Love's Sweet Revenge (10 page)

“Yes, sir,” Ben answered.

“You don't go with other ladies now, do you, Grampa?”

Jake tried to keep the moment serious, but it was next to impossible. He chuckled. “Stephen, if I did, I would have to answer to your grandmother for it, and believe me, I'm more afraid of
her
than I am of those seven rustlers I went up against a few weeks ago.”

Both boys laughed as Jake rose. “One more thing,” he told them. “Living like I did the first thirty years of my life has left me with a lot of aches and pains and scars and regrets, so live a good life, boys. You'll feel a lot better physically and be a lot happier when you get to be my age.”

“Oh, Grampa, you're still a strong man,” Stephen argued. “Pa says he thinks you're just as strong as he is.”

“He does, does he? He's never told
me
that. He's always saying he could beat me senseless if he wanted.”

“And you're always daring him to try,” Stephen answered. “I see how you talk to each other. Is that because you love each other?”

Jake felt the old ache deep in his heart, remembering when he thought he'd lost his son's love. “Yeah, something like that. Let's get these horses saddled. The men out there probably think we're shirking our duties.”

Just then Lloyd pushed open the barn door and came inside, leading his horse behind him. “Where in hell have you three been? We're all out there working our asses off, and you're in here taking your own sweet time getting fresh horses.” His smile faded when he noticed the boys had been crying. “Anything wrong?”

Jake turned away and went into the stall again to finish cinching the saddle on his horse. “Just having a little heart-to-heart,” he answered. “Everything is fine.”

Lloyd looked from the boys to his father. “You okay?”

Jake fought a distinct desire to walk up and hug his son. “Never been better,” he answered. “I was just explaining why we don't think the boys are ready yet to carry handguns.”

Lloyd pushed his hat back and moved closer to the stall. “What did you tell them?”

Jake didn't answer right away. He urged his horse backward out of the stall and mounted up. “Everything,” he told Lloyd. “And you'd be wise to do the same. It's about time Stephen knew it all.” He rode the horse toward the barn entrance.

“Pa?”

Jake reined the horse in, not looking at Lloyd.

“You know I love you,” Lloyd told him.

Jake rode out of the barn.

“Why didn't he say anything, Pa?” Stephen asked.

Lloyd sighed and rearranged his hat again. “He didn't need to.” He looked at Ben. “And you boys had better finish saddling fresh horses and get back to work. We still have more cattle to bring in and brand. No rest for the wicked on this ranch, boys, so get busy.”

The boys eagerly obeyed. Lloyd led his horse out of the barn and mounted up again, watching Jake ride down a calf and rope it. “No rest for the wicked, that's for sure,” he muttered.

Late May

“It's like watching a circus,” Evie commented, laughing when Billy Dooley, who was cutting calves from their mothers, fell off his horse and got up, cussing a blue streak.

“I call it organized bedlam,” Randy remarked.

Katie laughed. “It sure is that!”

The three women sat in a wagon bed in the middle of all the action on one of the J&L's busiest days. Cattle and cowboys filled the air with braying and whistling and swearing and yelling. Extra men had been hired just for roundup and the busy job of branding. Steers meant for slaughter were herded into designated pens, calves were culled out and roped for branding, and certain male calves were urged into a separate corral, where they would later be castrated. Two breeding bulls were penned well away from the rest of the herd, including mean old Gus.

Lloyd stayed busy culling out calves. The sharp turning and dodging movements of his favorite cutting horse made Katie nervous. More than one man had been thrown from his horse when it would suddenly dart in a different direction. Well-trained cutting horses did most of the work on their own.

Once Lloyd urged a calf into the branding area, Vance Kelly took over from there, riding down the calf and roping it. When he'd climb off his saddle, the back end of it would jerk up from the calf pulling on the rope tied to the saddle horn. He and Jake took turns wrestling calves onto their sides for branding.

Lloyd had decided the women shouldn't have to cook today, so he'd put Rodriguez back on duty feeding the men. Smoke wafted from the cookhouse, where the Mexican was preparing supper for what would be a bunkhouse full of very hungry men in a couple of hours. Teresa had stayed at Evie's house with both little girls to keep them out of dirt and danger.

Men rode every which way, stirring up swirls of dust as whistles and shouts filled the air. Ben and Stephen sat on a fence counting cattle, and even Brian helped, using a quirt to urge the cattle into the chute one by one. Little Jake also sat on a fence, watching the branding, obeying his grandfather's orders to stay where he would be out of danger.

“I wish Little Jake would be as obedient for me and Brian as he is for Daddy,” Evie commented.

“That boy worships the ground Jake walks on,” Katie replied. “So does Stephen.”

“I find it incredibly comical,” Randy put in. “Big, bad Jake Harkner ordering kids around—and if he ever made any of them cry, he'd be completely devastated. Someday those boys will figure out
they
could likely order
Jake
around.”

More laughter. “Yes, but Jake has a way of telling the boys what to do without ever raising his voice,” Katie added.

