Fifty

Lloyd saw him first. On the horizon. A lone man on a horse, and pulling a packhorse along. Lloyd was familiar enough with every single horse and man on the J&L to know it wasn’t Jake, and it wasn’t Outlaw. His stomach tightened. It was a roan gelding. Cole. God, no!

It had been seven days since his mother nearly collapsed over thinking something had happened to Jake. Damn it, Cole, where’s Outlaw?

Terrel happened to ride past, and he shouted to Terrel to get down off his horse. “Go tell Peter to keep my mother in the house,” he told Terrel.

“Yes, sir.” Terrel looked toward where Cole was coming in. “Shit,” he mumbled, hurrying to the house.

Lloyd mounted Terrel’s horse and charged up the hill before Cole could come any closer. He rode in a circle around the man. “Where’s my father?” he shouted.

Cole reined his horse to a halt, devastation written all over his haggard face. He just closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Goddamn it, Cole, where’s my father!”

Cole removed his hat and rubbed his shirtsleeve across his forehead. “He ain’t comin’.”

“That’s it?” Lloyd practically screamed. “He ain’t comin’? That’s all you have to say?”

Cole whirled his horse. “Yeah, Lloyd, that’s it! He’s as much as dead, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it! Shoot me if you want. I’d be glad if you did, because right now I’d just as soon be dead myself except for the fact I don’t have the guts to put my own gun to my head and pull the trigger! Jake chose what happened, Lloyd! He did it to give me and Annie time to get away, and now he’s dead!”

“You’re lying!” Lloyd leapt right off his horse and into Cole, knocking him off his mount and to the ground. Cole covered his face as the much bigger Lloyd began pummeling him, calling him a fucking liar and a coward. “You left him!” he roared. “You left him behind, didn’t you?”

In moments, several of the ranch hands surrounded them. It took six of them to get Lloyd off Cole, who got to his knees, then managed to stand up, his face cut and bleeding. Lloyd went for his gun, but Terrel grabbed it, and with the help of three other men, they managed to get it away from Lloyd.

“Jesus, Lloyd, that’s Cole!” Terrel told him. “He’d never abandon Jake of his own accord, and you know it! And he ain’t gonna fight you back. He knows you still ain’t healed on the inside.”

Lloyd glared at Cole as he jerked away from the men who held him. He grasped his middle and turned away. “Where’s my father?” he groaned.

“I did every goddamn thing I could do, Lloyd. You gotta know that! It came down to a choice of me and him both dyin’ and a Mexican don getting his hands on Annie…which would have defeated the entire purpose of Jake riskin’ his life like that. Jake even gave me his guns to keep for Little Jake. I tried my best to save him, but I couldn’t! Do you understand? I couldn’t! If I could go back there and trade my life for your father’s, I would, because my life ain’t worth a shit. I’d die for any member of this family, and you goddamn well know it. You know there wasn’t one damn thing I could do, or I would have done it!”

Lloyd stumbled away from them, then went to his knees. Pa! He heard his mother then, screaming for him. “Oh, my God,” he moaned. After a moment, he managed to get to his feet and turned to see the men standing in a group, surrounding Cole as though they feared Lloyd would charge into him again. Blood streamed from a cut on Cole’s cheek, mixed with silent tears that came from Cole’s eyes. Cole, a man seemingly immune to softer feelings—a crusty cowboy as tough as nails, crying. Cole, a hardened ex-outlaw, much like Jake…the kind of man Jake would be if not for—

“Lloyd, where is Jake?”

Randy screamed the words as she headed up the hill. Lloyd hurried down to intercept her. A moment later, she screamed Jake’s name loud enough for everyone around the homestead to hear.

“No! No! It’s not true!”

Lloyd had to keep an arm around her to keep her from collapsing as he helped her back to the house.

Evie came running, then folded to her knees. Katie came out of her and Lloyd’s house and ran to Lloyd. He put his other arm around his wife and herded her and his mother inside. Peter came out to help with Randy, and Brian ran to Evie, helping her up. She turned and collapsed against her husband, weeping.

Cole looked away and walked to his horse . He studied the vast expanse of the J&L spread out in all its glory beyond the hillside. “This place ain’t never gonna be the same,” he told the other men. “Not ever.”

“What happened down there in Mexico, Cole?” Terrel asked.

It took Cole a moment to answer. “I think he just gave up.” Cole swallowed and sniffed. “Jake Harkner has been fightin’ his own demons his whole life, and he finally stopped tryin’. That’s the only way I see it.”

A couple of the other men turned away with tears in their eyes.

Terrel spoke up. “This will kill his wife. She won’t survive this. Last winter was bad enough, but she only got through that because of Jake. She ain’t gonna get through this.”