Those Jensen Boys! (10 page)

“You said you've driven a wagon, so you know how to get a team to go and stop and turn,” she told Ace. “The main thing you have to think about with a stagecoach is that it's built differently from a wagon. It's not as stable on the road and will turn over easier if you're going too fast. Just take it easy and you should be all right.”

Ace gripped the reins, licked his lips, and nodded. “Are we ready?”

Bess leaned over and called through the coach's windows, “Everybody all right in there?”

“We're fine,” Emily replied. “Ready to go.”

Bess straightened and nodded to Ace. “All right. Take the coach out.”

He made sure the brake lever wasn't engaged, lifted the reins, and slapped them lightly against the backs of the team as he called out, “Hyaaahh!”

The horses were experienced and knew what to do. They moved ahead at a walk, leaning against their harness, and the coach lurched into motion.

Bess rocked back and forth on the driver's seat but steadied herself by gripping the brass rail at the side of it. “A little tighter on the reins next time, but that wasn't a bad start. Now turn left and take us out of town. We'll head out on the mine road. It's nice and flat and straight.”

“The flatter and straighter the better,” Ace muttered under his breath as he hauled the team around and sent them trotting out of Palisade.

From the town to the base of the mountain where Samuel Eagleton's Golden Dome Mine was located was only about a mile. The road was fairly wide and very hard packed from the hundreds of ore wagons that had rolled over it.

Ace had always had the knack of picking up new skills pretty quickly, so he didn't have much trouble guiding the stagecoach team along the route. He started feeling comfortable within half a mile.

“You're a good driver,” Bess told him. “The horses respond well to you.”

“Thanks.”

“Watch the reins, though. You're still a little loose with them. Not too tight, though, or the horses will start to fight you.”

Ace modified his grip on the reins as the coach continued rolling toward the mountain. It swayed some, but it was designed to do that. The leather thoroughbraces had to have some give to them to absorb the bumps from the rough places in the road.

“What about the damage that avalanche did to the trail below the pass?” Ace asked. “Will the coach be able to get through?”

“I think so,” Bess replied. “It'll be a narrow squeeze in a few places but it won't be like that for long. Mr. Eagleton will have his men out repairing it. They may already be doing that. It wouldn't surprise me a bit. He has to be able to get his gold wagons out.”

“The way you've talked about him, the fella must be as rich as old King Midas.”

“He's rich, all right. No telling how many tons of ore he's taken out of the Golden Dome, and it's pretty high-grade, too, from what I've heard.”

“And yet he wants to ruin your father and take over the stagecoach line.”

“It doesn't make a lot of sense,” Bess agreed. “But I guess when you're used to having that much money and power, you don't like it when people say no to you.”

Ace chuckled. “I wouldn't know. I've never been rich
or
powerful. So I never really had to worry about it. Give me a good horse and somewhere to go, and I'm happy.”

“In other words, you're a saddle tramp.”

“Chance and I have been called that,” Ace admitted. “I like to think we just have restless natures.”

“Emily's more restless than I am,” Bess said. “I think she'd like to drift around like you and your brother do. Women aren't really allowed to do that, though. We're expected to stay in one place and make a home.”

“Well, not many of 'em drive stagecoaches or ride shotgun, either,” Ace pointed out. “There ought to be room for all kinds of folks in the world.”

“It's a nice thought.” Bess pointed ahead of them. “See that wide place in the road? You're going to turn around there. Think you're up to it?”

“I'll give it my best try,” Ace promised.

 

 

Inside the coach, Chance rode in the seat facing backward while Emily sat on the forward-facing seat with the picnic basket beside her. He would have preferred sitting side by side with her, but she'd told him to sit across from her and he didn't think it was a good idea to argue with her.

It was always better to make a gal think what he was doing was her idea, not his.

He patted the smooth wooden stock of the coach gun across his knees and asked, “Have you ever had to use one of these?”

“What do you mean? I've fired a shotgun plenty of times.”

“At somebody who was trying to shoot you?”

