“It’ll get worse,” Bess told him. “Feel the way the weight of the coach is making it move a little faster?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Pull the brake lever back and slow us down a little . . . Now release it. Use it when you have to keep us about this same speed.”
As they neared the first of the hairpin turns, Ace asked, “Now what do I do?”
“Use the brake and slow down a little more. You can see that there’s plenty of room for the team and the coach to turn.”
Ace supposed she was right about that, but with so much empty air looming only a few feet away, the space available to make the turn probably seemed a lot smaller than it really was. To Ace’s inexperienced eyes, it looked like he had no room for error at all.
“All right, start turning the team,” Bess told him.
Carefully, he pulled on the reins and brought the horses’ heads around enough that they began to turn. With the thoroughbraces creaking, the coach followed. Ace held his breath as he felt the vehicle’s momentum shift, but it stayed solidly where it was supposed to be on the trail and as the team straightened out again, he relaxed slightly.
“Good job,” Bess said. “A little brake now. It’s all a matter of getting the feel for it.”
As he drove, Ace mostly kept his eyes on the road in front of him, rather than looking out at the valley falling away so dramatically, but he couldn’t keep himself from glancing in that direction occasionally. He thought about how Bess had taken the coach down the same road at such a breakneck pace a few days earlier.
“You must have been really scared when those fellas ambushed you and the team ran away,” he said.
She shook her head. “Wasn’t time to be scared. I was more concerned with keeping the wheels on the road. I knew the horses would do what I told them. As long as the brake didn’t burn up or bust, I figured we could make it. And we did.” She smiled. “Emily probably wouldn’t admit it, but I think she was pretty scared. But that’s because all she had to do was hang on. I was too busy to worry much.”
“I guess that’s the secret to a lot of things. Just stay busy.”
Ace made the next turn with no trouble. The road got a little steeper, so he had to use the brake more often, but as Bess had said, he began to develop a feel for it. He glanced over at her, and she nodded in approval.
From time to time as they descended, he looked up at the slope looming above them. Today wasn’t a regularly scheduled stagecoach run, so he thought it wasn’t very likely Eagleton’s hired killers would be up there trying to start another avalanche. They would have had to spot the coach going back through the settlement, figured out where it was headed, and followed them. That certainly wasn’t impossible, but Ace thought the risk was small.
“How many turns are there?” he asked. “I never thought to count them the other day.”
“Ten,” Bess replied. “You’re almost halfway there.”
The thoroughbraces, the wheels, and the horses’ hooves made a surprising amount of noise, so it was hard to hear much over them. After the next turn, however, Ace heard what he thought sounded like men’s voices somewhere below them.
Bess heard them, too, and frowned slightly. “That might be a work crew Mr. Eagleton sent down to repair the road.”
“Will we be able to get past them?” Ace asked.
“There are a few places where the road is wide enough for a vehicle to get over and let another one past, but not many. I suppose a coach and a wagon might be able to scrape past each other on a turn, but that would be pretty nerve-wracking for whoever was on the outside.”
It made Ace feel a little cold and clammy just to think about it. He hoped the situation wouldn’t come to that and mused that maybe Bess hadn’t quite thought through all the things that could go wrong with this practice run....
He saw a large work wagon make the next turn down and start up toward them.
“Oh, shoot,” Bess muttered beside him.
Ace reached for the brake lever without being told. Careful not to haul too hard on it, he brought the stagecoach to a halt. About fifty yards ahead, the burly driver of the work wagon had stopped, too, looking up at them in anger and surprise.
The two vehicles faced each other, headed in opposite directions with no place to go.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After glaring at them for a moment, the man on the wagon seat bellowed, “Get that damn stagecoach out of the way!” He was tall and broad-shouldered, built like a tree, with a bullet-shaped bald head that looked like it had been blistered by the sun numerous times in the past.
“That’s Horace Wygant, the foreman at Mr. Eagleton’s mine,” Bess said quietly to Ace. “I guess Mr. Eagleton put him in charge of repairing the road.”
