The Jensen Brand

by William W. Johnstone

  “Damn right I can.”

  “Good. When the time comes, you jump on the buckskin and get out of here. When you do, stampede the other horses if you can.”

  “What about the guards in the canyon?”

  “They’ll be in here along with everybody else. Trust me, I’m going to create enough of a distraction that the whole gang will come to see what’s going on, and nobody will be paying any attention to you.”

  “How the hell—”

  “Don’t worry about that. Just leave it to me.”

  Without thinking about what she was doing, she reached out and took hold of his arm. “Damn it, Brice, you’re going to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”

  “No, I plan to live through this just as much as you do, Denny. They’re not going to be paying any attention to me, either. When I make my move . . . trust me, all hell’s going to break loose.”

  CHAPTER 36

  They went back to the tent they were sharing, where she had to badger him for quite a while before he finally gave in and told her his plan.

  “I was looking around earlier and found a tent nobody was using, set off by itself a little ways,” he said, keeping his voice so quiet it couldn’t be heard outside the darkened tent. “When I looked inside, I saw that it’s being used for storage. There are some crates of supplies in there, along with a case of dynamite. I took half a dozen sticks from it.”

  Denny’s eyes widened in the shadows. “Dynamite!” she whispered. “You’ve got it with you now?”

  “Yeah, along with some fuse and blasting caps.”

  “Here in the tent?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You loco fool! You’re going to blow us to kingdom come!”

  “No, I’m not. Unless it’s old and has been sitting around for a while, dynamite is stable enough as long as you know how to handle it.”

  “How do you know how long that’s been sitting around?” she wanted to know.

  “I can tell by the feel of it, how greasy it is. I’ve been around the stuff before. I worked on a railroad construction crew for a while when I was younger. They had to blow out some cuts through hills and ridges.”

  “Did you set off any explosions?” Denny said.

  “Well . . . no. But I saw it done plenty of times.”

  “Yeah, you’re gonna blow us up,” she said bleakly.

  “You just let me worry about that.”

  She grunted. “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Listen to me, all right? You wanted to know what I’m planning.”

  Denny didn’t respond for a moment. Then she said grudgingly, “Go ahead.”

  “In a little while, once they’re all sound asleep, I’ll sneak over to the other side of the basin, as far away from the horses as I can. I’ll set off the blast, and everybody will go running over there. I’m betting the guards in the canyon will abandon their posts, too, because it’ll sound like the army is attacking. If any of them stay behind, you’ll have to get past them, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Where do you plan on being when that dynamite goes off ?”

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I brought plenty of fuse with me. I can get far enough away to be safe from the blast and then light it.”

  “You can’t tell for sure how far it might fling some rocks.”

  “I’ll take that chance. You’ll be running some risks, too. We can’t avoid them completely.”

  “No, I reckon not,” Denny said. “I suppose you’ll just join the crowd after the explosion and act like you don’t know what’s going on any more than they do.”

  “That’s right. If I’m slick enough, nobody will know I had anything to do with what happened.”

  Denny thought it all over, then admitted, “It might work. Creighton will know something’s going on, and when he realizes I’m gone, he’ll probably blame it on me. But you and I are supposed to be partners, so he may hold you responsible, too.”

  Rogers chuckled. “Not once I get through ranting about what a no-good, double-crossing polecat you are.”

  “You’d better be convincing.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  Denny glared in his direction in the darkness, but then she had to laugh softly, too. “When you first told me you had some dynamite—once I stopped thinking about how crazy you are—I wondered why we didn’t just toss it in the cabin and blow Creighton to hell. But then I realized—”

  “That would be cold-blooded murder,” Rogers said sternly. “Double murder, because that woman Molly would be in there, too.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I reckon. I just said I thought about it. I didn’t say we really ought to do it.”

  “What I’m wondering now is if you wouldn’t have time to slap a saddle on that buckskin of yours. That would make it easier for you to charge out of here.”

