The Jensen Brand

by William W. Johnstone

  Unfortunately, they were just smudges in the pine needles, without anything to make them recognizable if she ever saw them again.

  All right. The lurker must have had a horse up there. She walked back away from the edge of the ridge and searched for signs that a mount had been tied up to wait while its rider peered across the creek at her.

  After a few minutes, she found hoofprints and a fresh pile of horse dung about fifty yards back where the trees thinned out somewhat. Again she studied the tracks. Those were more distinct. She was able to make out the markings made by that particular set of horseshoes, and she tried to commit all the telltale nicks and scratches and bent nails to memory.

  A frown put lines in her forehead. Whoever had shod this horse hadn’t done a particularly good job of it. If it was a Sugarloaf animal, her father wouldn’t have tolerated such sloppiness. Of course, some cowpokes had their own mounts and didn’t always use ranch stock. Still, it was an indication that the lurker might not have been a member of her father’s crew.

  If that was the case, then the hombre probably had no business being on the Sugarloaf—and he sure hadn’t had any cause to be spying on the boss’s daughter.

  Denny was pondering whether to try backtracking the sneaky son of a gun when she heard her buckskin whinny. Knowing the animal probably wouldn’t react like that unless some other horse was around, she quickly got to her feet. Her pa might have come along looking for her, or it might be someone else. Was the lurker coming back for some reason? she wondered.

  She started in the buckskin’s direction, moving through the trees and brush as quickly as she could and still be relatively quiet about it. She didn’t hear her horse make any other sounds.

  She wondered suddenly if some horse thief had come along and stolen the buckskin. That would be a stroke of bad luck. She was several miles from the ranch headquarters, and it would be a long walk in riding boots.

  Of course, she could always fire those signal shots Smoke had mentioned, and he or one of the hands would show up to help her.

  But damned if she wanted to be one of those helpless females who was always in need of rescuing, she told herself. She’d encountered way too many of them in books and was always annoyed by such characters.

  To her relief, the buckskin was still there, she saw a few minutes later. Denny looked around and didn’t see anyone else, man or horse. Maybe some other animal had spooked the buckskin. A prowling bobcat, maybe.

  She patted the horse’s shoulder and murmured, “What’s wrong? You smell some varmint?”

  As she spoke, she heard a faint rustling in some nearby brush. She stiffened slightly but managed not to show any other reaction. Watching from the corner of her eye as she continued to talk softly to the buckskin, she saw some branches shiver a little. The movement was more than a small animal would have made by rooting around.

  A man was hiding over there, she thought, and she had no doubt he had been checking out her mount a few minutes earlier. The thought that she was so close to whoever had been spying on her made her nervous, but it angered her as well. Without putting the carbine back in its sheath, she untied the buckskin’s reins and swung up into the saddle.

  Then, without any warning, she sent the horse plunging straight at the brush where the stranger was lurking.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was a loco thing to do, and Denny knew it. She was too angry to do anything else, though. Whoever was hiding, she was going to teach him that spying on her was a bad idea.

  She heard a startled yell as the buckskin crashed into the brush. A figure leaped aside, diving out of the way. In the sharply contrasting pattern of shadow and light cast by the trees, Denny couldn’t see the man very well, but she slashed at him with the carbine’s barrel. She wasn’t going to open fire without knowing who she was shooting at.

  The lurker might have been surprised by the unexpected charge, but he recovered quickly. As Denny tried to wallop him with the carbine, his hand shot up and grasped the barrel, stopping the blow in midair. He wrenched at the carbine, and since Denny wouldn’t let go, she abruptly found herself being pulled out of the saddle. She yelled in surprise and dismay as she came crashing down in the underbrush.

  The man loomed over her, still trying to wrestle the carbine away from her. From the ground, Denny kicked upward, but the man twisted so her boot heel thudded against his thigh rather than into his groin where she had aimed it. She writhed around, trying to get away from him, but all that succeeded in doing was knocking her hat down over her eyes so she couldn’t see.

  She lashed out blindly with her other leg, and when her foot hooked behind something, she yanked on it as hard as she could. She heard a surprised curse, then more brush crashed as her attacker toppled, his legs swept out from under him by her swift move.

  Denny rolled over. The wrist of the hand holding the carbine banged against a tree trunk with such force that her hand went numb for a second. That was long enough for the Winchester to slip out of momentarily nerveless fingers. Denny scrambled after it, but just as she slapped her other hand down on the stock, the stranger grabbed her from behind with both arms around her middle. He jerked her back away from the carbine and struggled to his feet as he hung on to her.

  It was like trying to hang on to a wildcat, or at least she tried to make it as much like that as she could. She writhed and kicked and flailed, and as she drove an elbow back she felt it land solidly. The man started gagging and choking. The point of her elbow had gotten him in the throat and at least distracted him for a moment, if not worse.

