Outlaw Hearts (29 page)

“I don't know. About ten, I guess. Next week I'm going hunting for more mustangs, now that the crops are in. I'd like to catch that black stallion that keeps getting away from me. He'd make a hell of a stud horse if I could ever get a rope around his neck and get him back here.” Jake stabbed three pieces of ham and laid them on his plate with the potatoes, cutting into the meat zealously. He was a big man who always had a big appetite, and Miranda enjoyed cooking for him. He always made her feel appreciated, made anything she did for him enjoyable because it was all so new and pleasurable to him. “Joe Grant wants to go after the mustangs with me. I want you and Lloyd to go stay with his wife while we're gone. Joe's brother will come over here to tend to our place.”

“Jake, I can stay here alone. There has never been any trouble around here.”

“Well, there's a first time for everything.” Jake cut up some meat into smaller pieces and gave them to Lloyd. “This is still pretty lawless and remote country. We've offered food and water to enough migrant Arizona prospectors who wander this way that I wouldn't want you alone here when another one comes along. No arguments. You'll go stay at Joe's.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Are you going to enter the shooting contest again this year?”

“I don't know. I suppose. I didn't really want to last year. It isn't very fair to the others.”

“Maybe not, but the fifty-dollar prize will come in handy.”

Jake glanced at her and scowled. “It's a hundred dollars this year, but it doesn't seem right, us knowing the rest of them don't have a chance against me. If they knew the truth—”

“Well, they don't. They just think guns are your hobby and you happen to be an excellent shot. You shouldn't worry so much, Jake.”

“I can't help it. If Joe Grant hadn't seen my Peacemakers hanging in the barn last year, none of this would have started. He kept after me to show him if I was any good with them, put me in that contest at the fair last year against my will. I tried to miss a few, pretend I wasn't any better than anybody else, but then I started thinking about the money and how much we needed it. I hope I don't answer for not leaving well enough alone.”

“Jake, it's just a simple shooting contest at a little fair in a little town. And these are good people around here. They don't think anything about it. Their biggest thrill is that fair and you just made it more exciting for them. Hetta Grant says Joe's been practicing ever since last year to try to beat you.”

Jake finally smiled a little. “I know. He ribs me about it constantly, tells me I'd better be ready this year.” The smile faded a little. “Only thing I don't like is he talked about advertising the fair this year in the San Diego paper to get outsiders to come. It would bring in more money. He wanted to put in some kind of challenge to come to the shooting contest and try to beat the best shot in Southern California—wanted to use my name. I told him I didn't care if he advertised the fair, but I made him promise not to mention my name. That's the last thing I need. I don't even like the thought of a lot of outsiders coming.”

“No one in these parts knows you, and they certainly won't recognize the name.”

“You never know. I don't like it, but maybe it will be all right.”

“I enjoy the fair. Everyone looks forward to it after a long, hard summer of farming and all.”

“You baking your famous pumpkin pies again?”

She smiled. “Yes, and I'm taking that quilt I've been working on.”

Both of them enjoyed this, being at the table together in their own home, being a family. Jake thought how this was the kind of life he only used to dream about, and he was at last beginning to relax and believe it could always be this way.

They finished eating, Lloyd eating his potatoes and ham with his fingers. Miranda rose and poured the boy a small glass of cow's milk and helped him hold the glass while he drank it. She cleaned his face and hands and took him from the chair, and he immediately ran on quick little legs to reach for the handle of the fry pan in which she had cooked the ham. Miranda rushed after him, grabbing his hand back and slapping it. “No, Lloyd! It's hot and it's heavy. It will hurt you!”

The boy's lips puckered and he started to cry, and Jake scooted back his chair. Miranda gave him a warning look. “Don't you dare pick him up and cuddle him. He's got to learn to stay away from the stove!”

Jake frowned. “I wish you wouldn't smack him. I'd rather he learned the hard way and burned his hand. Then it's the stove he'll remember hurting him and not one of us.”

