Outlaw Hearts (30 page)

That had been the case after their last robbery of a little bank in some nameless town in Arizona, where they had found a surprising amount of cash on hand. They had ridden into Mexico to lay low for a while and now returned, coming up into Southern California. Here in San Diego they had bought new clothes and decided to get baths and shaves. His new felt hat hung on a hat rack nearby, and he wore a diamond ring on his right hand. Nearby lay his brand-new .45 Peacemaker with a cutaway trigger guard to make his draw and shooting time even faster. The gun rested in a new gun belt with his name etched into the holster.

The only trouble they had found since fleeing Northern California was along the Outlaw Trail itself. At a place called Robber's Roost they had run into two men who had known Jake Harkner in his gunrunning days, men Jake had known before he took up with Bill Kennedy. They seemed to have a certain loyalty to Jake and didn't like the idea that Bill Kennedy had been hunting for him. One of them, who called himself Jess York, claimed Jake had saved his life once, and he didn't want anything to do with anybody who was out to kill Jake. He and several other men had come after Kennedy, warning all of them to forget about finding Jake. That was the only time Clarence could remember Bill Kennedy and even Juan running from anything, but it was obvious the men meant business.

Clarence had realized then that being an outlaw didn't always mean just the law was after you, but sometimes men of your own kind. Word had spread, and they had suddenly become unwelcome practically everyplace they stopped along the Trail. They had been forced to the southern end, into Arizona, and after the bank robbery there, they had finally gone on into Mexico. After a few weeks in Mexico, Kennedy had decided to come back north, this time into Southern California, where they weren't so well-known. There was plenty of wealth to be had here too, and they could always make it back to Mexico, where the law couldn't touch them, in just a few days. And in Mexico there were no outlaws who wouldn't make them welcome there. In fact, Kennedy had made friends with some rough-looking banditos and was planning to do business with them, raiding Southern California towns and ranches and trading horses, guns, and women to the banditos for Mexican gold.

One of the bathhouse women gave Kennedy a copy of a San Diego newspaper, and the man handed it over to Clarence, the only one among them who could read well. “Take a look, boy. Let us know what's goin' on around here that's exciting.”

Clarence took the newspaper and studied it, proud to be the best educated one of the bunch. They all seemed to look up to him a little for that, all except Juan, who had no respect for anything. Clarence stayed away from Juan, after an argument they'd had over which one got to rape a young Mexican girl first. Juan had come after him with a knife, and Kennedy had managed to talk the man out of using it on him. Clarence had seen Juan's “talent” with the big bowie he carried, and he wanted no more run-ins with the man.

“Nothing much here,” he said aloud. “They're having some kind of sailboat races off the coast.”

Kennedy chuckled. “Big deal. This town's a little too big for my liking anyway. We'll hit a few saloons tonight with our new duds, find us some card games and some women and get out of here in a couple of days. I like these Mexican women. The ones who are easy are hot mamas who know how to please a man, and the ones who
aren't
easy fight you so hard they're even more excitin' than the whores.” He laughed a throaty laugh, joined by the others.

“Says here they're planning to bring in a railroad to Southern California, partly following the old San Antonio–San Diego stage route.” Clarence looked over at his boss. “Hell, at the rate they're bringing railroads out here now, we might as well start robbing trains instead of banks and stagecoaches. Now that they've completed the transcontinental railroad, they'll be putting in more tracks all over the place.”

“Yeah, and bringing in more civilization and more law,” Kennedy complained. “And don't be tellin' me what kind of jobs I should pull.”

Clarence reddened a little. “Sorry, Bill.” He always felt his position among them was tentative, and did his best to prove he was worth having along, even though he had never quite gotten used to being the target of lawmen's bullets. He turned back to the paper, hoping to find something to interest Bill Kennedy and stay on the man's good side. He turned the page and saw a headline reading
Come
to
the
Fair
. He read on a ways and then spoke up.

“Some small town east of here name of Desert, they're having a fair—stitching contests, baked goods, a horse auction—hey, and a shooting contest! Hell, we could go there and win every prize they got. Nobody in a little town called Desert is going to be any good with a gun.”

“Now that could be fun, boss,” Jeb Donner spoke up, rubbing at his left arm. “If the town is small enough, while everybody is at that fair, we could check out the bank, break in, and rob it before anybody knows what's happening. Maybe there isn't even any law there.”

“Yeah, and maybe there's no
bank
either!” Joe Stowers said, joking.