  Denny tore free, but instead of running she whirled around, lowered her head, and butted it against the man’s chest as she tackled him around the waist. His hat flew off, and the tackle knocked him off balance. As she drove as hard with her feet as she could, she forced him backwards. The two of them crashed through the brush and then out of it, into the open along the edge of the ridge. Denny kept pushing and never slowed down.

  Suddenly, there was nothing under their feet. She had driven them both off the edge, and she let out a startled yell as she realized her mistake.

  A split second later, they hit the slope, were jolted apart by the impact, and started to bounce and roll. The slope was steep, but it wasn’t a sheer drop or the fall probably would have killed them.

  As it was, they tumbled like thrown-aside rag dolls toward the creek below.

  Denny grunted and yelped as she banged into rocky knobs protruding from the slope. She tried to grab some of them to slow her fall, but her fingers slipped off. Sky and earth changed places with dizzying speed as she rolled, until finally she landed in the creek with enough force to drive all the breath from her body. It didn’t help that immediately after that, water splashed in her face and went down her throat. She came up coughing and spitting and gasping.

  At least she hadn’t landed facedown and knocked herself out. She wasn’t going to drown. She sat in the cold, swiftly flowing water and lifted a shaky hand to push ropes of sodden hair out of her face. She probably looked like a wet rat, she thought.

  That started her brain working again. She remembered how she had come to be in this predicament to start with, and anger blazed to life inside her again as she looked around for the man who had attacked her.

  She spotted him about ten yards away from her. He was floundering around in the creek, too, with his back toward her. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.

  She would give him even more trouble, Denny thought as she felt around under the water on the creek bed and closed her hand around a rock that was just about the size of her two fists clenched together. She pulled it free from where it was wedged in with some other rocks and lunged to her feet. She lifted the rock and splashed toward the enemy, vaguely aware that she hurt in a lot of places, but she was too mad to worry about that.

  He heard her coming, of course, and twisted around to see her looming over him with the rock upraised, ready to stove in his skull. He ducked toward her so
that as she struck, she fell over his back and sprawled face-first into the creek.

  She jerked her head up out of the water and tried to turn around and get her feet underneath her again. He grabbed her wrist and wrenched hard enough that she cried out as she dropped the rock. She tried to punch him with her other hand, but he caught hold of that wrist, too.

  “Stop it! Settle down, you . . . you hellcat!”

  Denny’s chest heaved as she gritted her teeth and glared at him. “Let go of me, you son of a bitch!” she raged.

  “That’s no way for a rich young lady to talk.”

  She blinked water out of her eyes and stared at him, realizing that he wasn’t a complete stranger, although she didn’t know much about him. She knew his name, though. “Let go of me, Rogers.”

  “Are you gonna keep trying to kill me if I do?” he asked.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t!”

  “How do you figure on doing that when I’ve got hold of both your arms?”

  She snarled. “I didn’t say I’d do it right now! But I swear, one of these days when you least expect it—”

  “You can get in trouble threatening to kill a—” He stopped short.

  When he didn’t go on, Denny demanded, “Kill a what? An insufferable, perverted sneak?”

  He frowned in evident confusion. “What?”

  “You were spying on me! What else would you call a man who skulks around to stare at young women?”

  Rogers shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Jensen.”

  Denny jerked her chin to point toward the open area where she had been running the buckskin earlier. “You were up on the ridge watching me while I was over there about half an hour ago.”

  “What were you doing?” He smiled. “Having a swim?”

  Denny felt her face growing warm. “Oh!” and tried to pull her wrists free again. “Let go of me, blast it. You’re hurting me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his face growing solemn. “But you knocked me off that cliff and then tried to brain me with a rock, so I’m not sure I feel like running the risk of letting you go.”

  She breathed hard for a couple seconds, then ground out, “I won’t fight anymore. All right?”

  “I have your word on that? Your word as Smoke Jensen’s daughter?”

  “That means something to you?”

  “From what I’ve heard about him, he’s a mighty honorable man,” Rogers said. “I figure that sense of honor might extend to his kids, too.”

  “I give you my word,” Denny snapped.

  Brice let go of her wrists. For a second she thought seriously about punching him anyway, then decided she couldn’t do that after she had given her word. He was right about that assumption, anyway, damn it.

  “You realize we’re sitting here up to our, uh, waists in icy cold water, don’t you?” he said.

  “Going numb, are you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind getting back on dry land.” He got to his feet, wincing. “Reckon my bruises are gonna have bruises by the time tomorrow morning rolls around.” He extended a hand to her. “Let me help you up.”

  “Go to hell,” she muttered. She climbed upright, awkwardly and painfully. But she made it without any help from him, and that pleased her.

  “Now, what’s this about somebody watching you from the ridge?”

  “You were,” she said flatly.

  Rogers shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. I rode up, found a saddled horse tied to a tree, and was about to look around for whoever owned it when I heard somebody coming. I pulled back into the brush to wait and see who it turned out to be. That’s the first time I laid eyes on you today, Miss Jensen.”

  “You’re lying,” Denny insisted.