She rolled her eyes, putting her hands on her hips. “And would you rather he pulled that skillet off the stove and have it fall on his head and break his skull, maybe kill him, let alone the fact that the hot grease could burn his face and scar him?”

Their eyes held in a challenge, and Jake turned away. Already Lloyd's tears were subsiding, and he toddled over to a tin pie-plate he liked to play with, the incident quickly forgotten, but not by Jake.

“You know I can't stand to see him cry because he's been spanked. We've been through this before, Randy.”

She stepped closer. “Jake, you have to learn there is a difference between senseless beatings and minor spankings to discipline a child for his own good. There are some things he has to learn early so that nothing happens to him. The right kind of discipline is nothing more than a form of love. You have got to let me teach him right from wrong. You've got to
help
me teach him, or he'll end up getting badly hurt, or being so spoiled that no one will be able to stand having him around. What if he wanders to the creek out back? Should I let him just toddle in and risk drowning?”

He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. “I know what you're saying. It's just that when I hear that smack and see those tears…”

She touched his arm. “Jake, that child is loved more than most. Believe me, a little spanking now and then is not going to destroy his trust. I got a few spankings of my own when I was little, but I knew it was because my parents loved me and didn't want anything to happen to me. I never doubted that love for one minute, and I was never afraid to turn to them and let them hold me when I needed holding. You have to learn the difference between proper discipline and senseless hitting. That little boy knows his daddy loves him, and it isn't fair of you to make me be the only one who shows him discipline. I need your help on this, especially if we have more children.”

He pulled her close. “It isn't just that. I'm afraid that if I hit him for something, I won't be able to stop. What if something takes over, something inside of me that I can't control? Besides, he's so little, and I'm so strong. I could hurt him without even wanting to.”

She sighed deeply. “Jake, what should I do with you? You are
not
your father. There is no chance you would ever get carried away and hurt him.” She leaned back and looked up at him. “Part of being a father is teaching your son the right way to go, that the wrong way can hurt him. If you never discipline him at all, he'll grow up to be a wild young man who no one likes and who goes out and gets himself in trouble. Is that what you want?”

Jake looked over at the boy, who sat playing with the plate, still sniffling. “I just want him to love me.”

Miranda leaned up and kissed his cheek. “Jake, you're a kind, gentle, attentive father. He
does
love you. Nothing is going to change that.”

Lloyd looked over at them and got to his feet, toddling over to grasp at his mother's skirt. Miranda smiled and stooped down to pick him up. He hugged her around the neck and she patted his back. “It's all right, baby,” she said softly. “The stove is a no-no. You know that.” She looked at Jake. “Does it look like he is afraid of me now or doesn't love me? He's only two and a half, Jake, but he knows what I did was out of love.”

Jake pulled both of them into his arms, and Lloyd turned, putting his chubby arms around his father's neck. Jake took him into his arms, thinking how much he would have loved to have had the same affection and reassurance shown to him when he was small. “I'm taking him back out to the barn with me for a while.”

“Fine. But if he goes toddling up behind a horse, you'd better make sure he understands it's dangerous. And do it in a way that makes him think twice about doing it again.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He walked toward the door.

“Jake.”

He turned, keeping the boy in his arms and patting his bottom.

“I mean it. I need your help in this. Jake, I think I'm going to have another baby. I can't take care of a newborn and be running after a two-year-old who won't obey me.”

He watched her lovingly, slowly setting Lloyd back down to the varnished hardwood floor Miranda kept dusted daily. “You're making me do this twice?” he teased. “Hell, I'm not sure I can do it right one time around.”

“You're doing just fine. Just go tend to your chores.”

He gave her a rather tentative smile, his emotions mixed. The responsibilities were growing. There would be a second child depending on him, another mouth to feed, another baby to love and to look up to him as a father. He walked closer to Miranda, bending down and kissing her cheek. “You all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“What if it's like the last time, maybe worse? I can't lose you, Randy. I can't do any of this without you.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me. I'm sure Mrs. Grant and some of the other neighbor women will help when the time comes, which won't be until at least next March. Now get going.”

