Those Jensen Boys!

by William W. Johnstone

  She rolled her eyes, turned away, and placed the coach gun back in a rack on the wall with a couple other double-barreled shotguns.

  At the desk, Corcoran drew in a deep breath and then lifted his head with an obvious effort. He looked at Ace and Chance. “I’m sorry. I was rude to you boys earlier. I . . . I appreciate everything you’ve done to help my daughters. They told me all about it.” He forced himself to his feet and held out his hand. “I’m Brian Corcoran.”

  “Ace Jensen.” He shook hands with the older man.

  “And I’m Chance Jensen.” He gripped Corcoran’s hand, too.

  Corcoran nodded toward the empty bottle. “I’d offer you a drink, but we seem to be out.”

  “There was only a little in it,” Bess said quickly. “Just enough for a bracer. Pa needed it.”

  “No, what I need is for the Good Lord to strike Samuel Eagleton dead, him and all his hired guns.” Corcoran sighed. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. God doesn’t seem to take much of an interest in what happens in a hellhole like Palisade.”

  “The town doesn’t look that bad to me,” Ace said. “Maybe the people who live here just need to be more like you, Mr. Corcoran, and stand up to Eagleton.”

  “And get themselves killed? That’s happened before, you know. There were several smaller mines around here, starting out. They came in right after Eagleton made his strike. One by one their owners got scared off . . . except for the ones who died in cave-ins and so-called accidental explosions and the like.”

  “That sounds like murder to me. Something the law ought to take an interest in.”

  “No way to prove it,” Corcoran said glumly. “And when you’re talking about crooked lawmen like Claude Wheeler or incompetent ones like Jed Kaiser over in Bleak Creek . . . well, it doesn’t take long to realize you can’t count on the law for much of anything around here.”

  Emily said, “Maybe not, but we can’t just give up, Pa. This stage line is your dream. We have to keep fighting for it.”

  Corcoran’s head jerked up and his eyes blazed with anger. “We Corcorans have never given up,” he snapped. “We’ve always been fighters, ever since we came over from the ould sod. But now—” The momentary anger seemed to go out of him, leaving him deflated again. “Now that it may cost you girls your lives, it’s just not worth it anymore.”

  “You can’t think of it like that, Pa,” Bess said. “Emily and I know what the risks are. You know we’ve always been willing to help. That’s why we volunteered to take the run to Bleak Creek.”

  “It’s not a matter of whether or not you’re willing,” Corcoran insisted. “I won’t stand by and watch the two of you get hurt.” He nodded slowly but decisively as if his mind were made up. “Sam Eagleton gets what he wants. I’ll go see him tomorrow and find out if he’s still willing to buy the line. Chances are he won’t pay as much as he offered before, but I don’t care about that anymore.”

  Bess and Emily stared at him as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Bess looked like she was about to cry, and Emily seemed to be on the verge of exploding in anger.

  Ace and Chance looked at each other. Chance nodded, and Ace said, “Hold on a minute, Mr. Corcoran. I know you don’t want your daughters risking their lives taking the stagecoach through anymore . . . but how do you feel about Chance and me giving it a try?”

  The two young women looked at him in surprise, but Corcoran frowned and asked, “Are you saying you and your brother want to work for me, lad?”

  “You need a driver and a guard,” Chance said. “There are two of us.”

  “Have either of you ever actually driven a stagecoach?”

  “Well, no,” Ace admitted. “But if—” He stopped as Bess glared at him.

  “But if what? If a girl can do it? Is that what you were about to say, Ace?”

  To tell the truth, it was, but he wasn’t going to confess that, not with Bess staring daggers at him. “No, what I was about to say was that if Bess could give me a few pointers, I’ll bet I could do it.”

  “And I know how to use a shotgun just fine, so no problems there,” Chance added.

  Bess said, “Handling a team isn’t easy, especially on a road like the one leading down from Timberline Pass.”

  The thought of taking a stagecoach down that zigzag road high above the valley was enough to make him nervous, but he said, “I’m willing to give it a try.”

