Outlaw Hearts (59 page)

She just stared at him a moment, as though she didn't know him. “I…I followed Charlie. I thought if I stayed back here, out of the way, maybe I could still help somehow.” She looked again at the pitchfork. “I was going to try to shoot him, but I was afraid I would hit you instead.” She began to tremble. “I never saw anything like that. When he came at you with that pitchfork…” She looked at him again, her eyes dropping to the blood on the front of his shirt.

“I
told
you before we left there would be no room for mercy in this! God only knows what they've done to Lloyd. All I can hope for is Latimer's lying about him being dead. I'm going for Latimer! You stay
put
this time!”

The look in his dark eyes almost frightened her. “You're hurt.”

“Not bad enough to keep me from killing Latimer!”

A sob caught in her throat. “I killed two men, Jake. One found me back at the waterfall.”

His eyes moved over her. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. He put a hand to the side of her face, reminding himself what killing meant to someone like her. “I've killed
nine
men so far,” he said firmly. “You can't think about it, Randy. You do what you have to do. Now stay here!
Promise
me!”

She nodded her head. Jake left her then and moved inside the barn, quickly searching through stalls, looking up then to check the loft area. The building was empty. “Just the house now,” he mumbled, teeth gritted. “And Latimer.” He leveled his rifle through a barn window, aiming it toward the house. “You're the only one left now, Latimer!” he yelled. “You and whoever is in there with you! Come on out!”

“You're a liar!”

“I got nine of them myself. Go ahead and call out! Nobody will answer! The big one is lying at the back of the barn with a pitchfork in his throat! You screwed up when you decided to hurt my son!” He began firing, rapid shots that tore through windows and ripped into the back door so fast that those inside didn't have a chance to shoot back. He charged out of the barn and headed toward the house. Charlie fired into two side windows from the bunkhouse, giving Jake more cover.

Miranda closed her eyes and covered her ears, hoping the bullets were coming only from Jake's and Charlie's guns and not from men shooting back. The barn was between her and the house, and she couldn't see what was happening.

Jake reached the back door, setting the rifle aside then and pulling out his revolver. He burst into the house then, firing instantly at a man who lurched into a doorway between the kitchen and another part of the house. The man went down, and Jake heard someone running, heard a door open. He charged through the house to the front door, aiming his revolver. “Latimer!” he roared.

The fleeing man stopped, turned, revolver drawn. Jake fired, opening a hole in his chest. The man went down, and Jake walked out to the body, his .45 smoking. The man lay panting, staring up at him. He was not a big man, actually looked thin. His dark eyes were full of terror, and his black hair was wet with perspiration. Jake stood over him. “You're Jube Latimer.”

“How did you…do it?” the man groaned.

“You underestimate what a man can do when he's out to save his son. Where's Lloyd?” Jake sneered.

“In the…shed. I hope…he's dead. The sonofabitch killed two of my men…stole their horses.”

Jake knelt closer. “That isn't why you went after him, Latimer. You went after him to lure
me
up here, after you heard I got out of prison. You just didn't count on things happening the way they did. Maybe you thought I was too old and getting too soft to take on you and your bunch.” He placed the still-hot barrel of his revolver against the man's forehead. “You hurt my son just to get to me, Latimer. That was a big mistake!”

He pulled the trigger, and Jube Latimer was instantly dead, his eyes still wide open. Jake just stared at him a moment, then wiped blood from the barrel of the revolver onto Latimer's shirt before rising and holstering the gun. He called to Charlie and Miranda, and both came running. Miranda still carried the shotgun. She stopped short at the sight of Jube Latimer lying on the ground with a gaping hole in both his chest and his head. Jake turned to her, suddenly looking weary and spent. “He told me Lloyd's in the shed. I don't know if I can get my legs to move. I'm afraid of what we'll find.”

A look of ruthless revenge still lurked in his eyes. Charlie took the shotgun from Miranda's hand. “Where's your rifle, Jake?”

