The Jensen Brand

by William W. Johnstone

  “It’s got to be the hardest thing in the world for a man like your pa,” Cal said as he and Denny went down the stairs. “He’s used to always bein’ right in the middle of the action, no matter what’s going on. And now he’s got to just take it easy.” Cal shook his head. “He’ll go plumb loco.”

  “No, he won’t. My mother will see to that.”

  He chuckled. “You’re probably right. When it comes to strong-willed folks, those two are a good match.”

  Denny agreed with that. She had inherited that strong will, too. She was already thinking about her next course of action. Her father probably wouldn’t like it, and her mother damned sure wouldn’t, but Denny knew what she had to do.

  While Cal headed outside to see to the day’s chores, Denny went into the parlor. She picked up Smoke’s Colt revolver from the table she’d set it on the night before and checked the cylinder. Five rounds, with the hammer resting on the empty chamber, just the way she had heard him say many times.

  Dressed in clean riding clothes, she slid the Colt into the waistband of her jeans and went outside, looking for Pearlie. She found him in the barn where he spent a lot of his time, mending tack.

  “Howdy, gal,” he said as he looked up from the saddle he was working on. “How’s your pa?”

  “The doctor says he’ll be all right, but he has to stay in bed for the next two weeks and take it easy for who knows how long after that.”

  Pearlie let out a bray of laughter. “Smoke Jensen layin’ in bed and takin’ it easy . . . That’ll be the day!” He noticed the gun at her waist and a slight frown creased his weathered forehead. “What do you have there?”

  “Pa’s .45.”

  “He know you’re carryin’ it around?”

  “I’ve got a good reason for carrying it,” Denny said, not really answering Pearlie’s question.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  Denny wrapped her hand around the gun butt and drew the weapon. She looked down at it for a moment as she held it, then she raised her gaze to the former pistoleer. “Teach me how to use this.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Standing next to a line shack in the high country about five miles from the Sugarloaf headquarters, Pearlie said with a worried frown, “I ain’t sure about this, girl. I don’t much think your pa would want you doin’ this.” He’d made the same argument about Smoke not liking the idea when Denny had first confronted him with her request, but she’d pressed him until he had agreed to meet her up there.

  “It’ll be all right,” Denny insisted. “If anybody ought to understand about having to pick up a gun and do what’s right, it’s Smoke Jensen. He was doing that when he was younger than I am.”

  “Younger, maybe, but he was still a man full-growed, not a—”

  Denny glared at him as he stopped short. “Not a mere woman. Is that what you were about to say? Is there any rule that says a woman can’t use a gun? I know my mother has, more than once.”

  They had left headquarters separately, half an hour apart, Pearlie departing first. By the time Denny got there, he had scavenged half a dozen empty tin cans from the trash dump behind the shack and set them up on the poles that supported the corral fence. He looked down at the holstered revolver and gun belt he held. The rig was one of his old ones.

  The gun was Smoke’s.

  Pearlie didn’t have an answer for Denny’s questions, so when she held out her hand he sighed and passed over the Colt.

  She took the belt, buckled it around her hips, and smiled. “It’s a good thing you’re a scrawny old cuss, Pearlie, or this might have been too big for me.” She adjusted the holster and then reached for the rawhide thongs at the bottom of it.

  “Wait just a minute,” Pearlie said. “You’re wearin’ that too dang low.”

  “I thought gunfighters always wore their holsters low.”

  “You ain’t one of them dime-novel gunfighters. Anyway, wasn’t never much truth to those yarns. You don’t want to carry your gun so low you have to bend over to reach it. That’ll just slow you down. Of course, speed ain’t the most important thing.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it ain’t. Bein’ able to hit what you’re shootin’ at, that’s the main thing.”

  “Smoke Jensen is famous for being one of the fastest guns alive. Maybe the fastest.”

  “One thing you best get through your head right now,” Pearlie said with a stern frown, “you ain’t Smoke Jensen. You ain’t never gonna be Smoke Jensen. He’s one of a kind. I ain’t sure there’s ever been anybody who could shoot as fast and as accurate as him. Frank Morgan, maybe. On a good day, Falcon MacCallister and Matt Beaudine. John Wesley Hardin and Ben Thompson might come close, but no see-gar.”

