Those Jensen Boys! (11 page)

After glaring at them for a moment, the man on the wagon seat bellowed, “Get that damn stagecoach out of the way!” He was tall and broad-shouldered, built like a tree, with a bullet-shaped bald head that looked like it had been blistered by the sun numerous times in the past.

“That's Horace Wygant, the foreman at Mr. Eagleton's mine,” Bess said quietly to Ace. “I guess Mr. Eagleton put him in charge of repairing the road.”

“Did you hear me?” Wygant demanded harshly. He waved an arm. “Get out of the way!”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Wygant,” Bess called to him. “There's nowhere for us to go. I think you can back down to the turn without much trouble. We can get by you there.”

“I thought you said that would be pretty risky,” Ace murmured.

“It will be, but I'll take the reins. You and Chance and Emily can get off the stage so you won't be in any danger. I can make it.”

Ace didn't like that idea, but he wasn't fond of the notion of trying to drive past the work wagon on that turn, either. Bess had a lot more experience handling the stagecoach than he did, so it made sense for her to take over the reins. It still rubbed him the wrong way, despite the logic of it.

The question might be moot, though, as Wygant sneered at them. “I'm not backing up. Once I start somewhere, I keep going.”

From inside the coach, Emily called, “What's the problem out there? Why are we stopped?”

“I'm taking care of it,” Bess told her sister.

Ace wasn't sure that was the case. Wygant struck him as the sort of man who wouldn't be easy to budge but figured he would give it a try. “Look, mister, be reasonable. We can't turn around or back up. You can.”

“I can get some men up here to shove that damn stagecoach off the road, too,” Wygant snapped. “I told you to get out of my way, and I meant it.”

One of the coach doors opened and the vehicle shifted as Chance stepped out with the short-barreled shotgun tucked under his arm. “I reckon anybody who wants to wreck this stage will have a hard time making it up the trail.”

Ace bit back a groan. He didn't blame Chance for being angry, but the show of defiance would just make Wygant dig in his heels, most likely.

That was exactly the reaction Wygant displayed. He twisted on the wagon seat and shouted down to the lower section of trail. “Hey! Some of you men get up here! We've got a problem!”

Bess said nervously, “This isn't good. Everybody who works for Mr. Eagleton knows about the problems we've had with him. They can curry favor with him by causing trouble for the stagecoach line.”

“We'll just have to put a stop to that,” Ace said, sounding more confident than he felt. He and Chance could hold their own in a brawl, but if they were outnumbered by burly mine workers, the outcome wouldn't be in much doubt, and it wouldn't favor them.

On the other hand, they had that coach gun in Chance's hands to help even the odds. The problem with that was the law considered gunning down unarmed men to be murder, no matter what the odds. That was especially true when the law in Palisade was firmly in Samuel Eagleton's pocket.

Half a dozen men almost as big and burly as Wygant stalked around the turn carrying shovels and pickaxes. They may have come out to repair the road, but they were well-equipped for causing trouble, too.

Ace handed the reins to Bess. “Stay on the coach.” Before she could stop him, he vaulted down to the ground, landing lithely next to Chance.

Without leaving the wagon seat, Wygant gestured toward the coach and told his men, “Get that damn stagecoach off the road so I can go past.”

The workers didn't hesitate. They strode past the wagon and started up the sloping trail toward the stagecoach.

“Should I fire a load of buckshot over their heads?” Chance asked.

As far as Ace could see, none of the men were armed with guns, but he spotted the barrel of a Winchester sticking up from the floorboard of the wagon next to Wygant. He figured if Chance fired the coach gun, the foreman would use it as an excuse to grab the rifle and blaze away at them. “Not yet. Don't fire unless you absolutely have to. Let's see how they like looking down the barrels of that scattergun.”

Chance lifted the shotgun and snugged the butt against his shoulder as he pointed it at the workers. His face was cold and grim. Beside him, Ace rested his hand meaningfully on the butt of his holstered Colt.

The threat was enough to make the men stop, at least for the moment. It was difficult for any man to walk right up to the gaping muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun.

One of the workers looked back over his shoulder at the wagon. “Horace, I don't know about this.”

“For God's sake. They're not going to shoot you!” Wygant raged. “That'd be cold-blooded murder.”

“Looks more like self-defense to me,” Ace said. “When you start attacking people with picks and shovels, you can expect to get shot.”

