Thirty-eight

The room hung quiet. Every person present was lost in thought and despair while Gretta took a moment to regain her composure. “The note is in Spanish,” she told Jake, “but Otis asked someone to interpret it for him, and in English it means…House of Heavenly Women.” She picked up a cloth napkin to wipe at her eyes. “My God, I feel so awful about this. All of you have to understand this was the hardest decision of my life. You don’t owe me anything, but I have nowhere else to turn.” She wiped at more tears and faced Jake, her stomach tightening at the look on his face. He hardly looked like Jake Harkner, the affable, handsome family man. He was someone else, and the darkness in his eyes was overwhelming.

“Otis said he was told that the place is heavily guarded,” she told Jake. “There are lots of men there who know how to use guns. And it’s run by a white man named Sidney Wayland. The brothel is just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, so if she’s still there, you wouldn’t have to go far.”

Randy noticed Jake stiffened at the mention of Brownsville. He put a hand to his chest as though he felt pain. “She’s still there, all right,” Jake said. “If she’s as pretty as you say, she’s still there. Do you have a picture?”

“Yes.” She took a photograph from a pocket on her dress and handed it to Jake with a shaking hand. He studied it a moment.

“Jesus, she looks twelve.”

The rage in his soul was palpable. Gretta had never seen nor felt such darkness. Jake handed the picture to Lloyd, and from him it passed around to the whole family.

“Where is this uncle of yours now?” he asked Gretta.

“Dead.”

“Good, because if he wasn’t, I’d hunt him down, and he’d be dead when I got through with him.” He snuffed out his cigarette in the remains of a piece of pie. “Any idea what tactic this man Valencia used? Maybe they saw him right away as some kind of lawman, or maybe he just grabbed your daughter and tried to run off with her.”

“I have no idea,” Gretta admitted. “Loretta is the one who hired him. I never even met the man, but I repaid her the two hundred dollars she spent, and I will pay you well if you do this.”

“I don’t want any pay. I don’t need it, and I wouldn’t do something like this for money.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll feel much better if you let me pay you. I brought almost four thousand dollars with me. Take it with you. It’s easy to bribe men like the ones who have my Annie, and one dollar American goes twice as far in Mexico. You might even be able to buy my daughter back. That would be the easiest way to get her out of there.”

Jake stared at the picture again when it came back to him. “Buying her won’t stop what’s going on down there. Someone needs to kill Sidney Wayland.”

Randy gasped. “Jake, no!”

“Pa, you’re not a lawman anymore,” Lloyd reminded him, “and even if you were, American lawmen can’t go into Mexico.”

“Jake, going there to kill a man could land you in a Mexican prison the rest of your life…or worse!” Gretta reminded him. “I’m not asking you to do something like that. I just want my daughter back.”

The look in his eyes actually frightened her.

“This will keep happening if the man in charge isn’t gotten rid of. It’s that simple.” Jake rose and walked across the room to the fireplace at the other end. “I’ll have to pose as a customer, maybe even a buyer, like you said.” He ran a hand through his hair, turning and packing back and forth in an odd frustration.

“Jake, what aren’t you telling us?” Randy asked.

He braced his arm against the fireplace mantel and rested his head on his arm. “I grew up in Brownsville.” The words came out as though he was in pain.

Randy quickly got up and walked closer to him. “Jake?”

He straightened, putting his hands on his hips and taking a deep breath. “That’s where I spent those first ugly years,” he said through gritted teeth. “Once I left, I never went back. Never! Not to Brownsville and not even back to Texas. I haven’t even thought about Brownsville in years.”

“Jesus,” Lloyd said under his breath. “Pa, you know what going there will do to you,” he said louder. He left the table and joined Jake and Randy at the fireplace. “I don’t like any of this!”

“She’s fifteen!” Jake roared. “And she’s Gretta’s daughter!”

“And I’m not letting you go down there alone!”

“Yes, you will let me go alone! You have a wife and three kids, another one on the way, and you still aren’t healed after a whole year of pain and hell. Not to mention you have an eighty-thousand-acre ranch to run and a bunkhouse full of men out there who depend on you for their jobs. And if something happens to me, you’ve got your mother to think about. She can’t lose us both, Lloyd! She can’t lose us both!”

