Chi paused with her hand on the doorknob and regarded Cord. “You don’t look too bad.”
“Uh-huh,” Cord agreed. “Hose me off and dress me in clean clothes, I’m a real prize.”
“Yes, you are.”
Cord flexed the fingers of his right hand. The swathing had come off, replaced with small patches of plaster. The blisters were scabbed over, and nothing hurt. “You ready?”
“For what?”
Cord shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
Chi laughed gaily. “Let’s take a ride. It’s a nice day for a long ride.”
“It will be,” Cord agreed. “Soon as we get out of this place.”
On the other side of the door, Nick Oakley called, “What’s everybody so goddamned cheerful about?”
Chi opened the door. Oakley lay in the sickbed where Cord had awakened one long day ago. “This and that,” Chi said to him. “Not being dead.”
“You figure I am going to make it, eh?” Oakley said. His left shoulder was bandaged, and his arm was in a sling.
“We are all fine today,” Chi assured him. She reached down and squeezed Oakley’s hand. Cord didn’t mind too much. She did look quite fine today—or maybe it was that all of life looked good, after the fight of only a half-dozen or so hours earlier.
“What about Bliss?” Oakley contradicted.
Chi sobered a bit. “Don’t know. Carlisle will ride out there later on.”
“If he made it,” Oakley said, “he’d better keep away from me.”
“Now, now,” Cord chided. “He left something for you to remember him by.” Cord dropped a thick packet of currency on the bed beside Oakley.
Oakley stared at the money.
“We got paid in advance,” Chi told him. “You earned a share.”
“That so?”
“Put it to good use,” Chi said. “You aren’t going to die, chico.”
“Never?”
“Not from that shoulder. La médica took out the bullet and fixed you up.” Chi hesitated. “You knew you weren’t hurt bad.”
Oakley shrugged. “That bastard was crazier than a drunken snake. I figured I was gone one way or the other—no point taking you with me.”
Oakley studied Cord for a long moment. “I guess I would have been right, if you hadn’t faced him down. Anyway, I noticed when you walked in that I’m not nursing any old grudges today.”
Truth to tell, Cord liked hearing that. He’d never been too proud of the business in Denver. But apologizing was so damned hard, harder sometimes than facing guns. At least he’d thought so
“This is adios,” Chi said to Oakley.
“See you again, maybe,” Oakley said neutrally.
“You ever ride through the Bitter Root Valley,” Chi said, “look around and see if we are there.” She looked at Cord and laughed. “I will bake a sour-apple pie, and you old boys can sit in the porch rockers, smoking pipes and lying about your hellion days.”
“Old boys?” Cord echoed. Chi laughed again and led him by the hand out of there. Oakley chuckled at their backs, but Cord could stand that as well.
They found Fiona Cobb and Carlisle out front, staring at what was left of the town. The ditch had been undammed and most of the water in the yard had settled into the scorched ground. The hot breeze was gone with the fire, and the day had dawned pleasant and cool. But the sun was rimmed in red, and without wind it would be days before the haze was all the way gone. Far off south in the mountains, the fire was still burning. The prairies were black in every direction.
Fiona Cobb’s hand was cool and smooth when Cord shook it. “What are you two going to do?” Cord asked.
“Like you said,” Carlisle laughed. “Pray for rain.” Everyone was a little giddy with life today.
“We will stay,” Fiona Cobb said. “Perhaps we will rebuild.” She smiled. “On a smaller scale, I would say.”
“We won’t be starting from scratch.” Carlisle shook his head. “You’ll like this part, Cord. The fire sucked right into that bank, gutted it like a dead buck. But the library is whole, only a little scorching on the front door. Fire must have jumped right over it. We didn’t lose a book.”
Cord did like it. Hard to tell why; maybe he meant to become a serious book reader himself soon. Who could tell what would happen to a man with a settled life? “Time to go,” he said, and climbed into the saddle.
“A moment,” Chi said. She pointed. A rider was coming toward the wreckage of Enterprise. Cord peered through the haze and made out F. X. Connaught.
The little Irishman rode into the yard and looked from one of them to the other. “God’s wrath is an awesome sight,” he intoned.
“Yeah,” Cord said. “We got to be going.”
Connaught did not seem to hear. “We saw the fire, the men and I, as we neared the North Gap.” He peered out across the wasteland. “I knew that Stringer had driven most of Mr. Bliss’s stock into the breaks, and could not abide what would befall them. I appealed to my men.”
Connaught closed his eyes as if praying. “We rode back, rounded them up, and stampeded them through the gap. There are B-brand cattle scattered over a hundred square miles of country between the gap and the Missouri, but alive.”
“Bliss?”
“May God preserve his soul.”
No one else said anything. Cord cleared his throat significantly.
“Mr. Connaught?” Fiona Cobb said gently.
Connaught opened his eyes and looked down at her.
“Will you take coffee?”
“Coffee.” Connaught blinked. “Coffee would be fine.” He swung down from the saddle, but then he looked up to Cord and Chi. “Go with God.”
“Good idea,” Cord said. He touched his finger to his hat brim and swung his horse away from there.
Out from the town the effect of the fire was not so devastating or troubling. The country was black and sere, but the grass would come back before the summer was out. This sort of burning was an old habit with nature. Land was a legacy no man could destroy, or perhaps truly own, Cord thought.
“Oh, my,” Chi said.
Cord looked up from his reverie. To the west, maybe a hundred yards from the road, a couple of dozen blackened hummocks were scattered about the scorched earth. Cord felt a little jolt in his gut: the cows that had stampeded through town ahead of the fire storm, only to be caught here by the flames. Cord breathed through his mouth. Thank Christ there was no more wind.
Something moved: coming up from behind a little knoll, a man on horseback, a big man with long matted hair, sitting slump-shouldered on a soot-smeared pale horse.
It was Mallory Bliss, alone with his despair amid the excoriated corpses of his dream.
“Ought to tell him,” Cord said slowly.
“He knows,” Chi said gently. “Let him be.”
A soft mournful sound drifted across the still air: Mallory Bliss was weeping.
“Yeah,” Cord said, and headed the bay on south. On toward the Bitter Root Valley, and good news and greener pastures.