Those Jensen Boys!

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’m afraid that’s right. It won’t do any good to report what happened to us. Marshal Wheeler will say that he’ll look into it, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Wheeler’s just another of Eagleton’s gun-wolves,” Emily said bitterly. “He keeps the peace in the saloons, but that’s all he’s really good for. That and intimidating anybody Eagleton sics him on.”

  “He’s not going to intimidate Ace and me,” Chance boasted.

  “We’ll see.” Emily’s tone made it clear she didn’t think much of the Jensen boys’ chances if they crossed Palisade’s star-packer.

  “There’s no telegraph line between here and Bleak Creek, is there?” Ace asked.

  Bess said, “No, although there’s been talk about stringing one eventually. It wouldn’t be easy bringing a telegraph line up the mountain, though.”

  “Having to go up and down that trail to the pass makes everything more difficult, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  They’d reached the outskirts of town. The music from the saloons was pretty loud, the different songs blending together to form a discordant melody. Light from half a dozen different drinking and gambling establishments spilled brightly into the main street of Palisade, which Emily explained was named Eagleton Avenue.

  “As if you’d expect it to be called anything else,” she added. “The man’s got such a high opinion of himself you’d think the air would be too thin to breathe up where he is.”

  Most of the businesses up and down the street were still open, even though the hour was late.

  “They don’t roll up the boardwalks at dark around here, do they?” Chance said as they rode past several stores that were still brightly lit up.

  “Like I said, the men work all day,” Emily replied. “Actually, some of them work all night, too. The mine never stops operating. The crews have three different shifts.”

  “You said Eagleton owns just about everything in town,” Ace said, “but the saloons all have different names and so do the other businesses.”

  “Since when do names matter?” Emily wanted to know. “Anyway, the deeds may be in someone else’s name, but it’s Eagleton’s money behind them. For all practical purposes that makes them his, doesn’t it?”

  She was right about that, Ace thought. Samuel Eagleton might not be sitting on a throne, but from everything Ace had heard, the mine owner was the uncrowned king of Palisade and the surrounding area.

  “There’s the stage line office,” Bess said, indicating a neat frame building on the left side of the street with a large barn and corral beside it.

  Ace and Chance turned the horses toward it. As they came up to the hitch rack in front of the building, Ace looked through the large window. A burly, barrel-chested man paced back and forth in the brightly lit room as if in a worried frenzy.

  He caught sight of them and stopped short in his pacing. He rushed to the door, flung it open, and charged out onto the porch. “Bess! Emily!” he cried. “Thank God! Are you all right?”

  The sisters slid down from the horses and quickly stepped up onto the porch, where the man threw an arm around each of them and hugged them at the same time.

  “We’re fine, Pa,” Bess assured him.

  “But the coach isn’t, and neither is the team,” Emily said. “They’re wrecked at the bottom of the mountain.”

  “Good Lord!” Corcoran exclaimed. “What happened?”

  “An avalanche almost got us when we were climbing up to Timberline Pass.” Emily paused. “An avalanche started by Eagleton’s men.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Bess said. “It seems pretty likely, though.”

  Corcoran stepped back and regarded his daughters solemnly, with a hand on the shoulder of each of them. His face, which sported a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, was flushed with anger. “Tell me what happened.”

  Bess did most of the talking and Emily added curt comments, until Bess finally turned to the Jensens. “If it wasn’t for the help these men gave us, we wouldn’t be here. Pa, this is Ace and Chance Jensen.”

  Corcoran barely glanced at them and didn’t acknowledge the introductions. “Eagleton is behind this, damn him.”

  “That’s the way it looks to us, too,” Emily agreed.

  Corcoran jerked his head in a nod, then surprised them by turning and stepping back into the office. He was only there for a second, though. When he came out again, he held a coach gun like the one Emily had carried. “I’ll teach him to come after my daughters.” He started along the street with a determined stride. “I’ll blow his damn head off!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Pa!” Bess called after him. “Pa, no!”

  “Damn it,” Emily muttered. “We’ve got to stop him. He’s the one who’ll get his head blown off if he tries to get past Eagleton’s hired guns.”

