Seven

“Are you crazy?”

“Poor choice of words, son. You already know I’ve been a little bit crazy my whole life. Must be from getting my brain knocked around so much as a kid.” Jake spoke with a cigarette between his lips as he headed for the jailhouse.

“Pa!” Lloyd reached out and grabbed his father’s arm. “Slow down!”

Jake turned to face him, taking the cigarette from his lips.

“You know what I meant,” Lloyd told him. “That kid in there is huge trouble! He’ll be getting into fights with my son and with young Jake and very likely Ben every five minutes. They won’t put up with his shit and neither will the men.”

“Good! That’s what he needs. Besides that, when young Jake is mad, he can beat up a grizzly. Stephen is already growing practically as tall as you, and he wrestles down steers. He can hold his own. And I don’t need to tell you about Ben. He could probably beat up both of us! The kid is a moose. There isn’t a person alive who’d believe he’s only fourteen. All three of those boys have been toughened up by ranch life, and they have the Harkner spirit of defense—even Ben, in spite of not having a drop of my blood in him.” Jake turned and started walking again. “Besides, I don’t intend to let that little bastard Tommy get close to a gun or the houses. He’ll live out at the bunkhouse, and you know damn well how fast the men out there will shake his tail out. They’ll have him wetting his pants.”

“Damn it, Pa, why? Why are you doing this?”

They stepped up onto a boardwalk and Jake faced his son again, taking another drag on his cigarette before explaining. “Because it’s a way for me to atone for my past. For once I’m going to help a shit-bag outlaw instead of shooting him, which he’s very lucky I haven’t already done.”

Lloyd closed his eyes and sighed. “Pa, sit down on this bench over here before you go into that jail. Will you do that? The J&L is mostly mine, so I think I have a say in this, don’t you?”

Jake buttoned his wool jacket closer around his neck, studying his very brave and loyal son’s dark eyes. He couldn’t imagine any father being more proud of his son. He sighed deeply and put the cigarette between his lips again. “All right. I’ll grant you have a point.” Jake walked over and sat down, stretching his left leg out to relieve some of the pain. “I already know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?” Lloyd sat down beside him, resting his elbows on his knees. He removed his gloves and set them aside, then rubbed his hands together to get the circulation going. “Pa, why in hell do you think you need to atone for anything? You’re almost sixty-three years old and you quit your outlaw ways over thirty years ago. You paid for it with four years in prison and just about that many more years as a U.S. Marshal in the most hellish and dangerous country a man could ask for. You saved Mom’s life when you two first met. You shot it out with seven men to keep them from killing me and Mom when I was a baby. You still have pain in your hip from taking a bullet then. And later, after I abandoned the family and went kind of crazy, you literally risked your neck to save me. You risked your life again to save Evie at Dune Hollow.”

“So did you. You were shot.”

“That doesn’t matter. We’re talking about you now. I know you hate that, but I’m not done yet.” Lloyd stopped to light his own cigarette while his father sat quietly smoking. He took a long drag before continuing. “You saved young Ben from being beaten near to death by his father, and then you adopted him and have treated him like your blood son ever since. Evie and I couldn’t ask for a better father or a better grandfather to our kids. And in Denver you nearly got yourself hanged for killing the man who shot me. You didn’t even know if I was dead or alive. You just reacted out of your love for me. Then you stuck by Mom with a patience I never knew you had after what she suffered two years ago. No man could have been kinder or more loving to his wife.”

“What’s your point, Lloyd?”

“My point is that you have nothing to atone for. You’ve already done it, over and over. You risked your ass again foiling that bank robbery in Boulder—probably saved some innocent lives.”

“That’s just because they had hold of your mother and my granddaughter.”

“No, it isn’t. You would have done it anyway, even if they weren’t involved. Don’t say you wouldn’t have. And then you truly did nearly lose your life going to Mexico to rescue a young girl you didn’t even know, and you did it for the highest-paid prostitute in Denver—a woman few men would bother helping. But her daughter was in a horrible state and you couldn’t stand it, so you went down there and ended up with a broken leg and beaten with a bull whip and you’re still in pain from that. So don’t be talking about how you have to atone for anything. What’s the real reason you want to hire on Tommy Tyler?”

