Rimfire

by William W. Johnstone

  McPhee leaned forward and said harshly, “I know why you’re here, and you’re never going to get what you’re after. In fact, you’re going to pay for what you’ve already done. I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” He surged up out of his chair and shouted, “Get ’em!”

  A rush of footsteps told Ace and Chance the real threat was behind them. They whirled around to see half a dozen of McPhee’s men, the ones who had been at the bar earlier, charging them. The men who had been playing poker were on their feet as well and had guns in their hands. Ace knew that if he and Chance slapped leather, McPhee’s men would fill them full of holes.

  Their only option was to meet the attack head-on.

  Ace sprang at the nearest man, ducked under a roundhouse punch that came at his head, and hooked a hard right into the hombre’s belly. As the man bent forward, Ace lowered a shoulder and rammed it into his chest, knocking him back into the path of the other men. A couple stumbled over him, and all three fell to the sawdust-littered floor.

  Chance went on the offensive, too, blocking a punch with his left forearm and jabbing his right fist into his opponent’s face. Blood spurted hotly over Chance’s knuckles as the man’s nose flattened under the impact.

  With three of the attackers momentarily tangled up together on the floor, Ace turned his attention to the other two still on their feet. They came at him together. He weaved aside from a punch, letting the fist go over his shoulder, and brought an elbow up under the man’s chin, snapping his head back.

  Ace couldn’t stop the second man from landing a blow on the jaw and driving him to the side. He almost lost his balance and fell but caught himself in time to stay upright. He slammed a punch to the second man’s chest.

  A few feet away, one of the men on the floor recovered enough to reach out and grab Chance’s ankle. A quick jerk upended him. Chance tried to catch hold of a nearby table as he fell, but all he succeeded in doing was overturning it. A couple of McPhee’s men scrambled after him, obviously intent on pinning him down.

  As one of the men tried to jump on him, Chance kicked him in the belly and threw him aside. The other one grabbed Chance by the throat with both hands and started banging the back of his head on the floor.

  Ace was still trading punches with his opponent, standing toe-to-toe with the man as they pounded away at each other. The outcome of that slugging match was interrupted when the third man who had fallen made it to his feet.

  He seized Ace from behind, grabbing both of his arms. “Got him!” the man shouted. “Give him hell, Chuck!”

  Ace tried to writhe free, but he couldn’t get enough leverage. Fists crashed into his face and body again and again, until a red haze seemed to drop over his eyes and fill his vision. His head spun crazily and his muscles no longer responded to his commands.

  Chance was in bad shape, too. He knew if the man kneeling on top of him and choking him managed to slam his head into the floor a few more times, he would pass out. He summoned up what little strength he had left and brought his hands up, cupping them as he slapped them hard against the man’s ears.

  It was painful enough to make the hardcase howl and caused his hands to slip a bit. Feeling the tiny relief, Chance bucked up from the floor. The man lost his hold and fell off to the side. Chance rolled the other way, gasping for breath and blinking rapidly as he tried to clear his vision that had gone dangerously blurry.

  Also on the verge of passing out, Ace finally managed to get one foot up and plant it in the belly of the man who was hammering him. He shoved the man away and at the same time went limp. The unexpected weight caused the man who was holding him to stagger and let go. Ace slid to the floor.

  He wound up lying next to Chance, who was red-faced and gasping. Their eyes met, and they knew they had only split seconds to get back up before McPhee’s men were on them again.

  They didn’t make it. Vicious kicks thudded into the ribs of both brothers. Numbing pain washed through them. Ace got his hands underneath him and tried to push himself up, but he couldn’t find the strength. Then another booted foot caught him in the back and savagely drove him back down. All the Jensen brothers could do was lie there and groan.

  The brutal punishment seemed endless. After it had gone on for an eternity, Ace heard McPhee call out, “All right, boys, that’s enough.” The cattle baron’s voice seemed to come from far, far away.

