The Raiders

1

JO-ANN WAS ANGRY AND RESENTFUL. LIFE HAD CRAPPED on her. For fourteen years her father had refused even to acknowledge she was his daughter. Then he had. There had been a few halfway good years. Then he'd walked away from her and her mother to duck a subpoena, and the next thing they knew he had acquired a grown son.

On Christmas night she lay alone in bed. The next room was shared by her newfound half brother and his girlfriend, and Jo-Ann could hear their exuberant coupling — humping was the word that came to her mind. In the master bedroom her father was no doubt doing the same with his girlfriend.

Jo-Ann could see the attraction this Angie had for her father. The woman was of course a great deal younger than her mother, and she was superficially glamorous, with a hard edge to her that spoke "hooker" to the girl. If Angie wasn't that, she was something like. Jo-Ann could see it on her face.

She did not hate her father for divorcing her mother once, then getting himself divorced by her, and now bedding with this Angie. Monica had never slept alone. Two nights after Jonas left the house in Bel Air another man — What was his name? Alex — had slept in Monica's bed.

Without even letting her finish her year at Pepperdine, her mother had moved them to New York, so she could be closer to her work and closer to the men she had known for years and now once more was free to welcome to her bedroom. Jo-Ann was able to transfer some credits to Smith, but she had an anomalous status there and could not be sure exactly when she would graduate.

Monica had meant to live in the Cord apartment in the Waldorf Towers, but after she and Jo-Ann had stayed there only a week the lawyers informed them they would have to get out. The lease did not belong to Mr. Cord but to Cord Explosives, which was not a party to the divorce suit. Mrs. Cord could raise her cash settlement demands, since she was not going to get the apartment, but she could not remain there. Besides, Mr. Cord's attorneys had come up with some embarrassing evidence. So, out again. They moved into a furnished apartment on East fifty-ninth Street.

That was one of the problems. They had moved too much. Sometimes they had tried to follow after her grandfather, whose name was Winthrop. She remembered that old man: a nauseating drunk. He had done only one good thing — he had died saving her father's life. The good thing he'd done was die; saving her father's life had been extra.

The brother. The newfound brother. Her father was ecstatic to have found a third Jonas, even if he did call himself Bat. He was what she wasn't and could never be: a male. Her father was not subtle about what he had in mind. This son who had dropped on him like something from heaven was going to be his heir-in-chief and the next head of the family business.

She had never imagined she would be the head. Her mother had explained to her that, although she would probably inherit most of the Cord stock, her father would arrange a voting trust or something of the kind so that she would not be able to control the business, not even to exercise much influence over it.

In her naivete she had speculated on how her father might react if she married well — well, that is, in terms of a young man with demonstrated intelligence and maybe an MBA from Harvard. Would he take him into the business and confide in him? When she dated, she appraised young men in terms of how her father might react to them. So ... She need not worry about that anymore. She would date for fun now. She'd find herself a stud and have a good time.

She would not go on sleeping alone, either. Nobody else did. This house tonight was a goddamned whorehouse! As she pressed fingers into herself and tried to find some relief, she was glad she had hit the Scotch and brandy bottles every chance she got. For the time being bottles were damned important to her. At least she would go to sleep. At least she could go to sleep ...

2

Nevada understood her feelings, and maybe he was the only one who did. Nevada understood more than most people — and more certainly than either her father or her mother. She was glad she'd had a chance to talk with him. Glad and ... then for a different reason, not glad.

The family hadn't even flown out here together. Her flight had landed at San Francisco, where Nevada met her at the airport. An Inter-Continental Airlines company plane, a Beech Baron, had flown them to the ranch landing strip. She had been the first to arrive. The Beech went back to pick up her new brother and his girlfriend, and she had been alone at the ranch with Nevada.

They'd had horses saddled and had gone out to ride across the sandy, rocky countryside.

"You always was a natural in the saddle. Shame your parents decided to move you to California."

"I think I could have been happy here."

"Uhmm. That mean you're not, where you are?"

"I might be. But who knows how long I'll be there before I'm packed up and sent somewhere else? There's nothing permanent, Nevada."

"Don't feel like you got no roots down," he said.