“He doesn't
need
to raise his voice,” Randy answered. “He just has a commanding way about him. Even people who don't know him pick up on that
don't mess with me
air about him. You can tell by the way they react to him.”

Katie laughed. “Yes, except for you, Randy. Jake is a big sap when it comes to you. Stephen told me his grampa said the other day that he was more afraid of you than all seven of those cattle rustlers he faced down three weeks ago.”

Randy grinned. “Is that so?”

“Yes, and at the time, they were talking about ‘bad women.' Stephen wanted to know if Jake still liked ‘bad women.' Where all that came from, I have no idea, but Jake told him that if he was around women like that he'd have to answer to you, and he wouldn't want to do that.”

All three women laughed again.

“He
would
have to answer to me, and I would make him very sorry,” Randy told them.

“Ouch!” An extra hired hand spewed several not-so-proper expletives after being kicked by a steer. “If I had my gun on, I'd shoot your ass, you sonofabitch!”

“Hey, there's women watchin',” Charlie McGee shouted. “Watch your language.”

Katie giggled, and Randy just shook her head. At this time of year she was extra grateful to have her physician son-in-law around during roundup and branding, because nearly every day someone was kicked or sometimes thrown by an extra strong and ornery calf or steer, or by a cutting horse that swerved the wrong way. There was an occasional burn from the hot coals of the branding fire, and sometimes one of the men would get something in his eye. She worried about Jake, knowing this wasn't easy work for him, but he enjoyed it, and he was amazingly tough for a man who'd stood at death's door too many times to count in his lifetime.

Most of the injuries came from any man who dared to help break one of the wild mustangs that were inevitably brought in with the cattle, and last year Pepper lost a finger when he mistakenly gripped his saddle horn just when he'd roped a calf and it jerked the rope tight. It caught his left index finger between the rope and the saddle horn and cut right through it.

Every man helped, including Charlie McGee from Tennessee and Vance Kelly, a weathered, hard-edged man whose past they knew nothing about. Another man, named Cole Decker, limped from a wound suffered fighting for the South in the big war. Pepper was always chewing tobacco and spitting its juice, but he was a good man. He had a big belly that shook when he laughed. Terrel Adams was nice-looking and rather quiet, a hardworking man who'd appeared one day wanting a job. Right now he was out looking for more strays.

Jake had hired Teresa and her husband, Rodriguez, in Denver when they first went there after moving from Oklahoma. Jake liked having Mexicans around. He spoke Spanish himself and often had long conversations with Rodriguez. Randy supposed being around Mexicans reminded Jake of his mother. Hearing the language probably comforted him. Evita Ramona Consuella de Jimenez. That was her name. Evie was named after her.

“Mother, who's that?”

Randy looked in the direction of Evie's gaze to see five men approaching, well armed and dressed in the familiar dusters and hats that signified U.S. Marshals. “Oh no!” Randy gasped. “No! No! No!” She started to climb out of the wagon. “Evie, they've come for Jake!”

Evie grabbed her wrist. “Mother, wait! Don't go over there! The day those soldiers came for Daddy to take him to prison, you got hurt. Stay here!”

“I can't!” Randy jerked her arm away and climbed out of the wagon.

“Oh no… Daddy…” Evie followed.

Jake noticed the visitors and walked out of the corral where he'd finished branding a calf. “Lloyd, get over here!” he shouted.

Lloyd turned his cutting horse, charging the horse up to Jake when he saw what was happening. He dismounted and walked to stand beside his father. For the next few minutes, things quieted as most of the hired hands ceased their work and began moving closer to Jake and Lloyd defensively. Brian hurried over to stand near Evie. In the more distant corrals, the action stopped completely as more men quit cutting and roping and branding when they saw what looked to be some kind of showdown coming. They all moved beside Jake as though to shield him.

Terrel Adams rode alongside the approaching riders. When Randy came closer, Jake grasped her arm gently.

“Jake—”

“Get back,” he ordered. He looked over at Brian. “Get her out of here, Brian—the kids, too.”

Brian walked up to Randy, taking her arm. “Come on, Mom. They might just be here to talk. Let Jake and Lloyd handle this.” He gently forced his mother-in-law to step back, calling to Little Jake and Ben and Stephen to come over near him. “Mind your grandfather and get over here,” he ordered. By then Evie had also come too close. Brian urged her to move farther away.

Ben and Stephen jumped down from the fence near the counting chute and walked right between the armed men and Jake, glowering. Ben's fists clenched. The intruders halted their horses and waited as Little Jake went running by, but the boy stopped and walked right up to the lead marshal, putting his hands on his hips in a daring stance. “Don't you hurt my grampa, mister!” he demanded. He squinted his eyes to show how serious he was. “I won't let no sonofabitch take him away!”

“Little Jake, get away from there!” Jake commanded, the words firm but not yelled. “And watch your language. Get over by your father.”

Pouting, Little Jake held a fist up at the marshal, who just grinned. The man turned to Jake as Little Jake marched away in a huff.

