Gold Mine Massacre

Book 4: Jensen Brand

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

Johnstone Country. Family First.



For generations, the Jensens have struggled to build their home, their land, and their dreams. But now the family is forced to fight fire with fire, bullet by bullet, blood for blood . . .



For Smoke and his daughter Denny, life on the Sugarloaf Ranch is more valuable than all the gold in the world. Which works out fine, since all the gold mines in Big Rock were squeezed dry years ago. Even so, that won't stop a pair of smooth-talking businessmen from trying to squeeze out a little more. One of them has developed a newfangled method for extracting gold—something called "hydraulics"—and he's bought up all the old mines to do it. His partner is the son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan, and Denny thinks he's awful handsome. Smoke isn't sure what to think of these would-be gold-diggers. Especially when the handsome one triggers a rivalry with Denny's off-and-on beau, a US Deputy. And then the smart one hires a small army of gunfighter to protect his mines from sabotage . . .



The Jensons can smell trouble brewing from a mile away. And when it involves gold, guns, and good love gone bad, it's more than just trouble. It's a massacre waiting to happen . . .

Release date: April 27, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

Denise Nicole Jensen’s head snapped around as she heard screams coming from somewhere along the main street of Big Rock, Colorado. Denny had just stepped out the front door of Goldstein’s Emporium and had three paper-wrapped bundles in her arms. Since the packages didn’t have anything breakable in them, she didn’t hesitate to toss them into the back of the wagon parked in front of the store and bound down the steps from the high porch and run toward the commotion.

She was a sight to behold—a tall, well-built young woman in a man’s soft flannel shirt and denim trousers that hugged the curves of her legs and hips. Wheat-colored curls cascaded to her shoulders and down her back from under the brown Stetson with its strap taut under her fine chin.

She carried a holstered Colt .38 Lightning on her right hip. In these modern and enlightened times, early in the twentieth century, fewer and fewer men carried guns on a daily basis, especially in town, and practically no women did. But as the daughter of Smoke Jensen, Denny was no ordinary woman.

Smoke was famous throughout the West—throughout the whole country, really—as one of the fastest men with a gun who had ever lived on the frontier. Maybe the fastest.

Early in his adventurous career, he’d had a reputation as a gunfighter, even as an outlaw, although the charges leveled against him had been bogus ones whipped up by his enemies. In the past two and a half decades, since marrying Sally Reynolds, he had gained a different sort of reputation, that of one of the most successful ranchers in Colorado.

During that time, he and Sally had also had two children, the twins Denise Nicole and Louis Arthur, along with several unofficially adopted siblings who had been part of the family for a while before striking out on their own.

Denny and Louis had spent most of their childhood in Europe with Sally’s parents. The medical problems Louis had been born with had required the attention of the best doctors in Europe. But they had visited their parents often, and in young adulthood had returned to the Sugarloaf, the Jensen ranch, to stay.

Louis was back east, with his new wife and stepson, while he attended law school. Denny, a Western girl at heart despite having spent so much time across the Atlantic, was just fine with staying on the Sugarloaf, which, in the back of her mind, she already planned on running one of these days, when her father was ready to take it easy.

Knowing Smoke Jensen, that might be a long time yet!

Denny had been mixed up in a number of scrapes and adventures of her own since returning to Colorado. She had inherited Smoke’s natural ability for gun handling, and she didn’t mind using a gun when she had to.

It might be one of those times, judging by the frightened cries coming from up ahead somewhere.

She slowed as she saw four men in the street in front of the bank. Each had a bandanna tied around the lower half of his face and wore a long duster and a pulled-down hat. They brandished guns, and two of them had taken hostages. One man had his left arm wrapped around the neck of a middle-aged woman, while another had picked up a boy about eight years old and held the boy in front of himself like a human shield.

The other two men carried canvas bank bags in their left hands. All four bank robbers—no doubt what they were—backed slowly toward horses tied at a nearby hitch rack.

“Jeremy!” A woman sobbed on the boardwalk. She held out her arms toward the boy, who was kicking his legs and waving his arms frantically as the outlaw clutched him.

The kid’s mother, thought Denny as she skidded to a halt in the dusty street. She didn’t recognize the woman, but plenty of people she didn’t know lived in Big Rock.

Such as the man who stood on the sidewalk beside the bank’s open doors, his hands lifted halfway to show that he wasn’t a threat. That was pretty obvious, anyway, given his expensive black suit, the fancy cravat, the glittering watch chain, the carefully shaven chin with a slight cleft in it, and the silver band on the flat-crowned black hat that sat on his sandy hair.