“Did you hear me?” Wygant demanded harshly. He waved an arm. “Get out of the way!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wygant,” Bess called to him. “There’s nowhere for us to go. I think you can back down to the turn without much trouble. We can get by you there.”
“I thought you said that would be pretty risky,” Ace murmured.
“It will be, but I’ll take the reins. You and Chance and Emily can get off the stage so you won’t be in any danger. I can make it.”
Ace didn’t like that idea, but he wasn’t fond of the notion of trying to drive past the work wagon on that turn, either. Bess had a lot more experience handling the stagecoach than he did, so it made sense for her to take over the reins. It still rubbed him the wrong way, despite the logic of it.
The question might be moot, though, as Wygant sneered at them. “I’m not backing up. Once I start somewhere, I keep going.”
From inside the coach, Emily called, “What’s the problem out there? Why are we stopped?”
“I’m taking care of it,” Bess told her sister.
Ace wasn’t sure that was the case. Wygant struck him as the sort of man who wouldn’t be easy to budge but figured he would give it a try. “Look, mister, be reasonable. We can’t turn around or back up. You can.”
“I can get some men up here to shove that damn stagecoach off the road, too,” Wygant snapped. “I told you to get out of my way, and I meant it.”
One of the coach doors opened and the vehicle shifted as Chance stepped out with the short-barreled shotgun tucked under his arm. “I reckon anybody who wants to wreck this stage will have a hard time making it up the trail.”
Ace bit back a groan. He didn’t blame Chance for being angry, but the show of defiance would just make Wygant dig in his heels, most likely.
That was exactly the reaction Wygant displayed. He twisted on the wagon seat and shouted down to the lower section of trail. “Hey! Some of you men get up here! We’ve got a problem!”
Bess said nervously, “This isn’t good. Everybody who works for Mr. Eagleton knows about the problems we’ve had with him. They can curry favor with him by causing trouble for the stagecoach line.”
“We’ll just have to put a stop to that,” Ace said, sounding more confident than he felt. He and Chance could hold their own in a brawl, but if they were outnumbered by burly mine workers, the outcome wouldn’t be in much doubt, and it wouldn’t favor them.
On the other hand, they had that coach gun in Chance’s hands to help even the odds. The problem with that was the law considered gunning down unarmed men to be murder, no matter what the odds. That was especially true when the law in Palisade was firmly in Samuel Eagleton’s pocket.
Half a dozen men almost as big and burly as Wygant stalked around the turn carrying shovels and pickaxes. They may have come out to repair the road, but they were well-equipped for causing trouble, too.
Ace handed the reins to Bess. “Stay on the coach.” Before she could stop him, he vaulted down to the ground, landing lithely next to Chance.
Without leaving the wagon seat, Wygant gestured toward the coach and told his men, “Get that damn stagecoach off the road so I can go past.”
The workers didn’t h
esitate. They strode past the wagon and started up the sloping trail toward the stagecoach.
“Should I fire a load of buckshot over their heads?” Chance asked.
As far as Ace could see, none of the men were armed with guns, but he spotted the barrel of a Winchester sticking up from the floorboard of the wagon next to Wygant. He figured if Chance fired the coach gun, the foreman would use it as an excuse to grab the rifle and blaze away at them. “Not yet. Don’t fire unless you absolutely have to. Let’s see how they like looking down the barrels of that scattergun.”
Chance lifted the shotgun and snugged the butt against his shoulder as he pointed it at the workers. His face was cold and grim. Beside him, Ace rested his hand meaningfully on the butt of his holstered Colt.
The threat was enough to make the men stop, at least for the moment. It was difficult for any man to walk right up to the gaping muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun.
One of the workers looked back over his shoulder at the wagon. “Horace, I don’t know about this.”
“For God’s sake. They’re not going to shoot you!” Wygant raged. “That’d be cold-blooded murder.”