  The two young women hurried after their father. Ace and Chance looked at each other, and Chance said, “We’d better give them a hand.”

  “I think you’re right,” Ace agreed. “Mr. Corcoran didn’t look like he was in any mood to listen to reason.”

  The brothers went after Bess and Emily, their longer strides allowing them to catch up fairly quickly. Ahead of them, Corcoran had angled across the street and reached the steps leading up to the front gallery of what appeared to be the best hotel in town, Palisade House.

  Ace figured that Samuel Eagleton owned it and might even live there.

  Corcoran bounded up the steps and threw the double doors open. Bess and Emily were right behind him as he went in, and Ace and Chance were a step behind them. Bess grabbed hold of her father’s left arm, and Emily took his right. They stopped him a few feet inside the door.

  The sight of him carrying the shotgun was enough to set off a commotion in the hotel lobby. Ace and Chance stepped into the room in time to see several well-dressed men—probably guests—moving quickly through an arched entrance into a dining room. A couple others were headed up the stairs, obviously wanting to get out of the line of fire in case any gunplay broke out.

  That looked like a distinct possibility. Three men had gotten up from chairs across the room and stood tensely, their hands hovering over the butts of holstered pistols. Cigars smoldered in an ashtray on a table between two of the chairs.

  One of the men was something of a dude and wore the same sort of suit, vest, boiled shirt, and cravat that a whiskey drummer might wear, along with a bowler hat. The reddish tinge to his sun-bronzed, pockmarked features testified that he had some Indian blood. The well-worn grips of the Colt jutting up on his hip showed that the gun had seen plenty of use.

  The two men flanking him wore range clothes but looked equally tough and hard-bitten. The threat of danger seemed to ooze from all three men.

  “What do you want, Corcoran?” asked the man in the bowler hat. “You know you can’t come in here and start waving a scattergun around.”

  “Where’s Eagleton?” Corcoran demanded. He tried to shake off his daughters, but they clung to him stubbornly so he couldn’t use the shotgun. “He tried to kill my girls!”

  Bowler Hat’s thin lips curved in a cold, humorless smile. “The boss didn’t try to kill anybody, old man. You’re plumb loco. He’s been right here in town all day. Plenty of folks have seen him.”

  “What in blazes does that mean?” Corcoran asked. Immediately, he answered his own question. “I’ll tell you what it means. Nothing! He gives the orders and sits back like . . . like a fat old spider in his web, just licking his chops and waiting to see what’s going to happen!”

  “Spiders don’t lick their chops,” Bowler Hat said, still with that ugly smile on his face. “Maybe you better study up before you start making accusations again.”

  Ace and Chance had been behind the three Corcorans where they couldn’t be seen very well. They moved out into the open, Ace to the right and Chance to the left.

  The sight of them caused the smile to disappear from Bowler Hat’s face. His spine s
tiffened, and so did those of the other two gunmen. Clearly, they regarded the Jensen brothers as more of a threat than Bess, Emily, and their father.

  “Who are your friends, Corcoran?” Bowler Hat asked harshly as he hooked his thumbs in the gun belt slanted across his hips.

  “Never mind them, Buckhorn,” Corcoran snapped. “Where’s Eagleton? I want him to look me straight in the eye and tell me he didn’t have anything to do with my girls almost dying not once but twice!”

  “The boss is up in his suite. He’s already turned in for the night, and I’m not going to disturb him to make him listen to the rantings of a crazy man. Go on back to your little stagecoach office. You may have lost a coach, but your girls are fine. They’re standing right there.”

  Ace frowned and cocked his head a little to the side. “How did you know the stage line lost a coach, mister? We just rode into town and haven’t told anybody except Mr. Corcoran what happened.”

  Buckhorn’s face darkened. He snapped, “Are you accusin’ me of something, kid?”

  “We’re curious, that’s all.” Chance’s pose was casual, but his hand was close to his lapel where it could dart under his coat and, in the blink of an eye, pull the Lightning from the shoulder holster. “How do you know something you shouldn’t know?”

