Fifty-one

After everything had calmed down some, Lloyd had someone get Cole and bring him to the house. The whole family sat in stunned silence as Cole explained exactly what happened, fighting his tears as he did so.

“Poor little Annie is so devastated. She can’t get over what he did for her. He was so nice to me, she kept sayin’. He spent the whole night with me, and all he did was put his arm around me and tell me not to be scared. She feels horrible about having to leave him behind.”

Brian spoke up. “Then we need to have her come out here to the J&L. She needs to know none of this is her fault, and I think the family will feel better if they can meet her.”

Cole nodded. “She’s a beautiful, beautiful girl. Incredibly innocent for what she went through.” He glanced at Randy. “She said as how Jake said how much he loved his wife. She couldn’t get over the fact that he paid three thousand dollars for a night with her and then sat there and talked about his wife and grandchildren.”

That brought a few smiles, a welcome break from the heartache they were suffering.

“Gretta’s in a bad way too,” Cole told them. “She’s just flat-out destroyed. She said she’s closin’ up her place and turnin’ it into a legitimate roomin’ house, but right now I’m worried about her state of mind. She’s so happy Annie is back. She just wants her daughter to have a normal life and fall in love and marry like a natural woman ought to do, but she’s sick about Jake. She’s so damn sorry to all of you, and she feels so guilty. I promised her nobody would blame her, but she’s a mess.”

“Then you need to go back to Denver, Cole,” Evie told him. “We’ll give you a letter to take to her.”

Cole sighed, nodding toward the cloth bag he’d laid on the table. “There’s Jake’s guns,” he told them. “He half threw them at me and said as how he’d promised them to Little Jake. I think he just didn’t want them men who was after him to get hold of them, ’cuz they’re famous and all. He wanted them to stay in the family.”

Little Jake got up from his chair and stormed over to Cole and started hitting him with his fists. “I don’t want ’em!” he cried. “I don’t want Grandpa’s guns! I want Grandpa! You let him die! You let him die!”

Brian pulled the boy off Cole and hung on to him as he kept kicking and flailing his fists. “Stop it, Jake!” he demanded.

“Jake, this is not Cole’s fault,” Evie told him as she joined Brian in trying to calm the boy down. “Your grandfather is probably with God now. He’s in the best place he’s ever been.” She broke down herself, and turned away.

“Apologize to Cole!” Brian ordered his son. “He risked his life trying to get Jake out of there. You know Cole. He wouldn’t leave your grandfather to die unless he had absolutely no other choice!”

Little Jake jerked in a sob, hanging his head. “I’m…sorry.”

Cole grabbed one of his arms and squeezed. “Little Jake, as much pain as he was in, your grandfather thought to give me them guns. Just think what that means. He was thinkin’ about you. You can honor him by taking damn good care of them guns and growin’ up to be a strong, good man like your grandpa was. And don’t use them guns for nothin’ bad. Your grandpa wants you to learn the new ways and be a law-abidin’ man. You’ve seen how your grandpa suffered because of his own past. He doesn’t want that for any of you.”

Little Jake straightened, wiping at his tears. He looked around the table. “Don’t anybody call me Little Jake again,” he told them. “You call me Jake! Just Jake!” He ran out the door, and they could hear his sobs as he kept running. Ben laid his head in his arms on the table and wept, and Stephen got up and walked into the great room to curl up in his grandfather’s chair.

Lloyd stood near Katie, and she reached out to grasp his hand. “Lloyd, I don’t know what to say to you. I’m so sorry for you,” she wept.

Brian sighed and rubbed at his eyes. Evie sank back into her chair and covered her face, breaking into more tears. “Daddy,” she cried.

“I should have gone with him,” Lloyd lamented again. He squeezed Katie’s hand, then let go and turned away. “Ever since the Outlaw Trail, we’ve been together through everything. We’ve had each other’s backs for years, all those times in No Man’s Land back in Oklahoma, going up against the worst of them, we always looked out for each other. And last summer, when I was shot, he stayed right there with me day and night for weeks and took care of me, and he almost got hanged for avenging what happened to me.” His voice broke, and he wiped at his eyes. “Damn it! He can be such a stubborn…sonofabitch! I never should have let him talk me into staying. I should have been with him!”

“You probably would have died with him, Lloyd,” Cole told him. “He didn’t want you to take that risk. Look at that beautiful wife of yours, carryin’ another one of your young ’uns. You couldn’t risk leaving her to raise all them kids alone. And you have a big ranch to run. The welfare of the whole family depends on this place and on you. You gotta know this is what your father wanted…for you to be right here where you belong. He damn well knew you’d have risked your life for him in a second, but he didn’t want that.”

They remained silent for a few minutes, every one of them trying to get control of themselves. Peter took hold of Randy’s hand and squeezed.

“Some of you…uh…aren’t my biggest fans,” he told them, “but”—his voice broke a little—“you have to know I liked the hell out of Jake…and I respected the man for the way he could…keep going in spite of the hard life he led. I saw his goodness, in spite of that gruff facade he had. Surely you know how much I cared about him, or I wouldn’t have done so much for him. Yes, it was for your mother too, but I was proud to call Jake a friend. I wish I knew what to tell you now…how to find comforting words.”

“You’ve been a good, good friend, Peter,” Evie told him. She broke into tears again and couldn’t finish.