Wygant sneered at him. “I reckon you're right, kid.” He paused as an ugly grin spread across his face. “Throw those tools down, boys. You can handle 'em with fists!”

Ace bit back a curse. Wygant was right. He and Chance would be outnumbered three to one, with their opponents being men who spent their days swinging sledgehammers in a mine. He and Chance were doomed to lose the battle. But if they cut loose with their guns, it would be murder.

Eagleton's men knew that, and grinning like their foreman, they tossed the picks and shovels to the ground and charged up the slope toward the stagecoach.

“Chance!” Emily called from the driver's seat where she had climbed to join Bess. “Throw me the gun!”

Chance turned and tossed the coach gun up to her. Emily caught it, turned it so the barrels were facing the charging workmen, and told Ace and Chance, “Get down!”

“Look out!” one of the men exclaimed as they suddenly slowed. “That crazy Corcoran girl's got the gun now!”

“Crazy is right,” Emily snapped. She fired over the heads of the horses as Ace and Chance dived to the ground.

The load of buckshot tore into the ground right in front of the workmen, making them stumble and run into each other as they tried to throw the brakes on their charge. Ace came up on one knee and saw Wygant standing up on the wagon's box, raising the Winchester.

Ace was at a bad angle, but he drew and fired anyway, the Colt leaping into his hand with blinding speed. The bullet angled up and struck Wygant in the left shoulder, twisting him around as he pulled the trigger. The two shots came so close together they almost sounded like one, but Ace had gotten his bullet in first, forcing Wygant's shot to go wild. The rifle slug plowed harmlessly into the mountainside.

Wygant dropped the Winchester, clutched his shoulder, and collapsed on the wagon seat. The workers milled around in front of the wagon, the momentum of their charge blunted by the coach gun blast.

“You men know me!” Emily told them. Her voice was shrill with anger. “You force my hand and I'll blow you all to hell!”

“You'll hang if you do!” one of the men shouted back at her. A few of them started to edge forward.

“You really think a jury would hang a woman who defended herself against six men, even in Eagleton's town? I'll take my chances.” She laughed coldly. “Anyway, even if I swing, you'll be too dead to see it!”

From the wagon seat, Wygant growled weakly, “Damn it, you idiots. I'm hurt! I need to get to the doc before I bleed to death.”

“Then back down to the turn so we can get by,” Ace hollered, “and you can be on your way.” He gestured with the Colt in his hand to emphasize the point.

The pain Wygant was in trumped his natural belligerence. “One of you come take the reins and move this wagon.”

“But Horace—”

“Now, damn it!”

One of the men went to the wagon and climbed up onto the seat. Wygant grimaced as he slid over to make room. The workman reached down to pick up the reins as the others retrieved the tools they had thrown down.

While they filed past the wagon on foot, their comrade carefully backed the vehicle toward the turn. The wagon team was composed of mules, and they weren't very cooperative. After a lot of cussing, the man finally got the wagon to the turn and then back around it.

“That's far enough,” Bess called. “Stay right where you are. I can get the coach past.” She turned to Emily. “You climb down, just in case.”

“The hell I will,” Emily replied. “I'm staying right here where I've got a good vantage point to use this gun if I need to. Let the boys walk. It'll be safer for them.”

Chance frowned. “Hey, nobody asked for any favors from you.”

“Good, because I'm not the sort of person who grants them most of the time,” the blonde said.

“I'm starting to get that idea.”

“We'll cover your back,” Ace said, to end the bickering between Chance and Emily as much as anything.

Chance had drawn the Lightning from his shoulder holster, and Ace didn't think the workers would challenge the two revolvers, especially as long as Emily held the coach gun. The brief flurry of gunplay seemed to have knocked the fight out of Eagleton's men.

Bess flapped the reins, called out to the team, and got the coach moving again. She drove past Ace and Chance, who fell in behind but had no trouble keeping up because Bess had to take it slow and cautious as she drove down the slope toward the turn.

Horace Wygant's cursing was a monotonous drone that floated up from the lower stretch of road.

When Bess reached the turn, she eased the coach around it. Emily sat tensely beside her, shotgun still raised. She hadn't replaced the shell she'd fired earlier, but she still had a lethal load of buckshot in the weapon. She kept it pointed in the general direction of Eagleton's men.

The wagon hugged the mountainside just beyond the turn, leaving just enough room for the coach to scrape past on the outside. The wagon's sideboards and the coach literally scraped. The coach's outer wheels were no more than four inches from the edge of the trail. With the brink that close, Ace held his breath until the coach was past the wagon and Bess was able to swing it away from the edge a couple feet.

