asked.
Emily shook her head. âNot that Iâve ever heard of. The men who work for him are pretty tough. Thatâs how come he can use them for things like harassing honest business owners who donât want to be gobbled up by his little tinpot empire.â
Ace looked over at his brother and knew that Chance was trying to figure it out, too. Maybe there was no connection between Eagleton, Tanner, and the ambush in Shoshone Gap . . . but that seemed like too much of a coincidence to the Jensens.
As they rode west across the valley, the talk turned to other things. Chance wanted to know more about the Corcoran sisters, and while Emily was taciturn, Bess was willing to fill in some of their background.
âPa worked for the Butterfield line and for Wells Fargo for a long time. He started out as a hostler and worked his way up to managing stage stations. Emily and I were born at stage stations, different ones because Pa had been transferred in the time between. Emily was born in Julesburg, and I was born in Silver City, both down in New Mexico.â
âWeâve been to both places,â Chance said. âThe fella who raised us moved around a lot, too.â
âPa said he wanted to settle down in one place, but Iâm not sure he really did. Our ma would have liked it, though.â
Emily said, âToo bad she died before she ever got to.â
âYes, that seemed to change Pa,â Bess said with a sigh. âHe regretted that he never gave Ma what she wanted, but he knew she thought Emily and I should have a real home, so he decided he wanted to start his own stage line, someplace with a fairly short route so he could run it and still have time for us. He saved his money, and when he heard about the boom in Palisade he moved us there right after it started and established his business. Mr. Eagleton probably would have started his own stage line when he got around to it, but Pa beat him to it.â
âThatâs one more reason Eagletonâs so damn determined to take us over,â Emily put in. âThe man canât stand losing out on anything, even if itâs something that really doesnât matter that much to him.â
âWhat about you two?â Bess asked. âYou said you never knew your real folks, and you were raised by a gambler, but surely thereâs more to your lives than that.â
âNot much,â Ace said with a shrug. âDoc Monday brought us up the best he could. Iâm not sure he was really cut out to be raising kids, but he tried hard, Iâll give him that. We always had plenty to eat, decent clothes, and a roof over our heads. He made sure we got an education, too.â
âThatâs right,â Chance said. âBy the time I was four years old, I could shuffle a deck of cards better than most. You shouldâve seen the way I handled those pasteboards!â
âI was thinking more of the way he always made sure we went to school, wherever we were. He said our mother had been a schoolteacher at one time, so he figured it would be important to her for us to learn as much as we could. We both like to read, so I reckon we probably got that from her.â
âYour father might have liked to read, too,â Bess suggested.
Ace shrugged. âMaybe. We donât know a thing about him. Iâm not sure Doc ever knew anything about him, except that his name was Jensen.â
âLike Smoke Jensen,â Emily said. âThe gunfighter. Iâve heard of him.â
Chance groaned. âDonât get Ace started on Smoke Jensen. As it happens, we actually met that hombre not that long ago, and he has been wondering ever since then if we might be related.â
âYou met Smoke Jensen?â It was the first time in the relatively short time they had known Emily that she actually seemed impressed by something about the brothers.
âYeah, just briefly,â Ace said. âWe got in a little
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