  “How about you, in your prime?”

  Pearlie snorted. “Not hardly. I could get my gun out quick enough, mind you, but I won many a fight where I got off the second shot. The other fella got off the first one . . . but missed.” He gestured at the holstered gun on Denny’s hip. “Now, pull that up a mite, say four or five inches, and then tighten the belt so it stays there. Then you can tie the holster down.”

  Denny followed his instructions, positioning the Colt to Pearlie’s satisfaction.

  That done, he waved toward the cans balanced on the poles. “All right. Shoot them empty airtights.”

  “We’re only fifteen feet away from them. Shouldn’t I back off ?”

  “You won’t have any business shootin’ at anything farther away from you than that with a handgun. If it is, use a rifle. I know you’re a good shot with a long gun. You creased that rustler who was about to do your pa in.”

  Denny spread her feet a little, hunched her shoulders, and let her hand hover over the butt of the gun. “Should I do a fast draw?”

  Pearlie rolled his eyes and sighed. “No. Stand up straight. Just pull the gun and shoot. Don’t rush it.”

  It seemed wrong to Denny to be so nonchalant about it, but she did as Pearlie said. She drew the gun from the holster and lifted it, then hesitated. “Am I supposed to cock it?”

  “It’s a double action. All you have to do is pull the trigger.”

  Denny raised the gun more, thrust it straight out, closed her left eye, squinted over the barrel with her right, and pulled the trigger. The gun boomed and she said, “Ow!”

  None of the cans went flying.

  “Your arm was too stiff,” Pearlie said. “Bend your elbow just a little. Keep both eyes open, and don’t squint. You ain’t the villain in some mellerdrama. And if you need to, use both hands to hold the gun. It’s heavier than what you’d think it’d be.”

  “I can hold it with one hand,” Denny muttered. She aimed again, taking Pearlie’s advice. When she pulled the trigger, the first can in line leaped into the air and flew several feet before dropping to the ground.

  Pearlie grunted. “Actually, that ain’t bad. You got three more rounds in that gun. See what you can do with ’em. Take it nice an’ slow an’ steady.”

  Denny sent two more cans flying with her next two shots, then missed with the third and exclaimed in disappointment.

  “You weren’t more ’n an inch off with that last one,” Pearlie said. “You can reload whilst I fetch the cans and set ’em up again.”

  For the next hour, shots boomed out again and again, echoing over the shoulder of the mountain where the line shack was located. Gradually, the reports began to come faster. Denny’s increasing confidence in what she was doing could be heard in the sounds.

  “You’re doin’ good, girl,” Pearlie told her as she reloaded yet again. “You’ve burned a heap of powder. Don’t you reckon you’ve done just about enough for today? They’ve likely missed us back at the ranch by now.”

  Denny snapped the loading gate closed on the Colt and pouched the iron. “I’ve hit my last fifteen shots in a row, and thirty-seven out of thirty-eight. Don’t you think we ought to work on my speed a little?”

  “Plenty of time for that. After everything that’s
happened, it’s liable to be a good while before those rustlers come back, if they ever do.”

  “You heard about what the one I shot said to my father,” Denny reminded him. “He’s got a personal grudge. He’s not going to just abandon that. He’ll be back.”

  “Well, by the time that happens, you’ll have had a chance to practice plenty, I reckon. Ain’t no reason to rush things.”

  There was a very good reason, Denny thought . . . but she wasn’t going to tell him what it was. As much of an argument as he had put up over just teaching her how to use a handgun, he really would pitch a fit if he knew what her ultimate plan was.

  “I’ll just go ahead and set them cans up again, so they’ll be ready for next time,” Pearlie said as he walked over to the corral fence. The gate was open, so he was able to walk inside and pick up the cans Denny had shot off the posts. As he looked at them, he chuckled and added, “Looks like I may have to hunt up some new targets ’fore too much longer. You’ve just about shot these to pieces.”