She brought the coach to a halt and turned on the seat. “How does the road look down below, Mr. Wygant? Did the avalanche do much damage?”

“You're asking me that?” Wygant said through clenched teeth. “You can fall off the damn mountain for all I care!” He fixed his angry glare on Ace. “You shot me, kid. I'm not going to forget that.”

“Don't make me sorry I tried not to kill you,” Ace said.

From the box, Emily said, “You two get on here. We've wasted enough time.”

She kept the shotgun trained on Wygant and the other men while Ace and Chance climbed into the coach. The idea of Ace taking the coach down from the pass into the valley was forgotten for the moment. Bess got the team moving again and they left Wygant and the others behind.

As they reached the lower sections of road they saw that Wygant's crew had cleared away the dirt and rocks left behind by the avalanche. Here and there, a boulder had knocked a chunk out of the edge of the road, but the path was still wide enough for the coach to get by. Bess kept the team moving, working the reins and the brake with an expert's touch until the coach finally rolled onto the level ground at the base of the slope.

Bess brought it to a stop. Ace and Chance climbed out to find Emily holding her sister and patting her on the back while Bess shuddered.

Emily glanced down at the brothers. “She's not really as icy-nerved as she acts sometimes.”

“But you are,” Chance said. “I really believed you were willing to blow holes in all those varmints.”

“That's because I was. Anybody who threatens me or my sister deserves whatever they get, including a load of buckshot.”

Bess straightened up and took a deep breath. “I'm all right now.”

“You sure?” Emily asked.

“Yes. I just had to let my nerves settle down for a minute.”

“All right.” Emily broke open the shotgun, replaced the spent shell with a fresh one from her pocket, and snapped the weapon closed. “Now, how about we find a good place for that picnic?”

Joe Buckhorn's room was on the same floor of the hotel as his employer's suite, right across the hall, in fact. He was always at Eagleton's beck and call, twenty-four hours a day, and was never far from the mining magnate.

Eagleton had a bellpull in the suite that alerted the hotel cook down in the kitchen whenever he was ready for breakfast, which was usually in the early afternoon. The boss had a habit of sleeping late, especially when the lovely Rose Demarcus had visited him the night before.

Until that summons came, Buckhorn was free to sit in the hotel lobby or drink coffee in the dining room or have Rose send over one of her girls, but he always went up with the waiter who carried Eagleton's breakfast tray and got his orders for the day.

He was in the lobby, reading a two-week-old Denver newspaper. He had learned to read at the reservation school before he was old enough to understand just how much his people despised him because of his white blood. Once that realization sunk in, he had left to make his way in the white man's world, only to discover that he was equally hated there because of the Indian blood in his veins. It didn't help in either place that he was big and ugly and mean.

If everybody was going to hate him anyway, he could stop worrying about it, he'd decided, and just got tougher and meaner and good with a gun. The people who valued those skills—like Samuel Eagleton—didn't give a damn about his ancestry. All they cared about was how good he was at killing people they wanted dead.

A bit of commotion in the street made Buckhorn glance up from the newspaper and look out through the hotel's big front windows. A wagon rolled past in the street carrying two men. One of them was Horace Wygant, the mine foreman. His bald, bullet-shaped head was unmistakable. He was also the only hombre in these parts who was almost as big and mean as Buckhorn himself.

Wygant didn't look tough at the moment, though. He huddled on the wagon seat while the other man handled the team of mules. Wygant clutched his left shoulder where his shirt displayed a large, dark bloodstain.

That looked like a gunshot wound to Buckhorn. He had seen plenty of them, so he ought to know.

He frowned. Before going to bed last night the boss had left orders for Wygant to take a crew out to Timberline Pass and check the road down to the valley for damage from the avalanche—an avalanche, Buckhorn had thought wryly at the time, that some of Eagleton's own hired guns had caused in an attempt to wreck the stagecoach.

Sometimes he wondered just how much the boss thought things through. He would never express that thought to anyone, of course.

It baffled him who could have shot Wygant, so he put the paper aside, stood up, and went outside. The wagon had drawn to a stop in front of the office of Dr. Josiah Truax, and the workman was helping the injured Wygant down from the vehicle.

“Wygant, what the hell happened to you?” Buckhorn asked.

“What the hell does it look like?” the foreman snapped. He and Buckhorn had never gotten along well.