“Looks more like self-defense to me,” Ace said. “When you start attacking people with picks and shovels, you can expect to get shot.”
Wygant sneered at him. “I reckon you’re right, kid.” He paused as an ugly grin spread across his face. “Throw those tools down, boys. You can handle ’em with fists!”
Ace bit back a curse. Wygant was right. He and Chance would be outnumbered three to one, with their opponents being men who spent their days swinging sledgehammers in a mine. He and Chance were doomed to lose the battle. But if they cut loose with their guns, it would be murder.
Eagleton’s men knew that, and grinning like their foreman, they tossed the picks and shovels to the ground and charged up the slope toward the stagecoach.
“Chance!” Emily called from the driver’s seat where she had climbed to join Bess. “Throw me the gun!”
Chance turned and tossed the coach gun up to her. Emily caught it, turned it so the barrels were facing the charging workmen, and told Ace and Chance, “Get down!”
“Look out!” one of the men exclaimed as they suddenly slowed. “That crazy Corcoran girl’s got the gun now!”
“Crazy is right,” Emily snapped. She fired over the heads of the horses as Ace and Chance dived to the ground.
The load of buckshot tore into the ground right in front of the workmen, making them stumble and run into each other as they tried to throw the brakes on their charge. Ace came up on one knee and saw Wygant standing up on the wagon’s box, raising the Winchester.
Ace was at a bad angle, but he drew and fired anyway, the Colt leaping into his hand with blinding speed. The bullet angled up and struck Wygant in the left shoulder, twisting him around as he pulled the trigger. The two shots came so close together they almost sounded like one, but Ace had gotten his bullet in first, forcing Wygant’s shot to go wild. The rifle slug plowed harmlessly into the mountainside.
Wygant dropped the Winchester, clutched his shoulder, and collapsed on the wagon seat. The workers milled around in front of the wagon, the momentum of their charge blunted by the coach gun blast.
“You men know me!” Emily told them. Her voice was shrill with anger. “You force my hand and I’ll blow you all to hell!”
“You’ll hang if you do!” one of the men shouted back at her. A few of them started to edge forward.
“You really think a jury would hang a woman who defended herself against six men, even in Eagleton’s town? I’ll take my chances.” She laughed coldly. “Anyway, even if I swing, you’ll be too dead to see it!”
From the wagon seat, Wygant growled weakly, “Damn it, you idiots. I’m hurt! I need to get to the doc before I bleed to death.”
“Then back down to the turn so we can get by,” Ace hollered, “and you can be on your way.” He gestured with the Colt in his hand to emphasize the point.
The pain Wygant was in trumped his natural belligerence. “One of you come take the reins and move this wagon.”
“But Horace—”
“Now, damn it!”
One of the men went to the wagon and climbed up onto the seat. Wygant grimaced as he slid over to make room. The workman reached down to pick up the reins as the others retrieved the tools they had thrown down.
While they filed past the wagon on foot, their comrade carefully backed the vehicle toward the turn. The wagon team was composed of mules, and they weren’t very cooperative. After a lot of cussing, the man finally got the wagon to the turn and then back around it.
“That’s far enough,” Bess called. “Stay right where you are. I can get the coach past.” She turned to Emily. “You climb down, just in case.”
“The hell I will,” Emily replied. “I’m staying right here where I’ve got a good vantage point to use this gun if I need to. Let the boys walk. It’ll be safer for them.”
Chance frowned. “Hey, nobody asked for any favors from you.”
“Good, because I’m not the sort of person who grants them most of the time,” the blonde said.
“I’m starting to get that idea.”
“We’ll cover your back,” Ace said, to end the bickering between Chance and Emily as much as anything.
Chance had drawn the Lightning from his shoulder holster, and Ace didn’t think the workers would challenge the two revolvers, especially as long as Emily held the coach gun. The brief flurry of gunplay seemed to have knocked the fight out of Eagleton’s men.
