Outlaw Hearts (20 page)

He took another swallow of coffee, then turned, staring at the fire. “From what I told you back at your cabin, you can guess what life was like with my father. Sometimes I think he was just plain crazy, and it scares me to think I could turn out like him, scares me when I lose my temper. I was eight when he killed my mother and my little brother. He beat me for crying about it. By the time I was ten he had me stealing for him so he could buy whiskey and women. I did whatever he told me, because I knew what he would do to me if I didn't. I was scared he'd find me and kill me if I tried to run away, and I was too small to fight back. Fear can make you do a lot of things you wouldn't ordinarily do.”

“Like when I shot you that day in the store,” Miranda said quietly.

He finally looked at her, and a trace of a smile passed across his lips. “Yeah. Kind of like that.” Miranda saw the pain in his eyes, and she knew the moment was delicate. She looked back at the fire, waiting for him to continue. He walked away for a few minutes, returning with a smoke. He poured himself another cup of coffee. “This stuff isn't much better than mud, but I hated to throw it out yesterday. Bad coffee is better than none at all.”

He swallowed some and made a face, then puffed on his cheroot for a few quiet seconds. The wind began to pick up, and it blew his dark hair around his face. “Over the years after my mother died, there were lots of other women, mostly all young Mexican girls my pa bought off banditos who stole them from nice families. Many nights I had to try to sleep while I heard young girls crying and begging my father not to rape them, heard the blows when he would beat them. Sometimes I even threw up, wishing I could stop him. When I was fifteen, I befriended this homeless Mexican girl…Santana. She was only twelve, but she looked sixteen. There was nothing physical between us, but I knew that someday there would be. I never let Pa know about her. I used to take food to her, steal money and clothes for her. She lived in an abandoned shack in a worthless little town full of poor Mexicans just south of San Antonio, where Pa and I lived. He had moved up there after killing my mother and brother.”

He drank a little more coffee, walking a little farther away again and watching the horizon. “Somehow Pa found out about Santana. I don't know how. I only know I came home one day and there she was, in our house, him standing there holding her wrist so tight I could tell it hurt. She was naked, her face all bruised and wet with tears. I could even see blood…on her thighs.” His voice nearly broke with the words. “Pa just grinned at me, told me I was learning to pick them good, just like him. ‘She's tight, boy,' he said, sneering. ‘I couldn't hardly get into her, but I did.'”

Miranda felt sick, and she put her head in her hands.

“I loved her.” Jake nearly groaned the words. “As much as a fifteen-year-old boy who's been kicked around all his life knows how to love anyway. He took her, took what belonged to me, what I was going to take someday in a nice way. I was going to make her my wife, show her it didn't have to be ugly and painful. I felt crazy knowing what he'd done to her. He dragged her back into that bedroom and started having at it with her again while I was standing right there in the house. I just…I don't know. It was like that was the last of it. I had taken all I could take. I went in there and started beating on him, screaming at him to stop. I was a lot bigger by then, but still not as big and strong as he was. He landed me a good one, sent me flying against the wall, and almost knocked me out. Then he got on top of her again.”

He tossed his cup out in front of him in anger, and what coffee was left in it splattered against sand and rock. “I knew there was only one way to stop him. All reason left me. I told myself he was hurting Santana; but it wasn't just for her. It was for my mother, my little brother, all the young girls he had hurt; mostly maybe it was for me. I don't know. I only know I went and got his pistols. He had two of them, and I wanted to be sure I did the job right, because I knew what he'd do to me if I missed. I brought the guns back into that room and I shot him in the back with one of them. He fell away from Santana onto the floor. I walked around the bed to where he lay, and I put the second pistol to his forehead and I shot him again. I'll always remember standing there looking at him with that hole in his head and not feeling a damn thing.”

His voice broke on the last words, and Miranda's heart ached for him. She wanted to go to him, but she waited, sensing he did not want her pity, did not want to be touched. Not yet. He turned to face her, and the agony in his eyes tore at her insides. “It wasn't until I turned to Santana that I realized the first shot had gone through his neck, not his back, right through him and into Santana's throat.”

Miranda's eyes widened in horror. She saw the tears in Jake's eyes before he turned away again. “She just lay there staring at me, unable to speak. I went to her, held her. There was blood…everywhere. I told her how sorry I was, and I could tell by her eyes she understood it was an accident. Within a minute or two she was dead too.”