Jo-Ann shrugged. She frowned at a coyote limping across the ground in front of them. It had been bitten by a rattlesnake apparently and was dying. Nevada pulled a .30-30 Winchester from its scabbard on his saddle, took aim, and put the creature out of its misery.

"I'm shoved this way and the other," she said. "Obviously, I've got nothing of my own. I'm so — Nevada, I'm so goddamned dependent!"

"Who ain't, your age? Of course me, I had to go out younger. But that was another time, another place. You're the daughter of Jonas and Monica. You gotta get your education and be smart and sophisticated-like. Who's not dependent at that time of life?"

"Do you believe that man he found in Mexico is really his son?" she asked.

"I expect he is," said Nevada. "I remember the girl. Sonja Batista. First thing he had to do after he sudden-like inherited everything was go to Germany to see how they made plastics, since that was what his daddy had bought into. He took Sonja Batista with him. I was surprised when he didn't marry her. Pretty thing, she was. All this was before he met your mother."

"That wouldn't have made any difference. They never really loved each other. She was a piece of ass. He was a cock. That's all either of them ever wanted."

"Young lady," said Nevada sternly, "you shouldn't use them kind of words. Anyhow, you're wrong. I don't know what happened, but they did love each other. At least twice. Once when they made you. Once when they got together again. I didn't see the first part. I saw the second. You got a point if you wanta say they're not the kind of folks that fall in love in the romantic way. But don't put 'em down, Jo-Ann. Love ain't always a lifetime thing."

Jo-Ann loved the kind of country they were riding across. They were five miles from the house. It smelled good: big and fresh and dry. The horses spooked occasionally. Living things skittered in the low dry brush to either side of them. They came across the track left by a sidewinder. That would spook a horse. The mountains rising in the distance were more beautiful for their promise from miles away than they were when you reached them.

"Nevada ..."

"Uh?"

"I'm a virgin."

"I'd sort of hope you was, at your age."

Jo-Ann shook her head. "My mother wasn't when she was eighteen. My father —"

"Prob'ly was when he was eighteen," Nevada interrupted. "Th' old man wasn't for foolin' around. 'Course ... your father made up for it pretty quick, when he got the chance. Uh — Come to think of it, once he started to drive a car ..."

"Nevada ... I'm very uncomfortable."

The lanky old man shook his head. "Honey, you ain't got no idea what uncomfortable is."

"I'd like a man I trust to — It could be you, Nevada."

"Missy! Don't you never say nothin' like that ag'in! Jeezuss Christ! I don't ever wanta hear nothin' like that ag'in. I won't tell your father, but —"

Jo-Ann sobbed. "But you can see!"

He shook his head. "I can't see."

"Somebody I trust. That was the point."

"I could be — I could be your grandfather. Grandfather? Hell, I could be your great-grandfather."

"Forgive me?" She sniffed.

"Sure. But look, sis. When you're eighteen it looks like that's got to be the most wonderful thing in the whole world. It ain't. It's good, but it's not the best thing in the world. You gotta learn to live with it, like you do with everything else."

"I heard my father say one time that you were the smartest man he'd ever met when it came to ... life."

Nevada shook his head. "Maybe that's because he's done some dumb things in that department. It could be that was what killed his daddy, findin' out that Junior had done it dumb again and was going to have to pay hush money."

"Blackmail?"

Nevada shrugged. "Whatever they called it. Oh, hell, it didn't kill him. He died of bourbon and hot temper and maybe of tryin' to keep up with the young woman he'd married to keep your father from marryin' her."

"Rina?"

"You've heard of her. Your daddy wanted to marry her. He was set on it. Your granddaddy married her and carried her off to Europe on a honeymoon."

"What a family! No wonder I'm crazy."

"You're not crazy, honey." He chuckled. "Maybe you're a Cord, though."

Jo-Ann reined her horse to a stop. "Sex," she said. "If you won't teach me, tell me something, anyway. It ruins lives."

Nevada reined his horse around and sat facing the beautiful dark-haired girl in the tight blue jeans and wool shirt. "Blue-eyes lives," he said. "My daddy was a buffalo hunter. My ma was a Kiowa. The Kiowa were noble people that knowed how to live. A Kiowa man never dreamt dreams about doin' it. He didn't have to; he did it. A Kiowa woman never worried about it. She didn't have to; she did it. The Kiowa wouldn't-a cared about pictures of people doin' it. What good was that? They wouldn't-a read in books about people doin' it. What good was that? They didn't make up stories about it, or make laws about it, or suppose the Great Unknowable cared how and when they done it. If children come and nobody could figure out exactly whose they was, that didn't make no difference; children belonged to the tribe, and all of 'em was taken care of. You understand?"