“No doubt he belongs to you, Jake.”

Jake watched the man carefully. “He does.”

“Same temperament, I see.” The marshal nodded. “It's been over four years, Jake.”

Jake wasn't wearing his guns. Neither was Lloyd, but some of the hired help were, and Randy's heart pounded at realizing they were ready to use them.

Jake nodded to the marshal. “Hal Kraemer, if I remember right from my days of riding for the law back in Oklahoma.”

“One and the same.” Kraemer removed his hat to reveal curly brown hair that was matted from the heat and the hat. He had steely blue eyes and needed a shave. “I remember you and that son of yours as two of the best at this job.”

Jake ran a hand through his hair and wiped at sweat with his shirtsleeve. “What are you doing in Colorado, Hal?” he asked.

“Got reassigned. And, Jake, I don't like having to come out here and bother you, but it's my job. You know how it goes.”

“You go away!” Little Jake yelled, tears welling in his eyes.

“It's all right, Little Jake,” Jake told him without taking his eyes off of the marshal.

Hal Kraemer grinned. “Something tells me that kid is a handful, just like his grandpa can be.”

Jake grinned darkly, and Randy saw the wariness in his eyes. He looked like a panther that had just been backed into a corner and might pounce. “My adopted son and my grandsons seem to think it's become their job to look out for me.”

“I see that.” Kraemer looked around, eyeing the hired hands and taking in the surrounding sight of cattle and horses everywhere. A hog-tied calf still lay kicking on the ground near the branding fire. One of the hired hands knelt down and cut it loose. The calf ambled away, and Jake folded his arms, facing Kraemer.

“Boss, they came riding in from the south,” Terrel told Jake. “I sure couldn't stop them by myself, and they're the law, so I had to let them through.”

“That's okay, Terrel. I know this man,” Jake answered, his eyes still on Hal Kraemer. “Why all the extra men, Hal?”

Kraemer leaned on his saddle horn. “Well now, if I was coming out here to arrest you, do you really think I'd come all alone after somebody like Jake Harkner? Fact is, I would have brought a lot
more
men. I figure four men probably wouldn't be enough.”

“If I was armed, I'd agree with you,” Jake answered.

Kraemer glanced at Lloyd, then back at Jake. “This the son who rode with you in Oklahoma? I never got to meet him.”

“It's him. His name is Lloyd, and this is mostly his ranch. You haven't answered my question. What are you doing on the J&L?”

The marshal's horse shimmied sideways, and one of his men rested a hand on his six-gun until Kraemer turned his horse and ordered all of them to move back a little. “Guns aren't necessary, boys. Save them for when they're really needed.”

Randy breathed a bit easier. The five men looked well trained and ready to obey any command. Jake had been just as intimidating when he rode as a marshal. Apparently having been one was to his benefit now. He knew Hal Kraemer, but Randy had never met the man.

Kraemer faced Jake again. “Jake, I hear tell there was a bit of a shoot-out on this land with some rustlers a month or so back. The sheriff back in Denver filed a report.”

“Rustlers is the word. They were cattle thieves. And you're right, it was over a month ago.”

Evie clung to Brian's arm. “Brian, it's just like when soldiers came to take him to prison all those years ago,” she whispered.

Brian moved an arm around her. “This is different, love. You stay calm.”

“I reckon you had the right to take those men down, Jake,” Hal told him, “seeing as how they were on your land and rustling your cattle. But there were seven of them, and none of them lived. That sounds like the work of Jake Harkner—maybe even alone. Was that necessary?”

“They was shootin' at him and the missus,” Cole Decker spoke up before Jake could answer. “Jake had his wife with him. We came on the scene just minutes after they pinned Jake down. All of us was in on it. There ain't no way to say which one of us killed which man, so don't go pinnin' all of it on Jake here. He was defendin' his wife.”

Randy felt a lump rise in her throat. Cole was trying to take the blame off of Jake.

“That true?” Kraemer asked Jake.

Jake turned to look around at his men, and they just nodded to him. He looked back at Kraemer. “Something like that.”

“Pa did what he had to do,” Lloyd spoke up. “My
mother
was with him!”

Kraemer studied Lloyd and quietly nodded. “I can understand that.” He turned his attention to Jake again. “Thing is, no matter what these men say, Jake, the whole thing sounds more like something you would do—shoot to kill.”

“They were doing the same,” Jake told him, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “My men came along and finished what I started. And if those men hadn't died from our bullets, they would have died with a noose around their necks, and you know it, Hal.” He lit his cigarette.

Hal nodded. “The thing is, Jake, if they'd died with nooses around their necks, it would have been because the
law
made it so. In case you haven't noticed, there is a difference between obeying the law and taking the law into your own hands.”

Jake took a deep drag on his cigarette, and Randy watched, wondering where her next breath would come from.

“And there is a difference between taking the law into your own hands and just plain defending yourself and someone you love,” Jake told Kraemer. “That's all I did, and these men here can attest to that.”