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Because you’re a low-down, good-for-nothing—” He held up a hand to stop her. “I reckon we’ve established that you don’t have a very high opinion of me. But even so, I’m not the sort of fella who goes around spying on young ladies. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but it’s the truth.”

  She frowned at him for a long moment, then said, “You mean somebody else was sneaking around here?”

  “If you’re sure you saw somebody, then yeah, there had to be.”

  “I found some tracks up there,” Denny said, pointing to the top of the ridge. “I found where he tied his horse, too.”

  “But you never got a good look at him?”

  “No, I just saw some movement in the trees, enough to make me suspicious. I went back down the creek, forded it, and circled around on this side to try to find out who it was. Then I ran into you.”

  “And you just assumed that I had to be the varmint you were after.”

  “You don’t have any other good reason for being out here, do you?” Denny said. “This is Sugarloaf range, and the last time I checked, you don’t work for the Sugarloaf.”

  “You object to people riding across your father’s ranch?”

  “Unless they have a good reason to, I do.”

  Rogers shrugged. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

  “I don’t care if you think it’s fair or not. What are you doing here?”

  His voice tightened as he said, “That’s my business. I can tell you this much, though—I mean no harm to you or your family.”

  “I’m supposed to just believe that?”

  “Like I said before, believe it or don’t, whatever suits you. But it’s the truth.” He took a breath. “Now, I need to get on about my business and let you get on with yours . . .”

  Denny pointed to the top of the ridge again. “The problem is that’s where our horses are. It’s a long way back around if we have to walk it.”

  Rogers regarded the slope for a few seconds and then said, “I reckon if we’re careful, we can climb this ridge. We came down that way, we might as well go back up. I can give you a hand if you want—”

  “I’ve been climbing hills and trees and anything else that needed climbing since almost before I could walk,” she said. “Just stay out of my way and I’ll be fine.”

  “Suit yourself, then.” He waved a hand at the slope. “Up you go.”

  Denny glared at him and wanted to say something else but couldn’t think of anything. She turned toward the ridge while he began feeling around behind his belt. He suddenly seemed agitated about something and she heard him mutter, “Now where in blazes did that—?”

  “Looking for something?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s nothing for you to worry about. You go ahead and climb on up—”

  Denny was already looking around on the ground. A glint of something caught her eye, and before he could stop her, she reached down and plucked an object from the rocks at their feet. “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked as she held out her hand with a deputy United States marshal’s badge lying on the palm.

  CHAPTER 14

  Rogers caught his breath as he looked down at the badge in Denny Jensen’s hand. He wasn’t sure how it had slipped out of its pocket on the back of his belt, but the way he had been tumbling head over heels down the ridge, he supposed anything was possible.

  But why did it have to wind up where this crazy young woman would find it?

  For a second he thought about denying that it was his, but he realized she probably wouldn’t believe him. The way he had been pawing at his belt made it obvious he was looking for something, and it would be too much of a coincidence for the lost object to be anything else.

  He started to take it from her, but she quickly closed her hand around it and drew it back. “Wait just a minute. You haven’t told me this belongs to you.”

  “It does. And I’d appreciate it if you’d hand it over.”

  “You’re a deputy U.S. marshal.”

  She didn’t make it sound like a question, but he answered it like one anyway. “That’s right, and I’d be mighty grateful to you, Miss Jensen, if you could keep that to yours
elf.”

  “Does my father know?” she asked sharply.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Might as well spill the whole thing, he decided. Denny was stubborn enough to keep after him until he did. “The only one around here who knows is Sheriff Carson. I had to tell him who I am.”

  “Professional courtesy, you’d call it.”

  “Something like that.”

  She still had her hand closed around the badge. That was better than waving it around out in the open, he thought. There was no telling who might be watching. After all, she had said that someone was spying on her earlier. But what he really wanted was to have it snugged away in that hidden pocket where it belonged.

  “My boss, the chief marshal, sent me out here from Denver,” Rogers went on. “He assigned me to look into the rustling that’s been going on in this area. I assume I can trust you, Miss Jensen, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you about official government business.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “My father’s already taken care of that gang of rustlers.”

  “He eliminated some of them. We don’t know if he got rid of the whole bunch.”

  “What business is it of the federal government if some cattle are stolen?”

  She was pretty sharp, he thought. That was the same question Sheriff Carson had asked.

  “The rustling jeopardizes beef contracts with the army. Anyway, the marshal’s office has a stake in maintaining law and order in general.”

  “My brother knows a lot about such things. Maybe I should ask him about any jurisdictional questions.”

  “I’d really rather you didn’t say anything to anybody,” Rogers began quickly but stopped when Denny laughed.

  She stuck her hand out. “Here. Take your blasted old badge. I don’t care what you poke your nose into. I guess you had a good reason for being out here, instead of just spying on me.”

  He took the badge from her. “I wasn’t spying—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Forget it. You can go on searching for clues or whatever you were doing, and I’ll get back to my father. I don’t want him to come along and find us like this, looking like we’ve been rolling around together in the creek.”