Jake took one last drag on his cigarette and threw the stub onto the boardwalk, then stepped it out. “Because in all the things I’ve done, I’ve always killed or hurt the bad guy, if that’s what you want to call them. They all deserved it, but I was hardly any different from them the first thirty years of my life. I never gave any of them one chance to change his ways…the way your mother gave me the chance to do the same. And in this case, the bad guy is only eighteen. By the time I was eighteen, I’d killed my father and was running with the worst of them.”

“You didn’t have any choice when you killed your father.”

“Maybe not, but that damn legacy has been with me all my life. I finally shed myself of the ugly memories when I went down to Texas and saw that my mother and little brother got a proper burial and a proper headstone. But I don’t think that was the end of it. I think God wants me to do one more thing. And yes, those words came out of Jake Harkner’s lips. I have a chance to save a young man from going down the road I took, and I’m going to try. For one thing, if I don’t face this head on, that little bastard might decide to backtrack on me and still come back and try to bring harm, to me or someone I love. I’m going to cut him off at the pass and surprise him by offering him a job…with some damn hard-set rules.”

“He’ll laugh in your face.”

“Maybe. But unless he wants to sit in jail and then have no money and no place to go when he gets out, he’ll take my offer. I saw something in his eyes, Lloyd. I saw myself…the little boy who really wanted nothing more than for someone to care about him and offer him a little help. And in that moment I saw my father beating up on me, like I was beating up on him. It stopped me, and I felt something…someone…telling me to do something about it. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Lloyd finished his own cigarette, stepping it out as he rubbed at his eyes. “All right. But I’d better never see that little sonofabitch anywhere close to Sadie Mae or Tricia—or trying to pick a fight with one of the boys. And I’ll tell the men not to go easy on him, so don’t expect any forgiveness or kind treatment from Cole or Terrel or any of the rest of them.”

“I don’t want them to treat him kindly. I just want them to treat him like they treat each other, unless he steps out of bounds. If he smarts off or tries to start something, he deserves whatever they do to him. If anybody can make a man out of a smart-mouthed little troublemaker like Tommy Tyler, it’s the men on the J&L. He’ll soon learn to stay straight or wish he had.”

Lloyd leaned back and stretched out his legs. “Fine. Go get the little bastard. Tell him when we leave in the morning, he’s going with us…tied up in the back of one of the wagons. I won’t let him sit a horse and try riding off scot-free.”

“Agreed.” Jake leaned forward, watching a snowflake drift down to his boot. “Lloyd, maybe the kid has never had a decent family Christmas. I want him to see what our family Christmases are like. If he straightens up enough by Christmas, we’ll let him join us for presents and dinner.”

Lloyd removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “I can hardly believe Jake Harkner is talking.” He rose, pulling his long hair out from under his jacket before putting his hat back on. “Please let me be the judge of that. We want this to be the happiest Christmas possible. Do you agree he can’t be there if I say so? He hasn’t even seen Evie or Katie yet. You know how beautiful they will look to a wild little eighteen-year-old like that. If he says one word to make them uncomfortable or looks at them wrong, I’ll beat the shit out of him myself. You won’t have to feel guilty for being the one to do it. Hell, you’re the one who jumped all over him back at the ranch for making that remark about Mom. You’re expecting an awful lot to happen in just a little under three weeks.”

Jake rose and faced him. “I know. It might not work at all, but at least I’ll know I tried.”

“Yeah, well, I’d better get back to Katie. Today I get the joy of watching Donavan and Jeffrey while she shops with her mother and Evie. Jeffrey is already trying to walk and Donavan is into running off on me, so I’ll have my hands full. I’ll let you talk to the sheriff.”

Jake nodded, smiling a little. “Thanks for agreeing to this.”

“I just hope I don’t regret it.”

“You think I don’t feel the same way?”

Lloyd studied his father and the lines in his face that spoke of too many hard years. “I love you, Pa. If not for being so damn glad to know you’re alive, I’d object to this, but I can tell it’s important to you.”

They shared a look that said, I’d die for you in an instant—no hesitation—if it came to that. The bond was set hard and fast.

“Thanks,” Jake told his son.

They gave each other a quick hug and pat on the back before Lloyd left. Jake took a deep breath and stepped into the jailhouse.