His grip on Chance’s arms slipped, and Chance was able to shrug him off.
That help didn’t come in time to save him from a punch launched by Luther. His fist sunk into Chance’s stomach and doubled him over. The hombre was about to lift an uppercut into Chance’s jaw when Ace grabbed his vest from behind with both hands and slung him off his feet.
Spectators jumped back to give the man room to roll in the dirt as he landed. His hat flew off, revealing a thatch of carrot-colored hair. He came to a stop on his belly and tried to push himself upright.
“Just stay where you are, mister,” Ace warned him, holding out a hand.
“You go to hell!” the man roared as he surged to his feet.
Meanwhile, Banjo had caught his balance after that unexpected blow from Ling. He turned toward her and yelled, “You damn hellcat! I’ll get you for that!” He started after her.
She tried to retreat, but her back hit a hitch rail in front of the hardware store, making her hesitate for a second. She tried to duck under the rail, but the man grabbed one of the blousy sleeves of her tunic and jerked her toward him. She let out a frightened cry and swung the bag one-handed, but he blocked it with his free arm.
“Maybe we’ll just rip them clothes offa you!” he cried. “You yeller whore!”
Chance was still doubled over. His face was gray and he was breathing hard from that punch to the belly, but he lifted his head as the man shouted at Ling, and resolve appeared on his features. He shook off the pain he was feeling and tackled the man from behind, knocking him away from the young woman. They both sprawled in the dust.
A few yards away, Ace had his hands full blocking the flurry of wild punches Luther directed at him. The attack was so furious Ace didn’t have time to throw any punches of his own. He couldn’t parry all the blows, either. One of them clipped him on the side of the head and made him dizzy for a second.
“Now I got ya!” the man bellowed as he lunged forward and clamped both hands around Ace’s neck. He gouged hard with his thumbs. “I’ll pop that gourd right off your shoulders!”
Ace doubted that, but the man might choke him to death, he thought as he was forced back. He turned the man’s own momentum against him by going limp and falling backwards before he raised his right leg and rammed the sole of his boot into the man’s belly. He levered him up and over, flipping him through the air. The man’s choking hands slipped away from Ace’s throat as people leaped out of the way, clearing a spot for him to crash down on his back with stunning force.
Ace rolled over and dragged air into his lungs as he fought his way to his feet. He looked over and saw that Chance was sitting on top of the other man, raining punches down on his face. That part of the fight looked to be just about over.
But then a third man came out of the crowd with a gun in his hand, looming behind Chance. He raised the revolver and was about to bring it crashing down on Chance’s head in a vicious blow that might well prove fatal.
It wasn’t just a street brawl any longer. It was deadly danger.
Ace let his instincts take over. His right hand flashed toward the holster on his hip. He hoped the Colt hadn’t fallen out during the fracas.
It hadn’t. His hand closed around the revolver’s walnut grips. He palmed out the gun and brought it up with blinding speed. His thumb looped over the hammer and eared it back. “Drop it!” he called to the man about to pistol-whip Chance.
The blow never fell. Ace would have squeezed the trigger if it had started, even by a fraction. He aimed to shoot the hombre in the shoulder, but it was hard to say what would happen if guns started going off.
“Hold on, kid,” the third man said. He was a lean, dour-faced individual. Like the other two, he wore range clothes that marked him as a cowboy. “Don’t shoot.”
“Then drop that gun,” warned Ace.
“Sure, sure. Take it easy.” Slowly, the third man lowered his arm and bent to let the revolver drop to the ground in front of him. While he was doing that, Chance sledged one final punch into the face of the man he had defeated, who now lay bloody and senseless.
“Back away from the gun,” Ace told the third man.
The crowd had gone quiet, so he didn’t have any trouble hearing a sound behind him. He recognized it as the twin hammers of a double-barreled shotgun being pulled back.
“You’re the one who better drop your gun and back away from it,” said a gravelly voice.
Ace glanced over his shoulder, saw a burly man in a dusty black suit and hat pointing the Greener at him. A five-pointed tin star was pinned to the man’s vest.