Bess flapped the reins, called out to the team, and got the coach moving again. She drove past Ace and Chance, who fell in behind but had no trouble keeping up because Bess had to take it slow and cautious as she drove down the slope toward the turn.
Horace Wygant’s cursing was a monotonous drone that floated up from the lower stretch of road.
When Bess reached the turn, she eased the coach around it. Emily sat tensely beside her, shotgun still raised. She hadn’t replaced the shell she’d fired earlier, but she still had a lethal load of buckshot in the weapon. She kept it pointed in the general direction of Eagleton’s men.
The wagon hugged the mountainside just beyond the turn, leaving just enough room for the coach to scrape past on the outside. The wagon’s sideboards and the coach literally scraped. The coach’s outer wheels were no more than four inches from the edge of the trail. With the brink that close, Ace held his breath until the coach was past the wagon and Bess was able to swing it away from the edge a couple feet.
She brought the coach to a halt and turned on the seat. “How does the road look down below, Mr. Wygant? Did the avalanche do much damage?”
“You’re asking me that?” Wygant said through clenched teeth. “You can fall off the damn mountain for all I care!” He fixed his angry glare on Ace. “You shot me, kid. I’m not going to forget that.”
“Don’t make me sorry I tried not to kill you,” Ace said.
From the box, Emily said, “You two get on here. We’ve wasted enough time.”
She kept the shotgun trained on Wygant and the other men while Ace and Chance climbed into the coach. The idea of Ace taking the coach down from the pass into the valley was forgotten for the moment. Bess got the team moving again and they left Wygant and the others behind.
As they reached the lower sections of road they saw that Wygant’s crew had cleared away the dirt and rocks left behind by the avalanche. Here and there, a boulder had knocked a chunk out of the edge of the road, but the path was still wide enough for the coach to get by. Bess kept the team moving, working the reins and the brake with an expert’s touch until the coach finally rolled onto the level ground at the base of the slope.
Bess brought it to a stop. Ace and Chance climbed out to find Emily holding her sister and patting her on the back while Bess shuddered.
Emily glanced down at the brothers. “She’s not really as icy-nerved as she acts sometimes.”
&n
bsp; “But you are,” Chance said. “I really believed you were willing to blow holes in all those varmints.”
“That’s because I was. Anybody who threatens me or my sister deserves whatever they get, including a load of buckshot.”
Bess straightened up and took a deep breath. “I’m all right now.”
“You sure?” Emily asked.
“Yes. I just had to let my nerves settle down for a minute.”
“All right.” Emily broke open the shotgun, replaced the spent shell with a fresh one from her pocket, and snapped the weapon closed. “Now, how about we find a good place for that picnic?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joe Buckhorn’s room was on the same floor of the hotel as his employer’s suite, right across the hall, in fact. He was always at Eagleton’s beck and call, twenty-four hours a day, and was never far from the mining magnate.
Eagleton had a bellpull in the suite that alerted the hotel cook down in the kitchen whenever he was ready for breakfast, which was usually in the early afternoon. The boss had a habit of sleeping late, especially when the lovely Rose Demarcus had visited him the night before.
Until that summons came, Buckhorn was free to sit in the hotel lobby or drink coffee in the dining room or have Rose send over one of her girls, but he always went up with the waiter who carried Eagleton’s breakfast tray and got his orders for the day.
He was in the lobby, reading a two-week-old Denver newspaper. He had learned to read at the reservation school before he was old enough to understand just how much his people despised him because of his white blood. Once that realization sunk in, he had left to make his way in the white man’s world, only to discover that he was equally hated there because of the Indian blood in his veins. It didn’t help in either place that he was big and ugly and mean.
If everybody was going to hate him anyway, he could stop worrying about it, he’d decided, and just got tougher and meaner and good with a gun. The people who valued those skills—like Samuel Eagleton—didn’t give a damn about his ancestry. All they cared about was how good he was at killing people they wanted dead.
Those Jensen Boys! Page 10