Those Jensen Boys! by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Ace groaned as he regained consciousness. He was lying on something hard, but it didn’t really feel like the ground. After a few moments, he realized it was a bunk with no mattress, only a folded blanket. He wasn’t surprised when he forced his eyes open and saw that he was in a jail cell. Iron bars surrounded him on three sides, and on the fourth side was a stone wall with a high, small, barred window set in it.

He swung his legs off the bunk and sat up, making the world spin crazily around him for several seconds. When it settled down, he risked standing up and stepping over to the bars. He wrapped his hands around a couple iron cylinders and hung on in case another wave of dizziness hit him.

The other cells in the cell block were empty, and a feeling of relief washed through him. Chance had gotten away somehow.

That relief quickly disappeared and dread replaced it. Maybe Chance wasn’t there because he was dead and laid out down at the local undertaker’s parlor.

He looked to his right. The heavy wooden door probably opened into the marshal’s office. Still clinging to the bars, he shouted, “Hey! Hey, is anybody out there?”

A moment later, a key scraped in the lock and the cell block door swung open. Marshal Kaiser walked into the aisle between the cells, a self-satisfied smirk on his weathered face. “Not such a desperado now, are you, Jensen?”

“I was never a desperado, Marshal. I’m sorry for the trouble, but all I was ever trying to do was keep you from arresting me for something I didn’t do.”

“Attacking an officer of the law is a crime. You’ve done it twice now.”

“There were”—Ace searched his mind for a word he had read in a book—“extenuating circumstances. There were extenuating circumstances, Marshal.”

Kaiser stopped smirking at him and glowered. “You save that fancy legal talk for the judge,” he snapped. “He’ll be here, week after next. In the meantime, you can just cool your heels in there.”

“All right,” Ace said. “The judge might find it interesting to hear that you interfered with delivering the mail, too. That’s a federal crime, you know.” Ace knew he shouldn’t have made that comment, but the startled look on the marshal’s face was worth it.

Kaiser glowered at him. “You better be careful, boy.” He nodded as if to emphasize that, then added, “By the way, there’s somebody out here who wants to have a look at you. I can’t blame him for being curious.”

Ace didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He just stood there, gripping the bars while Kaiser went back into the office.

The marshal returned a minute later, followed by a well-dressed man in his thirties. In a dark suit and hat, sporting a narrow mustache, the man looked like many of the gamblers Ace had seen over the years.

The visitor was no gambler, though.

Marshal Kaiser said, “This is one of the fellas who ambushed you the other day, Mr.

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