  Ace’s breath rasped in his throat as he lay there on the saloon floor, huddled in pain. He heard harsh breathing beside him and knew it came from Chance. He was a little surprised that McPhee’s men hadn’t stomped them to death, but for the moment anyway, both of them were still alive.

  Ace hurt so much he wasn’t sure how grateful he was for that.

  Footsteps thudded heavily on the floor as someone approached them. Ace opened his eyes and through the gauzy red curtain that hung over them, he saw a pair of feet in expensive boots come to a stop. The small part of his brain that was still working figured those feet belonged to Angus McPhee.

  That was confirmed a moment later as the cattleman said arrogantly, “You boys never should have come to Rimfire. You should have known that I wouldn’t let you get away with what you did.”

  Ace wanted to ask him what in the world he thought they had done, but his swollen, bleeding lips wouldn’t form the words. All that came out of his mouth was an incoherent grunt.

  “There you are,” McPhee went on. The tone of his voice told Ace that McPhee wasn’t talking to them anymore. “I’m sorry you had to see this, my dear, but you have to admit, these two had it coming to them.”

  “Yes, Mister Angus, this one is so grateful to you for what you have done,” replied a familiar voice.

  Ace groaned as he lifted his head and turned it to look, unable to resist the pull of that voice. He gazed up the staircase that rose on one side of the room to the saloon’s second floor. Ling stood at the top of those stairs, smiling down at the bloody, sprawled bodies of the Jensen boys.

  It was the last thing he saw before his vision faded out entirely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next thing Ace was aware of was a sound that he gradually recognized as the grunting of hogs. As he realized that he was lying in thick, sticky mud, terror shot through him like a bolt of lightning.

  McPhee had had him and Chance dumped in a hog pen where the vicious tuskers would tear them apart and eat their bodies!

  Ace gasped and got a mouthful of mud for his trouble. He jerked his head up. Pain thundered inside his skull like somebody was pounding on a giant drum stretched between his ears. He tried to see where he was, but to make things even worse, he seemed to be blind, to boot!

  Then he realized that his eyes were caked with mud. He lifted his hand, felt it tremble, and pawed at his eyes, but that didn’t help any. As he forced his stunned brain to think, he figured out that his hand was probably covered with mud, as well.

  He concentrated on pushing himself up to a sitting position. As he did, harsh laughter came from somewhere close by.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” asked an unfamiliar male voice. “You think them porkers are about to get you?”

  Ace wiped the mud off his hands as best he could, then went to work scraping it away from his eyes. He blinked painfully because it felt like both sockets were filled with grit. With maddening slowness, his sight began to clear. Everything was gray, but that was because the sun had set and dusk was settling down over Rimfire.

  He looked around and saw a pole fence beside him, only a couple feet away. On the other side of that fence, a huge hog stared at him. The mud from the swamp-like wallow inside the pen extended outside the fence, and that was where he and Chance were.

  Chance was sprawled on his belly, which meant his face was in the mud. Fearing that his brother had drowned in the stuff, Ace reached over and grabbed hold of Chance’s shoulder to roll him onto his back. Chance coughed and sputtered, which indicated that he was alive, anyway.

  Ace pulled
Chance up and helped him lean against one of the fence posts. When the massive hog came up to reach his snout through the fence and snuffle Chance’s arm, Ace swatted the animal’s nose and yelled, “Get away from him, damn you!”

  That prompted another outburst of laughter.

  Ace turned his head and saw that four of the men who had given them that awful beating were standing nearby, grinning in the twilight. Their thumbs were hooked casually in their gunbelts.

  “You two are just about the sorriest, most pathetic-lookin’ specimens of humanity I ever laid eyes on,” one of them said.

  “I ain’t sure they even look human anymore,” said another. “More like tar babies, the way they’re so covered with mud.”

  “You reckon this’ll learn ’em not to mistreat womenfolks?”

  That didn’t make sense to Ace at first, but then his brain began to grasp a possible explanation. That answer could wait, though, until he found out what their enemies planned for them. “What . . . what are you going to do with us?”