Ace lowered his Colt but didn’t drop it. “I was just trying to save my brother from getting his head stove in, Sheriff.”
“I don’t talk things over with fellas holdin’ guns,” the lawman rumbled. “Put it down.”
From the ground where he was still astride the man he had battered into unconsciousness, Chance protested, “This isn’t fair. They’re the ones who jumped us.”
“We’ll hash it all out,” said the sheriff. “In case you ain’t noticed, I ain’t alone, neither.”
Ace looked around and saw that two more men had emerged from the crowd, which was scattering rapidly because of the possibility of gunplay. Each of the deputies carried a rifle and held it ready to use.
“All right.” Ace put his gun on the ground and stepped back away from it.
“You there. Fancypants.” The sheriff swung the shotgun toward Chance. “If you’re packin’ iron, get rid of it.”
Grudgingly, Chance reached under his coat and took the revolver from his shoulder holster. He tossed it onto the ground next to his brother’s Colt.
The man who’d been about to buffalo Chance said, “You need to lock these kids up, Sheriff. They’re crazy. Look what they did to Banjo and Luther.” He gestured toward his two friends.
The one Chance had tackled was still out cold. Luther had rolled onto his side but couldn’t get up. He just lay there groaning.
“Shut up, Kiley,” the sheriff snapped. “They probably had it comin’. You McPhee men are always startin’ trouble. What are you doin’ all the way up here, anyway? Don’t they have saloons down in Rimfire?”
“What we’re doing here isn’t really any of your affair, Sheriff,” Kiley responded. “Banjo and Luther were just minding their own business—”
“That’s a lie,” Chance interrupted hotly before the man could go on.
“I told you, we ain’t havin’ this argument out here.” The sheriff gestured with the twin barrels of his scattergun. “I want all five of you over in my office, now.”
“Luther and Banjo can’t even walk!”
“They’ll manage all right once somebody’s got a bucket o’ water from the horse trough and thrown it in their faces.” The lawman looked at one of the deputies and jerked his head in a curt nod.
The deputy lowered his rifle and hurried to carry out the order as the sheriff told the others, “Get movin’.”
Ace and Chance looked at each other. There didn’t seem to be anything they could do except go along with what the sheriff wanted. Maybe once things had calmed down, some of the bystanders would speak up and confirm that the Jensen brothers had just been defending themselves . . . and Ling.
At that moment, she stepped up beside Chance and took hold of his sleeve.
“Wait just a doggone minute,” the sheriff said. “Who in blazes is this?”
“This one’s name is Ling,” she said with her eyes downcast. “Mr. Chance is my master.”
The lawman stared at her and exclaimed, “He’s what?”
“Hold on a minute, Sheriff,” Chance said hastily. “You don’t need to get the wrong idea here.”
“Too late for that,” the badge-toter snapped. “Get movin’, the lot o’ you!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Fort Benton sheriff’s office and jail was housed in a sturdy stone building next to the brick courthouse. Ace worried that the sheriff might herd them all
into cells before questioning them further, but the lawman settled for crowding them into the office and then placing the shotgun on top of the scarred wooden desk with a decisive thump.
According to what Chance had told him during a low-voiced conversation the Jensen boys had carried on while being marched over there, the two men who had started the fight were named Luther and Banjo. Their heads were soaked from the dousing one of the deputies had given them. They wore sullen, angry scowls as they stood on one side of the room with their friend Kiley. A deputy was behind them, keeping an eye on them.
The sheriff had directed Ace, Chance, and Ling to the other side of the room. The other deputy was posted next to them with his rifle tucked under his arm.
A nameplate on the desk identified the sheriff as Bud Maddox. He looked back and forth between the two groups and said, “I’ll give you one chance to explain what happened out there, and so help me God, if you all start talkin’ at once I’ll throw the whole bunch of you behind bars.” He pointed a blunt finger at Ace. “You look reasonably smart. You go first.”