He stopped and cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. “At first I was too scared even to cry. Hell, I had killed my own father, killed Santana. I just grabbed a few things and ran, took Pa's guns and horse and rode north. It wasn't long before Texas Rangers were after me. I rode into a camp of banditos my father had done business with, and they protected me. They shot it out with the Rangers, and I helped, killed a couple of them myself.”

He drew in his breath and let out a sigh of a man in pain. “I guess that's when it all began. I hated everybody because I had lost Santana, felt the pain of knowing I was the one who had killed her. I knew I was no good because I had killed my own father. The banditos didn't care. He was nothing to them, and I was young blood and was learning how to shoot. I fell in with them easy enough, and from then on that's all I ever knew—raiding and killing and stealing. After a while I went off on my own, landed in Indian Territory and took up with whiskey traders and gunrunners.” He shrugged. “You can figure out the rest. Word spread among others of my kind that I had killed my own father. Somehow that made me even more notorious. Some men taunted me about it and I shut them up with my guns. I got to be real good with guns of all kinds, and men began challenging me. Once you get a reputation like that, there is always someone who wants to prove he's better.”

He came closer and stirred the fire. “Anyway, it all just kind of got away from me. My life was out of control, and I didn't know how to change it. When I was young I used to think about having a wife and being good to her, figured maybe some way I could make up for how my pa was, prove to myself I wasn't going to be like him. But then I've got that mean streak, got it beat into me, I guess. For most of the past few years I just made up my mind I was meant to be bad and to never have a normal life, so I just let go and raised hell and did all the things people expected Jake Harkner to do, took out my hate and anger on anybody who even looked like they were going to get in my way. The last couple of years, though, I don't know…”

He stuck the cheroot between his teeth. “Maybe age does something to a man. I'm getting tired of the way I live. I just don't know how to change it.”

He faced her then, taking the cheroot from his mouth. “You've got no obligation to stay with me, Randy. I'll understand if you don't want to. I'm not even sure if I know how to love anymore. You're right in what you told me once. The thought of having feelings about anything scares me to death; but from what I can figure, the way I feel about you has to be love, or as close as a man can get. I just don't know which is worse, living with you and seeing you hurt because of me, or taking you to Nevada and going on from there without you. You'd forget about me soon enough.”

Miranda rose, studying the ruggedly handsome face, seeing both the little boy and the man who needed her in his eyes. “Never,” she answered. “I could never forget you, Jake. I'd rather die than live without you now.”

His eyes moved over her, and she felt flushed and warm at the memory of the things she had let him do to her the night before.

To Jake, she looked like an angel, standing there in that yellow dress he liked, her hair brushed out over her shoulders, her blue-gray eyes softly glowing with love. Was it possible something this good could come into his life? “You just might die sooner than you should if you stay with me.”

“Then so be it.”

He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. “Randy, you're a beautiful, respectable woman, intelligent, probably well-schooled. Hell, I can't even read good. You could marry a banker or a doctor, live a normal, peaceful life—”

“Is that a proposal, Jake?”

He met her eyes and he just watched her for several seconds before answering. “I guess maybe it is.”

“Then I accept.”

He frowned. “Randy, you'd better give it some thought.”

“I don't need to. I want to be your wife, Jake, no matter what the danger. We'll go to Nevada, maybe to California, someplace where no one knows you. You can start over, Jake. You're capable of loving and worthy of being loved in return. We'll just take one day at a time and enjoy that day's freedom to love and be loved.” She stepped closer. “Your pa was wrong to tell you you were a bastard and no good. It isn't your fault that he bought your mother and never married her. It isn't your fault that a man like that fathered you. You might have his build, but you're nothing like him, Jake, not in any other way, do you understand? You've got to quit believing the things he told you, because he was just being mean. I can see right through you, and you
are
good, or you wouldn't be talking to me like this now. You wouldn't have ridden Outlaw half to death trying to find me, and you wouldn't have helped me like you did. You know now that you can't stay away from me any more than I can stay away from you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. “I'm not afraid of it, Jake. I'm only afraid when I'm not with you. I want to be your wife and know that you'll never ride out of my life again.”

He embraced her, pressing her close, wondering if he had completely lost his mind. What the hell was it this woman did to him? Ever since meeting her it seemed like he hardly knew himself anymore, or maybe he was just beginning to find the real Jake Harkner. Whatever it was she did to him, he didn't seem to be able to fight it. He bent his head and kissed her hair.