  Buckhorn’s face twisted in a sneer. “I was on the boardwalk a few minutes ago and saw the four of you ride in on a couple horses. I knew Bess and Emily left town yesterday on the stagecoach, and they were comin’ back riding double with a pair of strangers. How smart do I have to be to figure out something happened to the damn coach?”

  That was a quick-witted answer, Ace thought. Buckhorn might not look very smart, but obviously there was a brain behind that brutal exterior. Ace didn’t believe for a second, though, that Buckhorn’s reply was sincere. The gunman knew about the wrecked coach because he worked for Samuel Eagleton and Eagleton’s men had been behind the attacks on the Corcoran sisters.

  Buckhorn went on. “Now do like I told you. Turn around and go home, Corcoran. We don’t want any trouble with you, but by God, that’s what you’ll get if you don’t back off.”

  A footstep sounded in the doorway, and a new voice said, “I’m telling you the same thing, Brian. You won’t accomplish anything by storming in here except to get somebody hurt, probably you or one of your girls.”

  Ace glanced behind him and saw a thick-bodied, hatless man with wispy fair hair. The tin badge he wore pinned to his vest was much like the one Marshal Kaiser had sported back in Bleak Creek.

  Corcoran said hotly, “If you’d do your job, Wheeler, citizens wouldn’t have to take up arms—”

  Corcoran breathed heavily for a few seconds, then said brokenly, “Damn it, I lost a coach and a team. Even worse, I . . . I almost lost Bess and Emily. I . . . I can’t go on like this.”

  Marshal Wheeler looked at the two young women and said gently, “Why don’t you take him on home, girls?”

  “We will,” Bess said as she and Emily finally succeeded in turning their father away from the confrontation with Eagleton’s gunmen and toward the hotel’s front door.

  “But he’s right, Marshal,” Emily snapped. “Most lawmen would want to get to the bottom of somebody trying to kill us twice in the past two days.”

  Wheeler’s fleshy features hardened. “You come to my office tomorrow, Miss Corcoran, and make an official report. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”

  Emily’s disdainful sniff made it clear just how much she thought that offer was worth.

  Wheeler stepped aside to let the Corcorans leave. When Ace and Chance tried to follow, he put out a hand and moved to block their path. “I don’t recall seeing you fellas in town before. Who might you be?”

  “Law-abiding citizens, Marshal,” Chance said. “You’ve got no call to stop us from going with our friends.”

  Buckhorn and the other two gunnies came across the lobby and moved up closer behind Ace and Chance.

  Buckhorn said, “You didn’t answer the marshal’s question, mister. You got something to hide?”

  “We don’t have anything to hide,” Ace said, which wasn’t exactly true. He wasn’t going to volunteer any information about the ambush in Shoshone Gap the day before or the run-in with Marshal Kaiser in Bleak Creek. “Our name’s Jensen. I’m Ace, and this is my brother Chance. We ran into the Corcoran sisters out on the trail yesterday and since they were having trouble, we decided they needed somebody to give them a hand, that’s all.”

  “And it’s a good thing we did,” Chance added, “because somebody’s got it in for those girls. Yesterday some no-good polecats tried to spook the stagecoach team into stampeding right off the side of the mountain, and today they used an avalanche to wreck the coach and nearly kill Bess and Emily, not to mention my brother and me.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about it,” Wheeler insisted. “I can’t do anything about a problem if nobody reports it.”

  “Consider it reported.” Ace was uncomfortably aware of Buckhorn and the other two men crowding them from behind. It was possible the gunmen were trying to goad him and Chance into a fight. That would be a good excuse for killing them and depriving the Corcorans of a couple potential allies. He hoped Chance would keep a cool head.

  For once that seemed to be Chance’s intention. “We’re not looking for trouble, Marshal.” A cocky grin appeared on his face. “Shoot, we just ran into a couple really good-looking fillies and wanted to help ’em out. Get on their good side, you know what I mean?”

  Buckhorn chuckled. “I sure do. The Corcoran sisters are mighty easy on the eyes, even if they are a mite proddy, especially that Emily.”