"Do it with whoever I want to?"

"Not quite that. Do it with whoever'll take responsibility, the way the tribe did. Responsibility. That there's the point. An ugly word with the white man. And forget all the hoodoo-voodoo. This thing we're talkin' about, it's mine, it's your'n, it's his'n, it's her'n. It's nobody else's but. And it's not worth moanin' and groanin' and worryin' and hurryin' about. Live, little girl! Pee when you have to and fuck when you want to. But you wouldn't pee on the street in public, so don't fuck where and when it ain't right — and not with the wrong man. That's all the rules they is about it."

Jo-Ann smiled and started her horse back toward the house. "Thank you, Nevada," she said. "My father was right about one thing. You are the smartest man about life either one of us has ever met."

3

She had known yesterday afternoon that she and Nevada would be returning to the house alone — alone, that is, but for Robair and the ranch hands who worked around the place. The plane bringing her new half brother and the woman from Washington wouldn't arrive before midnight.

She had continued to wish Nevada would consent to come to her bed, but she'd known he wouldn't, and she'd known better than to mention it again.

A hundred yards from the house, Jo-Ann reined her horse to a stop again. She yawned. "Would you believe I got out of bed this morning in New York?" she said. "Are you having dinner with me, Nevada?"

"I wasn't countin' on it, but you are alone, huh? Gonna eat early?"

She nodded. "Surprise Robair," she said.

"Not much surprises that man. Anyway, sure, tell him to set two places."

The dinner was what she'd asked for because she knew it was what the ranch kitchen most easily afforded — besides which she did not want to invade the food stocked for the Christmas Eve party. She and Nevada sat facing each other across the table, over steaks and potatoes, salads, and a bottle of red wine. Neither had changed clothes since their ride. Nevada actually wore buckskins. Jo-Ann wished he would wear them tomorrow night but knew he wouldn't. She would like to show up at the party in her jeans and wool shirt — and knew she wouldn't.

"If I asked him," she said, "I think my father might let me come and live here. My mother would hate it, but —"

"You'd be lonesome out here," said Nevada. "Tomorrow this house is gonna be full of folks. It isn't that way most of the time."

"You'd come and see me, wouldn't you? It's only a short drive. And I could come and see you."

"You can't count on me," he said.

"What? We've always counted on you. My grandfather, my father —"

"Not much longer," said Nevada.

"Nevada ... ?"

He smiled. "A man ain't forever, y'- know. I'm seventy years old."

"Kiowa men live to be ninety."

He shook his head. "Not this Kiowa. I tell you because you talk about countin' on this ol' man, like the Cords have always counted on me. If you tell your father what I'm goin' to tell you, then you ain't my friend. But the Great Unknowable has started callin' fer Nevada. Fer Max. That's my real name, y' know: Max Sand. I sit on my porch and look at the country. The country's callin' me. I kin hear it in the wind."

"What are you saying, Nevada?" Jo-Ann asked, alarmed.

"Promise me you won't tell."

"I promise."

Nevada stared for a moment at the bite of rare beef on his fork. "By god, that's good," he said. "There ain't nothin' better to eat than a real good piece of beef. We didn't have it in the old days, you know. This comes off a fat steer, one that couldn't a lived on the range grass. We —"

"Nevada You're changing the subject."

He sighed loudly. "Man doesn't know how long he's got. But they's signs. Mine don't read good."

Jo-Ann put down her knife and fork. "You can't read life and death from owl feathers," she said. "Or anything like that."

"Don't be so sure. But that don't make no difference. That's not what I'm readin'. I've started rottin' away inside. I can feel it, and I can smell it. When a man don't smell good —"

"Nevada! Have you seen a doctor?"

He nodded. "Cancer."

"Oh, my god! But you must tell my father! There are wonderful hospitals where —"

"You gave me your word you wouldn't tell him."

