Those Jensen Boys! (26 page)

Chance and Emily grabbed the back of Wheeler's coat and hauled the unconscious lawman up, then let him sprawl on the floor. Ace scrambled to his feet in time to see Eagleton swinging up the gun that Buckhorn had dropped when Rose shot him.

“She's dead!” the mining magnate screamed. “She's dead and it's all your fault!” He jerked the trigger and the bullet would have hit Emily if Bess hadn't grabbed her just in time and dived out of the line of fire.

Eagleton was about to fire again when Ace touched off the shotgun's second barrel. The load of buckshot tore into Eagleton's chest, picked him up, and threw him back against the door. He hung there for a moment, his vitals shredded, and then slowly slid down to a sitting position, leaving a gory smear on the door behind him.

Left standing were only Ace, Chance, and Marshal Kaiser, who had stood the whole time with a stunned expression on his face, somehow untouched by all the lead that had been flying around the room.

As the echoes of the blast died away, Kaiser opened his mouth to say something but couldn't find any words. His jaw hung open slackly.

Ace and Chance heard someone sobbing. They moved over where they could see Joe Buckhorn slumped over the body of Rose Demarcus, his back heaving as he cried. She had shot him, maybe mortally wounded him, yet he was grieving over her.

If life ever made complete sense, Ace thought, it would be for the first time.

They had other things to worry about. He looked at Kaiser. “Marshal, you claim to be a protector of law and order. Palisade's going to need somebody to take charge. Eagleton's hired guns will still need to be dealt with. Are you going to step up and do the right thing?”

Kaiser looked a little like a fish out of water. “I . . . I . . . I ought to arrest you . . .”

Chance stepped in. “You know who was really in the wrong here. You heard the whole story, and Eagleton didn't deny a bit of it. What you need to do is go round up your posse and let the rest of those gunmen know they'd better light a shuck while they still can.” He shrugged. “It's a sure bet they won't be getting any more fighting wages from Eagleton.”

“Yes, y-you're right,” Kaiser stammered. He squared his shoulders. “Somebody's got to be the law here, since Claude Wheeler is clearly as much a criminal as any of these others. And I'm the only one who has a badge.”

“That's right, Marshal,” Ace said, smiling. “You're the only one who has a badge.”

Brian Corcoran's wound was serious. He had lost a lot of blood, but the doctor believed he would pull through, especially if he got plenty of rest for the next few months.

Bess stayed at her father's bedside, but Ace, Chance, and Emily delivered the mail pouch to Bleak Creek the next day. After sending the wire to the home office of the railroad informing them that Jacob Tanner was dead and revealing the scheme he had entered into with Samuel Eagleton, they picked up the stagecoach and brought it back to Palisade

Marshal Kaiser and his posse hadn't had to run any of Eagleton's remaining men out of town. With no more payoffs ahead of them, they had pulled up stakes and drifted out in a hurry to look for more gun work elsewhere.

The response from the railroad was swift. The captains of industry who ran it were canny men and saw right away the merits of Eagleton's plan . . . as long as it didn't involve murder. Executives of the railroad, including one of the owners, a woman named Vivian Browning, arrived in Palisade less than two weeks later—coming in by stagecoach with Ace at the reins and Chance riding shotgun—to offer a recuperating Brian Corcoran a small fortune for the right-of-way across the valley. They also suggested that by the time the depot was built—the depot that would be the centerpiece of a new settlement—he might want the job of running it.

“I don't know anything about running a damn train station!” Corcoran protested to his daughters when they discussed the situation.

“But you always said that you enjoyed a challenge,” Bess pointed out.

“Sounds like it would be a challenge to me,” Emily added.

“Aye, I have been known to say that,” Corcoran agreed grudgingly. “I'll give it some thought, but that's as far as I'll go right now.”

“That's enough, Pa,” Emily said, patting his hand. “You've got time to think about it.”

Time was something that was weighing on the heads of Ace and Chance. They had been in Palisade for weeks, and no matter how fond they had grown of Bess and Emily, their nature was such that it wouldn't let them stay in one place for too long.

One day they looked at each other, knew what the other was thinking, and nodded.