  Wheeler grunted. “Yeah, I suppose so. But listen, you two are strangers here, and you might not know what you’re getting into. That whole family tends to be troublemakers, always upset about something and trying to stir up a ruckus. So, pretty or not, you might want to give some thought to steering clear of those girls.”

  “We’ll think about it, Marshal,” Chance promised. “Anyway, I suppose there are plenty of other good-looking gals here in Palisade.”

  Wheeler finally seemed to relax. He smiled slightly. “You’re right about that, my young friend. Go on over to the Three Deuces Saloon and you’ll find some of the prettiest women in the whole territory.”

  Chance slapped his brother on the shoulder. “We’ll take you up on that suggestion, Marshal. Won’t we, Ace?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Ace agreed, playing along with what Chance was doing. “I could use a drink, too.”

  Buckhorn said, “Tell the head bartender over there, fella named Carlsby, that the first drink’s on me. I’d like to sort of pay you back for our little misunderstanding earlier.”

  “Yeah, we were about to get off on the wrong foot, weren’t we? We’re much obliged to you, Mr. Buckhorn.”

  The gunman waved that off. “Forget about it. Glad to do it.”

  Wheeler got out of their way as Ace and Chance moved to leave the hotel. The marshal nodded to them. “You fellas have a good night.”

  “Thanks, Marshal,” Ace said.

  He and Chance stepped down from the hotel porch. The Three Deuces was easy to spot on the other side of the street in the next block. It appeared to take up almost the entire block, and its batwinged entrance was on the corner.

  As the brothers angled toward it, Ace said quietly, “You think they bought that whole act?”

  “Well, they pretended to, anyway,” Chance said. “That gave Wheeler and Buckhorn the opportunity to let us go without it looking like they were backing down. That would be important to a couple hardcases like them.”

  “It looks like the odds are really stacked against Bess and Emily and their pa.”

  “Yeah, but things are different now that you and I are here.”

  “You really think we can take on Eagleton’s whole gun-crew, plus his tame lawman?”

  “Why not?” Chance said. “We’re Jensens, aren’t we?”
<
br />   “Yeah, but right now, I wouldn’t mind if old Smoke was here, too, relative or no relative!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Figuring that Wheeler and Buckhorn were keeping an eye on them from the hotel as they crossed the street, Ace and Chance went into the saloon and had a beer, although they didn’t hunt up the head bartender and tell him about Buckhorn’s offer to buy the first round. Once they were finished, they sauntered over to a side door and let themselves out.

  “Let’s get back to the stagecoach office,” Ace said. “I want to talk to the girls and their pa and make sure they’re all right.”

  “And that Mr. Corcoran isn’t about to do something loco again,” Chance added.

  Even though they had never been in Palisade before, the town wasn’t so big that they couldn’t find their way through the back alleys to the rear of the stagecoach office. Ace knocked on the building’s back door, and a moment later, Emily swung it open, standing with the coach gun her father had taken to the hotel. She looked like she was primed to blow a hole through somebody.

  When she saw the Jensen brothers, she lowered the weapon. “Oh, it’s you two.”

  “And we’re mighty glad to see you, too,” Chance said with a grin.

  Emily stepped back and motioned with her head for them to come in.

  “There you are.” Bess stood beside a desk. “We wondered what had happened to you, but it seemed like we needed to get Pa back here. . . .”

  Her father sat in a chair, his shoulders slumped and his head hanging down. An uncorked bottle and an empty glass sat on the desk next to his elbow.

  “Marshal Wheeler and that fella Buckhorn just wanted to give us a little trouble before they let us go,” Ace explained. “They wanted to spook us and convince us we shouldn’t try to help you.”

  “Joe Buckhorn is enough to spook anybody,” Bess said with a little shiver. “He’s a cold-blooded killer.”

  Emily said, “It looks like they didn’t manage to scare you off.”

  “We’re pretty stubborn,” Chance said. “We don’t give up easy”—he smiled again at the blonde—“no matter what we’re trying to do.”