Lone Star 43

Chapter 1

When stealth means survival, man can outdo a coyote.

Outwardly the pair appeared to be slumped, weary travelers, unaware of their surroundings, and uncaring. And in keeping with this guise, as well as for comfort, both Jessie Starbuck and Ki wore well-worn jeans, dusty cotton shirts, and sweat-stained hats. Jessie did not appear to be what she really was—a proud, aristocratic woman in her mid-twenties; a crack shot with her now holstered revolver or the twin-shot derringer concealed behind her belt buckle; and a shrewd, knowledgeable heiress to immense wealth, the Starbuck international business empire. Nor did her companion and protector, Ki, seem to be more than a tall, lean man in his early thirties, of mixed Japanese and Caucasian blood, and so peaceful by nature that he lacked a gunbelt or any other sign of a firearm. In fact, though, he was a samurai-trained master of martial arts, in whose old leather vest were secreted short daggers and similar small throwing weapons, including razor-edged, star-shaped steel disks called shuriken.

In truth, they rode warily, merging their bodies with their mounts in what Ki would call the art of acting innocuous. Remaining carefully alert was difficult, for rarely had they followed a more monotonous trail. There’d been no sounds other than muffled swishing through forest groves or hooves clopping over rock and gravel.

All yesterday they’d headed up the Sacramento Valley and during the night had followed the one and only wagon road high into the Siskiyou Mountains. At dawn they’d breached the summit. Since then the road had continued northerly through the Siskiyou Gap, gradually descending toward the timbered foothills and lush, rolling country of Oregon’s Rogue River Valley. Occasionally from higher elevations they could see far ahead and were not surprised by the lack of movement or dust clouds. Emil Pritt had a good head start on them and was too experienced to leave any telltale signs of passage. But they had a basic notion where the man was heading—north, since east and west were hemmed by rugged, uninhabited mountain ranges—and they figured that sooner or later the man would have to stop in one of the small, scarce towns to rest, to replenish his supplies, or to deliver the stolen money. And then they’d nab him.

On the Oregon side of the Siskiyous, they reached the logmill community of Medford just after high noon. In short order they learned that Emil Pritt hadn’t even paused here, so they kept on in dogged pursuit. Sun burned their eyes and the heat made sweat trickle into them and sting. Jessie removed her denim jacket. Ki licked his lips, tasting the salt of his perspiration. Both took their time, gauging the green, wooded terrain and wondering if Pritt suspected he was being trailed and had doubled around to wait in ambush.

The going became easier. Suddenly it struck Ki as strange that he saw no more signs of animal life. The jays that had been squawking in low branches were silent now, and not even a gray squirrel darted across open fields. Motioning to Jessie, he pulled up in short, black shadows of trees and sat stiff and listening in the saddle. Then his roan whinnied and they heard an answer from around the blind curve just ahead.

Cautiously they approached, hands hovering near weapons. Jessie was about to suggest they leave the road and skirt around through the trees, when they heard a man’s gravelly voice declare, Okay, Rachel, that oughta do it.

If Rachel gave a response, it was too low to catch. Instead came a creak of springs, the snap of a whip, and the trundling grumble of iron wheels. By then Jessie and Ki were at the bend, where they saw a large, battered freight wagon. The words INDIANA TO THE CASCADES OR BUST had been smeared on its patched canvas hood with a brush and identified the couple riding the box seat as Hoosiers.

Trotting alongside, Jessie and Ki eyed the couple. The driver was a husky, tanned man in his mid to late thirties, clad in linsey-woolsey shirt and butternut pants and wearing a cartridge bandolier across his muscular chest. Beside him sat an auburn-haired girl of no more than twenty and probably less, her nubile body covered by a blue brocade dress.

Ki called out, Having trouble? Can we help?

No sir, friend, but thanks. The driver wasn’t handsome, but he had a likeable smile. Had to pry a rock outta one horse’s forehoof, is all, he added.

Has anyone passed you recently? Jessie asked.

Yep. A man headin’ our way, less’n an hour ago.

Short? Heavyset?

