muff she’s carrying.’
‘I’ll bet she’s never had to face down anything like my Winchester,’ Lonnie said. ‘Let me go back to my room and get it. I’ll show her something.’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ Cody said. ‘Town women don’t go marching down the street with their rifles. You’ll just draw more attention to us. I’m armed and I’ve asked: it’s only three blocks to the bank.’
‘Your Colt may not be enough,’ Lonnie protested, and in that she was right, but neither did they want to ignite a full-blown gunfight in the streets of Baxter. The local law would be drawn in immediately, and they did not need to have men with badges involved in this – Billy Post had been correct about that.
‘It’s better this way,’ Cody said uncertainly. He thought that the sight of the little mountain girl with a Winchester rifle traipsing down the street guarding a man with heavy saddle-bags over his shoulder might set people to wondering. He would just have to try his luck with Billy Post and Ned Pierce if it came to that. Both were known gunmen and Cody had never shot a man in his life.
Having to do so now would have the opposite effect to what he wanted – to move the gold quietly to the bank, where it would be secure and be available for Lonnie to live on for as long as she needed it. He admitted it to himself now – it was hers. It was Uncle Morris’s last bequest. If anyone had a right to the skeleton’s gold it was Lonnie Stanton. At least, she was the only one with a claim to it who didn’t seem ready to kill him for it.
The desk clerk was a different man from the one who had checked them in. Rounder, shorter, with thin red hair. He was just as affable, however; a trait that seemed to be desirable for men in such positions. Cody gave him his claim check, which the clerk muttered over, smiled and muttered some more, before retreating to the back office and returning with Cody’s saddle-bags. Lonnie stood by watching nervously, her eyes switching from point to point, surveying the hotel lobby. She seemed not to know what to do with her hands without her rifle.
Cody did not open the saddle-bags to check their contents. He asked, ‘Is there a back door we could use?’
‘There is one in the inner office, sir. Why …?’ He did not finish the question. These men were of a discreet breed. He offered to direct them through since there were no other waiting guests. Passing through the small, yellow-painted room, Cody noticed a brass-bound clock on the wall. It read ten minutes to nine.
‘Is that clock right?’ Cody asked. The man looked briefly offended by the question.
‘Of course,’ he replied, his manner a little stuffy. The clerk opened the back door with some difficulty. There was snow piled up outside in the back alley. The reflected morning sun was brilliant. A gust of cold wind blew in. Cody glanced outside, back to Lonnie and stepped out, his boots crunching through the crust on top of the newly fallen snow. Lonnie followed, pausing to shiver and wrap her arms around herself. She wore no jacket. They had left hurriedly.
‘How far?’ she asked, her lips trembling just a little.
‘Just three blocks; I told you. I’m sorry about dragging you out, but it was time to go.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, still shivering. The sky was blue, dotted with sparse clouds beyond a long line of leafless gray willow trees. A fitful breeze shuffled the branches of the trees. There were distant human sounds across town, but they saw no one. Along the alley there were only the tracks of a single man’s boots accompanied by a dog’s footprints in the snow.
Cody had the heavy saddle-bags slung over his shoulder. He had folded back the flap of his old leather jacket to allow access to his revolver. He strode so quickly along the snowy alleyway that Lonnie had to break into a trot to keep up with him. They were too close to the end to grow careless or slow down now.
‘We’ll make it,’ Cody said encouragingly to Lonnie after another block. Her breath steamed out as she spoke an unheard word and nodded. Her eyes were hopeful and uncertain at once.
That was when Ned Pierce stepped out from a cross-alley, his big blue pistol in his hand, coat collar tugged up around his jawline, hat tugged low, expression grim and menacing.
‘I believe you’ve got something that belongs to me, Cody Hawk.’
‘No. I don’t,’ Cody said, halting, shifting his feet slightly to ready himself for a draw. Though what chance he had against an experienced shooter who already had the drop on him was beyond minimal.
Pierce was smiling coldly. ‘Let’s not make this any worse, Cody Hawk,’ he said. ‘Just drop those saddlebags and I’ll let you walk away.’
The alley was empty. Cody had forced Lonnie to leave her rifle behind for her own protection. He regretted that now. Pierce drew back the hammer of his Colt .44. ‘I’ve no grudge against you, Hawk. All I want is the money.’
‘That’s all you ever cared about, isn’t it, Ned?’ a wild voice asked from out of the cross-alley. Cody shifted his eyes that way. He could see only the man’s arm and the pistol it held, but he recognized the voice of Billy Post.
‘Post?’ Ned Pierce said in obvious confusion. ‘How did you ever get here? If you think I owe you something, we can work it out.’ Pierce’s voice was uncertain, tinged with something near panic.
‘Oh, you owe me something, Ned,’ Post said, taking another step forward from the alley. ‘Like two years of my life, six months of it spent in a hospital bed. How much do you figure that’s worth, Ned?’
‘I didn’t mean for it to happen,’ Ned tried weakly. Billy Post didn’t let him get further with his denial.
