The Family Jensen

by William W. Johnstone

  He began pounding out his message in a rough but serviceable hand, addressing it to Smoke Jensen, care of Sheriff Carson, Big Rock, Colorado. The gist of it was that Smoke should find Preacher and get to Halltown, Nevada, as fast as he could. Trouble was brewing. Matt didn’t say anything about the Indian Ring, but he figured Smoke would realize that crooked bunch had to be involved somehow, otherwise Matt wouldn’t be asking for help. He signed the message M-a-t-t, then asked the key-pounder on the other end for confirmation. After a moment, the operator acknowledged and sent the series of dots and dashes that meant the message had been passed on to its destination. Matt heaved a sigh of relief.

  He unhooked the key from the junction box and stowed it in his shirt again. Climbing down the pole was almost as arduous a task as climbing up it. But a few minutes later his feet were on the ground again.

  He didn’t waste any time as he pulled on his boots, put the telegraph key back in his saddlebags, and settled his hat on his head. “Sorry I have to keep asking you to do more,” he said to the sorrel as he put his foot in the stirrup and reached up to grasp the saddlehorn. “But I’ve got to get back to town as fast as I can and make sure Maureen’s all right.”

  If she wasn’t, a whole heap of powder was about to be burned, he vowed. And he wasn’t going to wait for Smoke and Preacher.

  About five miles away, at the railroad construction camp, a man sat at a scarred desk in the caboose of the work train and laboriously printed words on a piece of paper with a stub of a pencil. On the desk in front of him was a telegraph key, and the wires leading from it ran out the window and up to a junction box on top of a nearby pole. The man had been surprised when the key suddenly chattered to life a few minutes earlier. He hadn’t tried to cut into the exchange, but had listened to the messages passing back and forth. Years of experience as a telegrapher meant he had memorized them without even thinking about it. Maybe not verbatim, but pretty blasted close, and he was writing out the words before he forgot them.

  When he finished, he stood up and went to the rear of the caboose, taking the paper with him as he stepped onto the car’s platform. He called out to one of the workmen passing by the train, “Hey! Go find Mr. Longacre, Benjy. I got something here I think he’s gonna want to see!”

  Chapter 11

  Maureen tried not to let her fear get the best of her as she sat on an unsteady three-legged stool in an old abandoned cabin not far outside Halltown. One of the early settlers had lived there. She didn’t know whether something had happened to the man or if he had just moved on for some reason, but the one-room shack was empty and had been ever since she and her uncle had come to the settlement. It was slowly falling into ruin.

  It was a good place for her captors to hold her prisoner, far enough from town that nobody really paid any attention to it. If she screamed, someone in the settlement might hear her, but the two hardcases had warned her it would go badly for her if she did.

  She told herself they wouldn’t really hurt her. This was the West, after all. Anyone who harmed a decent woman would be hunted down relentlessly and dealt with ruthlessly. Even the most hardened outlaw was usually respectful to women.

  She wasn’t sure those two had ever figured that out, though. They had leered at her constantly during the ride, and the one who stood on the other side of the room watched her with undisguised lust in his eyes.

  But so far neither of them had touched her.

  Maureen knew the man’s partner had ridden to town, checking to see if Cyrus Longacre had returned yet from the railroad construction camp.

  Longacre must be getting desperate if he’d go so far as to have his men kidnap her, she thought. Of course, it was possible he hadn’t given that order. The two men could have made that decision on their own.

  Desperate . . . or confident? Her spirits sank even lower when she asked herself that question. With the sheriff and the judge under his thumb, Longacre might feel that he could get away with whatever he wanted. So far there wasn’t a lot of evidence to dispute that.

  If something had happened to Matt . . . if more of Longacre’s men had followed him and killed him . . . then there wasn’t much hope. Cyrus Longacre’s word, backed by the guns of his hired killers, truly would be the only law in that part of Nevada.

  Fear and pain twinged inside Maureen as she thought about Matt. She wished she knew where he was and whether he was all right.