Denny knew a dude when she saw one, even though she barely glanced at the man. Nearly all of her attention was focused on the quartet of bank robbers.

Sheriff Monte Carson or some of his deputies ought to be there soon, but they might not arrive in time to stop the outlaws from fleeing. And when the outlaws lit out, they might take the hostages with them. That wouldn’t be good, so somebody had to stop them.

As far as Denny could see, that was up to her.

“Hold it right there!” she called in a clear, powerful voice that was just a bit husky for a woman.

The four men stopped backing away, evidently surprised not only to be challenged but also because a woman was doing the challenging.

“You came to rob the bank in Big Rock?” Denny said. “Big Rock? Don’t you know you could have run into Smoke Jensen here? Don’t you know how many would-be bank robbers have wound up propped on boards in front of the undertaking parlor while folks pose for photographs with the carcasses?”

“Girl, you’re loco!” shouted an outlaw as he jabbed his gun in her direction. “Shut up your yammerin’!”

“I ain’t sure that’s a girl,” another said. “She’s got long hair, but she’s dressed like a man.”

“Yeah, but she ain’t a man,” put in a third outlaw. “You can tell that by the way she fills out that shirt.”

All four of them, in fact, were looking at Denny quite intently.

She wondered, fleetingly, if she should have unbuttoned her shirt before confronting them. That would have riveted their attention even more. Nailed them right to the ground, she thought.

That might have made what was coming a little easier.

“If you let that poor woman and the little boy go, you might just live through this,” she said. “If you don’t—”

“What are you gonna do?” sneered the man still holding the squirming boy.

Remembering what the boy’s mother had called him, Denny said, quietly but intensely, “Jeremy, listen to me. You’re going to be all right, but you need to stop wiggling around. Can you do that, Jeremy? Can you be very still?”

He stopped trying to get away from his captor. As soon as his arms and legs weren’t waving around and his head wasn’t jerking back and forth, Denny struck.

Her right hand swept down and up, moving too fast for the eye to follow. The Lightning’s grips were smooth against her palm as the gun came level and she squeezed the trigger. The double-action revolver barked. The .38 slug hit the outlaw’s right eyeball, popped it like a grape, and bored on into his brain. He dropped straight to the ground as if a giant had slammed a sledgehammer down on the top of his head.

The little boy tumbled free.

His feet hadn’t hit the street by the time Denny pivoted slightly and fired again. Her target was the outlaw holding the female hostage. He twisted a little just as the bullet reached him, so instead of hitting the center of his throat and clipping his spine, as Denny had intended, it tore a bloody, painful tunnel through his neck. He let out a gurgling yell and staggered, but he didn’t let go of the woman.

With the hostage still mostly in the way, Denny couldn’t rush a third shot. As a heartbeat ticked past while she lined her sights, Denny knew the other two outlaws would have time to pull their triggers. She stood a good chance of dying, but at least she would save the hostages.

The Lightning spat flame again, and the slug went in the bank robber’s mouth as he opened it to howl a curse while pawing at the wound in his neck. As he let go of the hostage and crumpled, Denny expected to hear the roar of the other two outlaws’ guns, steeled herself for the bullets that were about to smash into her.

She heard two shots slam out so fast they blended together, but she didn’t feel anything hit her. One of the remaining bandits flipped backward like a bug flicked away by a finger, and the other swayed for a second before toppling like a tree. Neither of them moved once they hit the ground.

Denny looked over at the sidewalk. The dude she had seen earlier, the stranger with the fancy hatband, stood with a gun in his hand. A few wisps of powder smoke curled from the muzzle.

Knowing how close she had just come to dying, Denny couldn’t speak for a second. Finding her voice again, she said, “That was some pretty good shooting. I’m obliged to you, Mister . . . ?”

The man slipped the revolver back into a cross-draw rig under his coat, smiled at her, pinched the brim of his hat, and said in a voice with a surprising hint of a Western drawl in it, “You’re welcome, miss. The name’s Morgan. Conrad Morgan.”

Running footsteps and labored breathing behind her made Denny look over her shoulder. She saw Sheriff Monte Carson approaching with a shotgun in his hands.

He came to a stop, gazed past her at the bodies sprawled in the street, and said, “Blast it, Denny, couldn’t you have left at least one of ’em alive so I could question him?”