  He balanced the cans on the posts, then walked over to join her near the horses they had tied to a hitching post in front of the shack. She had her back to the corral fence.

  Without any warning, Pearlie barked, “Shoot them cans! Fast!”

  Denny whirled around, her hand dropping to the gun on her hip. The Colt came out and up and began to roar. With barely a pause between each shot for her to shift aim, the blasts rolled out in an almost continuous wave of gun-thunder. Cans flew in the air.

  When the sixth shot exploded and the echoes danced across the landscape, two cans remained on the fence posts. But the other four were lying on the ground inside the corral with fresh bullet holes in them.

  Denny was breathing hard as she slowly lowered the empty revolver. She had reacted instinctively to Pearlie’s unexpected command. The suddenness of it had kept her from thinking about what she was doing.

  “Reload!” Pearlie snapped. “Standin’ around with an empty cutter will get you killed. You can’t take the time to admire your gun work. Reload and make sure there ain’t no more threats.”

  “Those cans were never really a threat,” Denny said.

  “But you treated ’em like they were, just now. You didn’t think about it, you just acted. That’s what you got to do. It’s got to come natural to you, like breathin’.”

  “It did,” Denny said with a note of satisfied amazement as she thumbed fresh rounds into the Colt’s cylinder. “That’s exactly how it was.”

  “You’re the pure quill Jensen when it comes to gunhandlin’, I reckon,” Pearlie admitted. “I seen it there in flashes, plain as day. Four outta six ain’t bad . . . but if you were facin’ six enemies, them two you missed woulda killed you, more than likely. And you’re still slow as mud compared to any real gun-handler.”

  “I just started practicing today!” Denny protested. “And you just said I have some natural talent.”

  “Natural talent, sure. But it still needs a lot of honin’.” Pearlie sighed. “Anyway, havin’ a natural talent for drawin’ and shootin’ a gun ain’t somethin’ a young woman ought to be proud of. You oughta be doin’ other things. You know . . . woman things.”

  “I want to do what I’m good at.” Denny slid the Colt back into leather. “And this is it.”

  “You’d be a heap more likely to land a husband if you concentrated on cookin’ and suchlike.”

  “Who said I wanted to land a husband? And I can cook, thank you very much.”

  “Well, what is it you intend on doin’?” he asked.

  “You’ll know when the time comes.” Denny couldn’t tell anyone what she had in mind, not even Louis. Certainly not her mother and father.

  Whoever that rustler was, whatever his grudge against Smoke Jensen might be, Denny was going to see to it that he never again threatened anyone she loved.

  CHAPTER 21

  Denny and Pearlie met at the unused line shack for the next three days. She was a little surprised that her mother didn’t seem to have noticed her leaving the ranch headquarters for several hours every day, but she supposed Sally was too busy taking care of Smoke and worrying about him to pay attention to much of anything else.

  The first night after firing so many rounds, her wrist had ached almost intolerably from the recoil and from supporting the weight of the Colt. The next day, it was still sore but better, and since then the overtaxed muscles and ligaments had begun to strengthen and improve. According to Pearlie, it was just a matter of getting used to the experience.

  Most of the time, the old gunman insisted that she work on her accuracy. By the third day, she could make forty or fifty shots in a row without missing. She could knock cans off of posts, clip branches from trees, hit knotholes in a cottonwood’s trunk. Pearlie tossed cans in the air, and with a little practice she was able to hit those, too.

  What she liked best was working on the skills that would keep her alive in a gunfight: a speedy draw, swift reflexes, cool nerves. Pearlie would call out a target with no warning, sometimes off to the side and sometimes behind her, and she had to whirl toward it as fast as she could, get the Colt out, and plant three or four slugs as close to the mark as possible. At first she was more than a little wild, but as she grew accustomed to the task, her accuracy improved.

  Her speed was good from the start. She had been born with that, Pearlie declared. The long hours of practice improved that, too.

