The Jensen Brand

by William W. Johnstone

  She wondered fleetingly if Smoke himself would recognize the name. Or was Creighton just another of the almost anonymous owlhoots Smoke had gunned down over the years?

  She got the answer as the man went on. “While I was mending, I didn’t think about anything else except killing Jensen. It took a long time before I was ready to face him again. Then I rode to Big Rock, because I knew I’d find him there sooner or later, and bided my time until I saw him on the street one day. I went out to meet him, walked right toward him . . . and then he looked at me and didn’t have the slightest idea who I was. He’d forgotten completely about shooting me.” Creighton was breathing harder from the depth of the emotions gripping him. “I never hated a man more than I did right then . . . and that was when I decided that just killing Jensen wasn’t enough to even the score. I had to make him suffer before he died. Suffer by knowing that he’d lost everything. I’d bleed his ranch dry, then kill him.” Creighton closed his eyes, lifted his hand, and rested the fingertips against his forehead for a moment before he looked up again. “No, I never hated anybody like that before . . . until Jensen—or one of his men—killed my little brother. After that, it wasn’t enough to just ruin Jensen and then kill him. His family had to pay, too.”

  The man was loco with hate and the lust for revenge, Denny thought. She could see the insanity in Nick Creighton’s eyes. But that didn’t mean he was any less dangerous. She felt cold inside, knowing that she was one of the objects of the outlaw’s twisted wrath, that her mother and brother were also in danger.

  Creighton drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “So that’s what you’re signing up for. If you’ve got any qualms about killing, you’d better mount up and ride away now.”

  “The hell with that,” one of the men said. “If any of us tried to leave, your men would put bullets in our backs.”

  Creighton smiled thinly. “Well, that simplifies your decision, doesn’t it?”

  The man who had spoken shrugged. “I’ve never minded spillin’ a little blood if the payoff was good enough. Sounds like this one will be.”

  “It will,” Creighton said. “How about the rest of you?”

  Nods and mutters of agreement came from the other men.

  Denny mumbled, “Damn right,” loud enough for Creighton to hear.

  The hawk-faced killer stepped past her and said sharply, “What about you? What’s your name?”

  Denny glanced over her shoulder and saw that Creighton was confronting Brice Rogers.

  Rogers didn’t hesitate. “They call me Lon Williams. And I’ll kill just as many Jensens as you want me to kill . . . boss.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Since it was fairly late in the day when the group arrived at the hideout, Denny didn’t expect anything else to happen right away, and she was right.

  Turk Sanford, who seemed to be Muddy Malone’s friend and Nick Creighton’s second in command, told the newcomers they could use the tents that had belonged to the men killed in the previous clashes with the Sugarloaf. “I don’t expect any of you are sensitive-natured enough to be bothered by that.

  Disdainful grunts were the only answers he got.

  Actually, Denny didn’t feel that good about bedding down in a dead man’s tent, but she wouldn’t let any of the outlaws see that, or Brice Rogers, either. The real problem was that the men were expected to share tents, and Denny didn’t want to risk one of them finding out that she was really a woman.

  She contrived to be next to Rogers as they were unsaddling their mounts and said quietly, “We’d better wind up in the same tent.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he said, being equally discreet.

  “Is that so?” Denny arched an eyebrow.

  “Don’t make anything more of it than it is,” he advised. “The two of us sharing a tent shouldn’t look too funny, since Muddy believes we used to ride together.”

  “We haven’t acted like we’re exactly friends these days, though.”

  “We were cordial enough during the ride down here, at least most of the time. I reckon he’ll accept that we’ve declared a truce.”

  Denny nodded. “I hope so. Anyway, we don’t have much choice. Anything else is too much of a risk.”

  “You’re right about that,” Brice agreed.

  Once they had put the horses in the corral, they carried their saddlebags and other gear toward one of the empty tents. No one was close by, but they still didn’t say anything that would give away their true identities.