Messy good-byes were something they didn't care for. Before dawn the next morning, they saddled their horses and rode out of Palisade, leaving behind notes for the Corcoran sisters that tried to explain why they were leaving, although they doubted that Bess and Emily would ever fully understand.

“Those two are going to be mighty angry with us,” Chance commented as he and Ace rode through Timberline Pass and started down the mountain road where their adventure had begun.

“I'm sure they will,” Ace agreed. “But they're going to have their hands full helping their father with that railroad station. You know they'll both pitch right in.”

Chance chuckled. “Shoot, I wouldn't be surprised if those two wind up
running
that railroad in a few years.”

Ace couldn't argue with that.

They reached the valley and started north, not knowing where it led but well aware they didn't want to head east toward Shoshone Gap and Bleak Creek. Several times, they had seen Marshal Kaiser eyeing them as if he still thought he ought to arrest them, even though all the charges against them had been dropped.

No point in tempting the lawman, they thought.

They hadn't gone very far when a rider spurred out from a clump of trees and blocked the trail. Both brothers tensed and moved their hands toward their guns as they recognized the man in the dawn light.

“Take it easy,” Joe Buckhorn said. “I'm not looking for a gunfight.”

The man was gaunt, and his skin still had a pallor under its reddish hue. He had almost died from being shot by Rose Demarcus. That would have saved the law the trouble of hanging him. Even though he hadn't killed Nate Sawyer, he'd been there when the old hostler was gunned down and had ordered the men who did the killing into the building.

Just like Claude Wheeler, Buckhorn would have been put on trial when he recovered—if he recovered—but he'd escaped from the doctor's house by taking the deputy guarding him by surprise and knocking the man out.

Ace and Chance had figured the gunfighter was long gone from the area, so seeing him so close to Palisade was a shock.

“What
are
you doing here?” Ace asked.

“I've been waiting for the two of you. I figured you were too fiddle-footed to hang around forever, so I've been watching the pass. I wanted to tell you a couple things.”

“All right,” Chance said warily. He watched Buckhorn closely with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Go ahead.”

“First of all, I want to say I'm sorry about that old man.”

“You mean Nate?” Ace asked.

“Yeah. He shouldn't have died.”

“Damn right he shouldn't have,” Chance snapped.

“Well, I can't bring him back,” Buckhorn said, irritation rasping his voice. “No more than I can bring back all the other folks who shouldn't have died but did because of me. But I
am
sorry. For what good it does.”

“Damn little,” Chance muttered.

“What's the other thing you want to say?” Ace asked.

Buckhorn leaned forward in the saddle. “That I haven't forgotten about you shooting me, Jensen. I don't bear you any ill will, but I haven't forgotten. Might be wise if the two of you never crossed trails with me again.”

“Believe me, mister,” Chance said, “that's just about the last thing we want.”

“Just so we understand each other.” Buckhorn gave them a curt nod, turned his horse, and rode off into the trees.

When he was gone, Chance said, “You reckon he's waiting to ambush us?”

“No,” Ace said. “I think he's a man who means what he says. We don't have anything to worry about where he's concerned . . . unless we happen to meet up with him again.”

“And if we do?”

“Then everybody had better watch out,” Ace said as he heeled his horse into motion. Chance followed suit.

They had ridden about a hundred yards when Chance said, “What do you reckon Smoke Jensen would have done just then?”

“Smoke?” Ace smiled. “Oh, Smoke would have shot him. Buckhorn would have tried to draw on him, and Smoke would have blown him right out of the saddle.”

“But . . . neither of us is Smoke Jensen.”

“Nope,” Ace said, shaking his head. “We're not.”

Chance looked over at his brother and grinned. “But one of these days, you might grow up to be
just
like him.”

 

William W. Johnstone was born in southern Missouri, the youngest of four children. He was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. Despite this, he quit school at age fifteen.

“I have the highest respect for education,” he says, “but such is the folly of youth, and wanting to see the world beyond the four walls and the blackboard.”

True to this vow, Bill attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion (“I saw Gary Cooper in
Beau Geste
when I was a kid and I thought the French Foreign Legion would be fun”) but was rejected, thankfully, for being underage. Instead, he joined a traveling carnival and did all kinds of odd jobs. It was listening to the veteran carny folk, some of whom had been on the circuit since the late 1800s, telling amazing tales about their experiences, that planted the storytelling seed in Bill's imagination.