They all laughed again, all but Clarence, who sat up straighter in his tub. “Hey, Bill, listen to this!” They all looked his way. “It says here that the prize this year at the shooting contest will be a hundred dollars instead of fifty, and that they're offering a special challenge to outsiders. They have a citizen of their own that none of the locals can beat. They want to draw as many people as they can and will take side bets on top of the hundred-dollar prize.”

Kennedy smiled smugly. “Well, the guy might be good, but he would never beat any of us.”

“That's not what's important here, Bill. What's important is the man's name. It's Jake Logan.”

Kennedy's eyebrows arched. “
Jake
Logan?”

“
Jake
Logan,” Clarence repeated. “Doesn't that make you wonder? If this guy is so good that they're challenging men from all over to try to beat him, then he must be
damn
good. How many men do you know named Jake who are that good with a gun?”

Kennedy just sat there a minute, then straightened, looking over at Juan, who was beginning to grin. He looked past the man at Jeb. “What do you think, Jeb?”

Jeb's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the thought of possible vengeance, finally, after three years of searching! Actually, they had given up looking for Jake, but just the slim hope of finding him brought new life to his veins. “I think we ought to check it out. We know Jake came to California. Maybe he picked that little-ass town so he'd be harder to find.”

“If it is Jake,
patrón
, when I am through with my knife, I will personally drink his blood and spit it in his face!”

Kennedy looked back at Clarence. “Boy, I knew there was a good reason to keep you on. If you couldn't read, we'd never have known about this.”

Clarence grinned with pride, his teeth already stained brown from chewing tobacco. The two teeth in front that Jake had blackened were getting even more rotten. He had finally done something that showed them he was valuable to the gang. If this Jake really was the one they were looking for, he'd be favored in Kennedy's eyes the rest of their days. He checked the article once more. “We don't have much time. This is an old paper. The fair starts in two days.”

“Well then,” Kennedy said with a sly grin, “looks like we've got some riding to do.” He settled back into his bath water. “Boys, let's get done with these baths and get dressed. We're goin' to a fair!”

Miranda set her pies on the checkered tablecloth beside the tags designated for her entries. The judging would take place in one hour. She mingled with the other women, many whom had become close friends. They exclaimed over other entries, fancy meringues, cinnamon-topped apple, berry pies oozing their sweet juices over the edges of the pans.

“There are so many more entries this year,” Miranda said to Hetta Grant.

“Oh, you'll still win a prize, I just know it. Nobody makes a pumpkin pie that ends up as light as yours. Why, I could eat a whole pie in one sitting.”

Both women laughed, and they wandered to the table that held cakes. Hetta was older than she, a woman whose children were already grown. Miranda enjoyed their talks, enjoyed the woman's company when she had stayed with her while Jake was hunting mustangs. He had captured the black stallion, his pride and joy. He had brought it to the auction just to show and advertise the animal for stud service.

Lloyd was with his father. The boy refused to leave the man when they were in a crowd. He was shy, but where most toddlers clung to their mothers in such times, Lloyd clung to his father. She knew she would have to get over to the horse-showing stands soon and take the boy whether he liked it or not, since Jake did not like him playing around the unpredictable stallion. She smiled at how excited Jake was this year about the auction. He had several quality horses to sell. They would make a good profit.

“This fair is much bigger than last year's,” she told Hetta.

“Thanks to Joe's advertising in San Diego,” the woman answered, putting an arm around her waist and walking with her to where handmade quilts hung on display. “I think the challenge involving your husband and the shooting contest is what brought a lot of these people. I notice there are a lot more men here this year. They probably want to know who Jake Logan is.”

Miranda felt a hint of alarm. “Did Joe use Jake's name in the newspaper article?”

Hetta laughed lightly. “Yes. Jake didn't want him to, but Joe thought that giving a name for people to look for would make it even more interesting.”

Miranda stopped walking and faced the woman, unaware that a bearded, blond-haired young man who had spotted her was running off toward a scarred Mexican who carried a big knife. “Hetta, Jake asked Joe not to use his name. He would have preferred the challenge against one man wasn't even mentioned.”

“It's all right. It's all in fun, dear. Come now, let's see if any of these other women can make a quilt pretty as yours.”

Three other women friends caught up to them. One, Betsy Price, was a year younger than Miranda and a newlywed. Betsy and Miranda worked together on church projects for the one-and-only church in town, a Catholic mission around which the little settlement had been built.