  A couple members of the gang were building up a cooking fire in the middle of the basin. The sun dropped below the mountains to the west, and night closed in on the cliff-enclosed hideout. The light from the fire spread out into a wide circle, but it didn’t reach to all parts of the basin, Denny saw as she and Rogers emerged from a tent after putting their gear in it.

  Since there was still no one near enough to overhear, she risked saying, “We need to start thinking about how we’re going to get out of here and bring back a posse.”

  “We?” Rogers repeated.

  “If only one of us goes, that’ll make the gang suspicious of the one who stays behind, won’t it?”

  “If we both disappear, Creighton will know that something’s up, instead of maybe just suspecting it. He’ll be ready for an attack. It’s going to be hard enough as it is to get in here and bust up this bunch. Remember, you’ve got a history of running out on your partners. You go, and it’ll look like you just got cold feet and took off again.”

  “Damn it,” Denny said. “Lon Williams has got a history of running out on his friends, too.”

  Brice grimaced. “I was just trying to come up with a good story for Malone, so I used for background some things I knew really happened, namely what happened to the Bell-Poole gang. It didn’t make me look too bad.”

  “I reckon that’s a matter of interpretation,” Denny said coolly.

  “Maybe, but our best shot is still for you to sneak out and for me to stay behind and wait for you to show up with reinforcements. When you do, I can get the drop on as many of them as possible from in here.”

  “You’d never make it out alive,” she said, her voice flat.

  “I could sure cut down the odds against the rest of you, though.”

  “Blast it! You can’t just throw away your life like that.”

  “I have a job to do,” Rogers said. “I’ll do it the best way I see fit.”

  Emotions tore at Denny. She didn’t want to like Brice Rogers, but she had been around him enough to know that he was a decent man. She didn’t like the thought of him dying in the lonely basin, at the hands of no-good outlaws working for a crazy man.

  But lawmen always ran the risk of dying, she reminded herself. They knew that, every time they pinned on the star. Rogers, of course, wasn’t actually wearing his badge, but the concept was the same.

  “Let’s leave the question of who stays and who goes until later,” Denny said. “How does whoever goes . . . get the hell out of here?”

  “Now that is a damned good question.”

  “With half a dozen guards posted along the canyon, it would be mighty hard to slip past all of them.”

  “A person might be able to climb one of the cliffs. It would have to be at night, though, or else he’d be spotted too easily. And climbing those cliffs in the dark”—Rogers shook his head—“would be pretty dangerous. Even if you got out, you’d be on foot. How far is it to anyplace you could get help?”

  “It’s twenty miles or more to the ranch headquarters. I might run into some of my father’s hands on the way there, but there’s no way of knowing where or when.”

  “Could you find your way in the dark?”

  Denny smirked. “What do you think?”

  Rogers chuckled. “I’d be surprised if you couldn’t. It would be a lot better if you didn’t have to make the trip on foot, though. You could be back with a posse by morning.”

  “More than likely. But there’s no need to talk about that
, because while that buckskin of mine is a pretty good horse, it can’t climb a cliff.”

  “There might be a way for you to ride out of here after all.”

  “If there is, I sure don’t see it.”

  “Let me think on it for a while,” Rogers said. “We’ve got a little time.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t know how much. Now that Creighton’s bunch is close to full strength, we don’t know how long he’ll wait before striking at the Sugarloaf again.” She nodded toward Muddy Malone and Turk Sanford. “There’s something else for us to worry about.” She had spotted the two outlaws walking straight toward them.

  “What’s that?” Rogers asked.

  “Looks like we’re about to have company. Whatever those two have in mind, I’m willing to bet it’s not anything we’re going to like very much.”

  Rogers tensed, then made a visible effort to relax. He hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and waited for the two outlaws to reach them. Denny tried to seem as casual.

  “The boss wants to see the two of you,” Turk said as he and Muddy walked up.