  A rataplan of hoofbeats sounded outside the shack. Maureen’s head lifted as a few feeble stirrings of hope went through her. Maybe Matt had found her—

  It wasn’t Matt who pulled the sagging door open and stepped into the shack. “Longacre’s not back yet, and neither’s Judd,” the hardcase announced.

  The guard nodded toward Maureen. “Then what do we do with her?”

  “Looks like we’ll have to hang on to her a while longer.”

  “Reckon we can do anything to help pass the time?” An ugly grin accompanied the suggestive words.

  The hardcase shook his head. “Nix that. The boss can fix a lot of things, but I reckon molestin’ a woman’s still a quick way to meet the hangman.” The man crossed his arms over his chest and gave Maureen a baleful stare. “No, we’ll wait. Once we know for sure that Jensen’s dead . . . well, we’ll see.”

  So Matt might still be alive, Maureen thought. She was going to cling to that hope as long as she possibly could.

  Because she knew if breath remained in Matt Jensen’s body, he would come to help her.

  From the top of a hill about a quarter mile away, Matt watched the shack through a pair of field glasses he had taken from his saddlebags. He had seen the man ride up and enter the dilapidated old building a few minutes earlier, and had gotten a good enough look at the hombre’s unshaven face to recognize the type. The low-slung revolver on the man’s hip was further evidence that Matt was looking at one of Cyrus Longacre’s gun-wolves.

  He had a distinctly uneasy feeling Maureen was inside that shack with at least two of Longacre’s hired killers.

  Matt had been on his way back to Halltown when it had occurred to him to cut across to the spot where he had parted company with Maureen. If she had made it back to town safely, then everything was fine. But if she hadn’t . . . if some of Longacre’s men had grabbed her, which was possible since it appeared the hired guns might have been trailing them all day . . . it would be easier to pick up her trail there.

  Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. That was another lesson Smoke and Preacher had taught him.

  Matt hadn’t had any trouble finding the spot he was looking for, and had followed the tracks left by Maureen’s horse. For a while it had looked like everything was fine and she had headed back to the settlement without any trouble.

  But he noticed the tracks of two other horses coming from the direction of a rocky ridge nearby. He could tell from the muddle of tracks and the horse droppings that Maureen had stopped, and all three horses had milled around some.

  Then all three riders had gone on toward Halltown, with the distinctive hoofprints of the mare Daisy between the tracks left by the other two horses.

  Matt had a hunch Maureen was a prisoner of the two men who had stopped her on the trail.

  With anger and worry growing inside him, he followed the tracks, pushing the sorrel as hard as he dared considering the horse’s played-out condition. When they were still about a mile from the settlement, the three riders had veered off the trail and headed north. Matt pressed on, and after a few minutes he’d spotted the isolated cabin.

  Charging full-blast into that old shack without knowing exactly what the situation was inside might get Maureen killed. As soon as he was certain the tracks led to the cabin, he had circled around to come at the cabin from a different direction. Leaving the sorrel on the other side of the hill where it couldn’t be seen from the shack, he’d taken the field glasses and climbed to the top. A few minutes later, the hardcase arrived from the direction of town.

  Matt figured he
was outnumbered. It was just a matter of by how much.

  He focused the field glasses on the broken window and strained to see inside the cabin through the sections where the grimy glass no longer existed. At first all he could make out was an occasional movement. He continued watching, convinced Maureen was in there, and after several minutes he was rewarded by a brief flash of red hair. His heart slugged hard in his chest. She was in the shack, all right, with at least two of Longacre’s men.

  Matt lowered the glasses and looked down the hill at his sorrel, ground-hitched, with its head down in exhaustion. He would leave the mount there, he decided, and approach the old cabin on foot.

  There wasn’t much cover around the place, but the rear wall didn’t have any windows in it. If he went in from that direction, the men inside the ramshackle building couldn’t see him unless they happened to catch a glimpse through a knothole or a crack between two boards. It was his best chance. He went back down the hill, stowed away the field glasses, and paused for a second to look at the butt of his Winchester sticking up from the saddle boot.