“It looks like you've been shot, but you were out working on the road. Who'd want to take a shot at you for doing that?”

“It's none of your damn business, 'breed,” Wygant snarled, “but it was one of those Jensen boys. You know, the ones who've been sniffing around Corcoran's girls and taking their side.”

Buckhorn nodded. He recalled the Jensen brothers from the confrontation in the hotel the previous night. Their names were Ace and Chance, he remembered. Stupid names.

“Which one?” he asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Wygant groaned. “Help me inside, damn it. This blasted shoulder is killin' me!”

Buckhorn lifted a hand “Wait a minute. Why would one of the Jensens shoot you?”

“They were going down the mountain road in Corcoran's other stagecoach. Don't ask me why. I started up in the wagon and met them just past one of the turns. They wanted me to back up so they could get past.”

“And you didn't want to do that.”

“Hell, no! I know how the boss feels about that bunch. He wouldn't want any of us backing down from them.”

“So what happened?”

Wygant was a little pale, probably from loss of blood along with the pain he was in, but he said, “That crazy blond girl Emily Corcoran took a shot at us with a coach gun. Then the Jensen kid winged me. We didn't have any choice but to back off. They would have killed somebody if we hadn't.”

Buckhorn nodded slowly. He understood. Wygant and his crews, for all their toughness, were miners and construction men. They weren't killers. They weren't skilled in gunplay.

That took a special sort of man.

Evidently the Jensen brothers fell into that category. That didn't surprise Buckhorn. He'd been able to tell by looking at them that they were young but not green. They would be dangerous enemies if he ever had to face off against them.

He would remember that.

Buckhorn gestured toward the door of the doctor's office and told the other man, “All right. Take him on in there and get Doc Truax to patch him up. And tell the doc to send the bill to the boss.”

“Damn right he will,” Wygant muttered as he made his unsteady way into the doctor's office with the other man helping him.

Buckhorn turned around to head back to the hotel. Eagleton would be getting up soon, and he would want a report on what had happened out on the road. He didn't like to be kept in the dark about anything.

Buckhorn hadn't taken more than a step when he spotted Rose Demarcus coming along the boardwalk toward him. He stopped short, and his left hand lifted to pinch the brim of his bowler hat respectfully.

“Why, hello, Joseph.” She was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit with the jacket cinched tight around her slender waist.

Buckhorn didn't doubt that her waist was so trim because she was laced into a whalebone corset, and the image that thought planted in his head made his heart thump a little harder.

Rose's hair was piled up on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls, and a hat that matched the suit was perched on it. A little feather stuck up from the hat. She looked elegant and lovely and any man who looked at her was going to have a hard time taking his eyes off her.

Joe Buckhorn was no exception to that.

He found his tongue and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Demarcus. You weren't looking for the boss, were you? I don't know if he's awake yet.”

“No, I'm just out doing a little shopping.” With a little frown, she asked, “Was that Horace Wygant I saw being helped into the doctor's office just now?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Is he all right?”

Buckhorn hesitated. He wasn't sure he ought to mention the incident on the mountain road to anyone else before he reported it to the boss . . . but it was Rose asking. What man could fail to tell her whatever it was she wanted to know?

“He was wounded in a little shooting scrape out on the road from Timberline Pass down into the valley.” Although there was no real justification for it, he added, “I reckon he'll probably be all right.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear that, I suppose. I'm not all that fond of Mr. Wygant—he's gotten upset and caused trouble a time or two in my house—but I don't like to see harm come to any of Samuel's employees. To be honest, I'd be much more troubled if you were hurt.”

“I, uh, appreciate that, ma'am.”

“You can call me Rose, you know. At least when it's just the two of us like this.”

He wasn't sure if she was teasing and flirting with him or if she was sincere. Either way, he knew he had to tread carefully. He didn't want to do anything improper that would get back to the boss. Rose Demarcus was Eagleton's woman, and he wouldn't stand for anyone messing with her, certainly not his own bodyguard. His
half-breed
bodyguard.

“I appreciate that, too, ma'am, but—”

“I mean, we're friends, aren't we?” she interrupted.

“Sure. I guess. The boss might not care for it, though. He won't put up with anybody not showing you the proper respect.”

The smile that curved her red lips held a touch of cynical bitterness in it. “I run a brothel in a mining town, Joseph. As long as I get paid, that's all the respect I'm entitled to.”

