That allowed them to speak freely as long as they were discreet about it.
Rogers started off by saying quietly, “I hope you’ve changed your mind since last night.”
“Changed my mind? About what?”
“About going through with this loco scheme of yours.”
“You mean finding the gang’s hideout? Nothing loco about that. It’s what has to be done.”
“It’s also a job for the law.”
“Well, the law didn’t seem to be doing too good a job of it.” She heard Rogers’s breath hiss sharply and knew he had taken her words as an insult. She hadn’t meant them that way, exactly. To her it was more of a matter of stating the facts. “My father wound up shot and nearly killed. I would have left things to my uncle and my cousins if they’d been around, but there’s no telling when they’ll show up. They might not get the message for weeks or even months.”
They walked along for several steps without Rogers saying anything. Then he surprised her a little by telling her, “You might be right. But even so, this is too dangerous for you to be mixed up in, Denny. I want you to tell Muddy that you’ve changed your mind and will be drifting on along by yourself.”
Anger flared as she looked over at him. “Is that an order? An official decree from the federal law?”
“I can make it one, if that’s what it’ll take to get some sense into your head.”
“Go to hell, Lon. Nobody tells me what to do.”
“You stubborn, bullheaded—”
“You’re repeating yourself.” If he responded to that, she didn’t hear it, because she angled out into the street and cut across it to reach the café.
As soon as she went in, she spotted Muddy Malone sitting at a large, rectangular table with several other men. Platters of flapjacks, biscuits, eggs, steak, ham, and bacon filled the table, and the men were helping themselves to the grub. He waved her over to join them.
She took one of the two empty chairs at the table and nodded to the other men, who all had the look of hardcases and outlaws about them. She had never seen a more dangerous, disreputable-looking bunch.
And she was going to try to pass herself off as one of them? For a second, doubt attacked her. She must have been loco, just like Rogers said, to believe her scheme would work.
Thinking about Rogers stiffened her resolve. If her plan succeeded, not only would she be helping her family, she would be showing that stiff-necked young deputy marshal it was a mistake to underestimate her. She picked up one of the coffeepots sitting on the table and filled the empty cup at her place, then began piling food on her plate.
“Where’s Williams?” Muddy asked. “He said he was gonna wait at the hotel for you. I hope the two of you didn’t get in another squabble.”
“You didn’t hear any gunshots, did you?” Denny said.
“No, I didn’t,” Muddy replied.
“He’ll be along in a minute. I’m just a mite faster than him, that’s all.” She grinned. “In all the ways that count.”
The door opened, the bell hung over it jingling a little, and Rogers went in, still frowning.
One of the other men at the table jeered, “Hey, Williams, this old pard of yours was just tellin’ us how slow you are when it counts.”
“Yeah, well, nearly every word out of his mouth is a lie, and you’d all do well to remember that.”
Muddy said, “If you two keep goin’ on like this, I’m liable to decide I can’t trust either of you and that you oughta just go on your way instead of comin’ with us.”
“No need for that,” Denny said. “I can tolerate him.”
“And I can put up with him,” Rogers said as he took the other empty chair, which thankfully wasn’t next to Denny. “Right now I’m more interested in this coffee and grub.”
Like Denny, he dug into the breakfast. No other customers were in the café at the moment, but Lu Shan was kept busy anyway, bringing more food and pots of coffee. While they ate, Muddy introduced the other men to Denny, nodding to each of them around the table as he supplied their names—Moran, Truett, Long, Watson, Calder, Hamlin, and Daly.
Denny nodded pleasantly to them and tried to remember what each of them was called, but she figured it didn’t really matter much. In a few days, they would all be members of the outlaw gang out to destroy the Sugarloaf.
Her mortal enemies, in other words.
One of the men—Moran, Denny believed it was—asked, “How long is it gonna take us to get where we’re goin’?”