  The gunman who had spoken first said, “I don’t reckon anybody would’ve raised a fuss about it if we’d strung the both of you up from a tree limb. The boss ain’t a murderer, though, so he said to let you go with a warnin’ to rattle your hocks outta these parts and never come back.” He chuckled. “It was us who came up with the idea of throwin’ you in the mud and lettin’ you lay there until you woke up. Figured it might scare the hell outta you, and it sure looked like it did.”

  Ace wasn’t going to give the man the satisfaction of admitting that an instinctive terror had filled him for a moment upon awakening. What had been done to them was already bad enough without adding that humiliation. How much more humiliating can things get? he asked himself.

  “Wha . . .” Chance muttered. “Wh-where . . . ?”

  Ace gripped his brother’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Chance. We’re all right.” It was true. He hurt all over and knew that by morning his bruised muscles would ache even more. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull throb, though, and he could tell that he didn’t have any broken bones. He hoped the same held true for Chance.

  “Where are . . . our horses?” Ace managed to ask.

  “We’ve got ’em,” the hardcase replied. “You can climb in the saddle and go on back to those sod-bustin’ friends o’ yours. Just don’t ever show your faces in Rimfire again.” The man’s tone hardened. “If you do, I reckon the boss will give us the go-ahead to kill you.”

  “What for? We didn’t do anything!”

  “You kidnapped that gal the boss is sweet on and tried to turn her into a whore!”

  That was the answer Ace expected, or some variation on it, anyway. He knew that Ling must have spun some pack of lies to McPhee when she and Haggarty arrived in Rimfire and she set her sights on the cattleman.

  She had been in Fort Benton when Sheriff Maddox was talking to McPhee about that new safe. She knew McPhee had a lot of money and that he kept it on his ranch, not in a bank vault where she and Haggarty couldn’t get their hands on it.

  “Let me guess,” Ace said. “McPhee won her from a gent named Haggarty in a poker game.”

  “What?” The gunman sounded genuinely surprised. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? That fella Haggarty is the gal’s father.”

  Ace could only stare and say, “What?”

  “Well, her adopted pa, anyway. Miss Ling is one of them Celestials, you can tell that by lookin’ at her, but Haggarty took her in and raised her after her folks were killed by an avalanche in the Sierra Nevada while they were workin’ on the Central Pacific Railroad.”

  Ace stared at the man in the fading light for a couple seconds longer, then leaned his head back against the fence post behind him and began to laugh. It made his sore muscles hurt like blazes, but he couldn’t stop himself. He shook with bitter hilarity.

  Another of McPhee’s men said, “What in blazes is he laughin’ at? He sounds like he’s gone plumb crazy!”

  “I don’t know,” said the first man, “but he’d better stop it. He’s startin’ to get on my nerves.”

  Ace lifted a shaky hand and got himself under control. “If . . . if you’ll bring us our horses, we’ll get out of Rimfire.”

  “Now you’re talkin’.” The gunman turned to one of his companions. “Fetch those nags.”

  The man came back a minute later leading the two horses. Ace used the hog pen fence to hang on to as he climbed slowly and painfully to his feet. Chance still seemed mostly out of it, so Ace braced himself, reached down, and took hold of his brother’s arm. It took most of the strength he could muster to help Chance to his feet.

  “Come on,” Ace told his brother. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Yeah. Don’t . . . don’t like this place,” mumbled Chance.

  “You and me both,” Ace agreed.

  He got Chance’s foot in the stirrup, then boosted him up into the saddle. Chance grabbed the horn to keep from toppling over the other way. Once he was sure Chance was steady enough to stay mounted, Ace climbed onto the chestnut’s back.

  The man who’d been holding the reins handed them to him. “I wouldn’t look back if I was you.”

  “Just point us toward the bridge,” said Ace.

  The men got them turned in the right direction.

  Ace hesitated. “One more thing. What’s McPhee going to do with the girl?”

  “She and her pa went out to the ranch house with him to visit for a spell. They’re gonna be his guests there for a while.”

  “Yeah,” said Ace. “Sure they are.”