‘I know,’ Post said with heavy sarcasm. ‘You shot me four times accidentally and then left me in the mountains to freeze to death, to bleed to death, but you didn’t mean to do it.’
Ned Pierce was quaking now. He could hear the rage in Post’s words. Pierce tried again: ‘Billy, take the money. I guess I owe you that. But there’s no point in killing me. Not over old quarrels.’
‘That’s what you call it?’ Billy Post erupted. It was obvious he meant to shoot, to kill Pierce. ‘I’ll have the money, all right, and I’ll have my revenge!’
Cody pulled Lonnie behind him to shield her. Post’s .44 exploded in the stillness of the snowy morning. Cody saw Pierce take a bullet full in the chest and stagger back. As he tried to level his own aim, his knee buckled and he went down to lie sprawled in the snow. Post took three steps forward and hovered over the Triangle foreman as he twitched, breathed his last and died. There was a maniacal gleam in Post’s eyes as he shifted them toward Cody and Lonnie Stanton.
‘Now then!’ Billy Post roared. ‘How are you going to play it, cowboy?’
Before Cody could frame any sort of answer, a wild banshee cry rose from the alleyway and Jewel Frazier burst from it, screaming and wailing at once. She looked once at Cody and Lonnie, then pulled that small nickel-plated pistol from her fur muff and shot Billy Post, who was too astonished to react as the bullet struck him in the face, producing a bloody mask. He was already dead, but his reflexes were not. A tremor of his finger against the trigger of his Colt caused it to erupt with smoke and flame and the onrushing Jewel Frazier took a bullet in her breast, waved her arms like windmills, and her lovely face plowed into the snow a few feet from her dead foreman.
Lonnie gripped Cody’s arm tightly. Her voice was tremulous. ‘Cody, we have to—’
‘We have to get out of here,’ Cody said, taking her hand and yanking her along after him. The shots would draw a crowd. They reached the main street as a man with a silver shield was rushing toward them, hatless, hair in disarray. Cody didn’t wait for the questions. He pointed and said, ‘Some sort of ruckus back there, Marshal.’
The lawman hurried along. Lonnie leaned her head against Cody’s shoulder in relief and they walked on toward the bank. People up and down the street were rushing toward the alley where the triple killing had taken place. Lonnie was shaking; Cody wasn’t much steadier. They reached the bank door just as a small man in a blue town suit was unlocking the front door with the key he kept on a gold chain.
‘Something going on?’ he asked.
‘Some sort of gunfight,’ Cody said and the banker nodded his head. So long as it did not constitute a threat to his bank, it did not concern him.
‘Well,’ Cody said as he and Lonnie sat together in the cool sunshine on a bench on front of the hotel, ‘it’s done. You’re a rich girl now.’ They had split the money fifty-fifty, realizing that there was no one else left alive who had any claim to it, and had opened matching bank accounts.
‘Is that enough money to feel rich on, Cody? To tell you the truth, I don’t feel rich – and I sure wouldn’t go through that all again to make some money!’
‘No. Well – at least you’re better off than you were before.’
‘I was thinking,’ Lonnie said after a pause, ‘that I might try to find work in the hotel. That’s the most elegant place I’ve ever seen.’
‘You could try it, I suppose,’ Cody answered, watching a trio of cowhands ride past, churning up the snow, ‘but you’ve plenty of money to last you for a few years. You ought to try first to find a place of your own. A small house. Nothing is more elegant than your own home.’
‘Is that true?’ she asked, looking up with liquid eyes. Her hands were folded together between her knees.
‘So they tell me,’ Cody answered. ‘I’ve never had my own home, so I don’t really know.’
‘You’ve got enough money now to find a small cottage for yourself, Cody Hawk.’
‘I suppose I do,’ Cody said, breathing in deeply, ‘but then what would I do for a living?’
‘What will I do? What does anyone do, Cody?’ Lonnie said, with eagerness now showing in her eyes. ‘Your leg will heal by spring. You can do whatever you want. Right now you have no job, no prospects. You might as well settle in Baxter while the snow is falling. We’ll be neighbors!’ she said with girlish good cheer.
Cody was less enthusiastic, but what Lonnie said was true enough – where was he to go, how was he to work over the winter, the shape he was in, the weather as it was?
‘Or,’ the girl said with still more enthusiasm, ‘we could share a house! That way it would only cost us half as much. It would stretch out our fortunes.’
Cody moved uneasily on the wooden bench. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, Lonnie.’
‘Well, sure it is,’ she said, standing. There was a bright smile on her lips. ‘That way I could look after your leg, and you could look after mine!’
‘Why, what’s the matter with your legs?’ Cody asked uncertainly. Then he caught the meaning of Lonnie’s smile and looked away toward the hotel restaurant.
‘I wonder what they’re fixing for dinner?’
He rose and started toward the hotel door with Lonnie not far behind him. He thought that things might be that way for a long time to come.