“Hey!” Nate shouted as he came closer. “Don’t you go turnin’ your back on me—”
Buckhorn had reached the end of his patience. He turned quickly and his arm lashed out. The old man tried to thrust the pitchfork at him, but his movements were pathetically slow. Buckhorn knocked the sharp tines aside, reached out to grasp the tool’s handle, and jerked it out of the hostler’s grip.
The old man gasped and opened his mouth to sound a shout of alarm, but Buckhorn slammed the pitchfork handle against his head.
Nate staggered as the shout died in his throat. Buckhorn hit him again, and the old man went to the ground with blood seeping from the cut the pitchfork handle had opened. He groaned and scratched feebly at the dirt, but he didn’t try to get up.
Grimacing in disgust, Buckhorn tossed the pitchfork aside. He muttered, “Mighty warrior, beating up on old men,” then swung into the saddle. He turned the horse and rode away from the barn, following the tracks he had found. His own horse’s hooves probably obliterated them, but that didn’t really matter, Buckhorn thought. Those posse men were too stupid to ever find the trail in the first place.
The tracks led to the road that ran from Palisade to the Golden Dome mine. Buckhorn’s lips quirked in a grim smile when he saw that. That was probably the girl’s doing, he thought. Trying to head for a spot where the pursuers wouldn’t expect them to go. The Jensens hadn’t been around long enough to attempt something like that, while Emily Corcoran was a half-wild tomboy who, in some ways, had never grown up.
Of course, she was plenty grown up in other ways, Buckhorn amended, thinking of the blond beauty. As far as he was concerned, her looks paled in comparison to those of Rose Demarcus, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t pretty. He wondered if one of the Jensen boys was trying to court her. Wouldn’t surprise him a bit.
The tracks didn’t stay on the mine trail all the way to the Golden Dome. About halfway up, Buckhorn’s keen eyes spotted a couple scratches left on the rocks by horseshoes where the riders had turned onto a smaller path. He paused a moment, thinking Emily was going to get trickier still.
He didn’t know those mountain trails as well as he would have liked. He hadn’t spent much time up there exploring them. Eagleton kept him close by nearly all the time, which made sense. He was the man’s bodyguard, after all. He had accompanied the boss up to the mine a number of times and done a little prowling on the mountain, but it didn’t take long for him to be lost as he followed the fugitives’ tracks.
Well, he might not know where he was, he told himself, but he knew where he was going—after Emily and the Jensen brothers.
As he climbed higher on the mountain, his instincts told him that he was getting close.
Ace looked over at his brother and nodded. He could hear the horse approaching. The trail ran directly between the boulders where the Jensens crouched, waiting. When the man rode into view, Ace was going to leap from his perch and tackle him, with Chance jumping down right behind to help Ace subdue their pursuer. Emily was about twenty yards ahead, around a bend, and when she heard the scuffle she would run out into the open with the coach gun ready in case she needed it.
They all hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. Gunfire would draw plenty of attention they didn’t want.
It was a plan that had a very good chance of succeeding, Ace thought . . . if there was only one man for them to deal with. He had heard only one horse, but maybe that didn’t mean anything. Maybe that whole blasted posse was about to come down on top of them and cart them off to prison. Just the possibility of that was enough to make his heart thud painfully in his chest.
The horse’s hooves clinked against the rocky trail as it continued to draw closer. Ace tensed and leaned forward as the horse’s head came into view. He was poised to tackle the rider when the saddle appeared.
It was empty.
The realization hit Ace like a punch in the belly. The horse’s reins were tied around the saddle horn, leaving it to plod along riderless. He had no idea how long it had been that way, but he knew it couldn’t be good.
Across the trail from him on top of the other boulder, Chance had seen the same thing, and Ace knew from the stunned expression on his brother’s face that Chance had reached the same conclusion. It was very bad.
Just how bad, they found out a moment later when a harsh voice called, “Hey, Jensens! Better come out with empty hands where I can see you if you don’t want anything to happen to this pretty little girl!”