4

She had exacted from Robair a promise to wake her when her new half brother arrived. He did. She had not been asleep, really. What Nevada had told her, the cancer, had intruded on every sleep fantasy and jarred her awake. It was nearly one o'clock. She dressed in tight blue jeans and the blue-and-white wool shirt she had worn in the afternoon and at dinner. She brushed out her hair and put on a little lipstick.

They were in the living room waiting for her, standing before the fireplace where Robair had kept the fire going.

Jonas the Third stepped toward her, smiling broadly, his hand reaching for hers. "Jo-Ann! I've been looking forward to meeting you and am only sorry it didn't happen sooner. Let me introduce Antonia Maxim."

He was not what she expected, not in any way. Having heard he had been born and reared in Mexico, she had expected a swarthy, dark-haired man with a Spanish accent. This tall, handsome man was blond. He looked nothing like their father. He spoke perfect American English and yet not like their father's. She could detect no family resemblance at all.

The woman he had brought with him was beautiful. "Call me Toni" were her first words, and she reached out with both her hands and took both of Jo-Ann's.

Jo-Ann was polite to Toni, but her eyes fastened on Bat. She had wanted to dislike him, had decided to dislike him. But how could a woman — how could anyone — dislike a man with laughing eyes that drew you in and invited you to share whatever was making them laugh? Her half brother was naturally, gracefully magnetic, even more so than her father was.

"We've wakened you in the middle of the night," said Jonas the Third. "And we've been up since dawn. What time do we meet for breakfast, Jo-Ann?"

"Oh, let's be late. When our father is here, he'll be at the table by six-thirty, eating bacon and eggs and potatoes and God knows what. The Christmas Eve party is at seven and will go on well after midnight, but plan on being up at dawn again on Christmas Day. I don't have to tell you that his schedule will be our schedule."

5

On Christmas afternoon, Nevada took Toni out to teach her to fire her Winchester. Bat and Jo-Ann came along. The weather was raw. The sky was pale, and snow threatened. Except for Nevada, they wore coats from the ranch house closets: sheepskin that cut the wind.

Watching the old man, after what he had told her two days ago, was painful for Jo-Ann. That Nevada Smith was mortal had never occurred to her. And he walked and talked like a man who expected to live to be a hundred. He put wine and liquor bottles on fence posts. He talked quietly with Toni, telling her how to hold her rifle and aim; then he stood back and let her try.

She shattered three bottles with her first three shots, missing only the fourth.

"Know why y' done?" Nevada asked her.

Toni shook her head.

"Locked y' elbow. Keep 'er loose, Miss Toni. Nothin' stiff, nothin' locked. Easy ... easy ..."

She missed twice in knocking down his bottles. Now he set up beer cans, half as big. She needed eight shots to knock down five of them.

"Got a natural talent for it," he said. "Let's let Jo-Ann try."

Jo-Ann shot about as well as Toni.

"How 'bout you, Bat?"

"I'm better with a pistol," said Bat. "Happen to have brought one out from the house. What I like to shoot at is empty shotgun shells, but I couldn't find any. But I found a bunch of bottle corks."

Nevada shrugged as Bat walked forward and set up wine corks on the fence posts.

Five corks. Six shots.

Nevada grinned. "Y' ever decide y' bored bein' a lawyer, I kin prob'ly git y' a job in a Wild West show."

Jo-Ann tried to hide her feelings. Her new half brother was too goddamned good! Give him a blackboard and chalk, he'd probably square the circle.

6

She had one more chance to talk with Nevada. She didn't know it, but it would be the last time. They went riding, alone.

"What do you think of my new brother?" she asked.

"Y' dad's lucky to find him," said Nevada blandly.

"Bullshit. What do you think of him?"

"He's gonna be a handful," said Nevada, staring at the mountains and not turning his eyes toward her. "You know somethin'? He's a Cord. Your old man's figured that one out. I ain't sure he likes it much."

Jo-Ann smiled and nodded. "He'd have liked to have a son he could —"

"What his father wanted," Nevada interrupted. "A boy who'd take orders. Well, they didn't neither of them git that kind of son. This new boy has got somethin' of his gran'dad in him. Jonas sees it. That's hard for him to take. Could be this boy's got the old man's tough and your dad's smarts. Could be."

"Shuts me out of everything, doesn't it, Nevada?"