  “What about?” Rogers asked.

  “Nick’s not in the habit of explaining everything to me, Williams. He just tells me what he wants done, and I do it. You’d be smart to do likewise.”

  “Never intended anything else,” Rogers said. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

  Turk grunted. “In this bunch, it never pays to be too curious. Nick’s got his own way of doing things, and the rest of us have learned to go along with that. He generally steers us right.”

  “Funny,” Denny said, “I thought the reason Muddy went to look for more men to join the gang was that the last two jobs got a heap of you killed.”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Turk snapped. “Now come on, unless you’ve changed your minds about throwing in with us.”

  “Nobody said that.” Rogers glared briefly at Denny. “That mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble one of these days, kid.”

  Denny snarled. “Get your mind off my mouth,”

  Muddy leaned his head toward the cabin. “You two quit snipin’ at each other and come on. The boss don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

  As the four of them walked toward Creighton’s cabin, Denny wondered how much of the friction between her and Rogers was for show and how much was real. They had a tendency to rub each other the wrong way, that was for sure. She knew she was guilty of provoking some of it, even though she didn’t always mean to.

  The cabin door was closed. Turk thumped a fist against it.

  From inside, Nick Creighton called, “Come in.”

  Turk opened the door and jerked his head to indicate that Denny and Rogers should go in first. She hoped they weren’t walking into a trap, but whether they were or not, they couldn’t back out.

  Creighton was sitting on a bench at a rough-hewn table, rolling a cigarette. A half-full bottle of whiskey and an empty glass were on the table at his elbow. Across the room, his woman sat in a rocking chair held together with strips of dried rawhide. She rocked back and forth gently, just enough for the motion to be visible. A reddish glow came from the embers of a fire in the stone fireplace, but most of the light in the room came from a lantern sitting on the mantel.

  He didn’t get in any hurry to acknowledge the newcomers or Muddy and Turk, who’d stopped just inside the open door, alert in case of trouble. Creighton finished rolling the quirley, then scratched a kitchen match to life on the bench next to him and set fire to the gasper. Only after he had taken a couple puffs did he look up. “Tell me your names again.”

  “I’m Lon Williams,” Rogers said. “This is Denny West.”

  “Kid can’t speak for himself ?”

  “That’s my name,” Denny said. “What I go by now, anyway.”

  “Not everybody here goes by the name they were born with, that’s true,” Creighton said. “Happens I do. Muddy tells me the two of you used to be partners.”

  Rogers nodded. “That’s right.”

  “But there’s bad blood between you now.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Denny told the boss outlaw. “What’s past is past. I’m more interested in the money I can make in the future, and I reckon Lon is, too.”

  “That’s right,” Rogers said. “Hell, if there’s a good payoff involved, I can work with anybody.”

  Denny grunted and said dryly, “Thanks a heap for putting up with me.”

  Creighton waved his cigarette. “In this bunch, we all have to trust each other. Everybody’s life could depend on it. If either of you is going to have any trouble going along with that—”

  “No trouble,” Brice interrupted. “You’ve got my word on it.”

  “Mine, too,” Denny added.

  Creighton studied both of them for a moment, then nodded. “I just wanted to talk to you and see for myself if I could believe you. I think I do.” Creighton’s voice hardened as he added, “Don’t give me any reason to think I made a mistake.”

  “You won’t be sorry you let us throw in with you,” Denny said.

  Now that was an outright lie . . . she hoped. She hoped Nick Creighton would be sorry as hell when he went to prison—or died with Jensen lead in him.

  “All right, you can go on about your business,” Creighton said with another wave of his hand. He stood up.

  Turk and Muddy stepped outside, and Denny and Rogers followed them. Creighton ambled along behind them, still smoking. He paused just outside the doorway, evidently intent on getting a breath of the night air.