“Maybe we can find a preacher or somebody at Fort Laramie who can marry us,” he told her.

“I'd like that.” He hugged her even tighter, and she felt him trembling. “It's all right to let that young boy cry, Jake. He's been holding things inside for a lot of years.” He grasped her hair, and she felt his body jerk in a sob.

“I love you, Randy Hayes,” he wept.

“And I love you, Jake Harkner. It's going to be all right, you'll see. God means for us to be together.”

Woman with the golden hair,

You are my sunlight.

You are my joy.

You are my comfort in the night.

Now we walk together as one;

So much love I have never known.

We have laughed and cried and learned together.

You have brought me up from the darkness

Of despair and loneliness.

Woman with the golden hair,

You are my peace.

Bill Kennedy threw in his cards and finished his drink. He picked up another five-dollar bill and added it to the pot at the center of the table for the next game. “I don't like this paper money,” he grumbled. “A man don't hardly see gold or silver coins ever since the war.”

“Banks got 'em,” Juan Hidalgo answered, a hinting smile added to the words.

Kennedy stuck a new wad of tobacco into his mouth, saying nothing, but giving Juan a knowing look. After the bank robbery in St. Louis a few months back, money was running low again. Fancy guns, prime horses, women, and whiskey could cost a man a lot. Part of the money he played cards with now had come from a settler family in northern Kansas that he and his men had attacked and robbed a week ago. They all had had a good time with the struggling, begging wife of the farmer before Juan had silenced her with his knife.

Juan dealt another round of cards, and Kennedy thought how the Mexican was damn near “artistic” with that big bowie he wore strapped to his belt. The ugly scar that ran from the man's left eye across his nose and lips and on down his chin was clear evidence he had lived by that knife for a long time. He was a dark, ugly, evil-looking man that Kennedy himself would be afraid of if he didn't know him better.

“Lotta banks out west,” Juan spoke up, adding to the ante. “Lotta gold and silver.”

Kennedy gave him a warning look. He and his gang of eight men had taken a chance coming back into civilization as wanted men. They were holed up in an abandoned shack outside of Omaha, had come into town to gamble and spend their winnings on whores and whiskey. For over two months they had searched for Jake Harkner down in Indian Territory, where many Creek and Cherokee knew him. None had seen him. Kennedy didn't believe Jake was dead. A bullet from a little derringer like the one he'd been told the woman back in Kansas City had used wasn't generally powerful enough to kill a man as big as Jake.

Besides, Jake was too mean to die from being shot by a woman. He chuckled to himself at the thought as he picked up his cards. Jake Harkner, shot by a woman! How he would have loved to have seen that, and to have been there to finish the man off. Now the fact remained that Jake was likely still alive somewhere, and he was not going to rest easy until he found him and let Juan use his knife on him for stealing that pretty young girl away from them before they were through with her.

One of the strangers he was playing cards with opened a bid with two dollars. Kennedy turned and spit toward a spittoon, the brown saliva missing and sliding down the side of the brass container. He shrugged and picked up his two new cards, thinking maybe it was time to move on. Juan and the other men had been itching to head west, where they would be less likely to be recognized and where there was no law.

They had all agreed that west was the best place to be now that the war was over and the law would try harder to find them; but they had lingered too long in Indian Territory, and now it was too late in the summer to try to get all the way to California or even to Nevada. They would leave in the spring, but he didn't like the idea of going without finding Jake first. The sonofabitch was good with those guns of his. In the shoot-out over that girl, Jake had killed Kennedy's own stepbrother and Juan's best friend, along with four other gang members. He still suffered pain from a bullet Jake had left in his right thigh, and several of the other men with him had been wounded. Jake was good, all right, but if he could be found and surprised, things wouldn't turn out the same. Jake Harkner would be begging for his life.

God only knew where the bastard had gone, let alone what had gotten into him in the first place, taking that girl out from under their noses and returning her to her family. Hell, Harkner was handsome enough that he could have fucked the girl without her even protesting; but what did he do? Drew those damn guns of his and blew away half his men to get her out of there. Damn sonofabitch! He thought he knew the man. Hell, Jake had ridden with them for quite a while, robbed banks and trains with them, drunk and whored it up with the best of them.