“I, uh, wish I could, Sheriff, but the fight was already going on when I got there. I saw that two men had ganged up on my brother, so I jumped in to help him.”
Maddox looked back and forth between the Jensens. “You two are brothers?”
“That’s right.” Ace didn’t explain about them being twins. Whenever most folks heard that word, they expected to see identical twins.
“I can tell you what happened,” said Chance. “Those two with the wet heads were very rude and insulting to this young woman. I was just defending her when the little one tried to lay hands on her.”
Banjo said, “Little one? I ain’t much shorter ’n you!”
“Don’t start,” Sheriff Maddox warned. He looked at Chance. “Go on . . . what’s your name, anyway?”
“Chance Jensen. This is my brother Ace. And the young lady is Miss Ling.”
Luther said, “He keeps callin’ her a lady, but she’s a China gal, and a harlot to boot.”
Ling cringed at the harsh words and huddled closer to Chance.
“I’m not warnin’ you again, Stebbins,” the sheriff told Luther. “Open your mouth when you haven’t been told to, and you’re goin’ in a cell.”
Luther glowered, but he didn’t say anything else.
“Go on, Jensen,” Maddox told Chance.
“They mistook Miss Ling for a prostitute and said some terrible things to her. I told them to move on, then the little one tried to grab her, and the big one threw a punch and knocked me down.” Chance shrugged. “I got up and fought back. Ace got there a minute later and joined in. That’s the whole story, Sheriff.”
“Not quite,” Maddox said. “When I heard the commotion and got there with my deputies, there was a gun drawn.” He leveled an accusing stare at Ace.
“That fella Kiley was about to hit Chance with his gun,” Ace explained. “That might have hurt him really bad. So I wasn’t going to let it happen.”
“Even if it meant shootin’ Kiley?”
“I was aiming for his shoulder.”
“Yeah, and if you’d missed you might’ve hit him in the head.” Maddox squinted at Kiley. “Not that it would’ve been any great loss, but I don’t cotton to havin’ anybody’s brains splattered all over the street in my town.”
“You haven’t even asked for our side of the story,” Kiley said bitterly.
Maddox swung toward the trio of cowboys. “All right. Are you claimin’ it happened different from what these boys just told me? And remember, I can send my deputies out to get statements from witnesses if I have to. This ain’t Rimfire, where Angus McPhee runs everything.”
In a surly voice, Banjo answered, “Well . . . maybe it happened sorta like they said. But just look at the gal, Sheriff! How many China gals you see in these parts who ain’t either washerwomen or harlots? You can tell by lookin’ at her that she ain’t the sort to do laundry, so that only leaves one thing.”
Luther added, “Look at the way that fella’s dressed. He looks like a whoremonger, so we figured he’d brung the girl to town to sell her to Miss Hettie. It was a . . . what do you call it? A logical assumption.”
“And you heard her say yourself that Jensen there is her master,” Kiley put in with a smirk.
“That’s not the way it is,” Chance said hastily.
Maddox settled his suspicious gaze on Chance again. “Well, then, why don’t you tell me how it is?”
For the next few minutes, Chance did so, explaining about the poker game on the Missouri Belle with Jack Haggarty and its unexpected outcome. “The boat should still be docked,” he concluded. “You can go talk to Captain Foley if you want. He can tell you about the fire Haggarty started that panicked the whole boat and gave him a chance to get away.”
“I don’t reckon that’s necessary,” Maddox said with grudging acceptance in his voice. “The story you’ve told sounds reasonable enough to me. It’s pretty clear you three ain’t to blame for what happened.”
Luther and Banjo started to protest, while Kiley just stood there with a sour look on his face.
“Shut up!” Maddox roared at them. “Lock ’em up, boys. They’ll have to go to court for disturbin’ the peace.”