  “With so much commotion on the other side of the basin, I think I’d have time to saddle up.”

  “You can give it a try,” Rogers said. “Just don’t take too long. If it looks like you might get caught, get on out of here, even if you have to do it bareback.”

  “You sound like you’re actually worried about me,” Denny said with a trace of amusement in her voice.

  “I am.”

  Something about the way his voice sounded made her reach out in the darkness. Her fingers touched his shoulder and she tightened her hand on it for a couple seconds. “Don’t blow yourself to hell when you’re messing with that dynamite.”

  “I’ll do my best not to,” he promised.

  Time dragged maddeningly as they waited for the camp to settle down for the night. Rogers stuck his head out of the tent now and then to check on the outlaws.

  Finally he said, “I don’t see lights anywhere, and the cooking fire has burned down to embers. I think everybody has turned in for the night.”

  “Maybe we should give it a few more minutes, just to be sure,” Denny suggested. She didn’t like to admit it, even to herself, but she was scared. However, that wouldn’t stop her from doing what needed to be done. She was confident of that.

  When their nerves were stretched too tight to wait anymore, Rogers said, “All right, let’s go. I’ll give you ten minutes to get to the horses. Then I’ll light the fuse.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I intend to be. I—”

  Denny leaned closer and planted an awkward kiss on his mouth, surprising both of them. She drew back quickly. “For luck. That’s all. Don’t get any ideas.”

  “I, uh . . . I reckon I won’t. And good luck to you, too.” With that he was gone, slipping away into the shadows.

  Denny stayed where she was, heart pounding heavily, but only for a couple seconds. She knew she couldn’t afford to waste any of the time he had given her.

  * * *

  Despite what he had told Denny, having a bundle of six dynamite sticks under his shirt was more than a mite unnerving, Rogers thought as he made his way across the basin toward the far side. Sure, there was no real reason for the paper-wrapped sticks to explode on their own. They needed some outside force, like the blasting caps, to detonate them. But the thought of what would be left of him if they did happen to go off—not a hell of a lot—was enough to make anybody tense.

  All the more reason to get this over with, he told himself. He was counting off the seconds in his head, and as soon as he had allowed enough time for Denny to get her horse saddled, he would provide the distraction she needed to get out of there. A very loud, violent distraction.

  * * *

  Denny shoved everything out of her mind except the need to escape from the outlaw hideout and return with help from the Sugarloaf. She moved quickly and silently through the night toward the corral. No one else was moving around the camp, as far as she could tell. Even though everything seemed to be all right, her pulse boomed like thunder inside her head as she approached the enclosure. The horses inside the corral shifted around slightly but didn’t spook.
<
br />   She had to take it easy, Denny told herself. Too much of a commotion among the animals would surely draw attention.

  * * *

  Speaking of distractions, Rogers thought . . . he could still taste the kiss she had given him.

  He had never expected that from her. Sure, they had been working together and getting along all right. And even though he thought she was headstrong and reckless to the point of being loco at times, he couldn’t help but admire her courage and determination. It took one woman in a million to attempt the audacious course Denny Jensen was following. Not only attempt it, but so far succeed in it.

  And there was no doubt she was a beautiful woman, even with most of her hair hacked off and dirt smeared on her face . . .

  * * *

  Denny spotted the saddles sitting on logs dragged up near the corral, and the rest of the tack hanging from pegs driven into tree trunks. She found the buckskin’s bridle, then slipped between the poles into the corral. Enough starlight filtered into the basin for her to spot the buckskin—lighter in color—among the other horses. She made soft, calming sounds as she moved up next to the horse and got the harness on it.

  Leading the buckskin, she lifted the rawhide strap holding the gate closed and swung it back. She took the buckskin out and pulled the gate to but didn’t fasten it. She wanted to be able to open it in a hurry when the time came. She thought the explosion would stampede the horses, but if it didn’t, she would ride among them, swat a few rumps with her hat, and start them running that way.