“Three days, four at the most,” Muddy replied. “Unless we run into real trouble, like the law. I’m pretty good at steerin’ clear of star packers, though.” He grinned. “I can sniff ’em out, kinda like a bloodhound.”
Denny didn’t say anything, and she was careful not to glance in Rogers’s direction. Let Malone believe whatever he wanted. He would find out how wrong he was, soon enough.
When breakfast was finished, Muddy paid Lu Shan for everyone’s meal. “Don’t get used to it,” he warned the others. “Everybody pays their own freight in our bunch. Reckon you can call this a bonus.”
“We’re obliged to you, boss,” Daly said.
Muddy shook his head. “Don’t call me boss, and damn sure don’t get in the habit of it. Where we’re goin’, that could get you in a heap of trouble. There’s only one boss, and you’d best not forget it.”
“What’s his name, Muddy?” Rogers asked.
Always fishing for information, he was. Denny had to give him credit for that.
“Like everything else, you’ll find out when the time comes.” Muddy jerked his head toward the door. “Go get your horses saddled and ready to ride, then meet me in front of Trammell’s store. I told that old man to put together some supplies for us, and I got a pack mule to load ’em on.” He thumbed his hat back on his head. “I don’t know about you boys, but I’m ready to get started.”
“Not me,” Rogers said with a grin. “I’m ready to be there and start earning some of that money you promised us.”
Amen, Denny thought. She didn’t care about the money, but she was ready to arrive at the gang’s hideout and discover just who it was that wanted her father dead.
CHAPTER 32
The trip was generally miserable. It rained a lot while they were riding south, so they spent a lot of time wet and cold. When it wasn’t raining, thick clouds continued to gather over the mountains and the foothills, not even allowing the sun’s rays to warm and dry the riders. Every gust of wind had sharp teeth in it.
Denny was glad she had brought the extra blankets. Even with them, she still woke up shivering most mornings.
She rode with her head down and her hat pulled low over her eyes. The faces of the men were heavily beard-stubbled and she didn’t have any to display. She was able to get a handful of mud and smear it over her cheeks and jaws when no one was nearby to make her beardless state less obvious. Any time she had personal business to take care of, she had to sneak off into the brush. No one seemed to have noticed that so far, but the possibility that they might realize what she was doing worried her. She was glad the journey was only going to take a few days. That much less time for the others to figure out something about her was off-kilter, she thought.
The fourth and final day of the trip dawned clear for a change. Denny was glad to see the sun. With the clouds and mist that had been hanging over the mountains finally gone, she was able to get a better look at them and realized with a slight shock that some of the peaks looked familiar. They were less than thirty miles from the Sugarloaf.
Rogers drifted over close to her while she was saddling the buckskin. None of the other men were close by. He said quietly, “Got to be getting pretty close now.”
“Yeah, I think so.” She pulled a cinch tight. “We ought to get to the hideout today. Then what?”
“Then we’ll figure out some way for you to get out of there and go for help. I’ll stay behind to cover for you.”
Denny frowned. “Why
don’t we both get out? If you stay there, it’s going to be mighty dangerous.”
“Not necessarily. I’ll just make it sound like you double-crossed us and ran out again, like you did back in Kansas.”
“Don’t go thinking that was real,” she snapped.
“You’d better believe it was real. If you act like it wasn’t, you could get us both killed in a hurry.”
He was right about that, she supposed. She finished getting the saddle in place and gave a curt nod.
The group mounted up and rode on. The farther south they went, the more familiar the landscape was to Denny. Knowing that she was less than a day’s ride from home made her long to be there, to see her parents and brother again. She had only been away for a little more than a week, but she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened during that time. Had Louis been able to convince their mother and father that she had gone back east? Was Smoke still continuing to recuperate from his wound? If he’d had a setback, a turn for the worst, and something had happened to him while she was gone, she didn’t know if she could ever forgive herself for not being there.