  He decided to leave the rifle where it was. It was going to be close work, and the .44 was best for that. Any closer and he had the Bowie knife sheathed on his left hip.

  Matt trotted around the hill, slowing down and being careful as the shack came into view again. He drew his gun as he moved quickly but quietly toward the shack. When he reached the old building, he saw two horses were picketed on the far side, where he hadn’t been able to see them before. Daisy was one of them, further confirmation that Maureen was inside.

  He stopped, took off his hat, and leaned close to the wall. Time and weather had warped and swollen the planks. He put his eye to one of the cracks and peered into the shack.

  His jaw tightened as he saw Maureen sitting on a rickety old stool. Rays of sunlight slanted down around her through holes in the rotten roof. One of the men was to her left, perched on the edge of a table the owner had left when he abandoned the cabin. The other man was off to the right, bent over rummaging around in what appeared to be an old grub box.

  “You don’t really think you’re gonna find anything fit to eat in there, do you?” the man sitting on the table asked.

  “You never can tell,” the other man said. “Might be a can of peaches or tomatoes, and they’d be all right as long as they were still sealed up, I reckon. I’m hungry. We didn’t get any lunch, you know, because we were followin’ Jensen and this redheaded gal.”

  “Yeah, I know. I was there, remember?”

  “How long do you think it’ll take for the boss to get back?”

  “I don’t have any idea. By nightfall, I expect.”

  The hardcase continued pawing through the debris left in the grub box. “If I have to wait until then to eat—”

  His complaint stopped short as he let out an ear-splitting screech.

  Leaping down from the table, his partner yelled, “What in blazes!” His hand went to the gun on his hip.

  The hardcase reared up and stumbled back from the grub box. “It got me!” he howled as he gave his right hand a frenzied shaking. “Biggest damn scorpion I ever saw! It got me!”

  The man’s partner lowered his gun and said disgustedly, “You blamed fool! Is that all?”

  “Is that all?” the stung man repeated in a wounded tone. “It hurts like a son of a—”

  His companion had turned his back on Maureen, and before either of them knew what was happening, she leaped to her feet, snatched up the stool she had been sitting on, and brought it crashing down on the man’s head.

  Chapter 12

  Matt moved before the blow even fell. Gripping his Colt tightly, he raced around the shack and reached the front in time to see the door burst open. Maureen ran out with lines of fear etched on her face. In her terror, she wasn’tthinking straight, and dashed blindly away from the shack. She didn’t try to reach the horses.

  Yelling curses, the man she hit raced out of the shack and ran after her. Matt lifted his gun to shoot him, but remembered the other hardcase was still inside. Drawing back, he concealed himself at the corner of the building.

  It took the man only a few strides to catch up to Maureen. He reached out and grabbed her arm, jerking her to a stop. “You blasted little hellcat!” he bellowed.

  The hardcase came out of the cabin, shaking his injured hand. “Did you get her? Did you—”

  “Hold it!” Matt stepped into the open and leveled his Colt.

  Both men twisted toward him. The one holding Maureen’s arm let go and reached for his gun. The other man clawed at the butt of his revolver, handicapped by his swollen finger.

  “Maureen, get down!” Matt shouted. He took out the man closest to her first, slamming a couple slugs into the hombre’s chest just as the man cleared leather. The .44 bucked in Matt’s hand as he pivoted toward Scorpion Man and squeezed off a shot. He would have liked to take one of them alive, but Scorpion Man’s gun came up fast, sting or no sting. His gun roared but he was already twisting around from the impact of Matt’s slug driving into his body. His shot went wild, screaming off harmlessly into the air. He buckled to his knees and pawed at his chest for a second before blood bubbled from his mouth and he pitched forward on his face.