“Don’t blame me for all of them, Sheriff. I only killed the two who had grabbed hostages.” She nodded toward the boy named Jeremy, who was wrapped up in his sobbing mother’s arms, and the middle-aged woman, who leaned against a hitch rack with a hand pressed to her bosom as she breathed deeply, trying to recover from her fright. Several strands of her graying brown hair had come loose from their pins and dangled around her pale face.

“Then who gunned down the other two?” Monte wanted to know.

“That would be me, Sheriff,” the stranger said as he stepped down from the boardwalk and strolled in their direction. “My name is Conrad Morgan.”

“New in town, aren’t you?”

“Got off the train less than half an hour ago,” Morgan confirmed with a smile and a nod. He was a handsome man probably in his late twenties.

As Denny looked at him, she realized she had been wrong to dismiss him so cavalierly in that quick glance earlier, just because he was well-dressed. His gaze was cool and steady, and he moved with an easy grace reminiscent of a big cat.

Denny recognized those attributes. She had seen them often enough in her own father.

Monte Carson nodded toward the dead outlaws and said to the newcomer, “You shot two of those fellas?”

“I had no choice. They were about to shoot this young woman.” Morgan cocked his head slightly to the side as he looked at Denny and added, “Miss . . . ?”

“Jensen,” she said.

“They were about to shoot Miss Jensen,” Morgan continued. “So I did the only thing I could.” He shrugged. “Unless you think I should have tried to merely wound them and spare their lives. But to my way of thinking, after they robbed the bank and then endangered innocent citizens, they forfeited any right to such consideration.”

“Yeah, you did the right thing blowing holes in them,” agreed Monte. “It’s just that I would’ve liked to know if the four of them were the only ones trying to pull this robbery or if there might be more of their gang lurking around.” The lawman shrugged and went on. “But if somebody’s bound and determined to make trouble, I reckon I’ll find out about it sooner or later.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’m getting too old to be running up and down the street in the hot sun, though.”

“Are you all right, Sheriff?” asked Denny with a note of concern in her voice. She knew he was one of her father’s oldest and best friends, and he was like an uncle to her and her brother Louis.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Monte replied with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about me.”

A man wearing spectacles stepped out of the bank. Slender, dark-haired, and dapper, Charles Barnhart was the bank president, which accounted for the look on his face when he saw the dead outlaws lying in the street, as well as the two canvas money bags they had dropped when Conrad Morgan shot them.

“Thank heavens,” Barnhart said. “I was afraid they might have gotten away. Did you shoot them, Sheriff?”

“No, Miss Jensen and Mr. Morgan get the credit for that. Did they hurt anybody in there, Mr. Barnhart?”

The banker shook his head. “No, and I’m very thankful for that, as well. They just tied up me, the two tellers, and the three customers who were in the bank when they came in. It took me a few minutes to work my bonds loose.”

“Any of them call the others by name, or say anything else to indicate who they are?”

“Not that I recall. They just cursed and gave orders and waved their guns around.”

Monte grunted. “I’ll look through their pockets, maybe find something to tell me who they are. I can check the wanted posters in my office, too. And I’ll want to talk to the other folks who were in there, but that can wait. Better see first about getting these four down to the undertaking parlor.”

“I told them that’s where they’d wind up,” Denny said dryly.

The sheriff started to turn away, then paused. “Mr. Morgan, I didn’t think to ask you what brings you to Big Rock?”

“I’m here on business,” Conrad Morgan replied. He looked at the bank president. “Would you be Mr. Barnhart?”

“That’s right. Have we met, sir?”

“No, but we’ve corresponded.” Morgan held out his hand. “I’m Conrad Morgan. I was on my way into the bank to see about opening an account with you when those four holdup men came busting out.”

“Mr. Morgan, of course.” Barnhart shook the man’s hand eagerly. “Come in, come in. After that disruption, it’ll be a pleasure to do some actual banking business.”

Monte Carson said, “Are you going to be around Big Rock for a while, Mr. Morgan, in case I need to talk to you again?”

“I certainly will, Sheriff. I’ll be here for several weeks, at the very least.”

“All right, thanks.” Monte tucked the shotgun under his arm and headed toward the undertaker’s.

Since the excitement was over, Denny turned away, too, intending to return to the wagon she had driven into town from the ranch. Before she could do that, the woman whose little boy had been taken hostage hurried over to her and thanked her profusely, finally giving in to the deep emotion she obviously felt and throwing her arms around Denny for a big hug of gratitude.

