A bit of commotion in the street made Buckhorn glance up from the newspaper and look out through the hotel’s big front windows. A wagon rolled past in the street carrying two men. One of them was Horace Wygant, the mine foreman. His bald, bullet-shaped head was unmistakable. He was also the only hombre in these parts who was almost as big and mean as Buckhorn himself.
Wygant didn’t look tough at the moment, though. He huddled on the wagon seat while the other man handled the team of mules. Wygant clutched his left shoulder where his shirt displayed a large, dark bloodstain.
That looked like a gunshot wound to Buckhorn. He had seen plenty of them, so he ought to know.
He frowned. Before going to bed last night the boss had left orders for Wygant to take a crew out to Timberline Pass and check the road down to the valley for damage from the avalanche—an avalanche, Buckhorn had thought wryly at the time, that some of Eagleton’s own hired guns had caused in an attempt to wreck the stagecoach.
Sometimes he wondered just how much the boss thought things through. He would never express that thought to anyone, of course.
It baffled him who could have shot Wygant, so he put the paper aside, stood up, and went outside. The wagon had drawn to a stop in front of the office of Dr. Josiah Truax, and the workman was helping the injured Wygant down from the vehicle.
“Wygant, what the hell happened to you?” Buckhorn asked.
“What the hell does it look like?” the foreman snapped. He and Buckhorn had never gotten along well.
“It looks like you’ve been shot, but you were out working on the road. Who’d want to take a shot at you for doing that?”
“It’s none of your damn business, ’breed,” Wygant snarled, “but it was one of those Jensen boys. You know, the ones who’ve been sniffing around Corcoran’s girls and taking their side.”
Buckhorn nodded. He recalled the Jensen brothers from the confrontation in the hotel the previous night. Their names were Ace and Chance, he remembered. Stupid names.
“Which one?” he asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Wygant groaned. “Help me inside, damn it. This blasted shoulder is killin’ me!”
Buckhorn lifted a hand “Wait a minute. Why would one of the Jensens shoot you?”
“They were going down the mountain road in Corcoran’s other stagecoach. Don’t ask me why. I started up in the wagon and met them just past one of the turns. They wanted me to back up so they could get past.”
“And you didn’t want to do that.”
“Hell, no! I know how the boss feels about that bunch. He wouldn’t want any of us backing down from them.”
“So what happened?”
Wygant was a little pale, probably from loss of blood along with the pain he was in, but he said, “That crazy blond girl Emily Corcoran took a shot at us with a coach gun. Then the Jensen kid winged me. We didn’t have any choice but to back off. They would have killed somebody if we hadn’t.”
Buckhorn nodded slowly. He understood. Wygant and his crews, for all their toughness, were miners and construction men. They weren’t killers. They weren’t skilled in gunplay.
That took a special sort of man.
Evidently the Jensen brothers fell into that category. That didn’t surprise Buckhorn. He’d been able to tell by looking at them that they were young but not green. They would be dangerous enemies if he ever had to face off against them.
He would remember that.
Buckhorn gestured toward the door of the doctor’s office and told the other man, “All right. Take him on in there and get Doc Truax to patch him up. And tell the doc to send the bill to the boss.”
“Damn right he will,” Wygant muttered as he made his unsteady way into the doctor’s office with the other man helping him.
Buckhorn turned around to head back to the hotel. Eagleton would be getting up soon, and he would want a report on what had happened out on the road. He didn’t like to be kept in the dark about anything.
Buckhorn hadn’t taken more than a step when he spotted Rose Demarcus coming along the boardwalk toward him. He stopped short, and his left hand lifted to pinch the brim of his bowler hat respectfully.
“Why, hello, Joseph.” She was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit with the jacket cinched tight around her slender waist.
Buckhorn didn’t doubt that her waist was so trim because she was laced into a whalebone corset, and the image that thought planted in his head made his heart thump a little harder.
Rose’s hair was piled up on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls, and a hat that matched the suit was perched on it. A little feather stuck up from the hat. She looked elegant and lovely and any man who looked at her was going to have a hard time taking his eyes off her.
Joe Buckhorn was no exception to that.
He found his tongue and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Demarcus. You weren’t looking for the boss, were you? I don’t know if he’s awake yet.”
“No, I’m just out doing a little shopping.” With a little frown, she asked, “Was that Horace Wygant I saw being helped into the doctor’s office just now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is he all right?”
Buckhorn hesitated. He wasn’t sure he ought to mention the incident on the mountain road to anyone else before he reported it to the boss . . . but it was Rose asking. What man could fail to tell her whatever it was she wanted to know?
“He was wounded in a little shooting scrape out on the road from Timberline Pass down into the valley.” Although there was no real justification for it, he added, “I reckon he’ll probably be all right.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, I suppose. I’m not all that fond of Mr. Wygant—he’s gotten upset and caused trouble a time or two in my house—but I don’t like to see harm come to any of Samuel’s employees. To be honest, I’d be much more troubled if you were hurt.”
“I, uh, appreciate that, ma’am.”
“You can call me Rose, you know. At least when it’s just the two of us like this.”