“Now, I wouldn't say that—”

“Samuel would. But the last thing I want to do is cause a problem between the two of you, so you can go on calling me ma'am or Miss Demarcus or whatever you want. Just don't forget that I consider you a friend.” With that she moved past him and went on down the boardwalk toward the general store.

Buckhorn turned to watch her go. Most of the men she passed tipped their hats to her from a combination of her own beauty and the common knowledge that she was Samuel Eagleton's kept woman. Nobody wanted to offend the man who owned pretty much the whole town.

The women Rose passed didn't acknowledge her presence. To them, her relationship with Eagleton didn't matter as much. She was still a lady of the night.

Seeing that made Buckhorn feel a pang of sympathy. Both of them were outsiders, he thought. With Rose, it was a matter of choice rather than birth, but the end result was pretty much the same.

Folks were willing to pay them for the things they were good at—but that didn't mean they would ever be anything except gutter trash to most people.

Buckhorn sighed, tried to put that thought out of his mind, and went to see if the boss was awake yet.

 

 

Bess parked the stagecoach under some aspens that grew along the creek bank, and Emily took a blanket from the basket to spread on the ground so she could set out the food.

As the four of them sat on the blanket and ate and talked, Ace couldn't deny that it was mighty pleasant. The fact that not even an hour earlier they had been shooting guns and nearly fighting for their lives seemed far away in the idyllic surroundings.

“I almost feel guilty for relaxing and enjoying myself,” Bess said. “There's been so much trouble lately. . . .”

“That's the best time to forget about it,” Chance told her. “You can't do anything about it right now, can you?”

“Well . . . no more than what I'm already doing, helping the two of you get ready to take over the Bleak Creek run.”

“There you go,” he said with a grin. “You're doing what you can. Don't worry about the rest of it.”

Emily said, “Telling Bess not to worry is like telling a dog not to bark. It just comes naturally to her.”

“Don't you ever worry about anything?” Ace asked her.

“Sure I do,” Emily replied with a shrug. “But if it's not something I can fix, I try not to think about it. That just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.”

Bess said, “You can't fix everything with a load of buckshot from a coach gun.”

“Maybe not, but it's a good start.”

Ace and Chance laughed. Bess frowned at them for a second, then chuckled as well.

“What's funny about that?” Emily demanded. “I believe in simple solutions. Solutions don't come much more simple than buckshot.”

“I don't reckon anybody could argue with that,” Ace said.

“Not unless he wanted his rear end dusted,” Chance added with a grin.

Emily rolled her eyes, shook her head, and reached for the jug of buttermilk, which she had kept cool on the trip out by wrapping it in several layers of wet cloth.

When they had finished the meal, Ace dug a hole with his knife and buried the chicken bones while Emily packed up everything else in the basket. She and Chance got back inside the coach and Ace and Bess resumed their places on the driver's seat.

Bess handed the reins to Ace. “All right. Take us back to Palisade.”

He looked at the mountains looming above them and the road leading to Timberline Pass and felt a little trepidation but didn't let that show. He flicked the reins against the team's rumps and got the horses moving.

Going back up the road was slower but much easier in a way because he didn't have to worry about using the brake. The coach's own weight made the going difficult enough. The slower pace meant that the turns were easier, too.

“You're doing fine,” Bess assured him.

“I didn't get to finish driving all the way down,” Ace reminded her.

“No, but you did well enough that I'm confident you can handle the team and the coach . . . as long as nothing unusual happens.”

“And if it does, I'll do the best I can.”

“Just don't wreck this coach. It's the only one we have left. If anything happened to it, that really would be the end. Pa would just have to give up.”

“He couldn't afford to buy another coach?”

Bess shook her head. “Not even a chance.”

From inside the coach came a question. “Did I hear my name?”

“No, just go back to whatever you were doing,” Ace told him. To Bess, he said, “Does anybody keep an eye on the coach while it's parked in the barn?”

“Well, Nate does. But we haven't really been guarding it—” She paused. “We should, shouldn't we?”

“You'd be out of business without it. If Eagleton had somebody burn down the barn with the stagecoach in it, that would take care of his problem.”

“He'd never do that,” Bess declared. “It would be too dangerous, not just to our operation but to the whole town. A fire like that could spread and burn Palisade to the ground.”

Ace nodded. “I reckon you're right about that. But he could try something else to disable the coach. For that matter, he could have his men steal your horses. You can't have a stage line without horses.”