Desert had never been so busy or so populated. Baked goods, quilts, canned goods, and all sorts of homemade wares were on display in the town's only street. Jake had joked once about it being called “Main” Street.
Only
Street
is
what
it
should
be
called
, he had said. There were booths set up for children's games and for adult games. In the distance some children played tug-of-war with a rope over a man-made mud puddle, their parents cheering them on. The weather was beautiful, and Miranda thought what an enjoyable day it was going to be. She had made a picnic lunch of fried chicken, which they would share with the Grants. She decided to ignore the uneasy feeling she had over Jake's name being used in the San Diego newspaper, and she decided it would be best not to mention it to Jake. The town was full of strangers, but they all seemed to be good-natured people come to enjoy the fair, many of them probably here for the one-hundred-dollar pot raised for the shooting contest. Since there was a charge to enter the contest, even with the hundred-dollar prize, Desert stood to raise a good deal more than that from the entries; and to top off the day, she was confident Jake would be the one to walk off with the prize.

Behind her, the blond-haired young man was pointing her out to the Mexican with the ugly scar. A few people glanced at the Mexican, thinking to themselves how very ugly he was and not too sure he and the men some of them had seen him ride in with were the kind they wanted around Desert. The blond-haired man left, flagging down some more of his friends, and the Mexican and a light-haired, blue-eyed man walked casually toward where Miranda stood visiting with her women friends.

Somewhere in the distance a band struck up “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” and it was the last lovely memory Miranda had of that day. A strong hand suddenly came around her middle, and something poked her sharply at her right side, making her gasp. “Miranda Logan?”

Her name had been spoken by someone with a raspy voice. She started to struggle away, but whatever was poking her cut deeper, and she cried out with the pain of it. She heard the women around her screaming, and some man was waving a gun at them.

“Just stay out of the way, ladies, and nobody will get hurt.” Other men were joining him, and she saw a few people running. The band still played “Sweet Betsy,” and in the distance people went about their business, unaware of what was happening near the quilt booth.

Miranda watched a man with a stubble of a beard and a scar on his right cheek step closer to her. His steely blue eyes gave her shivers. He grasped her jaw and yanked her head around so she had to look up at a dark, ugly man with a deep scar across one eye, his nose, and lips, another scar across his throat. “This is Juan,” the blue-eyed man told her. “Ol' Jake ever tell you about Juan?” He squeezed her jaw painfully, and she could feel blood soaking her dress at the side.

Juan! Jake had mentioned the name several times. She remembered him saying something about how good the man was with a knife. Terror engulfed her, for that knife was stuck in her side now. A little deeper, and she would be dead. Jake! These men were after Jake! The one called Juan rode with Bill Kennedy.

This couldn't be! Bill Kennedy had found them after all! She tried to wrench free, but Juan just held her tighter, yanking the knife from her side and putting it against her throat, pricking the skin. “Take it easy,
mujer
bonita
,” the Mexican growled in her ear. “We will not kill you yet. We will wait and do it in front of your husband. But first we will have a good time with you, no? Now, you take us to Jake, or maybe I will change my mind and kill you now. I can push my knife a little deeper next time and maybe go all the way into your kidney. It will take you a while to die, and it will be very painful, but I assure you, you
will
die!”

“Hey, what's going on here?” Miranda could not see the man who had spoken the words. She only felt Juan whirl, heard a chopping sound and a grunt. More people screamed and ran, and Juan held a bloody knife before her eyes. Had he just killed some innocent man who had tried to help her?

“We would have waited for the shooting contest, honey,” the blue-eyed man told her, “but then there would be a lot of men around with guns. We prefer to do it this way.” He patted her cheek, hard enough to make it more of a slap. “Now, just tell us where to find Jake. Maybe we can get to him before the rest of my men find him and the kid. Is that where the little boy-pup is, with his pa?”

“You're Bill Kennedy,” she said, the words choked. She was already beginning to feel weak from loss of blood.

The man in front of her grinned. “I see Jake told you all about us. Now, where is he, sweetie?”

“He'll
kill
you. You know that.”

“You let us worry about that. You just tell us where he is, and we won't hurt the kid. But it's got to be quick, honey. If my men find him first and I'm not there, they might act without my orders and shoot down the little pup like a bunny rabbit.”

She knew by his eyes this man would think nothing of killing a little boy. She had to get to Lloyd, even if it meant telling these men where Jake was. Jake was the only person in this whole crowd of people who might be able to help this situation, but how many of them were there? Would she see her husband gunned down today?

“Randy,” Hetta Grant cried. “What is going on? What can we do?”

“Nothing!” Miranda answered in a low voice, terrified Juan or Kennedy would hurt the woman. “Just please stay out of the way.”

Kennedy squeezed her jaw again. “Smart woman. Now, where is Jake?”