"Wouldn't think of it that way. I'd make my peace with the new man, if I was you. Looks to me like an honest sort of fella. He ain' gonna take on your dad right off, but them two's gonna go nose to nose. I'm not ready to place my bet."

7

Jo-Ann broke her word to Nevada, and three weeks later he was admitted to the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City.

Jonas was with him and stayed at the hospital through ten days of tests, going to the Waldorf Towers only at night. Monica came to visit Nevada. Robair came. Morris Chandler. Angie. Bat, who had known Nevada only for a little while but had impressed him favorably. And Jo-Ann, and he forgave her.

The prognosis was not good. The doctors talked of radiation therapy and chemotherapy — and six months, maximum.

Nevada said no to all of it. "Y' cain't fight nature" was the way he put it. "Anyways, why should y'? Who knows what's next? Y' fight it off, maybe y' just postponin' somethin' awful good. In all my life I only took stock in one writer. Mark Twain said he warn't afraid of where he was goin'. He'd been there before, and it didn't hurt."

A Cord company plane flew Nevada back to his ranch. He sat in his old rocker on the porch, in his buckskins, sheepskin coat, and a stained old hat; and he stared at the desert and the mountains. He told Jonas to go on about his business. He promised to call if he felt the end was near. Meantime, he would just sit and wait. He was content just to wait.

Jonas knew Nevada would never call. He promised to come back to see him, but he left him with a sense he would never see him again.

8

When Nevada died, Jonas called Jo-Ann.

That afternoon she left Northampton in the black Porsche he had given her for Christmas, bearing the Nevada license plate cord two. She drove to New York in three hours. And having reached the city she was not sure why she had come or what she would do. She had driven mindlessly, probably assuming she would go to the apartment on Fifty-ninth Street. Then she realized she would face a mother who would demand to know why she had left Northampton — or a mother so absorbed in whatever man was there with her that she would hardly notice that her daughter had come home. She drove past the apartment and did not stop.

She put the Porsche in a garage on Fifty-seventh Street and had dinner in a Hungarian restaurant she had learned to appreciate. When she came out and retrieved the car, it was after ten o'clock and she had to face it that she could not drive back to Northampton that night and could not cruise through the streets of Manhattan in an expensive sports car much longer. She had drunk a whole bottle of rich red Hungarian wine. A sense of urgency, not panic but approaching it, seized her.

She drove into the garage at the Waldorf Towers.

"Miss?"

She showed the garage attendant her key to the Cord apartment. She didn't know what her mother had done with hers, but Jo-Ann had never surrendered her key. The man glanced at the license plate on the Porsche and opened her door. She got out, and he drove the car down into the garage.

The key gave her access to the elevator, too. She went up. At the door she pressed the bell button before she used the key. No one responded, so she unlocked the door and entered the apartment.

When Bat came home a little before midnight he found Jo-Ann sitting on a couch in the living room. She was smoking a cigarette and had taken off her dress and her stockings and garter belt and shoes. She sat in a white silk slip.

"It's a family apartment," she said.

He nodded. "Of course. The garage man told me you were here. I'm glad to see you."

Jo-Ann nodded. A bottle of Scotch sat on the coffee table before her. The ice in her glass had long since melted, and she had been sipping Chivas Regal neat. "Nevada died," she said.

"I heard. Our father called from California. I didn't know the man as well as you did, but I understand what a great loss it is."

Jo-Ann picked up her glass and drank the little that was left of the warm whiskey. "I feel as if I'd lost a father. He was more of a father to me than Jonas ever was."

"I understand," said Bat. He sat down on the couch, at the opposite end.

"I don't think you do, but it's all right."

"I know something of the family history," said Bat.

"You grew up in odd circumstances, too. Did you have anybody to talk to?"

"My mother," he said. "My grandfather."

"Lucky you," she said despondently. She crushed her cigarette. "Jonas is nobody's father, you know."

"He's a great man."

Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at him. "Do you think so? Or is that a Cord employee talking? Congratulations on your job, anyway."

He got up and went to the bar to get a glass. "A little more Scotch?" he asked.

"A splash."

He brought back two glasses, both with ice. As he poured, he glanced at her and said, "I wish we'd known each other sooner. I have two other little sisters: Rafaela and Mercedes. I was away from home during most of the years when they were growing up."