  “To think that gunhandlin’ knack was in you all along,” Pearlie commented one afternoon after Denny had just spun around, dropped to one knee, and shot three cans off a stump about twenty feet away. He had modified his fifteen-foot rule. Denny had demonstrated she was good enough that he had extended her effective range with a handgun.

  He went on. “We all knowed you could ride. Smoke put you in a saddle pretty much before you could walk, and he let you start usin’ a lariat when you was just a little bitty thing, too. We all figured out early on you’d have had the makin’s of a top hand if... uh . . .”

  “If I wasn’t a girl?” Denny said. “That’s what you were about to say, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, that ain’t it exactly. It’s true there ain’t many gals who work cattle on ranches out here, but there’s some. There’s enough work around a spread that sometimes a fella’s wife and daughters will have to pitch in. It’s more like . . . you ain’t just a gal, Denny. You’re the daughter of Smoke Jensen, who, in case you didn’t know it, is one of the richest fellas in this part of the country, and not only that, you was livin’ most of the time in England. Everybody figured you’d go to some fancy school over there and then marry up with a duke or an earl or somebody like that. You’d be the lady o’ some big ol’ manor, livin’ in a house like a dang castle.”

  Denny looked at the earnest old foreman for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. “Honestly, Pearlie, I can’t think of anything that sounds worse! Louis might not have minded staying over there, but once I got old enough to compare life in England to life out here on the frontier, there was never any question which one I preferred. I’m a Western girl, plain and simple.”

  Pearlie shrugged. “Anyway, we knew you could rope and ride, and when you was a mite older Smoke took you huntin’ with him and me and some of the other fellas. You were a good natural shot with a rifle the first time you ever had one in your hands. You knocked over a big ol’ jackrabbit at fifty yards.” He smiled at the memory. “Then you cried for an hour once you realized you’d killed it.”

  “I did?” Denny shook her head. “I don’t remember that.”

  “It happened. You were the saddest little girl I ever did see. Of course, that didn’t stop you from eatin’ some of that rabbit when we cooked it that night. You said it was mighty good, too, even though you were still sorry it had to die to feed us. That’s the way it is with life, I reckon. It’s all a mixture of good and bad, and there ain’t nothin’ that don’t come without a price.”

  Denny nodded. The men who had wounded and nearl
y killed her father owed a price for that, she thought, and she intended to collect.

  A few minutes later, while she was reloading after burning some more powder, she heard a horse coming.

  Pearlie heard the hoofbeats, too, and stiffened. “Dang it! Somebody heard all the shootin’ and come to see what it’s all about.”

  Denny slid the loaded Colt into the holster, turned toward the sound, and waited with her hand resting on the gun butt. On the ranch, the chances of the new arrival being a threat were pretty small, but she was going to be ready if he was.

  Pearlie was thinking the same thing. He moved over to his horse and slid his Winchester from the saddle boot. He worked the repeater’s lever and stayed where he was by the horses instead of going back to rejoin Denny. “You know why I’m stayin’ over here, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

  “So whoever it is can’t get both of us at once. If he aims to start shooting, he’ll have to go for one or the other—and whoever he doesn’t go after will kill him.”

  “Yeah, you’re your pa’s daughter, all right.”

  Denny squinted at the spot where the trail to the line shack emerged from some nearby trees. After a second she said disgustedly, “Yes, and that’s my pa’s son. My stupid twin brother.”

  Louis rode out from the shadows under the trees on a brown mare. He wore canvas trousers tucked into high-topped boots, a white shirt, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He wasn’t wearing a gun, and he didn’t have a rifle or any other weapon as far as Denny could see. That was worth being called stupid all by itself. Riding out unarmed that far from the ranch headquarters was dangerously careless. Even if you didn’t run into any two-legged varmints, there were plenty of four-legged ones—from mountain lions to bears—in those parts that could kill you.

  As he came up to them and reined the mare to a halt, Denny said, “Louis, what in the hell are you doing here?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” he replied coolly. He glanced at the other man. “And of you, Pearlie. I take it this isn’t some sort of . . . romantic rendezvous? I don’t have to feel compelled to defend my sister’s honor, do I?”