  With quick, efficient motions, Denny got her saddle on the horse. She didn’t need much light for that. It was all automatic, and thankfully, she and the buckskin had grown accustomed to each other enough that the horse cooperated.

  * * *

  Reaching the far wall of the basin banished thoughts of Denny from Rogers’s head for the moment . . . except for the idea of helping her escape. He took the bundle of dynamite from under his shirt and pressed blasting caps onto two of the sticks. Having already cut a couple lengths of fuse, he attached one to each of the caps, then twisted them together to make a single strand, the way he had seen men working for the railroad do when they were getting ready to blast out a cut.

  Burning at about a foot a minute, Rogers’s four-foot-long fuse would give him that much time to put some distance between himself and the blast. He thought that would be enough. He wedged the dynamite into a dark crack in the rock wall, then held the fuse in his left hand while he used his right to fish for a lucifer in his shirt pocket.

  Before he could find one, a voice behind him asked sharply, “What the hell are you doin’ there?”

  * * *

  Ready to go, Denny thought as she pulled the last cinch tight. All she was waiting for was the dynamite blast Rogers was supposed to set off. She’d been trying to keep rough track of the time in her head and thought the blast ought to be happening any moment.

  * * *

  Brice stiffened. His first instinct was to reach for his gun, whirl around, and open fire. But that could rouse the whole camp and ruin everything. It might lead to Denny being caught, and he couldn’t stand that. He controlled the impulse, let the fuse fall quietly from his hand, and turned slowly and carefully. He thought he recognized the voice, so he said, “Muddy, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” the outlaw replied. “Lon? What in blazes? What are you doin’ over here?”

  “I could ask the same thing of you.”

  Muddy grunted. “Followin’ you, that’s what I’m doin’. I had to take a leak, and while I was doin’ it, I spotted somebody skulkin’ outta camp and headin’ in this direction.”

  Brice thought rapidly, casting about in his mind for a plausible explanation. “So did I! While you were following me, I was following whoever it was sneaking around the camp.”

  “Dang,” Muddy breathed. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “No, I never did. He got over here in the shadows next to the cliff and I lost him.”

  Starlight winked on the barrel of the gun Muddy lifted. For a second Brice thought the man was about to shoot him.

  Then Muddy said, “So he could still be lurkin’ somewhere close by. Might even be fixin’ to bushwhack us.”

  “He could be.” Rogers used Muddy’s reaction as an excuse to draw his gun and step closer to the outlaw “We oughta get out of here.”

  He should have lit that fuse by now, Rogers thought. Denny probably had her horse saddled and was waiting for him. Every second that ticked by increased the chances she would be discovered. He couldn’t afford to wait. He had to get close enough to strike without warning. A swift blow from the gun in his hand, and Muddy would slump to the ground, out cold.

  “What’s that?” Muddy said.

  “Where?”

  “Stickin’ out of that hole in the rock.” Muddy started to step past Rogers, closer to the cliff. “Son of a bitch! It looks like dynamite—”

  Rogers struck, slashing at Muddy’s head with the revolver.

  Something warned the man and he twisted aside just enough to avoid the full force of the blow. The gun skidded down the side of his head, ripping at his ear, and thudded against his shoulder.

  Muddy managed to hang on to his gun and triggered it as Rogers tried to hit him again.

  The bullet didn’t hit him, but the shot was so close that the noise slammed against Rogers’s ears and deafened him. Burning flecks of powder stung his face. He reeled back and tried to bring his own gun to bear, then held off on the trigger as he suddenly realized Muddy was right in front of the dynamite. If he fired and missed . . . and the slug struck the stuff . . . it could set off an explosion that would blast them both to bits.