Her more pragmatic side reminded her that she had been gone a lot more often than she had been there. Smoke could have died a hundred times over while she was on the other side of the world. But he hadn’t. He was the strongest man she had ever known, and she saw no reason that should change.
Muddy Malone’s course angled west, deeper into the foothills. The terrain grew more rugged. Huge, rocky shelves thrust up a hundred feet or more, forcing the riders to detour around them. The vegetation was sparse, mostly clumps of tough grass and small but hardy pine trees. Denny didn’t recall ever exploring that particular area. It wasn’t on Sugarloaf range, although she estimated the ranch’s northern boundary was only a few miles away.
They dropped down into a stretch slashed by ravines. A rider could get lost pretty easily in that labyrinth, but Muddy seemed to know where he was going. He led the way down a broad, caved-in bank into a gully about twenty yards wide. That gully twisted and turned but provided a way through the badlands.
Brice nudged his horse alongside Denny’s, and when she glanced over at him, he darted a look down at the ground. Denny’s eyes followed his gaze and spotted the same thing he had. The ground was too hard and rocky to take many prints, but here and there cattle tracks could be seen. At some point in the not-so-distant past, cows had been driven through the gully.
Stolen cows, Denny thought. Stock rustled from the Sugarloaf.
That came as no surprise. After all, the whole plan had been to find the rustlers’ hideout. Those tracks were welcome confirmation that she and Rogers were on the right trail.
The gully ran for several miles and then rose and ended at a level stretch of ground. Half a mile away loomed another of those massive rock shelves, that one split by a small opening. Denny’s heart slugged faster at the sight. She sensed that the cleft led to her destination.
She was even more convinced when Malone rode straight toward it. He took off his hat and waved it back and forth over his head three times in what had to be a signal. As the group approached, two men holding rifles stepped out from behind some boulders clumped at the entrance.
Muddy reined in and greeted the guards. “I’ve got some fellas who want to ride with us, just like the boss was lookin’ for.”
One of the outlaws gave the newcomers a hard stare. “They know they’ve come too far to turn back now, don’t they?”
“Nobody wants to turn back. They’re all good hombres.”
“You’d better hope so,” the guard said. “Your neck is ridin’ on this, too, you know, Muddy. Turk convinced the boss to put you in charge of this, but he can’t save you if you’ve fouled up.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” Muddy snapped. “Too many of you fellas have been doubtin’ me. You’ll soon see that I done a good job.”
“Hope so . . . for your sake, Muddy.” The guard stepped back and used his rifle barrel to wave them on through the opening in the cliff. The other outlaw just watched impassively as they rode past.
Denny took in all the details of the narrow canyon leading to the hideout and knew Rogers was doing the same thing. She counted the number of bends and noted that a guard was posted at each one. Getting to the other end of the canyon wouldn’t be easy. A small number of defenders could hold off a much larger force.
Smoke had probably been near there and might know another way in, if one existed. Once he knew where the hideout was located, he would be able to come up with an effective battle plan, even if he was still too weak from his injury to take part in the showdown. Denny was certain of that.
Even in the middle of the afternoon, it was shadowy inside the cleft. The only time the sun would shine down into it would be at noon, during certain times of the year. Because of that, the air had a permanent chill to it.
The canyon was narrow enough that only a handful of cattle could be driven abreast through it. That was workable—plenty of cows could be moved through there as long as you didn’t mind having a long line of them—but they couldn’t be kept penned up in such close quarters. Knowing that, Denny figured the canyon had to lead to a larger area. She wasn’t surprised when they rode around another bend and she saw sunlight up ahead. The bright rays were flooding across a wide, cliff-enclosed basin as the group emerged from the passage.
Quite a bit of work had gone into that hideout. There were corrals and an old prospector’s cabin that had been fixed up. Tents were pitched, giving it a resemblance to a military camp. A large fenced-off area where the rustled stock must be kept was empty at the moment, telling her that the gang had already disposed of their last haul.