  Corcoran scratched his bearded jaw. “Let me think it over. The next run isn’t scheduled for a couple days. That gives us some time.”

  Emily said, “I think it’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. You won’t let us do it, your own daughters, but you’ll trust the future of the line to a couple complete strangers?”

  “Ah, but they’re not strangers,” Corcoran pointed out. “You and Bess know them. And there’s one more advantage to hiring them.”

  “What’s that?” Bess asked.

  “When Eagleton has them killed, I’ll be mighty sorry . . . but it won’t break my heart like it would if it was you two girls.”

  Joe Buckhorn had told Corcoran that the boss had turned in for the night. It was a convenient fiction. Rose Demarcus hadn’t come down yet from Eagleton’s second-floor suite. She always gave him a smile when she passed through the lobby on the way back to the house she ran.

  Buckhorn knew Rose was just having a little sport with him—she was a lovely, middling-rich woman who had no real interest in an ugly half-breed gunfighter—but she was so blasted beautiful he always enjoyed their brief interaction anyway.

  Knowing that she was still inside made him a little nervous as he approached the suite’s door. He knew the boss wanted to be informed of what had happened, but he wouldn’t like being disturbed while he was with Rose.

  Of course, there was a good chance they were already finished with whatever they were doing in the suite’s bedroom and were in the sitting room, enjoying a glass of brandy. Eagleton could even be smoking one of his expensive cigars.

  Buckhorn came to a stop at the door and raised his left hand. He hesitated just a second longer, then rapped softly on the panel. The summons was quiet enough that if Eagleton and Rose were still in the bedroom, they wouldn’t hear it, yet Buckhorn could honestly say he had tried to let the boss know what was going on.

  The response from inside the suite was instant. Eagleton said in a loud, annoyed voice, “What is it? Who’s out there?”

  “Joe Buckhorn, boss,” the gunfighter replied.

  Eagleton knew Buckhorn wouldn’t disturb him if it wasn’t important. His tone was slightly mollified as he said, “Come on in.”

  Buckhorn opened the door and stepped into the opulently furnished sitting room. Eagleton stood next to a beautiful cherrywood sideboard pouring amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a snifter. He was a short man, mostly bald and almost as wide as he was tall, or at least that was the way he looked in the silk dressing gown he wore. He swirled the liquor around and then took a sip before he asked, “What is it, Joe?”

  Buckhorn couldn’t help but notice that Rose wasn’t in the sitting room. The door to the bedroom was closed, so he supposed she was in there. Getting dressed, maybe. Or still lounging in the big four-poster bed . . .

  Buckhorn shoved those images out of his head. “The Corcoran girls got back into town a little while ago.”

  Eagleton took another sip of the brandy. “I thought they were going to have trouble on their way back from Bleak Creek.”

  “They did . . . but they had help from a couple kids who like to stick their noses in other people’s business.”

  Eagleton scowled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Two young fellas named Jensen. The coach was wrecked, but thanks to them, Bess and Emily got out alive.”

  As Buckhorn spoke, something nagged at his brain. It took him a second to realize that it was relief. As odd as it sounded, considering that Sam Eagleton paid his wages, he was glad the Corcoran girls hadn’
t been killed. He had gunned down plenty of men . . . hell, he had shot a few unlucky ones in the back . . . but something inside him didn’t like the idea of killing women. Especially young, pretty women.

  He would never say anything about that to Eagleton. And if the boss ever gave him a direct order to handle something like that personally . . .

  Well, Buckhorn hoped it never came to that. So far, his job had been to see to it that Samuel Eagleton remained alive, and he’d been good at it. Some of the other men had been given the job of handling the Corcoran problem, and that was just fine with him.

  Eagleton was too upset to continue sipping the brandy. He tossed back what was left in the snifter and set it down on the sideboard. “You say Corcoran lost the coach, anyway?”

  “That’s what I was told,” Buckhorn replied. “And the team, too, of course.”

  “Well, that’s something, anyway.”

  “And when he left the hotel, he sounded like he was just about ready to give up.”