Denny didn’t cotton to being fussed over like that, but she accepted the woman’s thanks graciously. She might not always live up to her mother’s standards of being ladylike, but she could be courteous, anyway.

The woman told her son to thank Denny, too, which he did by gravely shaking hands with her. Then he couldn’t hold in his excitement any more as he burst out, “I never saw anybody draw and shoot like that before, Miss Jensen! Why, I bet not even your pa coulda killed those varmints any slicker!”

“Jeremy,” his mother scolded, “don’t be crude.”

“Thanks, Jeremy,” Denny smiled down at him. “I’m just glad I was able to help.”

The woman put her arm around Jeremy’s shoulder and led him away, but not before the little boy gazed back over his shoulder adoringly a couple of times. Denny just smiled at him and waited until he wasn’t looking to chuckle.

She became aware of someone standing beside her, and her hand moved instinctively toward her gun as she looked around quickly, seeing Conrad Morgan.

“I thought you were going in the bank to talk business with Mr. Barnhart,” she said as she relaxed.

“I am,” he told her. The way his eyes twinkled with amusement told her that he had noticed her reaction. “But I told him I’d be there in a few minutes. I wanted to ask you a question first.”

“All right,” Denny said coolly as she hooked her thumbs into her gunbelt. “Go ahead and ask.”

“You said your name is Jensen, and that boy mentioned your pa. Would your father happen to be Smoke Jensen?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

Morgan chuckled. “I imagine most red-blooded American boys have heard of Smoke Jensen. I remember reading dime novels about him when I was growing up. And there’s a part of me that’s still a red-blooded American boy. So . . . ?”

“Yes,” Denny said. “My father is Smoke Jensen.”

“And like father, like daughter, eh? I mean, the lad was right. That was an amazingly fast draw you made, and remarkably accurate shooting under extreme pressure.”

“I was lucky.”

Morgan shook his head. “No, I’ve seen plenty of lucky shots. What you did wasn’t luck. It was skill.”

“You did some good shooting yourself,” Denny pointed out. “Did you inherit that?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. My father is Frank Morgan.” He pinched his hat brim again. “I’d better get to my business. Good day, Miss Jensen.” He turned and his long-legged stride carried him toward the bank.

Denny stared after him, trying not to let her mouth sag open in surprise. Frank Morgan is his father? The man sometimes referred to as the Drifter?

And the man some folks called the Last Gunfighter.

Conrad cocked his right ankle on his left knee and leaned back casually in the comfortable brown leather chair. He had his hat in his left hand, and his right hand toyed with the links of the silver band.

On the other side of the big desk, Charles Barnhart shuffled some papers in front of him. “I have your letters right here, Mr. Morgan. I’m very pleased that you’ve come to us for your banking needs.”

“Well, your bank is the oldest, biggest, and most respectable in Big Rock,” Conrad said. “Whenever I do business, I make it a habit to deal with the best. That’s how my mother built the Browning Holdings into what they are today. It’s my intention to continue that tradition.”

“Yes, your mother was Vivian Browning, isn’t that right? I remember hearing about her. She had a reputation as one of the shrewdest businesswomen in this country’s history.” Barnhart frowned slightly. “Now that I think about it, I would have sworn that your last name was Browning, as well . . .”

“My stepfather’s name was Browning,” Conrad replied, his tone cooling a little. “He helped raise me, and I used his name for a long time. But these days I go by my actual father’s name.”

Barnhart raised his hands, palms out, and said, “Yes, of course. My apologies, Mr. Morgan. I didn’t mean to pry into your personal life. That’s certainly no business of mine.”

“Quite all right,” Conrad said, flashing an easy smile that concealed the emotions the banker’s comment had started stirring around inside him.

For a long time, Conrad had believed that the man married to his mother was actually his father. It had taken Vivian Browning’s murder at the hands of an outlaw gang and Conrad’s kidnapping and torture by those same desperadoes, for him to discover that his real father was Frank Morgan, a notorious gunfighter who had killed countless men from one end of the violent frontier to the other.

Frank Morgan had saved his son from almost certain death, but despite that, for several years Conrad had hated the man, blaming him at least partially for his mother’s death.

Over time, the relationship between the two of them had thawed. Fate had thrown them together on several adventures, and during the course of those dustups, Conrad had come to learn just what a good man his father really was. When tragedy had caused Conrad to ride the gunfighter’s trail, taking on the identity of a fast gun calling himself Kid Morgan, Frank had come to his aid on numerous occasions.