The cry of pain from Emily that followed those words stabbed into Ace and turned his blood cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Don’t keep me waiting, boys!” the voice called again.
Ace lifted his voice. “You come out where we can see you! I want to know that Emily’s all right!”
“She is—for now! Tell them!”
Emily cried, “Ace! Chance! Don’t cooperate with him—”
The sharp sound of a slap silenced her. Chance’s face flushed with fury. He jerked the Lightning from under his coat and started to slide down off the boulder, ignoring Ace’s gesture for him to stay where he was.
Ace went off his boulder the other way, dropping to the ground where the man who had captured Emily couldn’t see him. He didn’t know who the man was, possibly that gunfighter Buckhorn, but whoever he was, he was pretty canny, fooling them with the horse trick while he circled around and grabbed Emily.
If they surrendered to him, it would be all over. The man would take them back to Palisade as prisoners and turn them over to Marshal Kaiser. Surrounded by the posse from Bleak Creek, they would have no chance to escape. They would be facing years in prison.
And the Corcorans would be facing ruin. No one else in Palisade was going to help them. The stage line would be crushed and swallowed up by the greedy maw of Samuel Eagleton.
Somewhere on the other side of the boulders, Chance shouted, “Come on out, damn you! If you hurt Emily, I’ll kill you!”
Keep raising that racket, Ace thought as he began circling through the rocks. He didn’t know if his brother was doing it deliberately to distract Emily’s captor or if Chance was really just too scared and angry to think about anything else.
Either way, it was giving Ace the opportunity to move around without being heard. The odds against him would still be high . . . but the only other option was surrender.
For a Jensen, even one not named Smoke, that was just no option at all.
Chance struggled to get control of his emotions as he pressed himself against a little shoulder of rock and watched the bend in the trail where Emily had been hidden. He wanted to just blaze away as soon as he got a shot at the one who had captured her, but that was a good way to get her killed, and probably him, too.
They all had to stay alive. Ace hadn’t come down with him, so that meant his brother was trying to get in position to turn the tables on their enemy. To give Ace that opportunity, Chance tried another tack. “Listen, mister. Step out so I can see that Emily’s all right, and I’ll throw down my gun! I give you my word on that. We’ll cooperate. Just don’t hurt her.”
“What about your brother? Is he willing to make the same promise?”
“Sure he is,” Chance said, mentally cursing even as he answered. He knew that next, Emily’s captor would demand to hear Ace pledge to surrender, too.
The man surprised him. “Don’t try anything funny. Miss Corcoran will be sorry if you do.” With that, Buckhorn moved out into the open, holding Emily in front of him with his left arm looped around her neck and pressing cruelly against her throat. His right hand held a Colt so that the barrel dug into her side. The man seemed casual, but Chance figured he was anything but.
Over Emily’s shoulder, he took in the bowler hat and the craggy, rough-hewn features of the gunslinger, Eagleton’s own personal killer. The man had plenty of blood on his hands already. Spilling some of Emily’s probably wouldn’t bother him.
Buckhorn didn’t seem surprised to see that Chance wa
s alone. In fact, he chuckled at the sight. “Well, you didn’t disappoint me, Jensen. I knew your brother wouldn’t be here. Did he take off for the tall and uncut, or is he trying to sneak around and get behind me? You know damn well there’s nothing he can do, don’t you?”
Buckhorn’s voice was loud enough to carry to Ace’s ears somewhere in the rocks. He was trying to get Ace to give up, too.
“Look at the thumb on my gun hand, Jensen,” Buckhorn went on. “By the way, which one are you?”
Chance’s mouth was dry, but he managed to say, “I’m Chance.”
“Look at my thumb, Chance. It’s the only thing holding back the hammer on this gun. Your brother might be the best shot in the world. I don’t know. He might be able to put a bullet in my head from wherever he is. But if he does, this gun’s going off, too, and Miss Corcoran will get a slug through her guts. You don’t want that, do you?”
Chance’s jaw was too tight with rage for him to speak.