  Eagle stiffened. “Corcoran came here?”

  “Yelling and waving a coach gun around,” Buckhorn said with a nod.

  Eagleton stared at him for a few seconds, then burst out, “You fool! You damn fool!”

  Buckhorn was a little taken aback. “Boss, he never got anywhere near the suite—”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about! You had a chance to kill him, and you didn’t. For God’s sake, Buckhorn, what were you thinking? A man busts into my hotel and threatens me, and you don’t gun him down? You even had Starkey and Byers with you. Corcoran wouldn’t have stood a chance. It would have been self-defense, everything legal and aboveboard.”

  Especially with your own pet lawman in the marshal’s office, thought Buckhorn. Claude Wheeler would never question anything Eagleton or any of Eagleton’s men told him.

  “I’m sorry, boss. I didn’t think of it. Corcoran’s daughters were with him—”

  “And you didn’t want to kill a man in front of his children? That never stopped you when you were working as a regulator up in Montana Territory.”

  Buckhorn struggled to keep a tight rein on his temper. He’d been tempted at times to tell Eagleton to go to hell, saddle his horse, and put Palisade behind him. The problem with that was that Eagleton paid so damn well. Unlike a lot of rich men, he wasn’t miserly with his money . . . only with power.

  Before either of them could say anything else, the bedroom door opened and Rose came out. She wore a simple blue dress that she managed to make look elegant and expensive and a lace-trimmed shawl around her shoulders. Due to the elevation, the evenings could get pretty chilly, even in the summer. Not a bit of the sleek, dark brown hair that curved around her face was out of place.

  As she smiled at Buckhorn, he felt his heart slug harder in his chest. The small scar that just touched her upper lip on the right side of her mouth made her stunningly beautiful, a tiny bit of imperfection that made a man realize just how lovely the rest of her was.

  Buckhorn was glad to know he wasn’t the only man she affected that way. Dozens of men in Palisade would have cut off an arm if she’d asked them to. They had to content themselves with the girls who worked in the house she ran, though. The only man she went with was Samuel Eagleton.

  “Hello, Joseph,” she said in the husky voice that drove most gents half-crazy.

  Buckhorn touched the brim of his bowler hat. “Miss Demarcus. It’s good to see you, as always.”

  Rose pulled on a pair of soft leather gloves as she turned to Eagleton. She wasn’t a particularly tall woman, but she had an inch or two advantage in height over him. She leaned forward, kissed him on the cheek, and murmured, “Good night, Samuel.”

  “Good night,” Eagleton said, sounding half-choked.

  Her gloved left hand patted him lightly on the right cheek, then still smiling, she turned and walked out of the room.

  Glided, thought Buckhorn. Or drifted, like some beautiful phantom, a spirit glimpsed only in a dream . . .

  His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth grind together. One hell of a thought for a half-breed gunfighter to be having, he told himself. Next thing he knew he’d be writing a damn poem.

  When Rose was gone, Eagleton pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing gown and mopped his forehead and his bald pate. Buckhorn could almost see him forcing Rose out of his thoughts and turning them back to the Corcoran problem.

  “You said Corcoran acted like he was ready to give up. You’d better hope that’s the case. If he comes to see me tomorrow and offers to sell out, we’ll forget about your little lapse tonight.”

  “Are you gonna offer him the same amount you did before?” Buckhorn asked.

  Eagleton let out a disgusted snort. “Good Lord, no. I’ll offer him a third as much and go up to half if I have to.”

  “Some folks might say what you offered him before was highway robbery.”

  “Do you believe I honestly care what people think about me, Buckhorn?”

  The gunfighter knew Eagleton didn’t care. “No, sir, I reckon you don’t.”

  “That’s right. If Corcoran comes to the hotel in the morning, bring him on up. Unless he’s armed. Then for God’s sake, go ahead and kill him! Now get out of here. I’m tired.”