  Rogers lunged at the outlaw, hoping to get close enough to knock his gun aside and batter him into unconsciousness. Another shot slammed out and Rogers felt a terrific blow against his body. He wasn’t sure where he was hit, but the impact drove him backwards. He couldn’t get his breath, couldn’t force his muscles to work, though he felt Muddy kick the gun out of his hand.

  “You son of a bitch!” Muddy said as he bent over Rogers. “What the hell are you doin’, tr yin’ to blow us all up?” His free hand fumbled at Brice’s midsection. “Well, you’re gut shot now, you bastard. You’re the one who’s gonna die—What the hell!”

  Rogers heard the startled exclamation. He felt sick and all the air had been knocked out of his lungs, but there wasn’t any real pain. Maybe he was just numb to it.

  “What’s this?” Muddy said as he straightened. He lifted his hand and stared as the starlight revealed what he clutched.

  Rogers saw it, too. Muddy had his badge.

  “A lawman!” Muddy howled. If the shots weren’t enough to bring the rest of the camp on the run, that strident cry would be.

  CHAPTER 37

  Denny sprang up into the saddle as soon as she heard the shots. She leaned over and jerked the gate open. The dynamite could still go off, but even if it didn’t, stampeding the gang’s horses was bound to help her chances of getting away. She drove the buckskin among the other mounts and slapped left and right at them with her hat. She gave a low cry that spooked them even more. All it took was one horse bolting through the open gate, and then the rest followed, running wildly through the darkness.

  She wheeled the buckskin and raced out of the corral after them. The shots had come from the far side of the basin, half a mile away. She didn’t know what had happened, but it couldn’t be good.

  Brice Rogers might be dead now, drilled by those two slugs. The thought made a chill go through her, followed by a burst of white-hot rage.

  If those bastards had killed him, they would be sorry. It might be completely illogical for her to think such a thing, one lone young woman against two dozen hardened killers, but she swore it anyway.

  Although the quickest way to reach the area where the shots had sounded was to gallop straight through the outlaw camp, she didn’t go that way, figuring the men might try to stop her, mig
ht suspect a fast-moving rider was trouble.

  She swung the buckskin wide around the cluster of tents and the cabin. Faint shouts drifted through the night, barely heard over the horse’s drumming hoofbeats. Denny knew the outlaws would be scrambling out of their tents, guns ready, looking for something to shoot. Although well out of handgun range, she was a little surprised they didn’t fire blindly at her as she rode around the camp.

  Angling back in the direction of the shots, she urged the buckskin on. A few moments later, she heard shouts coming from up ahead.

  A man bellowed, “Boys, get over here! I caught a damn lawman!”

  Denny’s heart sank as she recognized Muddy Malone’s voice, and the outlaw’s words made it even worse. He somehow knew Rogers was a deputy U.S. marshal. Not only was the plan to set off the explosion likely ruined, but his true identity had been exposed, dooming him.

  Unless somehow she could get both of them out of there, Denny thought. She poured on the speed and came within sight of two figures standing up ahead, one with a gun thrust out while the other was bent over in apparent pain.

  Brice is hurt! That thought shot through her as she closed in, not even realizing she’d begun to think of him on a first-name basis.

  She drew the Colt and leveled it as she hauled the buckskin to a stop.

  Muddy didn’t recognize her at first. He laughed. “Look here! I got me a law dog! It’s that fella Williams—” He howled a curse as he realized who she was and tried to jerk his gun toward her.

  Denny fired first, but Malone was on the move and her slug just nicked his gun arm, but it was enough to throw off his aim. She heard the bullet whine past her head.

  The next instant Rogers threw himself forward and crashed into the outlaw, swinging short, powerful punches that drove Malone back against the cliff. His knees buckled as his head banged against the rock.

  Rogers caught him, wrenched the gun out of his hand, and then let him fall to the ground, stunned.

  Denny pouched her iron, held out her hand, and called, “Brice, come on!”

  A quick step took him within reach of her. He clasped her wrist and swung up behind her. “You were supposed to get out of here!”