“I can’t lose you!” Randy pleaded. “Not now, Jake!”

Gretta broke into renewed tears. “I’m so sorry.”

Evie stared at her father, grief written all over her face. “Daddy, I know you. You’ll go after her because that’s what you do, but I have an awful feeling about this. And if something happens that sets your temper off…you know what that will do to you. You could end up in a Mexican prison, or worse.”

“Jake, you’d better think this one over really good,” Brian warned. “One man has already died. I know he probably didn’t compare to you when it comes to using a gun, but you should still take someone with you. If not Lloyd, then a couple of the ranch hands. Cole and Terrel are good shots.”

“I should go!” Lloyd argued in a near rage. “We’ve had each other’s backs since we rode together in Oklahoma. I’m not letting you do this alone, Pa!”

“Lloyd, you can’t!” Katie protested, breaking into tears. “I’m going to have another baby. And you have the ranch to run. My God, Lloyd, don’t leave all this. You know Jake is right. You can’t go with him.”

Jake faced them with determination. “Katie’s right. Of every member of this family, I’m the one who’s needed the least,” he told them.

Evie gasped. “Daddy, don’t say that!”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Katie told him, tears starting to come.

“I know that.”

Jake began to pace. Randy knew the signs. No one would be able to argue with him, not even Lloyd. In minutes he’d turned from a gentle, loving husband and affable grandfather to someone else…to the man she’d first met and feared. And she knew deep inside that the possibility of bringing his past right in front of his eyes again was what had him the most upset.

“Every person in this room is a keeper of the J&L,” Jake told the family, finally standing still to face them. “You all represent the future of this place. I’ll never truly fit into that future. I’m part of a past that will never be again.”

There it was! Lloyd realized why his father had been so restless the last few weeks. It was as though he’d known something like this was coming. He wanted to grab Jake and beg him not to go, but he knew better. “Pa, you have to let me and a couple other men go with you.”

Jake shook his head. “No. Not you. Not my son. I already watched you die, or close enough as to make no difference. You’re too important to this whole family, and I’ll not let anyone else risk his life over this. I’ll talk to the men. Maybe Cole can go with me, but only him.”

Randy turned away. “Jake, you promised not to leave me again.”

“I know what I promised, but I can’t let this go, Randy. You have to trust in me. We both knew when we talked upstairs that I might end up having to go away.”

Gretta spoke up. “Jake, I could go too. I could claim I’m looking for new girls.”

Evie broke into tears, covering her face as Brian put an arm around her and drew her close.

“I won’t take the risk of you ending up in their hands any more than I’d risk my own wife or daughter,” Jake told Gretta. “It doesn’t matter what you are. You’re a woman, and I won’t risk any woman’s life. I can do this alone. The only reason I’m taking Cole is for backup to get Annie out of there if I’m…” He hesitated. “If I don’t make it out.”

“Damn it, Pa, I know we can do this together!”

Jake faced Lloyd, his countenance like a rolling thunderstorm. He looked ready to explode with a mixture of determined anger and undying love. “You’ve followed me to hell and back too many times,” he told his son. “You’re the most decent and most loyal son a man could ask for, but you’re also a father, and young enough to learn how to live with all the new laws and new ways. It won’t be long before you’ll have to defend this ranch against the changes that are coming. If you don’t stay here and stay healthy, the ranch could be broken up and parceled out. You’re smart and educated, and you’ll know how to handle things without violence. And violence is all I know, son.”

Lloyd held his gaze, his eyes teary, his jaw flexing in horrible indecision. “What if you get shot? I can’t let you die alone, Pa. No man should die alone, especially not my…” His voice choked. “Not my father.”

Randy covered her face and wept. Jake looked at her, pain ripping through his heart. He could lose her again. She was still so fragile. He turned away. “In spite of your mother and this family, in a way I’ve been alone my whole life, Lloyd. You know what I’m talking about. It’s a different kind of alone.”