Men were scattered around the basin, but Muddy ignored them and rode straight toward the cabin with his companions trailing out behind him. A figure appeared in the structure’s open doorway.
Denny was a little surprised to see that it was a woman. She had long, straight brown hair and wore a simple dress cut low enough in the front that the upper swells of her breasts were visible. She might be a whore the gang had brought along to service them—or she might be the boss outlaw’s wife—or anything in between. She didn’t seem surprised to see Muddy and the others, though. She turned away unconcernedly and disappeared into the log cabin.
As Muddy reined in and motioned for the others to do likewise, a man stepped out, buckling on a gun belt. He was fairly well-dressed and neatly groomed, with a close-cropped mustache and sleek dark hair. His hawklike face was intense but bore the stamp of intelligence. He walked with a limp, but it didn’t seem to hinder him too much.
Another man, stocky and sandy-haired, came quickly toward the cabin on foot. As he strode up, he spoke first. “Glad to see you’re back, Muddy.”
“Told you I could do the job, Turk.” Muddy gestured toward the others on horseback. “Got nine good men here to throw in with us, the best of the bunch in Elkhorn.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” the hawk-faced boss snapped.
“Uh . . . sure, Nick,” Muddy said hastily. “I never meant otherwise.” He paused. “You, uh, want ’em to get down off their horses?”
The boss nodded. Muddy motioned for the group to dismount.
They swung down from their saddles and stood by the horses, holding their reins. Denny’s paint packhorse was tied to the buckskin’s saddle, so it wasn’t going anywhere. She kept her head down, but she was watching everything closely with eyes shaded by the brim of her hat. Rogers was behind her somewhere. She wished she could see him but didn’t want to turn around to look. That might draw more attention to her.
The woman came out of the cabin again, leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, and folded her arms across her ample bosom. She studied the newcomers, too, and that made Denny uneasy. Would another woman be more likely to realize that she wasn’t a man?
It was too late to do anything about that. More than ever before, she truly had to play the hand out and see what happened.
The boss walked toward them and looked them over. He didn’t come up and study each of the newcomers at close range. Denny was grateful for that.
After a moment he said, “My name is Nick Creighton. I reckon you’ve probably heard of me.”
Denny hadn’t, not at all, but under the circumstances she sure wasn’t going to admit that. Some of the hardcases nodded slightly to indicate that they were familiar with Creighton’s name. Whether or not they actually were, was anybody’s guess.
“Not far south of here is a ranch called the Sugarloaf,” Creighton continued. “It belongs to a man named Smoke Jensen.” A cold smile curved the outlaw’s lips. “I reckon you’ve heard of him, too.”
One of the men—Calder, Denny thought it was—glared at Muddy Malone. “You didn’t tell us anything about goin’ up against Jensen.”
The others looked a little surprised, too, and even nervous.
“Jensen’s laid up,” Creighton said. “He’s got a bullet through him from the last time we tangled. I nearly killed him then, and next time I will kill him. Him and everybody he cares about. And then, once that’s done . . . we’re going to loot that ranch. We’re going to drive off every head of stock on it and burn every building to the ground. We’re going to soak the Sugarloaf in blood, gentlemen, very soon. When we’re done, we’ll be rich men, rich enough to go wherever we want without the law touching us. If you want to be part of that, you’ve come to the right place.”
One of the men said, “You sound like you’ve got a powerful grudge against this fella Jensen, to want to wipe out him and his whole family.”
Creighton patted his left thigh. “I got a bullet through here five years ago. It broke the bone and put me in bed for months. The damn doctors told me I’d likely never walk again. But I knew I would, because I had to be on my feet to get my revenge against the man who shot me—Smoke Jensen.”
Denny cast her mind back, trying to remember if her father had ever mentioned a man named Nick Creighton around her, or in any of his letters. She drew a complete blank.
The Jensen Brand Page 22