Well, he was built more sideways than up’n down. Was blond and bearded, and a gold tooth showed when he opened his mouth.

And he swore at us, the girl interjected indignantly.

Jessie glanced at Ki. Pritt. We’re catching up.

After an exchange of friendly nods, they passed the wagon and soon left it out of sight behind them. The road flanked a steep ravine for about the next three miles; then it wandered in long curves following hill contours. Long before now the land along this stretch had been cut over, and in another ten years the pulp buyers would be bidding for the second-growth timber that was covering it. Soon the road dipped to the southern bank of the Rogue River, went along the edge for a bit, and finally ended at a clearing by a ferry dock.

Swift and treacherous, the Rogue was notorious for breaking unexpectedly into riffles or plunging into boat-crushing rapids. It offered superb fishing, but most of the year it could be used only to float logs of pulping size. The spring melt could be depended upon to give at least a week of high water and carry a logger’s winter cut downstream to mill towns and ports.

The Rogue earned its name. Not surprisingly, therefore, this ferry was the only one plying the dangerous waters for a stretch of better than fifty miles. The landing slip on the north bank was a connection with the famous McKenzie Trail, which followed the Willamette Valley northward beyond Oregon and into the territory of Washington and beyond that into the Canadian wilderness. The ferry scow was docked at the far landing slip when Jessie and Ki rode into the clearing.

Through a ship’s brass spyglass, the ferry tender spotted their waving hail. He cased the spyglass and levered the engine into gear, tossing a chunk of wood into the fire for good measure. Big pulleys whined on posts above the landing, as twin cables guided the bargelike craft slowly, agonizingly slowly, across the turbulent river, and Jessie and Ki chafed impatiently.

Now Pritt’s gaining a lead, Jessie murmured testily.

He has to draw in somewhere, Ki reminded her. He can’t be any less tired and hungry than we are, and he hasn’t changed horses since Redding. I wouldn’t doubt he’ll fold for the night when he hits Grants Pass, the next town up the line. Ki paused thoughtfully, swabbing his bronzed cheeks with a bandanna neckerchief. Or do you suppose Pritt’s taking the cutoff to Sweetgum instead?

Jessie hipped around in the saddle and gazed in a general northeasterly direction, where a few miles from the main road lay the remote logging settlement of Sweetgum. She shook her head. We’ve got our troubles at Sweetgum, what with the restraining order against Emerald Timber and all, but I don’t think it’s connected with Pritt.

Probably not. Do you want to visit Sweetgum anyway?

On our return, perhaps, after we’ve dealt with Pritt. Then will be time enough. Jessie spoke tersely, a reflection of the bitter thoughts that were roiling through her as she considered the problems that were crowding in on them.

As was all too often the case, the immediate, major problem involved the cartel. The cartel was her implacable enemy, just as it had been her father’s enemy dating from when he’d been a struggling young entrepreneur in the Orient. He’d run afoul of its ruthless henchmen early on and had fought its drug trade and slave trafficking with all his resources. The cartel’s response was to murder Alex Starbuck’s wife, Jessie’s mother, while Jessie was still a babe.

Alex Starbuck responded in kind, and thus began the protracted warfare between him and the cartel. The deeper Alex delved into the machinations of his enemy, the more it became clear that the cartel’s main goal was nothing less than the domination of the commercial and political interests of the young, growing United States. Eventually, one of the cartel’s insidious tentacles managed to assassinate Alex Starbuck. But by then, Jessie was old enough and had the strength and cunning to take his place. After avenging her father’s death, she pledged to use her inherited Starbuck fortune and influence to continue his battle until the entire cartel was utterly destroyed.

Helping Jessie was Ki, born in Japan to an American and his Japanese wife. From his father, Ki had inherited his respectable height and sinewy endurance; from his mother he’d been blessed with his lustrous black hair and almond-shaped eyes; from both had come his handsome bronze complexion. Orphaned at an early age, Ki had learned how to survive in a hostile world as a half-breed outcast and had eventually apprenticed himself to one of Japan’s last great samurai, the aged Hirata. After Hirata’s death, Ki had migrated to San Francisco, where he’d been hired by Alex Starbuck. When, years later, Alex was killed, Ki became the confidante and protector of Jessie to whom he was like an older brother. And, like Jessie, Ki hated the cartel with a passion.