  “Stay there!” Matt shouted to Maureen, who had thrown herself to the ground and rolled several yards away, out of the line of fire. He hurried forward and kicked the fallen guns out of reach of the men he had shot. Keeping his gun ready, he checked both men. They were dead, each man drilled through the breast pocket of his shirt.

  As he reloaded his Colt, he asked Maureen, “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

  She pushed herself up on one arm and shook her head. “No, I’m fine, Matt. They didn’t do anything except threaten me. At least, not until that one grabbed me just now. I may have a few bruises from that.”

  He holstered his gun and went over to her to help her up. When she was on her feet again, she went on, “What about you? They seemed convinced you were dead.”

  “I almost was. Somebody ambushed me while I was on my way to the telegraph line. I think it was Judd Talley.”

  “You didn’t kill him?”

  Matt glanced at the bodies of the two men and shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. He got away.”

  “But he tried to kill you. Longacre told him to murder you and sent these men to kidnap me. We can get the law on him now!”

  Matt hated to dash her hopes, but he knew how such things worked. Sure, it would be obvious to any reasonable person that Longacre was behind the violence that had happened, but there were no witnesses to prove it. No one who would be willing to testify in a court of law could say that Longacre had given the orders, and Longacre would claim that his men had acted on their own and been overzealous in kidnapping Maureen. As for the attempt on Matt’s life, well, who was to say that such a thing had actually happened? A smart lawyer—and Longacre wouldn’t have any other kind working for him—would blow any case against the railroad baron right out of the water.

  The eager smile disappeared from Maureen’s face as she looked at him. “What is it, Matt? Isn’t this a good thing?”

  “It’s good that you and I are still alive,” he told her, “but this isn’t going to help us put a stop to Longacre’s plans. We’ll have to flush him out into the open even more before we can get the law on our side. Right now it’s still backing him.”

  “But . . . but that’s not right!” Maureen paused and then let out a bitter laugh. “I’m being foolish, aren’t I, thinking the world should be fair and that right should prevail.”

  “It usually does. Sometimes it just takes a little longer. In the meantime, the fact that those men grabbed you will at least make Longacre look bad. It might help some folks who hadn’t made up their minds about him yet decide that he’s really a polecat. That can’t hurt anything.”

  Some movement in the direction of Halltown caught Matt’s eye. He saw a man striding toward the cabin and recognized
the bulky figure of Sheriff Walt Sanger. Several citizens followed him. The sound of the shots had reached the settlement, and they were coming to see what all the commotion was around the old shack that should have been empty and deserted.

  “Are you going to get in trouble for shooting those men?” Maureen asked worriedly.

  Matt shook his head. “No, it was self-defense. Besides, they kidnapped a woman. Not even Longacre will raise too much of a stink about them getting killed.”

  As it turned out, Longacre didn’t raise any stink at all. He disavowed any knowledge of what the two men had done and in fact claimed he had fired them several days earlier.

  “If they stayed around these parts, they must have been planning on causing trouble,” Longacre declared as he stood in the sheriff’s office, “but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Judd Talley stood behind Longacre, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt and a smug grin on his face. Sanger sat behind the desk, and Matt was off to one side with Maureen and her uncle. Colin Ferguson had a protective arm around Maureen’s shoulders.

  “That’s a lie,” Ferguson said. “Maureen heard those scalawags talking about their boss. That’s you, Longacre.”

  Calmly, Longacre shook his head. “They may have had some far-fetched notion that kidnapping your niece would somehow get them back in my good graces and cause me to rehire them, Ferguson, but I can hardly be held responsible for such madness.”

  “What Mr. Longacre is sayin’ makes sense.” Sheriff Sanger rested his hands palms down on the desk. “I don’t reckon there’s any need to bother him anymore. The varmints are dead, and all that’s left is for the undertaker to plant ’em.”

  “As a goodwill gesture, I’ll pay for the burials,” Longacre said. “That’ll save the town the expense.”

  Sanger pushed himself to his feet. “That’s mighty generous of you, Mr. Longacre.”