Buckhorn nodded. “Why don’t we start by you throwing that gun down? Go ahead and do it now.”
Chance’s pulse pounded in his head. He had to play along with the gunfighter for the time being and stepped out from the rock and leaned over to set the Lightning on the rocky ground at his feet.
“Back away from it,” Buckhorn ordered. “Got any hideout guns, knives, anything like that?”
“No,” Chance managed to say. “That’s the only weapon I carry.”
“I don’t know if I believe you, but it doesn’t really matter. Not as long as I’ve got this gun in Miss Corcoran’s side.”
“Did Eagleton send you after us?” Chance wanted to keep Buckhorn talking.
“Of course he did. Why else would I be here?”
“He sent you to kill us all, didn’t he?”
Buckhorn sounded amused as he replied. “No. Actually, he sent me to kill just you and your brother. He told me to bring Emily back to him.”
“What does he want with her? Does he want to kill her himself?”
Buckhorn frowned. “You’ve got it all wrong, Chance. Eagleton’s not a killer. He’s a businessman. He’ll use Emily as leverage to force her father to sign the stage line over to him. That way he wins. I reckon that’s what he cares about more than anything.”
As his heart continued to slug hard in his chest, Chance said, “If you were supposed to kill me and Ace, why haven’t you shot me?”
Buckhorn’s voice hardened slightly. “Because Samuel Eagleton doesn’t always have to get everything he wants. I’m thinking I’ll take the two of you back to Palisade and turn you over to Marshal Kaiser. He’ll see to it that you’re convicted of whatever charges he’s got against you and sent to prison. That’ll get rid of you just as well as gunning you down.”
Chance frowned. It almost sounded like Buckhorn didn’t want any more killings on his conscience. Was that even possible? Could a cold-blooded hired killer ever reach the point where he didn’t want to see any more men fall to his gun?
Was Buckhorn that sick of the smell of gun smoke?
It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to put that theory to the test, not when Emily’s life hung in the balance. But maybe somewhere along the line would come a moment when the tables could be turned, when Buckhorn might hesitate just for the split second that could change everything....
It was about as slim a hope as any Chance had ever clung to, but it was better than nothing.
“All right, you’ve stalled long enough,” Buckhorn said abruptly. “Ace Jensen, I know you can hear me! Come on out and throw your gun down, or I won’t be responsible for what happens to Miss Corcoran!”
Ace slid out of a crack in the rock about fifteen feet behind Buckhorn. “Yes, you will.” He aimed the Colt in his hand at the gunfighter’s head. “And if anything—anything at all—happens to her, you’ll be dead half a second later.”
Ace wasn’t bluffing. He would blow Buckhorn’s brains out if the man hurt Emily. He didn’t want it to come to that, though. “You don’t want to die for Samuel Eagleton, Buckhorn. If you don’t want to kill for him anymore, you sure as hell don’t want to die.”
“Who says I don’t want to kill?” Buckhorn growled.
“If you wanted Chance dead, you could have shot him by now. You could have put a bullet through him as soon as he stepped out into the open.”
“Good idea, reminding him of that,” Chance muttered.
“I mean it,” Ace said. “Your heart’s not in it, Buckhorn. And why should it be? You probably know what kind of man Eagleton is better than anyone else.”
“Maybe not anyone,” Buckhorn said under his breath, but loud enough for Ace to hear it.
“You know he’s power-mad, but really it’s worse than that. He’s not crazy, Buckhorn. He’s smart. He knows he can make a fortune by taking over the stagecoach line.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Buckhorn sounded confused, and Ace could imagine the puzzled frown on the gunfighter’s face. “The money Eagleton could make off the stage line is nothing compared to what he’s taken out of the Golden Dome.”
Ace took a deep breath. A lot of what he was about to say was still supposition on his part, but it made sense and explained why Eagleton was so anxious to get his hands on the Corcoran Stage Line. “The Golden Dome is about to play out, but there’s an even bigger gold mine down in the valley . . . the valley itself. But to make it pay off, Eagleton needs the stage line. Or to be more precise, he needs the road.”
