Those Jensen Boys! (4 page)

Young women, at that, the brothers saw as the coach came to a stop about thirty feet from them.

The guard with the thick, curly blond hair lowered the coach gun until the barrels were pointed at them. “You two better not be a pair of road agents,” she called to them in a clear, sweet voice.

“I told you, they helped us.” The driver's voice was musical, too. “They ran off Mr. Eagleton's men. You saw that with your own eyes, Emily.”

“Maybe so, but that doesn't mean they ain't road agents who want to hold us up themselves.”

“Well, I suppose you're right about that,” the driver admitted.

Chance started to move his horse forward.

The young woman called Emily lifted her coach gun even more and trained the weapon on him. “That's far enough, mister, until you tell us who you are and what you want!”

Chance made sure both hands remained in plain sight. He didn't want to risk making her trigger-happy. He put a smile on his face and thumbed back his brown hat, being careful not to move too fast about it. “You've misjudged us, ma'am. We saw those fellas chasing you and just wanted to help. That's why we drove them back over the pass.”

Emily snorted. “If you really wanted to help, you should've ventilated a few of them. I don't reckon Eagleton would've missed a couple gun-wolves. He can always hire more.”

Ace said, “We're not in the habit of gunning down anybody when we don't really know what's going on. I reckon they must have been bandits?”

The driver said, “They didn't want to rob us, exactly, although I don't doubt they would have looted whatever they could find on the stage after we crashed. What they really wanted was to wreck us.”

She was more slender than the blonde, with short, dark hair under her hat. She wore baggy denim trousers, high-topped boots, and a flannel shirt. The butt of a revolver stuck up from an old holster attached to a gun belt around her waist.

Chance said, “Why in blazes would anybody want to wreck you? That doesn't even make any sense.”

“It does if you work for Samuel Eagleton,” the driver said. “Emily, put down that gun. These men don't mean us any harm.”

“Well, if that turns out not to be true, it's on your head, Bess,” Emily muttered. She lowered the shotgun until the barrels were pointed at the floorboards of the driver's box.

Ace and Chance eased their horses forward. The two young women watched them closely but didn't seem spooked, even after that harrowing run down the mountainside. Both of them were so self-possessed, Ace had a feeling it would take a great deal to spook them.

He reached up and tugged on his hat brim. “My name is Ace Jensen, ladies. This is my brother Chance.”

“Ace and Chance?” Emily repeated, a look of amused disbelief on her face. “Really? Those are your names?”

“Well . . . that's what we're called, anyway.” Both brothers knew their real names, of course, but Doc had always called them by the nicknames he had given them and that was how they had thought of themselves ever since they were old enough to understand such things.

“Those are perfectly good names,” Bess said. “I'm Bess Corcoran, and this is my sister Emily.”

“A pair of brothers and a pair of sisters,” Chance said. “That's mighty cozy.”

“No, it ain't,” Emily snapped. “And don't go thinkin' it is, Jensen. Now, if we're all through jawin', my sister and I have a schedule to keep. The Corcoran Stage Line has the mail contract between Palisade and Bleak Creek, and the government's a mite picky about things like bein' reliable and prompt.”

Ace had already noticed the Corcoran name painted on one of the stagecoach's doors. “You ladies own the stage line?”

“Our pa does,” Bess said. “We just work for him.”

“Because nobody else will do it,” Emily said with a bitter note in her voice. “Eagleton's scared off everybody else with his hired guns.”

Chance said, “From the sound of it, I don't like this Eagleton fella, and I never even met the gent.”

“You will if you go on to Palisade,” Bess said. “He owns practically everything in and around the town.”

“Except the stage line,” Ace guessed. He was starting to see how things were laid out.

“And a few other small businesses,” Bess agreed with a nod. “He'll get around to the others sooner or later, I suppose. Right now, he's got his eyes set on our father's operation.”

Chance pointed up at the pass. “So this Palisade place is higher up in the mountains?”

“That's right. It's a mining town, and I suppose it's no surprise Mr. Eagleton owns just about everything, since he's the one who made the first strike around here. There wouldn't be a settlement if it wasn't for him and his mine.”

Emily said, “That doesn't give him the right to run roughshod over everybody who came after him.”

“No, it doesn't,” Ace agreed. “And you're headed for someplace called Bleak Creek?”

“That's right,” Bess said. “It's on the other side of those mountains to the east. There's a railroad spur there that connects up with the Union Pacific. We deliver the mail there and pick up any mail bound for Palisade.”

Emily regarded the Jensen brothers with a suspicious glare. “You boys are mighty curious about our business.”

“You have to be curious to learn anything,” Chance pointed out.

Ace said, “I was just wondering about Eagleton. If he sent men after you to try to wreck the coach as you came down from the pass, could he have sent other men ahead to set up an ambush in case the first bunch failed?”

Emily and Bess glanced worriedly at each other.

Ace thought the possibility he had just brought up probably hadn't occurred to them. But now that he had mentioned it, they didn't like the idea.

“We do have to go through Shoshone Gap,” Bess said.

“And it's a good spot for a bushwhackin',” Emily agreed. “We'll have to be careful.”

“And we'll ride along with you,” Chance said, “just in case of trouble.”

“Nobody asked you to do that.”

“Nope,” Ace said. “That's why we're volunteering.”