Juan kept a strong left arm around her, moving a hand to close it over her breast and wiping the blood that was on his knife onto the front of her dress, pressing the flat of it against her stomach to warn her how easily he could sink it into her. Miranda felt sick with fear and dread. “You're fools to do this with so many people around,” she answered, her voice shaking.

Juan gave her a jerk. “Do not waste time, woman!” he growled in a chilling voice. “Your son's
life
is at stake!”

Lloyd! “He's over at the stands…where they're holding the horse auction,” she told them.

Kennedy grinned. “Let's go!”

They hurried off, forcing Miranda to go with them. Shock and pain and loss of blood left her weak, and Juan had to half drag her to keep up. She sensed there were a couple more men following. All around them people scattered and women screamed. Miranda could feel blood trickling down her right leg under her dress. She walked as fast as she could to keep her feet ahead of Juan's, but it was impossible, and his boots kept kicking into her ankles. When she would start to fall, he would hoist her up again, making sure to keep a hand over her breast.

“What's going on there? What the hell are you doing to that woman?” someone shouted.

Bill Kennedy turned and fired. A second innocent person dead. Her fear faded into a dread of what this would do to Jake if he did survive, to know innocent people had died. Would she lose everything today? Her husband? Her son? Was this to be her destiny then, always to have her loved ones taken from her? “Please don't hurt my son,” she begged.

Juan laughed. “Now you know the kind of man your Jake used to be, no? You have spread your legs for a man just like one of us,
señora bonita
, so you will not mind doing it for us too, no? We will all have a good time. Maybe I will not even kill you. Maybe I will keep you.” He squeezed her breast painfully and laughed. “After being with Juan, you will not want Jake anymore anyway.”

“Somebody get Jake!” a man shouted.

Kennedy shot again, hitting the man in the back.
Three
innocent people! Miranda could see the stands now, heard shouting, more screams, children beginning to cry. Plenty of the men sported guns because of the contest, but none seemed willing to get involved. A couple of men rode off on horses, deciding just to get out of there. The band stopped its playing. She could see Jake now, standing in the middle of a corral. To her horror, another man, obviously part of Kennedy's bunch, held a crying Lloyd, pointing a gun to the baby's head. The black stallion was trotting nervously in a circle around the inside of the corral fence.

So, the rest of Kennedy's men had already found Jake. She spotted two more men lying dead, and her stomach churned when she saw that one of them was Joe Grant. He must have been watching Lloyd while Jake showed the stallion, and had likely lost his life trying to keep the outlaw from grabbing the boy away.

She took faint hope in the fact that Jake was still alive and standing, and he wore one of his revolvers. He had put it on because of the shooting contest, but it was only one gun with six bullets. How many men did Kennedy have along? People scattered, no one willing to argue now with the defiant intruders who seemed to think nothing of shooting people down in cold blood. Most people had run off; others stood transfixed, probably afraid that if they moved, they would be shot.

Now
you
know
the
kind
of
man
your
Jake
used
to
be
, Juan had told her. She would not believe he had ever been this bad. He would not stick a knife into a woman's ribs. He would not threaten a little boy. Never. He would not rape, or come to something like this and shoot people down like rabbits. Still, he had ridden with these men at one time, and now it seemed he would pay a much higher price for it than if he had gone to prison. Her heart ached at the look in his eyes when Juan dragged her around the corral fence to stand next to the man who held Lloyd. The baby reached for her, screaming “Mama.”

“Let him go, you bastards!” Jake shouted. “Let him go to his mother and release both of them! You can have me if you want! Just let them go!”

People stared, no one making a move. Jake had never felt such desperate rage. This was his son! And the woman he loved more than his own life! Was that blood on her dress? What had Juan already done to her? The very thing he had feared most was happening. By some cruel twist of fate, Bill Kennedy had found him, and he knew that if he survived this, the sweet, gentle life he had found here was over. He had everything to lose, and he was not going to lose it without a fight!

“Oh, we'll take you, Jake,” Kennedy shouted. “But you've got to suffer a little first. You and your kid and your woman are comin' with us.” He turned to one of the other three men who had come around to stand in front of Jake. “Shut that kid up. Gag him or something.”

“Leave him alone!” Miranda screamed.

One of the men untied a sash she was wearing around her waist and yanked it off, going up to Lloyd and tying it tightly around the baby's mouth.

“Jake, what the hell is this about?” the small town's mayor shouted.

“It's about this man here being Jake Harkner, not Jake Logan,” Kennedy shouted. “It's about him bein' just like us once, rode with us back in Missouri, robbed a few banks, killed a few men, raped a few women—”