  The cooking fire was burning pretty big under an iron pot of stew. The glare from it spread to the edge of a clump of scrubby trees about fifty yards from the cabin. Denny happened to be looking in that direction when she saw the firelight reflect redly from something in the trees. She caught her breath as she realized it was a rifle barrel being thrust past one of the trunks.

  Pure instinct sent her diving off her feet as flame spouted from the rifle’s muzzle.

  CHAPTER 34

  The dive carried her toward Nick Creighton. Her shoulder crashed heavily against his side. Since he wasn’t expecting the collision, he wasn’t braced for it. The impact drove him off his feet and sent him sprawling to the ground as the crack of the shot reverberated through the basin. The quirley flew from his fingers and its coal traced an orange arc through the air.

  Denny felt something pluck at her vest in midair and knew it was the rifle bullet whipping past her as she fell to the ground beside Creighton.

  “Somebody just took a shot at the boss!” Turk yelled as he clawed at the gun on his hip.

  Muddy grabbed his iron and both of them opened fire on the trees. Bark flew as slugs pounded into the trunks. Some of the bullets clipped branches and made them fall.

  Rogers weaved to the side and threw lead at the trees as well. All over the camp, men were shouting and running toward the cabin to see what was wrong.

  Creighton scrambled up. He reached his feet just as Denny made it to her knees. He grabbed her arm and jerked her the rest of the way up. “That shot was meant for me,” he said, panting a little. “How’d you know, West?”

  “Caught a reflection of the firelight off the rifle barrel.” She didn’t like being that close to the outlaw. Her skin crawled at his touch, but it was more than that. She worried he would take too good a look at her. Her hat had fallen off when she lunged and knocked him out of the way.

  Something suddenly occurred to Creighton and he exclaimed, “Molly!” He let go of Denny’s arm and wheeled toward the cabin door.

  It was still open. Given the bushwhacker’s location and where he had been standing, the bullet that missed him might have gone on into the cabin where the woman was.

  Creighton plunged through the doorway, hampered a little by his limp but not letting it slow him down much. Denny grabbed her hat from the ground, jammed it back on her head, and followed him. The shooting had stopped, so she assumed the bushwhacker was no longer a
threat.

  Molly stood next to the table, breathing hard. At first glance she appeared to be unharmed. She pointed toward the fireplace. A splash of lead on one of the stones showed where the bullet had struck.

  Creighton grabbed her arms anyway. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Nick. Just startled, that’s all. What happened?”

  “Some son of a bitch tried to kill me,” Creighton answered grimly. He let go of Molly and swung around toward Denny. His hand hung near the gun on his hip, and she tensed, thinking he might be about to draw on her.

  He didn’t. “West caught a glimpse of the bushwhacker and knocked me out of the way. Saved my life, more than likely.”

  Denny lifted her right shoulder in a tiny shrug. “Just did what any of the other fellas would have done, boss.”

  “Most of them wouldn’t have seen the bastard in time to do anything about it. I owe you, West.”

  Maybe she could turn the unforeseen incident to her advantage, Denny mused.

  Before she could think any more about that, Turk appeared in the doorway, gun in hand. “Were you hit, boss?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Creighton told him. “What about the man who tried to ventilate me?”

  “He’s shot to pieces,” Turk said, “but he’s still alive. Probably not for much longer, though.”

  “Good,” Creighton snapped. “I want to talk to him, find out who he is, and why he tried to kill me.” He stalked past Turk and out into the night.

  Turk followed him outside.

  As Denny started to follow them, she caught Molly staring at her. The scrutiny made Denny nervous, and she muttered a curse under her breath as she went out.

  A glance back showed Molly standing in the doorway, one hand raised to rest on the jamb as she watched the men.

  Several outlaws stood around a figure on the ground. The circle parted to let Creighton through. He stood there looking down at the wounded man for a moment, then knelt beside him.

  Denny moved up closer so she could see and hear what was going on. She found herself standing next to Rogers, who gave her a speculative glance.