While the deputies prodded the three prisoners past a heavy, iron-strapped door into the cell block, Maddox took the guns belonging to Ace and Chance from behind his belt where he had tucked them away earlier. He placed the weapons on the desk and nodded toward them. “You can collect your hardware,” he told the Jensens. “There’s no law against carryin’ guns in town, but if you pull iron you’d better have a damn good reason for it.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Ace said as he picked up his Colt and slipped it into its holster. “We were telling the truth about not looking for trouble.”
“Then what does bring you to Fort Benton?” Maddox wanted to know. He squinted at Ling. “And if this gal is convinced she belongs to you, what’re you gonna do with her?”
“We haven’t quite figured that out,” said Chance.
“She’s starting to understand that she’s not a slave, though,” added Ace.
“Is that right, miss?” Maddox asked her.
Ling nodded tentatively. “It is all very confusing for this one. All of this one’s life, she has had a master to tell her what to do. This one does not know if she can make up her own mind.”
Maddox frowned at Ace and Chance. “She talk like that all the time?”
“Mostly,” Chance said, nodding.
Maddox shook his head. “That would confuse the hell outta me. You have any business in these parts?”
Chance snugged his revolver back into the shoulder holster. “No business. We’re just seeing the country, I guess you could say.”
“Uh-huh,” said Maddox. “Drifters, you mean. Saddle tramps.” He looked at Ling again. “That’s no life for a woman.”
“We know that,” Ace said. “That’s why we’re going to stay here for a while until we get her settled.”
“You might point us to a decent hotel,” suggested Chance.
“The Western Lodge is a good one. Fella name of Green runs it. You can tell him I sent you.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Ace said. “What about a livery stable?”
“Assuming nobody’s run off with our horses,” added Chance.
“Your mounts are fine. I don’t allow any horse stealin’ in Fort Benton, and folks know that. You’ll find that somebody probably tied ’em to one of the hitch racks. Anyway, take ’em down to Patterson’s Livery. Joe Patterson runs the best stable in town.”
Ace nodded. “We’re obliged to you. We’re free to go, then?”
Maddox waved a hand. “Go on. Get outta here. And try to stay outta trouble while you’re in town.”
“We always try to stay out of trouble,” Ace said.
The sheriff looked pretty skeptical about that, but he didn’t say anything else.
When they stepped out onto t
he street again, Chance drew in a deep breath. “Always good to breathe free air.”
“There are the horses,” Ace said, pointing to the hitch rail where the animals were tied, just as Maddox had predicted. “Somebody put our warbags and rifles with them, too.”
“The sheriff runs an honest town,” Chance commented. He looked over at Ling, who still carried her canvas bag. “Say, what do you have in that sack of yours? It made a pretty good thud when you walloped Banjo in the head with it.”
“Just some extra clothes. And this.” She opened the drawstring, reached inside the bag, and brought out a small statue, no more than six inches tall.
Ace recognized the figure seated cross-legged. “That’s Buddha,” he told Chance. “Remember I mentioned him back on the boat?”
“Fat little fella, isn’t he?”
Ace shook his head. “You shouldn’t talk so disrespectful about him. He’s part of their religion over there in that part of the world.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It is all right,” Ling said. “Buddha is very forgiving.”
“Is that gold?” Ace asked her.
“No. Merely paint. The statue is made of lead.”
“Well, it’s still good for walloping varmints in the head,” Chance told her. “You’d better put it away, though. Somebody might see it and think it was made of gold. If it was, it would be worth a lot of money. Somebody might try to steal it.”
“This one hopes not. Buddha has always watched over her and protected her.”
Chance looked around the frontier settlement. “He’s got his work cut out for him in a place like this.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Western Lodge Hotel wasn’t fancy, but not many places in Fort Benton were. The settlement had grown a great deal from the crude fur trading outpost it had started out as, but signs of its origins could still be seen in the many log and sod buildings in town. The Western Lodge was one of those log structures, but inside it was fairly nice.
Ling’s room had a thick rug on the floor to go along with what looked like a comfortable bed, a ladder-back chair, a table with a basin on it, and a wardrobe. She looked around the room with wide eyes and said, “Mr. Chance and Mr. Ace will stay here with this one?”
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