“Well . . . no,” she said, glaring at him. “But you don't exactly look like Wild Bill Hickok to me. How many shoot-outs have
you
been in?”

“Ace and I shot at those fellas who were trying to run you off the road a couple of days ago,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but they were shooting at us, not you.”

“They fired back at us. Didn't come close, but still, they were shooting.”

“You know what I mean. Just how many showdowns have you been in, anyway?”

“A few,” Chance said. “More than I like to think about. And more than I like to talk about.”

That was true, and for once he was serious. He and Ace had been in some shooting scrapes. They had come through all right every time—so far—but Chance hadn't forgotten the heart-pounding experiences. It hadn't been fear, really, that made his heart race, although he didn't believe anybody could face up to being shot at without experiencing even a trace of fear. Nor was it excitement. Mainly, he thought, it was the fact that everything went so damn
fast
. Usually, there wasn't time to be too scared or too excited. He just had to act on instinct. See the threat, react, the crash of guns going off, tighten muscles in anticipation of the smash of a bullet—and then it was over. Gun smoke drifted in the air and bodies lay sprawled on the ground and pumped out blood. Struggle to grasp the concept that
he was still alive . . .

“What's wrong with you?” Emily asked, breaking into Chance's thoughts. “You looked like you just wandered off into the wilderness.”

“Sorry.” He put his usual smile back on his face. “I was just thinking about what's in that picnic basket. What have you brought for us to eat?”

“Fried chicken and rolls and a jug of buttermilk. Nothing fancy like what I'm sure you're used to.”

“Don't be so certain of that. I like to dress well, but Ace and I are a far cry from having a lot of money. It's hard to earn much when we're always on the drift like we are.”

Emily leaned back against the seat. “I think I'd like to do that. Ride around and see some new places. Pa moved our family a lot when Bess and I were growing up, but that's different. When you're a kid you don't have any choice where you go. Your parents decide that for you. You're lucky that—” She stopped short. “Oh, hell.”

“Lucky we never knew our parents and were raised by a shiftless gambler?”

“That's not what I meant. Well, not exactly that way. But you have to admit, your lives have been a lot more carefree than ours.”

Chance shrugged. “I reckon so.”
And more lonely, too.

Before they could continue the conversation, the coach slowed.

Chance looked out the window. “Now what are we doing?”

“Turning around, I'd guess. Bess must be confident that your brother can handle the team all right. It's time for him to try something else.”

“Like what?”

“Timberline Pass,” Emily said.

 

 

“You want me to what?” Ace asked.

“Drive through the pass and down the mountain into the valley,” Bess said.

Ace stared at her as he sat on the driver's box next to her. He had swung the coach around without any trouble in the wide spot in the road she had indicated, then brought it to a stop.

“This is the first time I've ever driven a stagecoach, and you want me to take it down that road with all those hairpin turns.”

“We need to check out the damage from the avalanche, like you mentioned earlier. And do you really think driving back and forth a few more times between here and town would prepare you better? The next run to Bleak Creek is the day after tomorrow. We need to find out now if you'll be ready.”

What Bess said made sense, Ace supposed, although he still thought the idea of driving down the mountainside over that twisting road was pretty daunting. It would certainly be easier, though, with her sitting right beside him to show him the ropes.

He sighed. “All right.” Then he got the team moving again.

It didn't take long to reach Palisade and drive through the settlement. As they approached Timberline Pass, Ace looked out through the gap and saw the valley spread before them. The mountains on the other side of the valley, ten miles away, were easily visible in the clear air. And the distance down to the valley floor was a little breathtaking.

Chance stuck his head out one of the coach windows and raised his voice. “Wait a minute. Are we really going down there?”

“We are,” Bess told him.

“Then maybe Emily and I should, uh, get out first . . . Oof!”

Emily took hold of the back of his coat and pulled him away from the window. “Quit being such a baby. We'll be fine.”

Up on the box, Ace said, “Chance is just a little nervous. So am I, to be honest.”

“Just take it slow and easy and you'll be all right.”