“Did he find anything about his past in Brownsville?” Randy asked. She sat rigid, clinging to Peter’s hand, but after her initial screams of devastation and nearly collapsing, strangely, she wasn’t crying now.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cole told her. “He…he found the house where he grew up.”

Nearly all of them gasped.

“What did he do?” Evie asked.

Cole shook his head. “It was pretty bad. He took a sledgehammer to it. It was just stone walls…no roof and nothin’ inside. He battered them walls till they was knocked into rubble. Then he showed me where his ma and brother was buried. He’d already gone to a mortician and ordered a headstone for it. He told me that if he didn’t make it back, I should make sure the headstone was taken care of. I did.”

“Jake…oh, Jake, I should have been with you for that,” Randy said, closing her eyes.

“He did say…more than once, ma’am…I need Randy. But he got through it, and if it’s any comfort…I think it gave him some peace, bein’ able to put a headstone on his ma’s burial place.”

“Oh, my God, that must have been awful for him,” Lloyd groaned, finally sitting down beside Katie. Katie rubbed a hand across his back, and Lloyd put his head in his hands.

“I just sat and waited for him to do what he had to do,” Cole told them. “He sat there by his ma’s grave most of the day, not sayin’ nothin’.”

“Jesus, Cole, I’m sorry for attacking you,” Lloyd told him. “You’ve been a damn good friend to me and Jake both. I just didn’t want to believe…” He couldn’t finish.

“I half expected it,” Cole told him. “And you don’t know how bad I wish it had been me them men made off with and not your father.” He looked at Randy. “Randy, Jake’s last words was to tell you…uh…tell you he loves you,” Cole told her.

Randy looked around the table, then let go of Peter’s hand and rose. “All of you listen to me.”

They looked at her in surprise. Lloyd got up again and moved to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Mom—”

“It’s okay, Lloyd.” She thought a moment before speaking. “Lloyd called Jake a stubborn sonofabitch, and he damn well is. He’s the toughest man I’ve ever known. And any boy who can survive what he survived can handle a lot more as a man. We already know what a fighter he is.” She looked at Evie. “Jake is not dead, Evie. Your prayers are too strong for God to have let him die. And he said he’d come back to me.”

“Mother, you have to face the truth.”

Randy looked at Cole. “You said they dragged him off, but they didn’t kill him.”

“Ma’am, he had a broken leg, and then they dragged him. Ain’t no man gonna survive that. And even if he did, them men ain’t gonna let him live. There’s no sense thinkin’ otherwise.”

Randy turned to Peter. “I should think we have a right to demand to see a body,” she told him. “Don’t we? Can’t we send someone to Mexican authorities and explain what happened and demand to know just what happened to my husband after they took him away? It was Mexican citizens who took him, not the law.”

If not for the gravity of the situation, Peter would have smiled. Randy was not going to give up on Jake Harkner. “I can see what we can do.”

“You do that, Peter.” She looked at the rest of them. “Until we have a body—some kind of real proof—I refuse to believe my husband is dead. Jake Harkner knows suffering, and he’ll bear it if he sees any hope of making it back here to his family, to little Tricia and Sadie Mae, to Ben and to the grandsons he so treasures…and to me! He’ll come back for me! He always does. He promised me he’d be back, and I choose to believe that he will. And you, Evie, need to pray that whatever your father is suffering now, God will bring him help and solace and take away his pain.”

They looked at one another, trying to decide if Randy could be right or if she’d finally lost her mind. After all, how could Randy go on without the man who was her lover, her soul mate, her heartbeat?

“Ma’am, you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Cole told her. “You don’t know them men down there. They’re bound to execute him. And they have a lot of power, even over the law.”

Randy looked at Cole. “But when they took him away, he was still alive. Those men don’t know my Jake. He is a mean sonofabitch,” she repeated. “Lloyd always says so. Those men are going to make him very, very angry, and we all know what Jake is like when he’s angry. Even I don’t want to be around him when he’s like that. And pain doesn’t frighten him. I, for one, will never believe he’s dead until I have proof.”

“Mother, don’t do this to yourself,” Evie begged.

“Evie Harkner Stewart, what happened to your faith? You’ve prayed your father through prison and that leg wound back in Guthrie, and me through surgery, and it’s your faith that helped you survive. You prayed your brother back to life last year, and you prayed for me when”—her voice wavered—“last winter. And your father and I found each other again, and our love has never been stronger. Now you need to believe your father is alive and pray that whatever he is suffering, God will help him through it and bring him back to us. And right now, I need to be strong. Jake would want that.”

She turned to Lloyd. “He would want that for you too, Lloyd. You are damn well your father’s son. You’re an absolute replica of the man, right down to your very soul. You need to go on with life, running this ranch, being a wonderful father and husband and brother and son. Keep this ranch going like it always has, because when Jake gets back, he’ll want to see that you’ve gone on just fine without him. He’d want that.”

Who do you belong to?

Randy nearly gasped when the words hit her. It was as though Jake was standing right beside her and whispering the words into her ear. She put a hand to her chest and nearly doubled over.

Jake Harkner, she told him inside.

Every beautiful inch of you.

Randy put a hand to her quivering lips, new tears coming. “He’s alive. I know it. He’s alive. If he wasn’t, I’d know it.”