Two

Jake went inside the house to see Randy consoling Sadie Mae, while young Jake stood near the fireplace, his hands still in fists. “You okay, Grandpa?”

Jake sighed, removing his hat and coat and unbuckling his gun belt. “Jake, you have to stop goading men like that cocky little cowboy,” he warned his grandson. “Let me or Lloyd or your father take care of them.”

“I didn’t like how that Tommy looked at you,” young Jake said, pouting. “I could tell he wanted to draw on you, Grandpa. I just wish I was big enough to handle a gun myself.”

“Don’t be so anxious to have a gun in your hand. You know how I feel about that, Jake. As for Tommy Tyler, I’ve been around men like that all my life, and I damn well knew he was going to be stupid enough to draw on me. You don’t need to be defending me when it comes to something like that. It just distracts me, because I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I sent you into the house.”

The boy blinked back tears. “I just get scared, Grandpa. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Last winter we all thought you were dead, and that’s the worst thing I ever felt. I don’t ever want to see you dead.”

Jake reached out and touched the boy’s cheek. “No smart-mouthed little runt like Tommy Tyler will ever get the best of your grandfather, Jake. As far as me dying, that’s up to God, not to me or you. But when it happens, and it will, you have to accept that everybody gets older and everybody dies, Jake. I’m just glad I was given the chance to have a family first and the best grandsons a man could ask for in you and Stephen. I appreciate how brave you are in defending me, and I know you’ll do the same for your mother and sister someday.”

Young Jake suddenly hugged him. “Are you mad at me?”

Jake grinned. “It never lasts long, Jake. I love you too much.”

Sadie Mae and Tricia stood watching their grandfather, still sniffling over the scare of Jake’s booming gunshot and the fight that followed. Jake patted his grandson’s shoulder, then let go of him and glanced at Randy, who just stood there with arms folded, smiling softly through tears.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Jake sighed deeply, rubbing at his neck. “I will be.” He looked down at his namesake. “Jake, you didn’t do anything wrong. Go on home and comfort your mother. Evie is probably upset.”

“Okay.” Young Jake gave his grandfather a quick smile before darting away. “Wait till Stephen finds out about this,” he said excitedly, referring to Lloyd’s son. Young Jake and Stephen were close, though Stephen was three years older. “He’s way out north of here helping some of the men spread winter feed. He’ll be sorry he missed the shoot-out!” He ran out the door and Big Jake removed his coat and hat, then his guns. He hung them back over the door and glanced at his worried wife.

Randy walked up and embraced him. Jake hugged her close and kissed her hair. “This sure isn’t how I figured the morning after Thanksgiving would turn out,” he told her.

Randy looked up at him. “Thank God you’re okay,” she told him, moving her hands over his arms while she studied her husband’s handsome face. “But, Jake, you really shouldn’t go throwing men off their horses and landing into them like that. You might have hurt your back or your leg.”

He rocked her in his arms. “Don’t be underestimating me, woman,” he teased.

Randy smiled. “After what we shared last night, I’m not underestimating a thing. I just want you to use some common sense because of that leg, Mr. Harkner.”

“I’ll be fine. I just hope I don’t end up regretting the fact that I let that young sonofabitch ride off alive and well.”

Sadie Mae spoke up then, new tears forming on her cheeks. “That man looked at me with mean eyes, Grampa. He scared me.”

Jake gently pushed Randy away and walked over to where the girls stood near the circular stairs that led to the loft bedroom he shared with Randy.

“And now he’s gone and won’t be back,” he assured the frightened girl. He leaned down and managed to pick up both girls, one in each arm. “No more crying,” he told them. “Grandpa is just fine.”

“Why did that man want to shoot you?” Sadie Mae lamented.

“He was just a stupid kid who wanted to brag he was faster than Jake Harkner.”

“Are you hurt?” Tricia asked him.

Jake carried them to his big leather chair, thinking how he would have preferred to kill Tommy Tyler. But times were changing, and he was trying to change with them, although it was very frustrating for a man accustomed to dealing out his own form of justice.