"Do you love them?" Jo-Ann asked.

Bat nodded. "Of course."

Jo-Ann scooted across the couch to sit close to him.

She reached for his hand. "You and I would have loved each other."

"Yes."

"Still can," she said.

He squeezed her hand. "Of course."

"Nevada gave me some advice," she said softly. "He told me to give my love to a man I could trust. A man who would accept responsibility for the consequences."

"That was good advice."

She lifted his hand and kissed it. "Nevada and I weren't talking about the kind of love you're thinking about."

"Jo-Ann ... ?"

"A man I can trust," she said simply, directly. Then her voice rose, and she said, "I'm a virgin, goddammit!"

Bat frowned. "You've had too much to drink."

Jo-Ann snatched up her glass and drank the Scotch he had poured. "Drunk! You think I'm drunk. No. Let me tell you what I am. I'm Jonas Cord's daughter. I'm the granddaughter of another Jonas Cord. When I heard about you, I wondered if you were a Cord at all, or some kind of fraud. There was never a Cord by the name who'd turn down a shot of whiskey or a piece of virgin pussy!"

She grabbed at the hem of her slip and pulled it up and over her head. She was wearing panties but no bra.

"Jo-Ann," he murmured.

"C'mon, big brother. You a Cord, or you not?"

"My sister —"

"My brother. So what the shit? You're the man I can trust, if you've got the guts. Brother and sister. We're gonna love each other — brother and sister, for the rest of our lives. If I can't trust my brother, who can I trust? I need your help, big brother. Besides the fucking I need from you right now, I need a standard to compare with."

"Our father —"

"Jonas will laugh if he finds out, which he doesn't have to. He'd do it himself if he were here. Only I wouldn't let him. Him, I wouldn't trust. Hey, brother! Look at me! Toni have nicer tits than these?"

For a moment Bat closed his eyes. "Oh, Christ," he muttered.

"You wouldn't know maybe, but Nevada Smith was a great man," said Jo-Ann. "Greater than our father and grandfather in some ways. He said something to me — I wrote it down when I got back to my room, and I think I've got it exactly the way he said it. He said. This thing we're talkin' about, it's mine, it's your'n, it's his'n, it's her'n. It's nobody else's but. And it's not worth moanin' and groanin' and worryin' and hurryin' about. Live, little girl! Pee when you have to and fuck when you want to.' You bastard, I want to!"

" 'Bastard.' You used the wrong word, little sister. Okay, I'll fuck you outta your mind!"

Jo-Ann grinned. "Promise? Promise it's going to be everything I've ever heard about!"

9

Everything she'd ever heard about.

Jo-Ann had seen pictures but had never seen a male organ before. He guided her hand to it and let her examine it with her fingers before he brought it near her. She satisfied her curiosity. She had been told it would be hard, but it wasn't hard; it was just stiff. She had been told it would be cold. She had been told it would be hot. It was neither. She curled her hand around it and squeezed it gently. A drop of gleaming moisture appeared on the rosebud of its tip. She pinched the drop off between her thumb and finger and tested it. It was slippery.

"Life," he said quietly.

They lay on his bed. She wanted to be kissed more before he entered her, so she rolled on her side and pressed her mouth to his. He responded forcefully. They kissed so hard she could taste blood from her lips. Then he turned gentle and pushed his tongue into her mouth. She had heard of this but had not imagined the lazy delight she would find in it. They lay side by side for a long time, their tongues caressing each other. She held his penis in her hand, and he stroked her wet private place with one long finger.

Until his patience ran out. Then he pushed her over on her back and rose to straddle her. For a moment she was afraid. For a moment she was sorry she had brought herself to this point. Then it was too late for fear, too late for regret.

He was tough and he was tender. He was gentle and he was rough. He hurt her and he soothed her. He subdued her and he exalted her. She shrieked and writhed under his unrelenting deep strokes: from pain and pleasure so intermixed she could not separate them. And when he finished and withdrew, she was hurt, she was exhausted, she was drenched with sweat; she was submerged in warmth and wonder.

For sure she would never again live without it.

"Big brother," she whispered, playfully mimicking a girl child.

"Hmm?"

"How soon can we do it again?"

"In a few minutes," he said. "Then never again after tonight."