Chance’s eyes widened as his keen brain grasped the implications of what his brother was saying. “It’s the railroad! Tanner’s going to build a spur line across the valley, and the stage road is the perfect route for it!”
“That’s the way I’ve got it figured,” Ace said. “Brian Corcoran owns the right-of-way on that land, and if he signed over the stagecoach company, Eagleton would get it. His silent partner Tanner will then use it to build a spur line across the valley to the new town that Eagleton establishes at the foot of Timberline Pass. I figure Eagleton already has other partners lined up to bring in cattle and start ranches in the valley. It’ll boom, and so will Eagleton’s new town. He’ll build stockyards and make this a shipping center not only for the valley but for this whole part of the territory. It won’t be as flashy as the riches from the mine, but it’ll last longer and make more money in the end. The old Palisade up on the bench will be a ghost town.”
Frowning, Buckhorn turned and backed against the rock so he could look back and forth at the Jensen brothers. Emily looked shocked by the things Ace had said, too.
“That’s an interesting story, kid,” Buckhorn said, “but I don’t see how it changes anything. If you’re right, Eagleton will wind up even richer than he already is. How’s that supposed to make me turn against him?”
“You know Tanner’s going to get a big cut of the money. So will the men who bring in the cattle. But you’re still working for wages, aren’t you, Buckhorn? Eagleton never offered to cut you in for a share, did he? If he had, you’d already know about all this, and I can tell that you didn’t.”
Buckhorn grimaced. “That doesn’t matter. So I’m working for wages. That’s what I’ve always done.”
“Well, like you said,” Ace shrugged, homing in on a comment Buckhorn had made earlier. “Eagleton gets everything. That’s just the way life works, isn’t it?”
Buckhorn turned his head to scowl at Ace, drifting the muzzle of the gun he held away from Emily’s side. “You don’t know what you’re—”
Emily drove her elbow back and to the side to knock the gun farther away from her, jolting Buckhorn’s thumb off the hammer. She threw her head backward and butted Buckhorn in the face, loosening his grip enough for her to tear free and dive forward, out of the line of fire, just as the shot blasted out.
At the same instant, Ace’s Colt roared. The slug smashed into Buckhorn’s shoulder and knocked him back against the boulder behind him. His gun slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers and thudded
to the ground.
Chance scooped up the Lightning and trained it on the wounded gunfighter.
With Buckhorn covered from two directions, there was nothing he could do except clutch his bloody shoulder with his other hand and snarl at the Jensens. “I’ll kill you two,” he vowed. “Whatever it takes, I’ll kill you.”
“Not today you won’t,” Chance said.
Emily scrambled to her feet. The palms of her hands were scraped a little from catching herself when she dived to the rocky ground, but other than that she seemed fine.
A great relief considering that a minute or so earlier she’d had a cold-blooded killer pressing a gun into her side, Ace thought.
She picked up the gun Buckhorn had dropped. “We have another problem now. Everybody down in Palisade will have heard those shots.”
Ace said, “Which means—”
“Yeah,” Emily broke in. “Marshal Kaiser and that posse of his will be on their way up here as soon as they can grab their horses.”
Chance frowned at Buckhorn. “We need to get moving again—but what do we do with him?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Emily said, “The simplest thing to do would be just to shoot him.” The gun in her hand—Buckhorn’s own that she had picked up—was already pointed in his general direction. “One more shot won’t bring the posse down on us any faster.”
Buckhorn sneered at her. “Trust me, girl, I know cold-blooded killers when I see them . . . and none of you three fit that description.”
“He’s right,” Ace said. “We can’t kill him. But we can do this.” Without any more warning than that, he stepped forward, reversed the Colt in his hand, and slammed the butt against Buckhorn’s head.
The gunfighter’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground, stunned.
Ace holstered his gun and knelt to search inside Buckhorn’s coat.
Those Jensen Boys! Page 18