He was pissed at himself for not realizing a man as good with those guns as Jake was would eventually decide to be his own boss. That was probably it. He might be gathering up a gang of his own right now. Whether he was or not, he had to be found. A man like Jake didn't stay low for long. Those guns of his were bound to get him into trouble.

He won the hand with three aces and pulled in his money, leaving a five-dollar bill in the pot and waiting for the next man to deal, spitting again and missing again. Juan raked in his own money. “I'm goin' to find me a woman for the night,” he said in his raspy voice, forever damaged by an old wound that left still another scar on the man, across his throat. So far, no one had gone up against Juan with a knife and won. “One of the men in here told me about a whore at a saloon up the street who likes ugly men.”

Kennedy chuckled. “Go ahead.”

“I think we should go on west, boss. We'll all get bored sittin' around here all winter.”

Kennedy glanced at the other men at the table, strangers who looked uneasy at their presence, especially Juan's. “We've got somebody to find yet. If we don't find him by spring, we'll leave then.”

“I want to find him as bad as you do,
patrón
, but you will not find him if he don't want to be found. You know that.” Juan scowled and pulled on his jacket, walking out.

“You, uh, you in for another hand, mister?” one of the others at the table asked.

Kennedy scratched at the stubble on his face. He supposed he ought to find a bathhouse, hadn't had a good soak for weeks. “Yeah, deal me one more hand.”

One of the others at the table began dealing, glad the one called Juan had left and wishing the Mexican's friend would do the same. He had a pretty good idea that this Bill Kennedy and the men who had barged into their little town outside of Omaha a couple of days ago were a bad lot, maybe wanted men; but dangerous enough that nobody around here was willing to go to the law in Omaha and start any trouble. Kennedy was a hard-looking man, with blue eyes that cut into you like a knife, his sandy-colored hair looking greasy, a scar down his right cheek. He was a tall, well-built man, perhaps in his thirties, the dealer guessed, and he could be pretty good-looking if he were cleaned up. Kennedy and his men were heavily armed, and the man couldn't help wondering if the money they were gambling with was stolen. The one called Juan kept talking about how much money there was in the gold towns out west, how he wished they would head that way before spring.

“Damnedest thing I ever seen,” a man at the next table was saying, his voice growing louder from whiskey.

One of Kennedy's men who sat at that table turned to look at his boss. “Hey, Bill, come over here and listen to this.”

“I've just got dealt another hand,” Kennedy grumped.

“Throw it in. This is important, unless you don't care this guy over here might know somethin' about Jake.”

Kennedy straightened, looking over at them. He threw in his hand and grabbed up his money, leaving the table and causing the rest of them there to breathe a sigh of relief. He dragged his chair to the next table and turned it, straddling it and resting his arms on the back of it. He looked at his friend. “This better be good, Jeb. I had a good hand.”

The one called Jeb grinned, showing a missing tooth in front. He laid down his cards and nodded toward a man sitting across the table from him and looking a little nervous now. “That's Les Stanton. This past spring he was workin' at a tradin' post about three weeks west of here.” He leaned back. “Les, this here is Bill Kennedy, a friend of mine, you might say. Tell him what you just told me.”

Stanton swallowed. He didn't like any of these men any more than the others in this little town did, but he was no more ready to give them trouble than the next man. They all looked mean enough to kill a man for smiling wrong, about as mean as the one who had called himself Jake Turner looked the day he shot things up at the trading post over that woman.

Stanton took a swallow of whiskey. “Well, Mr. Kennedy, I, uh, I was just tellin' your friend here about somethin' that happened at the tradin' post where I'd been workin'. Some travelers came along, a preacher fellow, dropped off a woman name of Miranda Hayes who'd been snakebit. They went on without her, figurin' she'd most likely die, I expect. The man who owns the tradin' post, Jack Nemus, he took her in and took care of her.” He grinned. “More than took care of her, if you know what I mean.”

Kennedy scowled. “So? What's the point?”

“It gets better, boss,” Jeb told him. “Hell, don't you remember that name, Miranda Hayes? That's the name of that woman from Kansas City I heard about when I was sniffin' around there askin' about Jake. That's the name of the woman who shot him.”

Kennedy straightened further. Of course! Was it the same woman? “Might just be someone with the same name,” he said. “Even if she
was
the same one, what good does that do us now?”

“Somebody name of Jake came lookin' for the woman,” Jeb answered.