Even though it was Chance's idea, it was a good one, Ace thought. There was at least a chance something else might happen on the way to Bleak Creek, and although the Corcoran sisters seemed plenty competent, it wouldn't hurt for them to have some allies along.

Of course, they didn't know the full story behind the clash between the Corcorans and this mining magnate named Eagleton. Things might not be as clear-cut as Emily and Bess made it seem.

It was possible, Ace mused, that he and his brother were jumping into this mess feetfirst simply because the Corcoran sisters were a couple mighty pretty girls. Well, there were worse reasons for doing things, he supposed as Bess got the team moving again and the stagecoach lurched into motion.

He and Chance turned their mounts and fell in alongside it, one on each side.

“You girls don't happen to be twins, do you?” Chance asked after they had gone a mile or two across the valley. He rode on Emily's side of the coach.

“Do we
look
like twins?” Emily responded.

“Well, Ace and I are twins.”

Bess said, “I wouldn't have guessed that.”

“Fraternal twins, they call it,” Ace said. “We look alike, but more like regular brothers would.”

“Yes, I can see that. Emily and I are two years apart, though.”

“I'm the oldest,” Emily said. “That means I'm the boss.”

“That's what you've always thought, anyway,” Bess said sweetly.

Ace chuckled. It sounded like these two scrapped about as much as he and Chance did, even if they weren't twins. “Is this the first trouble you've had with Eagleton?” he asked as they continued toward the mountains on the other side of the valley.

“No, he made an offer to Pa to buy out the stage line almost a year ago,” Bess said. “Pa turned him down, of course. Mr. Eagleton warned him then that he didn't like being said no to.”

“That wasn't the smartest tack to take with Pa,” Emily put in. “Once he gets his back up, he's about the stubbornest old pelican you ever saw.”

“Emily!” her sister scolded her. “That's no way to talk about our father.”

“It's true, ain't it?”

“Well, yes, but . . .” Bess took a deep breath and went on. “Anyway, after Pa refused Mr. Eagleton's offer, things started happening. Breakdowns with the coaches. Shipments of grain for the horses that got lost. Damaged harnesses. Even a few shots out of the blue. That scared some of our drivers. Others got jumped and beaten up. It's gotten bad enough that nobody wants to work for us, so Emily and I have been taking the runs through ourselves.”

“Sort of odd to find a couple gals driving a stagecoach and riding shotgun, isn't it?” Chance asked.

“Our father's worked on stage lines all of our lives,” Bess said. “We were raised around them.”

“You ought to hear her cuss when she gets mad.” Emily grinned. “She can put a lot of those old jehus to shame.”

Bess's face turned pink under her hat. “Sometimes I think that sort of language is the only thing those horses understand!” She tried to change the subject by looking at Ace again and asking, “What about your father? What's he like?”

“I couldn't tell you,” Ace answered honestly. “We never met him. Or our mother, either.”

“That's terrible! I'm sorry. Were you raised by relatives?”

Chance said, “We were raised by a gambler named Doc Monday. He's as close to a pa as we've ever had. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he
was
our pa.”

“I don't think so.” Ace didn't want to have the old argument again, so he did some subject changing of his own by asking the young women, “What's this Shoshone Gap you mentioned?”

“It's the pass through the mountains on this side of the valley,” Bess explained. She pointed. “You can see it up there, a couple miles ahead. It got the name because the old Shoshone Trail goes through it. It's a lot easier than Timberline Pass back the other way, between here and Palisade. It's lower and the slopes aren't nearly as steep, but there are a lot of rocks and trees on the sides of the gap.”

“A perfect spot for an ambush, in other words,” Emily put in.

“Maybe Ace and I should ride ahead and do a little scouting,” Chance suggested. “You know, make sure it's safe to take the coach through there.”

“Or to set up an ambush yourself, if you've been lying to us all along and planning a double cross,” Emily said caustically.

“We haven't lied to you.” Ace was getting a mite tired of the blonde's suspicions, but he kept his voice calm and level as he went on. “We just want to help, but if you don't want us to scout ahead—”

“No, I think it's a good idea,” Bess said. “Go ahead. We'll follow along behind you.”

“Keep an eye on your back trail,” Ace warned as he heeled his horse to a faster pace and pulled ahead of the stagecoach.

Chance's mount matched his. “Eagleton's men might have doubled back after we chased them off.”

As the coach fell behind them, Chance glanced back over his shoulder. “Maybe one of us should have stayed with them.”

“One of us meaning you, of course.”

“They're just a couple gals. Wouldn't want anything to happen to them.”

“Did you see the way Emily handled that scattergun? And Bess put that team through its paces like she'd been driving a stagecoach for forty years. I don't think they're exactly what you'd call helpless or defenseless.” Ace chuckled. “Anyway, Emily doesn't seem to have much use for either of us, and Bess strikes me as too levelheaded to fall for any line of bull that you might try to put over on her.”

“I think I'm offended.”

“Fine. Just keep your eyes on the sides of that gap up ahead.”

As they neared Shoshone Gap, Ace saw that Bess's description had been accurate. The mountains loomed on either side, but the trail between them wasn't too steep or rugged. The slopes were covered with boulders and clumps of pine trees. Plenty of places where bushwhackers could hide, he thought.

However, nothing happened as he and his brother entered the gap. No shots rang out, and there was no sign of trouble. Ace waved a hand toward the slope on the right and told Chance, “Take a closer look over there. I'll check out this side.”