He kissed her once more, then left her, picking up Lloyd on the way out. Miranda walked to the door to watch them head for the barn, Lloyd riding on his father's shoulders again and laughing. She thought what a sweet and peaceful sight it was. Lloyd had been like a healing ointment to his father's tortured soul. Already they were so close. She prayed nothing would ever happen to destroy that.

***

Bill Kennedy put a fat cigar in his teeth and settled into the tub of hot water, making a growling sound of pleasure as he let the warm water come up to his neck. “You can scrub my back and anything else you want to rub after I soak a few minutes,” he told the young Mexican woman whose job it was to keep adding buckets of hot water as the tub water cooled. The woman stared at Kennedy dully, a mixture of hatred and resignation in her dark eyes. It was obvious she hated her job, and that pleased Kennedy, made him feel powerful. She worked here, therefore she had to do what he asked. He gave her a wink and she turned away.

Three other Mexican women kept clean towels coming, provided soap and were required to scrub down any man who asked. Kennedy and his men had been told this was the most luxurious bathhouse in San Diego, and they had all converged on it after a hot, dusty trip back from Mexico. The others laughed and splashed and made lewd remarks to the Mexican women. Juan stood up and gestured with his penis, and the men laughed more, Clarence asking the women if any of them would please get in the tub with him and let him give them a soap massage of their own. He reached up and felt the breast of one older woman when she bent over to give him a towel, and she slapped his hand.

Clarence made kissing sounds at her and picked up his own cigar from a nearby ashtray. He thought how good it felt to be here after over a year of running. He watched Jeb Donner use his right arm to support himself as he knelt into his own tub. Jeb had lost almost all use of his left arm after the shoot-out with Wells Fargo detectives up near San Francisco over a year ago. Jeb had been slammed with two bullets that day, one in his left shoulder and another that smashed his left elbow. The trap the lawmen had laid had come close to killing all of them. Brad and Luke, Buffalo and Frank were dead. Juan still limped from a bullet to his right thigh that had broken a bone. Joe had taken a bullet in his side, but he'd lived.

The terror of that day still haunted Clarence. He'd never been that scared since the day Jake Harkner stuck a gun into his mouth and threatened to pull the trigger. He'd never seen so much shooting in his life, and he hoped he never would again. He felt lucky to have gotten away with his life, and he had even considered leaving Kennedy, going back to Virginia City and staying with his uncle a while until things cooled down.

They had eluded the law by heading north and making those who hunted them think they had gone to Canada. Instead, after finding a farm family who put them up and treated their wounds at gunpoint, they had circled around and headed back south, killing the entire family first so that they could not identify them. They had moved on through the Nevada desert and into Utah, where there was a whole network of hangouts for outlaws all along a north-south trail from Arizona clear into Wyoming called the Outlaw Trail. It was a haven of caverns and canyons and desolate country where no lawman ventured, unless he wanted to commit suicide. It was along that trail that Kennedy had picked up the two new men, Oran Peters and Cliff Remington. With himself and Kennedy, and longtime gang members Juan, Joe Stowers, and Jeb Donner, Kennedy's gang now numbered seven.

Still only twenty-one and the youngest of the group, Clarence felt proud to be a part of this formidable bunch of outlaws who took what they wanted wherever they went—money, women, anything they needed. It was mostly women he couldn't get enough of, and the innocent ones who protested pleased him most. He drank down some whiskey. This was the good life, a hell of a lot better than sitting around listening to his uncle preach. The way he lived now was dangerous and daring, but he liked the power that came with being one of Bill Kennedy's men. He had gotten pretty good with his gun, thanks to lessons from Bill and Jeb. After each robbery that turned out especially lucrative, they lived high on the hog, buying new clothes, buying the prettiest women.