Now, less than a week ago, the cartel had struck again. A Starbuck courier had been slain while leaving Sacramento aboard the Central Pacific, and his tote of negotiable bearer bonds swiped and hastily converted to cash—$256,733.28, to be exact, as Jessie subsequently learned from the fence who’d handled the transaction. By coincidence Jessie and Ki were in San Francisco at that time. But explaining how they arrived at the scene of the crime so swiftly was not easy, nor was it easy to explain why they decided to take a direct hand in retrieving the money. They had discovered the cartel was behind the robbery, so they acted swiftly.

There was no question that the cartel was involved. The captured fence identified Emil Pritt as the man who’d sold him the bonds, and Emil Pritt had quite a lengthy entry in Jessie’s small black notebook of cartel members. Her book was a copy of the original notebook, which was kept under lock and key back at her Circle Star Ranch in Texas. The original was old and worn, dating from when her father began listing every person and business connected with the criminal syndicate. Since his murder, Jessie had continued to update its entries. In it, she found that Pritt was a thug and a bandit, a cagey, utterly unscrupulous cartel strong-arm.

Immediately Jessie and Ki began to search for him. Their checking was sufficiently informal not to raise suspicions, but acute enough to follow gossip as weak and elusive as fireflies. They quickly picked up Pritt’s getaway trail at Redding, up near the California base of the Siskiyous. In a sense they’d been lucky. They’d no way of knowing that Pritt’s mount would contract spavin from overexertion, or that they’d arrive so soon after Pritt had traded horses. And it’d been luck that the single liveryman was a skinflint codger loving to haggle and boast of his bargaining with a whiskery tub leading a winded, lame pinto, as he referred to Pritt.

The liveryman had been lucky as well, not to have had his head blown off. Pritt had no patience or respect for human life other than his own, and he must’ve had good reason to swallow his temper, or for that matter, not to have simply stolen a fresh mount. Jessie suspected it was because Pritt wanted to avoid so much as a whiff of alarm, and the only reason for that had to be because the cartel was brewing a real dose of trouble, financed by the money from the stolen bonds. There had been a sort of honorable lull before the lead-slinging storm of ... Well, of what she did not know, but she sorely wished to learn.

So a stranger resembling Pritt had headed over the mountains on a bay. Jessie and Ki had pursued him to this ferry and were momentarily stymied on the wrong side of the Rogue—but in the right locale for the secondary problem involving Sweetgum and the surrounding timberland leased to the Starbuck-owned Emerald Timber Company. It was troublesome and threatening to become nastier, yet Jessie couldn’t see a link between it and the cartel, much less Pritt.

Moreover, this secondary problem had been dragging on for some time now. Late last year, a Starbuck timber cruiser named Eliot Gideon discovered that the Cascade Range foothills above Sweetgum held clear pine and fir of premium quality. Quickly a subsidiary company, Emerald Timber, was created; Eliot was promoted to manager and, with his wife Margot, put in charge of Emerald; and sixty sections were leased from the financially ailing Oregon & California Railroad.

In the spring the Gideons moved in their crew and equipment and started logging. Also, in order to build up a head of water so logs could be floated down to the sawmill and railhead at Grants Pass, a dam was begun across a Rogue River tributary that flowed through the property. Scarcely were things in full swing, when Emerald was hit with a court order blocking further operations.

The injunction was brought by Liam McManus, owner of the Bar M, a cattle ranch below and adjacent to Emerald. McManus had just purchased his land from a beef syndicate and claimed in court that Emerald’s logging would ruin the watershed for cattle grazing, while the dam would deprive his herds of their water supply. In turn, Starbuck lawyers found that the syndicate had no right to sell the land to McManus and were confident the courts would decide in favor of Emerald before it was all over. But if Emerald didn’t log now during the summertime, it’d suffer irreversible losses by fall, when the heavy snows would keep the crew out of the woods—and it’d take that long to settle the case, not counting delays and