Kennedy's steely blue eyes narrowed, and he targeted them at Les Stanton. “Jake Harkner?”

“Called himself Jake Turner,” Stanton answered. “Big man, dark, like maybe he was part Mexican or part Indian, wore his guns on two belts crisscrossed low on his hips and carried a rifle and a shotgun on his horse. He damn well knew how to use those guns.”

Kennedy rose and leaned closer over the table, all ears. “What did he do?”

“Like I say, he was lookin' for that woman. Nemus, he tried to say she wasn't there, but somehow he knew she was. Damned if he didn't draw his gun and shoot Nemus right across the side of the face and told him he'd better take him to the woman. They went outside, and another man there drew on this Jake fella and Jake shot him down easy as you please. The whole thing scared the hell out of me. This Jake, he took Nemus into his cabin where the woman was. We wasn't sure what went on in there till later. We found Nemus pistol-whipped and tied to a chair, but layin' on the floor, hurt pretty bad. Turner shot down another one of us when we tried to come in after him, wounded another in the arm. Another man rode off, scared shitless. I'm the only one who didn't get hurt. Turner, he brought the woman out and put her in one of Nemus's wagons, had us hitch up his horse and packhorse to pull it. Stole the wagon and lit out of there.”

Stanton squirmed a little under Bill Kennedy's piercing stare. “None of us was about to go after him,” he added. “Figured he'd shoot us down if we did. He claimed the woman belonged to him. Headed west with her, far as I know. She'd been on her way to Virginia City to find her brother. That's what the preacher told us. I don't know what the hell Turner had in mind for her—whether he was gonna help her or hurt her; but from the way he acted, I figure he had a soft spot for her and meant to help her.”

Jeb Donner chuckled. “Sounds like ol' Jake is still into helpin' women in distress.”

Kennedy straightened, his eyes bright with the thought of revenge. “It had to be Jake Harkner! I
knew
he'd give himself away with those guns!” He looked at Jeb. “Why in hell do you think he went after that woman? Hell, she's the one who
shot
him. I don't get it. The way he behaved over that woman—” He caught himself, not wanting to say too much in front of Stanton and the other strangers in the saloon. “Jake wouldn't hurt her. Then again, maybe he was pissed over her shootin' him and figured to get paid back—take it out of her flesh, so to speak.”

Jeb shook his head. “Not Jake. He's gone soft lately, over women, anyway. Don't sound like he's gone soft when it comes to them guns.”

Kennedy looked at Stanton. “Where's this tradin' post again?”

“About three weeks west of here, on the Oregon Trail.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

Stanton shrugged. “Must have been a couple months. If they went on west, they'd be clear to Wyoming by now, I expect, unless Indians or the weather or an injury got them. Hell, all kinds of things can kill a man on that trip. The woman, she might have died from that snakebite.”

Kennedy sat down and faced Jeb. “He's headed west, just like we were gonna do. Goddamn it! We should have thought of that sooner. Whatever he's got in mind for the woman, if she's dead or alive, he'll keep goin' west to avoid the law. And that's where we're goin'! We might not make it all the way this winter, but we can get pretty far before winter sets into the mountains. On horseback we can travel faster, maybe cut the distance between him and us.” He rose, looking excited. “Jeb, you round up the rest of the boys. I'll go find Juan. Tell the others to meet tomorrow mornin' at sunup behind this saloon. We'll head out then.” He reached into his pocket, slapping a twenty-dollar bill onto the table in front of Les Stanton. “Mister, you earned this. Thanks for the information.”

Stanton grinned, picking up the bill and feeling a little more at ease. Kennedy turned and left, looking for Juan.
He'll love to hear this
, he thought.
Juan
would
like
nothin' better than to carve Jake Harkner into a hundred pieces and feed him to the wolves!
And what if Jake
was
sweet on that Hayes woman? How in hell could that have happened? If it was true, and Jake had the woman with him, she would just be the icing on the cake for them once they found them. He and Juan and the others would lick that icing, right in front of Jake Harkner's eyes!

***

The Mormon women fussed over Miranda, helping her bathe, pressing the yellow dress Jake liked best on her, pinning her hair up into curls.

“Ah, you vill make beautiful bride,” Esther Carlson said in her musical Swedish accent. “This vill be first time I see vedding in America.” She ended the sentence with an up-note, as though it were a question, always making Miranda feel as though she was supposed to answer.