“I’m just fine,” he told the girls. He winced with pain as he lowered himself into the chair and let the girls each sit on a knee. He loved how different they looked. Tricia’s hair was bright red and curly, like her mother’s—Lloyd’s wife, Katie. She had bright blue eyes, and her nose and cheeks were scattered with freckles. Sadie Mae had long, dark hair like Jake’s lovely daughter Evie, who was tall and slender and ravishing, an example of the best of Mexican and white blood. Sadie Mae had dark eyes and a smile that would melt the heart of the worst man who ever walked. She smiled almost constantly, and when she did, her whole face lit up and the sweet dimples in her cheeks grew deeper. Both girls still had that little-girl chubbiness about them, and Jake loved them beyond measure.

Sadie Mae hugged him around the neck and laid her head on his shoulder, her lips near his ear. “Grampa, why do some men want to hurt you?” She started crying again. “I don’t wanna be without you.”

“I’m right here,” Jake assured her, “and I’m okay.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, glancing at Randy then. The words he’d just spoken rang the same as when he’d had to reassure his wife the same way two winters ago, after she’d suffered an attack by men seeking revenge on Jake Harkner.

Don’t let go, Jake.

I’m right here. I won’t let go.

He still saw that look in her eyes sometimes. He’d never forgive himself for all the things Randy Harkner had suffered because of him.

“I’m okay and I’m right here,” he repeated, this time to his wife.

She quickly wiped at her eyes and turned away to finish cleaning up the kitchen. Jake turned to his granddaughters. “Let’s read a story together,” he told them. “I’ll let you two read it to me, because your mothers have taught you well. I’ll bet you read better than Grandpa does. So I’ll let you try first.” He reached to a table beside his chair and handed a children’s storybook to Tricia. “Do you know that when I met your grandmother, I was a grown man and still hardly knew how to read?”

“Didn’t you go to school, Grampa?” Sadie Mae asked.

“Well, I had a pretty mean father and he wouldn’t let me go. So I learned to read later in life, when I watched and listened to your grandma teach your mother, Sadie Mae.” He squeezed Tricia close. “And your father, Tricia.”

“Grampa, will you take me and Tricia to town to buy Christmas presents?” Sadie Mae asked. “I wanna buy Mommy a hairbrush ’cuz she has long, pretty hair.”

“Yes, she does.” Jake was glad for a conversation that kept the girls’ minds off of this morning’s violence.

“I get two cents every day for getting all the eggs,” Sadie Mae said proudly. “I saved my pennies for Christmas.”

“Me, too!” Tricia piped up, both girls sometimes vying for their grandfather’s attention. “Mommy pays me for beating the rugs and helping with dishes.”

“Well, then, you two must be pretty rich. You can both get your mothers something nice.”

“What do you want, Grampa?” Tricia asked him.

“All I want is smiles on your faces, so I already have my present.” Both girls gave him their best smiles and giggled.

“Don’t tell Mommy I’m getting her a hairbrush,” Sadie Mae told him. She put a finger to her lips. “It’s a secret,” she said in a near whisper.

Jake grinned. “I’ll remember that. I know how much you like secrets, Sadie Mae.”

Sadie Mae clapped her small hands over her mouth and giggled. Randy wiped her hands on a towel then and walked over to stand behind Jake while Tricia read to him. She leaned down and kissed her husband’s cheek, thinking what a contrast he was now compared to only minutes earlier, when he went after Tommy Tyler. There was a time when Jake Harkner would have shot the young gunslinger down even though Tommy never even got his gun out of its holster.

She suspected the only thing that stopped him this time was knowing his little granddaughters were watching. She was still trying to get used to the Jake Harkner who was struggling to change with the times…but she knew that deep inside, the ruthless outlaw was constantly trying to break the chains of civility. Facing his brutal past last year, when he found his mother’s grave in south Texas, had helped soothe some of the old anger deep inside. Finding love through family, and especially his grandchildren, had helped even more, but sometimes a man’s past could be so ugly that rising above it completely was impossible. He was, after all, Jake Harkner, the man who’d been so brutalized the first fifteen years of his life that he’d killed his own father to escape.

No man completely conquered such a past.