“They were mostly honest people, despite the bad reputation traveling carny shows had back then,” Bill remembers. “Of course, there were exceptions. There was one guy named Picky, who got that name because he was a master pickpocket. He could steal a man's socks right off his feet without him knowing. Believe me, Picky got us chased out of more than a few towns.”

After a few months of this grueling existence, Bill returned home and finished high school. Next came stints as a deputy sheriff in the Tallulah, Louisiana, Sheriff's Department, followed by a hitch in the U.S. Army. Then he began a career in radio broadcasting at KTLD in Tallulah, which would last sixteen years. It was there that he fine-tuned his storytelling skills. He turned to writing in 1970, but it wouldn't be until 1979 that his first novel,
The Devil's Kiss
, was published. Thus began the full-time writing career of William W. Johnstone. He wrote horror (
The Uninvited
), thrillers (
The Last of the Dog Team
), even a romance novel or two. Then, in February 1983,
Out of the Ashes
was published. Searching for his missing family in a post-apocalyptic America, rebel mercenary and patriot Ben Raines is united with the civilians of the Resistance forces and moves to the forefront of a revolution for the nation's future.

Out of the Ashes
was a smash. The series would continue for the next twenty years, winning Bill three generations of fans all over the world. The series was often imitated but never duplicated. “We all tried to copy the Ashes series,” said one publishing executive, “but Bill's uncanny ability, both then and now, to predict in which direction the political winds were blowing brought a certain immediacy to the table no one else could capture.” The Ashes series would end its run with more than thirty-four books and twenty million copies in print, making it one of the most successful men's action series in American book publishing. (The Ashes series also, Bill notes with a touch of pride, got him on the FBI's Watch List for its less than flattering portrayal of spineless politicians and the growing power of big government over our lives, among other things. In that respect, I often find myself saying, “Bill was years ahead of his time.”)

Always steps ahead of the political curve, Bill's recent thrillers, written with myself, include
Vengeance Is Mine, Invasion USA, Border War, Jackknife, Remember the Alamo, Home Invasion, Phoenix Rising, The Blood of Patriots, The Bleeding Edge,
and the upcoming
Suicide Mission.

It is with the western, though, that Bill found his greatest success. His westerns propelled him onto both the
USA Today
and the
New York Times
bestseller lists.

Bill's western series include
Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man, Preacher, the First Mountain Man, The Family Jensen, Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter, Eagles, MacCallister
(an Eagles spin-off),
Sidewinders, The Brothers O'Brien, Sixkiller, Blood Bond, The Last Gunfighter,
and the new series
Flintlock
and
The Trail West.
May 2013 saw the hardcover western
Butch Cassidy: The Lost Years.

“The western,” Bill says, “is one of the few true art forms that is one hundred percent American. I liken the Western as America's version of England's Arthurian legends, like the Knights of the Round Table, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Starting with the 1902 publication of
The Virginian
by Owen Wister, and followed by the greats like Zane Grey, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, and of course Louis L'Amour, the western has helped to shape the cultural landscape of America.

“I'm no goggle-eyed college academic, so when my fans ask me why the western is as popular now as it was a century ago, I don't offer a 200-page thesis. Instead, I can only offer this: The western is honest. In this great country, which is suffering under the yoke of political correctness, the western harks back to an era when justice was sure and swift. Steal a man's horse, rustle his cattle, rob a bank, a stagecoach, or a train, you were hunted down and fitted with a hangman's noose. One size fit all.

“Sure, we westerners are prone to a little embellishment and exaggeration and, I admit it, occasionally play a little fast and loose with the facts. But we do so for a very good reason—to enhance the enjoyment of readers.

“It was Owen Wister, in
The Virginian
, who first coined the phrase ‘When you call me that, smile.' Legend has it that Wister actually heard those words spoken by a deputy sheriff in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, when another poker player called him a son of a bitch.

“Did it really happen, or is it one of those myths that have passed down from one generation to the next? I honestly don't know. But there's a line in one of my favorite westerns of all time,
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,
where the newspaper editor tells the young reporter, ‘When the truth becomes legend, print the legend.'

“These are the words I live by.”