Ace drove through the gap between two of the giant slabs of rock that resembled palisades and gave the nearby settlement its name. The ground slanted down under the stagecoach's wheels. His instinct was to reach for the brake lever, but he knew the slope wasn't steep enough to need it yet so he resisted the impulse.

The road followed a gentle curve that brought it around a shoulder of the mountain and into the route that zigged and zagged back and forth down to the valley.

“It's not as bad as I thought it would be,” he said after a few minutes.

“It'll get worse,” Bess told him. “Feel the way the weight of the coach is making it move a little faster?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Pull the brake lever back and slow us down a little . . . Now release it. Use it when you have to keep us about this same speed.”

As they neared the first of the hairpin turns, Ace asked, “Now what do I do?”

“Use the brake and slow down a little more. You can see that there's plenty of room for the team and the coach to turn.”

Ace supposed she was right about that, but with so much empty air looming only a few feet away, the space available to make the turn probably seemed a lot smaller than it really was. To Ace's inexperienced eyes, it looked like he had no room for error at all.

“All right, start turning the team,” Bess told him.

Carefully, he pulled on the reins and brought the horses' heads around enough that they began to turn. With the thoroughbraces creaking, the coach followed. Ace held his breath as he felt the vehicle's momentum shift, but it stayed solidly where it was supposed to be on the trail and as the team straightened out again, he relaxed slightly.

“Good job,” Bess said. “A little brake now. It's all a matter of getting the feel for it.”

As he drove, Ace mostly kept his eyes on the road in front of him, rather than looking out at the valley falling away so dramatically, but he couldn't keep himself from glancing in that direction occasionally. He thought about how Bess had taken the coach down the same road at such a breakneck pace a few days earlier.

“You must have been really scared when those fellas ambushed you and the team ran away,” he said.

She shook her head. “Wasn't time to be scared. I was more concerned with keeping the wheels on the road. I knew the horses would do what I told them. As long as the brake didn't burn up or bust, I figured we could make it. And we did.” She smiled. “Emily probably wouldn't admit it, but I think she was pretty scared. But that's because all she had to do was hang on. I was too busy to worry much.”

“I guess that's the secret to a lot of things. Just stay busy.”

Ace made the next turn with no trouble. The road got a little steeper, so he had to use the brake more often, but as Bess had said, he began to develop a feel for it. He glanced over at her, and she nodded in approval.

From time to time as they descended, he looked up at the slope looming above them. Today wasn't a regularly scheduled stagecoach run, so he thought it wasn't very likely Eagleton's hired killers would be up there trying to start another avalanche. They would have had to spot the coach going back through the settlement, figured out where it was headed, and followed them. That certainly wasn't impossible, but Ace thought the risk was small.

“How many turns are there?” he asked. “I never thought to count them the other day.”

“Ten,” Bess replied. “You're almost halfway there.”

The thoroughbraces, the wheels, and the horses' hooves made a surprising amount of noise, so it was hard to hear much over them. After the next turn, however, Ace heard what he thought sounded like men's voices somewhere below them.

Bess heard them, too, and frowned slightly. “That might be a work crew Mr. Eagleton sent down to repair the road.”

“Will we be able to get past them?” Ace asked.

“There are a few places where the road is wide enough for a vehicle to get over and let another one past, but not many. I suppose a coach and a wagon might be able to scrape past each other on a turn, but that would be pretty nerve-wracking for whoever was on the outside.”

It made Ace feel a little cold and clammy just to think about it. He hoped the situation wouldn't come to that and mused that maybe Bess hadn't quite thought through all the things that could go wrong with this practice run....

He saw a large work wagon make the next turn down and start up toward them.

“Oh, shoot,” Bess muttered beside him.

Ace reached for the brake lever without being told. Careful not to haul too hard on it, he brought the stagecoach to a halt. About fifty yards ahead, the burly driver of the work wagon had stopped, too, looking up at them in anger and surprise.

The two vehicles faced each other, headed in opposite directions with no place to go.