Finally, life had settled down a mite. Kid Morgan had put away his guns, and Conrad had devoted his energies to running the vast business empire Vivian Browning had founded.

Trouble had eventually cropped up, drawing him and Frank together again, and Conrad had come to the realization that he wanted to do more than carry on his mother’s legacy. He wanted to honor his real father, too, and he had done that by taking the Morgan name. Now and forevermore, he was Conrad Morgan.

None of that had anything to do with the business that had brought him to Big Rock, so he pushed those thoughts and memories aside and said to Charles Barnhart, “My new partner and I are going to need operating funds for a venture we’re going into, here in the area, and so I decided to open an account in your bank with a deposit of, oh, let’s say fifty thousand dollars.”

Barnhart drew in a deep breath, and Conrad could tell that the man was trying hard not to stare at him across the desk. After a couple of seconds, Barnhart recovered enough from his surprise to say, “Yes, of course. Fifty, ah, fifty thousand dollars.”

Conrad reached inside his coat and brought out a slip of paper. “I have a draft here from my bank in San Francisco in that amount. Will that be satisfactory, Mr. Barnhart?”

Barnhart barely suppressed his eagerness as he reached across the desk to take the draft when Conrad extended it to him. “Yes, more than satisfactory, Mr. Morgan.” He looked at the draft, and his business sense reasserted itself. “Of course, the deposit will be provisional until such time as the other bank notifies us that it will honor this draft.”

“Certainly,” Conrad said with a casual wave of his hand. “We shouldn’t be needing to draw on it for any large expenditures for a while. I brought along enough cash to cover our expenses until then.”

Barnhart set the draft on the desk in front of him and brushed his fingertips over it as if he were caressing it. Then he looked up at Conrad and asked curiously, “You mentioned a partner . . .”

“Yes, a man named Axel Strom. He came in on the train with me and was taking care of getting our bags delivered to the hotel. Once that was done, he planned to come over here and say hello, too, unless we’d already concluded our business.” Conrad chuckled. “Since our meeting was delayed by that little unpleasantness out in the street, I expect Axel will be here soon.”

“Little unpleasantness,” repeated Barnhart, shaking his head. “Those outlaws terrified everyone in here, and you and Miss Jensen could have been killed. I’d call that more than a little unpleasantness.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of what you’re accustomed to.”

“I, uh, I suppose.” Barnhart cleared his throat. “Just out of curiosity, what sort of business venture are you and Mr. Strom planning to enter into in our area?”

“Mining,” Conrad said.

“Gold mining?”

“That’s right.”

Barnhart looked a little confused. “Mining was certainly important at times in the area’s past, but this is primarily cattle country now. There are some large cattle spreads. The largest is Mr. Jensen’s Sugarloaf, as well as some ranches that specialize in raising fine horses. I believe that Mr. Jensen has an excellent horse herd, in addition to his cattle.”

Conrad ran a finger along the silver band of his hat again. “Jensen’s the big he-wolf around here, isn’t he?”

Barnhart looked shocked by that comment, which would have been more likely to come from a Westerner rather than an eastern businessman, as he believed Conrad to be.

Conrad waved it off and went on. “I realize mining isn’t a major industry in Eagle County these days, but that’s about to change, Mr. Barnhart. We’ve done considerable research into the matter, and Mr. Strom and I found that many of the gold mines around here were still producing ore when they were shut down, just not in sufficient quantities to make the work of getting it out worthwhile. That’s why their owners closed them.”

“From what I know, that’s true,” said Barnhart, nodding. “You have to understand, Mr. Morgan, I came to Big Rock after the mining boom was over, so I’m not personally acquainted with all the details.”

“The process Mr. Strom utilizes can extract gold ore from the earth in a much more efficient manner,” Conrad explained. “And, once the initial investment is recouped, it can continue to operate less expensively than traditional mining. With those two factors combined, mines that were closed because they weren’t paying off enough can be reopened and made lucrative again. That’s what we intend to do. That’s why we’ve already purchased a number of such properties in the area.”

“Oh,” Barnhart said, looking impressed. “I wasn’t aware of that. It does sound like you’ve thought everything through.” He tapped the bank draft on the desk in front of him. “Then this fifty thousand dollars—”

“Will be used for machines and the men to run them,” Conrad said. “And equipment to process the ore we take out of those mines.”

“An operation such as this could transform the entire area. The entire state, perhaps.”

Conrad smiled and leaned his head to the side to acknowledge Barnhart’s statement. “There’s no point to having goals and ambitions if they’re not big o. . .