He wasn’t sure if she was teasing and flirting with him or if she was sincere. Either way, he knew he had to tread carefully. He didn’t want to do anything improper that would get back to the boss. Rose Demarcus was Eagleton’s woman, and he wouldn’t stand for anyone messing with her, certainly not his own bodyguard. His half-breed bodyguard.
“I appreciate that, too, ma’am, but—”
“I mean, we’re friends, aren’t we?” she interrupted.
“Sure. I guess. The boss might not care for it, though. He won’t put up with anybody not showing you the proper respect.”
The smile that curved her red lips held a touch of cynical bitterness in it. “I run a brothel in a mining town, Joseph. As long as I get paid, that’s all the respect I’m entitled to.”
“Now, I wouldn’t say that—”
“Samuel would. But the last thing I want to do is cause a problem between the two of you, so you can go on calling me ma’am or Miss Demarcus or whatever you want. Just don’t forget that I consider you a friend.” With that she moved past him and went on down the boardwalk toward the general store.
Buckhorn turned to watch her go. Most of the men she passed tipped their hats to her from a combination of her own beauty and the common knowledge that she was Samuel Eagleton’s kept woman. Nobody wanted to offend the man who owned pretty much the whole town.
The women Rose passed didn’t acknowledge her presence. To them, her relationship with Eagleton didn’t matter as much. She was still a lady of the night.
Seeing that made Buckhorn feel a pang of sympathy. Both of them were outsiders, he thought. With Rose, it was a matter of choice rather than birth, but the end result was pretty much the same.
Folks were willing to pay them for the things they were good at—but that didn’t mean they would ever be anything except gutter trash to most people.
Buckhorn sighed, tried to put that thought out of his mind, and went to see if the
boss was awake yet.
Bess parked the stagecoach under some aspens that grew along the creek bank, and Emily took a blanket from the basket to spread on the ground so she could set out the food.
As the four of them sat on the blanket and ate and talked, Ace couldn’t deny that it was mighty pleasant. The fact that not even an hour earlier they had been shooting guns and nearly fighting for their lives seemed far away in the idyllic surroundings.
“I almost feel guilty for relaxing and enjoying myself,” Bess said. “There’s been so much trouble lately. . . .”
“That’s the best time to forget about it,” Chance told her. “You can’t do anything about it right now, can you?”
“Well . . . no more than what I’m already doing, helping the two of you get ready to take over the Bleak Creek run.”
“There you go,” he said with a grin. “You’re doing what you can. Don’t worry about the rest of it.”
Emily said, “Telling Bess not to worry is like telling a dog not to bark. It just comes naturally to her.”
“Don’t you ever worry about anything?” Ace asked her.
“Sure I do,” Emily replied with a shrug. “But if it’s not something I can fix, I try not to think about it. That just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.”
Bess said, “You can’t fix everything with a load of buckshot from a coach gun.”
“Maybe not, but it’s a good start.”
Ace and Chance laughed. Bess frowned at them for a second, then chuckled as well.
“What’s funny about that?” Emily demanded. “I believe in simple solutions. Solutions don’t come much more simple than buckshot.”
“I don’t reckon anybody could argue with that,” Ace said.
“Not unless he wanted his rear end dusted,” Chance added with a grin.
Emily rolled her eyes, shook her head, and reached for the jug of buttermilk, which she had kept cool on the trip out by wrapping it in several layers of wet cloth.
When they had finished the meal, Ace dug a hole with his knife and buried the chicken bones while Emily packed up everything else in the basket. She and Chance got back inside the coach and Ace and Bess resumed their places on the driver’s seat.
Bess handed the reins to Ace. “All right. Take us back to Palisade.”
He looked at the mountains looming above them and the road leading to Timberline Pass and felt a little trepidation but didn’t let that show. He flicked the reins against the team’s rumps and got the horses moving.
Going back up the road was slower but much easier in a way because he didn’t have to worry about using the brake. The coach’s own weight made the going difficult enough. The slower pace meant that the turns were easier, too.
“You’re doing fine,” Bess assured him.
“I didn’t get to finish driving all the way down,” Ace reminded her.
“No, but you did well enough that I’m confident you can handle the team and the coach . . . as long as nothing unusual happens.”
“And if it does, I’ll do the best I can.”
“Just don’t wreck this coach. It’s the only one we have left. If anything happened to it, that really would be the end. Pa would just have to give up.”
“He couldn’t afford to buy another coach?”
Bess shook her head. “Not even a chance.”
From inside the coach came a question. “Did I hear my name?”
“No, just go back to whatever you were doing,” Ace told him. To Bess, he said, “Does anybody keep an eye on the coach while it’s parked in the barn?”
“Well, Nate does. But we haven’t really been guarding it—” She paused. “We should, shouldn’t we?”
“You’d be out of business without it. If Eagleton had somebody burn down the barn with the stagecoach in it, that would take care of his problem.”
“He’d never do that,” Bess declared. “It would be too dangerous, not just to our operation but to the whole town. A fire like that could spread and burn Palisade to the ground.”
Ace nodded. “I reckon you’re right about that. But he could try something else to disable the coach. For that matter, he could have his men steal your horses. You can’t have a stage line without horses.”