  The gunman scowled and demanded, “What do you mean by that?”

  Ace didn’t answer. He dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and started it walking forward. He reached over and grabbed hold of the reins of Chance’s mount. He had to lead the horse because Chance’s head had sagged forward and he didn’t seem to know what was going on.

  Ace prayed that his brother hadn’t suffered any permanent damage from the beating.

  They rode slowly toward the bridge, which was still visible in the dim light but wouldn’t be for much longer. Across the creek, the glow from the fires at the wagon train camp could be seen.

  Those would be his guide, thought Ace, hoping they could make it that far.

  The destination seemed like it was a million miles away.

  * * *

  Edward Fairfield and Dave Wingate had done the smart thing by posting guards around the camp. As Ace and Chance approached the wagons, a couple men holding rifles stepped out of the gathering darkness. They couldn’t see very well in the gloom, and one of them called, “Hold it right there, you two. Who are you?”

  “It’s Ace and Chance Jensen.”

  The ride out of Rimfire, across the bridge, and on to the wagon camp seemed to have taken a lot longer than it really had. At least Chance had been able to stay in the saddle and hadn’t passed out. If he had started to fall, Ace wasn’t sure he could have caught him.

  The guards recognized the brothers’ names and hurried forward.

  One of them exclaimed, “Good Lord! What happened to you fellas?”

  The other man said, “You look like you been rollin’ with the hogs.”

  That was closer to the truth than Ace liked to think about. “We need to see Captain Fairfield and Mr. Wingate . . . but I’m not sure . . . we can make it that far.”

  “Get off those horses and sit down. Ben, go fetch the cap’n!”

  One of the guards hurried off. The other helped Ace and Chance dismount and sit on the lowered tailgate of a wagon. Less than two minutes later, Fairfield, Wingate, and Rufe hurried up and stared at the brothers in surprise.

  “I wasn’t sure we’d see you fellows again,” Fairfield said. “To be honest, I thought you’d abandoned us.”

  “We just tried to see about the business that brought us here,” Ace explained. “But McPhee grabbed us . . . and had something else in mind.”

  “Whoo-ee, you smell bad,”
said Rufe. “Maybe you should’ve come through the creek to get here, instead of over the bridge. Might’ve washed some of the stink off you.”

  “Hush up, boy,” snapped Wingate. “In case you can’t tell, these fellas have been through the wringer. McPhee must’ve sicced his wolves on ’em.”

  “That’s what happened, all right,” said Ace. “Rufe’s right about the stink, though. I can smell it on myself.”

  “Once you’ve got some of your strength back, you can wash up.”

  Now that he and Chance had at least solved the mystery of where Ling and Haggarty had gone—although they were no closer to recovering the money stolen from them—Ace forced his thoughts back to the problems facing the homesteaders. He looked at Wingate. “Were you able to find . . . a place where the wagons can get across the creek?”

  “We sure did,” the old scout replied. “Rufe and me faded back a ways on the trail, then swung wide around the settlement so none o’ them varmints would be likely to spot us. We found a spot about two miles upstream where the banks are shallow enough for the wagons to get down to the creek. They’ll be able to get across there. We just need to wait until it’s the darkest hour of the night and McPhee’s men are more likely to be asleep.”

  “And then we’ll head for the range we’re going to homestead as quickly as we can,” Fairfield added. “I just hope we can find it in the dark.”

  “I can steer by the stars well enough to put you in the general vicinity,” said Wingate. “As soon as it starts gettin’ light in the mornin’, we’ll look around and find them landmarks you showed me on your map. You can have your claim stakes hammered in before McPhee even knows what’s goin’ on.”

  Chance spoke up. “Claim stakes aren’t going to stop McPhee. He’ll just have his men pull them up and gun you down.”

  Relieved to hear his brother’s voice sounded relatively strong and clear, Ace disagreed. “Maybe, maybe not. You heard what his men said about him. He’s not a murderer.”

  “He came damn close with us,” Chance said.

  Ace couldn’t argue with that.