  Buckhorn nodded. “All right, boss. If he comes in here with a gun, he dies.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Brian Corcoran told Ace and Chance they could put their horses in the stage line’s barn, then added, “You can sleep in the loft, too, if you’d like. If you go to any of the hotels in town, you’re just putting more money in Sam Eagleton’s pockets, and he sure as hell doesn’t need that.”

  “We’ll take you on that offer, sir, and we’re obliged to you,” Ace said quickly before Chance could turn it down. He was sure Chance would have preferred sleeping in an actual bed, even if it meant venturing into a hotel owned by a man who was turning out to be their enemy.

  Bess said, “And you’ll join us for breakfast in the morning. You might not think so to look at her waving a gun around, but Emily’s an excellent cook.”

  Emily glared at her sister for a second, then switched the look to Ace and Chance. “We’ll talk more about this crazy idea of you two handling the stage run, too.”

  They left the office and went out to get the horses. As they led the animals into the barn, Chance said, “I don’t know, brother. You’re always accusing me of acting without thinking and getting carried away because of a pretty girl, but it seems to me like you’re the one who’s doing that here.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Ace asked.

  “You saw that road! Do you really think you can drive that stagecoach down it without killing us both?”

  “Well, I’m sure going to try. I’ve driven wagons before. It can’t be that much different.”

  “How about this? Where does that stage route go?”

  “You know that,” Ace said. “Across the valley, through Shoshone Gap, and then on to . . .”

  “Exactly.” Chance nodded as his brother’s voice trailed off. “It goes to Bleak Creek. Where you punched the marshal in the face, stole his gun, and we rode out with people shooting at us!”

  Ace groaned, closed his eyes, and scrubbed a hand over his face. His brother was right. The two of them going back to Bleak Creek was just asking for trouble with the law. Marshal Kaiser hadn’t struck him as the sort to forget or forgive.

  “Maybe we can get in and out of town without anyone noticing us,” Ace said. “We won’t spend the night there like the girls do. We’ll just drop off the mail at the depot, pick up the mail pouch for Palisade, and start back right away. We can spend the night on the trail somewhere.”

  “That might work,” Chance allowed. “If the marshal happens to be busy elsewhere or taking a nap in his office. Assuming nobody who sees us remembers what happened and recognizes us and runs to tell him about it.”

  “By the time we get there, four or five days will have passed. People will hav
e forgotten about it by then.”

  Chance frowned. “Sure they will.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  Another stagecoach was parked inside the barn, so as soon as they’d put their horses in stalls, unsaddled them, and made sure they had water and grain, they studied the vehicle by the light of a lantern that Ace took from the nail where it hung. He was especially concerned with knowing where the brake was located and how it worked. That was going to be important going down the road from Timberline Pass.

  Chance leaned over to take a closer look at the brake assembly. “You’ll have to be careful going down the mountain or you’ll wear that block down to a nub. Either that or overheat it so much it catches on fire.”

  “Well, I didn’t intend to drive hell-bent for leather all the way down,” Ace said.

  “Neither did Bess on the last run, I’ll bet, but you saw how that worked out.”

  His brother had a point, Ace thought. Once word got around Palisade, as it was bound to, that he and Chance were working for the Corcoran Stage Line and would be making the next run to Bleak Creek, there was a high probability that Samuel Eagleton would have his gunmen waiting for them.

  “Doc would say that we’re playing against a stacked deck, wouldn’t he?” Ace asked with a sigh.

  “And he’d be right.” Chance slapped Ace on the shoulder. “But buck up, brother! Sometimes you win, even against long odds.”

  Early the next morning, before dawn, they woke to hear a man singing a hymn in a cracked, elderly voice. The brothers had spread blankets in the hayloft—although not without some complaining on Chance’s part—and slept fairly well. Groggy from being woken up, they crawled over to the edge of the loft to look down into the stalls.

  A dozen draft horses were in the barn, along with their two saddle mounts, and a wizened little old man was forking fresh straw to them.

  He felt Ace and Chance looking at him and looked up, giving them a gap-toothed grin. “Don’t just stand there gawkin’, you two,” he called to them. “Get on inside. Coffee’s on. Take a sniff, and you can smell it.”