“I’ll talk to Pa when we get back. I think the world of Nate, but I’m not sure he could stop anybody who got in there and tried to do mischief.”
“Well, you’ve got Chance and me sleeping up in the hayloft now,” Ace pointed out. “That’ll make it a lot harder for anybody to try anything funny. We can take turns staying awake and standing guard.”
“Emily and I can help, too.”
“What are you volunteering me to do?” Emily called from inside the coach.
“I’ll tell you when we get back,” Bess replied.
It wouldn’t be long now, Ace saw. They had just reached Timberline Pass. He was glad to have the steep road and the hairpin turns behind them, urged the team to a slightly faster pace, and headed for Palisade.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Buckhorn waited for the boss to get some coffee down, then explained about seeing Horace Wygant being helped into the doctor’s office. Eagleton’s face got redder than usual as he listened to the story.
When Buckhorn was finished, Eagleton asked, “How badly was Wygant hurt?”
“I don’t really know, boss,” the gunfighter replied. “He was shot through the shoulder and it looked like he’d lost a considerable amount of blood. I don’t reckon he’ll die unless he comes down with blood poisoning or some such, but he’s bound to be laid up for quite a while.”
Eagleton was as angry as Buckhorn had expected him to be. He slammed his fist down on the table hard enough to make the china and silverware on his breakfast tray jump and rattle. “Damn it! I need him out at the mine. I can’t afford to have him hurt like this.” His eyes narrowed. “You say one of the Jensens shot him?”
“That’s what he told me. I didn’t see it happen.”
“Which one?”
“He doesn’t know their names.”
Eagleton waved a meaty hand in a slashing, dismissive motion. “It doesn’t matter, does it? They’re both troublemakers. I know that, and I haven’t even laid eyes on them.”
Buckhorn nodded. “I reckon you’re right about that, boss.”
Eagleton slurped down some more coffee and frowned in thought for a moment. “What in blazes was the stagecoach doing out there, anyway? The next run to Bleak Creek isn’t until tomorrow.”
Buckhorn had given that very question some thought while he’d waited for Eagleton to wake up, and he believed that he had arrived at the answer. “I think those Jensen boys have gone to work for Corcoran. They’re going to take over the stagecoach runs. They took the coach out today so Bess and Emily could show them the ropes. That’s the only thing that makes any sense to me.”
“We can’t have that.” Eagleton was still angry, but he wasn’t as flushed and furious as he’d been. A cold and calculating look appeared on the mining magnate’s beefy face. “Brian Corcoran is ready to give up. I don’t want him to have any reason to hope. If the Jensens took the stagecoach out for a practice run, they’ll be coming back to town.” He picked up a roll and began buttering it. Without looking up from what he was doing, he went on “Go out to the pass, wait until they come back, and kill them.”
Buckhorn stood there for a long moment, breathing evenly as he digested that order. Then he said, “I thought my job was keeping you safe, boss.”
“Your job is doing whatever the hell it is I tell you to do,” Eagleton snapped. He took a bite of the butter-slathered roll and started chewing.
Buckhorn drew in a breath and blew it out through his nose. “What about the Corcoran girls?”
“What about them?”
“If they’re with the stagecoach, do I kill them, too?”
Eagleton considered the question for a moment, then shook his head.
“Those two dying in an accident is one thing
. Gunning them down is another. I still have to live here and do business here. Murdering women could make that more difficult, especially if any evidence led back to me. So, no, don’t shoot them. Just the Jensen brothers. Nobody’s going to give a damn about a couple dead saddle tramps.”
The boss was probably right about that, Buckhorn mused. Eagleton had a good sense of what he could get away with and what he couldn’t.
The gunman nodded. “All right. You want me to send one of the boys up here before I leave?”
Eagleton shook his head. “No, just make sure a couple of them are down in the lobby. I’m not expecting any trouble, but there’s no point in not being careful.”
Buckhorn nodded and swung around to leave.
“Joe,” Eagleton said to his back, “don’t mess this up. I’m close to getting what I want, and those damn Jensens aren’t going to ruin my plans.”
“Sure, boss,” Buckhorn agreed automatically, but he didn’t actually know exactly what Eagleton’s plans were or why it was so important for him to take over Corcoran’s stagecoach line.
But that didn’t matter. The money Eagleton paid him did.
The added speed made the coach lurch a little as it hit a bump emerging from the pass, and Ace swayed back and forth on the seat. He felt something whip through the air next to his ear and knew instinctively that it was a bullet.
He reacted instantly as he realized someone was shooting at him. Knowing a target was harder to hit the faster it moved, he slashed the horses with the reins and shouted at them. It caused them to break into a gallop, which threw Bess back against the top of the coach.
She grabbed the seat to steady herself and exclaimed, “What are you doing? What’s wrong?” She didn’t know about the shot and thought he’d gone crazy.
“Ambush!” he told her. “Keep your head down!”
A bullet spanged off the brass rail at the side of the driver’s seat, inches away from him. The rifleman was good, whoever he was. Ace knew he’d be dead if luck—and a bump in the road—hadn’t made him sway to the side just when he did.
Those Jensen Boys! Page 11