“You aren’t going down there just to find Gretta’s daughter, are you? You’re going down there to prove something to yourself. You grew up by the gun, and you think you should die by the gun. I saw it in your eyes when we had that talk after that deal with Brady. Some little part of you gave up right then. I heard it in your voice. You saw the future, and you think you don’t belong in it, but you do, Pa! You do belong in it—for Stephen and Ben and Little Jake and the girls…for me and Evie…and for that woman standing beside you—the woman you just pulled back from hell and made whole again. That’s what you do, Pa. You pull people back from hell because you know what hell is like.

“So you go ahead and go to Mexico and take that girl out of her hell, because I know not one person here is going to be able to stop you, including Mom. But you, by God, had better not give up. You’ve survived a hell of a lot, so don’t be using this as your excuse to finally give it all up, Jake Harkner!”

It struck Gretta that there was far more going on here than Jake rescuing her daughter. Did the man have a death wish? He was surely a tortured soul, in spite of the big, loving family that surrounded him…in spite of the woman who’d given up so much for him. She realized she probably didn’t know half of what Randy Harkner had been through in her married life, over and above what happened to her last winter. “I’m so sorry,” she told them again. “I wish I wasn’t the one asking this. I’ll leave, and I will find someone else—”

“No!” Jake answered. “Once you mentioned Brownsville, I knew it had to be me.”

Randy wiped at her eyes and faced him with determination. “You’ve left me before, and I was always sure you would do everything in your power to make it back. But something about you is different this time. I’m looking at Jake, the outlaw who thinks he’s worthless. But he’s worth a hell of a lot to a lot of people, and he’s my life. So you come back, damn you! You come back, because when I die, I’m not going to be buried up at that line shack alone. Do you understand me, Jake? We’re going to live and love together for a lot more years, and one day we’ll be buried together up on that mountain. Don’t you take that away from me, Jake Harkner! Don’t you dare consider yourself dispensable to this family—and not ever dispensable to me! You know damn well how much I need you!”

Jake studied her a long, silent moment, a spark of the abused little boy flickering in his dark eyes. “I have something to do besides going after Gretta’s daughter, Randy. You know what I’m talking about.” He walked past her. “I’m going out to talk to Cole, and I need to find Rodriguez. He knows the right things to pack in my gear for me.” He paused at the doorway. “And all of you understand something. I don’t want one person in this family blaming Gretta for this. It is what it is, whether her daughter or someone else’s. And, Gretta, none of this is your fault. If anything, it’s your uncle’s. If he was here right now, I’d make him a sorry man for what he did to you.” He reached up and took down his guns from where they hung over the door, then faced Gretta. “Pack some underclothes and a dress and give them to Rodriguez. Your daughter might need something decent to wear when I find her.” He started out again.

“Daddy!” Evie shouted before he could get out the door.

Jake hesitated. “Don’t say it, Evie. You won’t change my mind.”

“I don’t intend to try. All I want is your promise that you won’t go riding off in the morning without all of us being there to pray for you first.”

Jake sighed and leaned against the doorjamb. “You don’t give up, do you?” He faced her, his brows lowered.

“No, I don’t. I’m a Harkner. I didn’t give up on myself or my marriage after Dune Hollow, and you aren’t going to give up just because you’re getting older and you think you don’t belong on this earth any longer. You forget how well we all know you and how you think. The Good Lord knows we’ve all had our share of time talking you out of these moods. But once you’re gone from here, we’ll have to leave what happens up to God Himself. He will be the one who chooses when you leave this world, Jake Harkner, not you. I prefer to ask Him to bring you back here, and with that girl. So don’t you dare leave without letting us pray for you!”

Jake shook his head and turned. “Lloyd, go upstairs and fix that goddamn bed.” He walked out.

Not one of them could help smiling through their tears. Only Jake would say such a thing at such a serious time.

Randy looked at Gretta.

“I’m sorry, Randy,” Gretta told her. “But Annie is the only good thing I’ve ever accomplished in my life. I can’t leave her down there with those animals.”

“Of course you can’t. And you couldn’t have picked a better man to go after her.” Jake! You promised not to leave me again! You promised!

Gretta looked at her lap, Jake’s remark about packing clothes for Annie playing over again in her mind and giving her hope. He’d said “when I find her”…not “if I find her.”