Jake tore his eyes from Miranda's and looked at the man, confusion in his eyes. “I don't know. I think I left it at the other side of the house.” He put a hand to his head. “Do me a favor. There's a dead man in there. Get him out of there. If Lloyd's alive, I'll bring him into the house so Miranda can tend to him. Then go check on Hank. I think he's dead too. We'll bury him later. To hell with the rest of them.”

“Sure, Jake.”

Jake noticed the man's bloody sleeve. “You hurt bad?”

“You tend to Lloyd. Once you get him inside, your wife can tie somethin' around the arm to stop the bleedin'. I think the bullet went clean through. I'll be all right. What about you? What happened to your back?”

It was only then Jake began to feel the pain. “Pitchfork,” he answered. “Doesn't really matter right now.” He took hold of Miranda's arm. “Let's go find Lloyd.”

Miranda put an arm around him, feeling him tremble. The gun battle and his pent-up fury had drained him. She knew he was terrified of what they would find, and so was she. She felt his weight, realized he was half leaning on her, suddenly weak. “He's alive, Jake. I know he's alive.”

He smiled bitterly. “My ever-faithful, ever-hopeful wife.”

They reached the shed, and Miranda gasped at the sight of Lloyd hanging from a beam, his wrists tied together. He wore only the bottom half of long johns, and his body and face were covered with bruises and cuts, his leg bleeding from what looked like a bullet wound, another similar wound at his upper left chest. “Lloyd!” she cried.

A new strength quickly returned to Jake's body. He hastily dragged a stool over to Lloyd's body and stood on it, taking a knife from his boot and cutting the boy down. He let the body slump over his shoulder.

“Oh, Jake, his back!” Miranda exclaimed. “They've whipped him!”

“I've got him. Let's get him to the house!”

Miranda hurried beside him, struggling to stay in control. Her beautiful son, so battered and wounded! What kind of men strung another man up like that and just beat on him? She knew that killing two men would always haunt her, but she did not regret it now. She would never regret it.

Jake kept the boy hoisted over his shoulder and ignored his own pain as he hurriedly carried Lloyd from the shed into the house. Charlie was dragging the dead man out the back door. Jake headed for the one bedroom, and Miranda pulled the bedcovers back. “We can't worry about his back right now,” Jake told her. “The bullet wounds come first.” He gently laid Lloyd onto the feather mattress, which was covered with a light cotton blanket.

Lloyd opened his eyes, focused them on the man hovering over him, expecting it to be one of Latimer's men come to bring him more pain. He saw his father's face.

“Pa?” He couldn't believe his eyes. Had he died after all?

“I'm here, Lloyd. Your mother is here too. We'll get you through this.”

“Pa?” the boy repeated. “How did…you…find me?”

“That doesn't matter right now. The point is we're here.”

Lloyd noticed his father was bleeding. He knew Latimer had a lot of men. How had Jake gotten through them? “Latimer…” he muttered.

“Latimer's dead. So are the rest of them.”

Lloyd's eyes teared. As much as he must have hurt the man, thought he hated him, here he was. He must have risked his life to get here, his mother too! “I'm…sorry, Pa,” he whispered, too weak to find his full voice.

“Don't be sorry, son. There's no sense in anybody being sorry anymore.”

Lloyd's body jerked in a sob. “Hurts…everything…hurts.”

“I know. I've felt the pain.” Jake sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, facing the boy. He leaned over and drew him up so that Lloyd's head rested against his chest. Lloyd grabbed at one of his father's arms, breaking into deep sobbing.

“Pa,” he repeated. “Don't let go.”

“I'll never let go, son. You're not alone, Lloyd. You've never been alone, even when we were apart.”

Miranda was not sure from where she drew the strength to bear the emotional drain the next several days presented to her. She had to remove two bullets from her own screaming son while Jake held him down. She was soon out of laudanum, and Jake had refused to let Lloyd drink any whiskey for the pain.

“He's got to get off the stuff,” Jake had insisted. “I don't care what he has to suffer to do it.”

She knew it was tearing Jake apart. Lloyd begged for a drink, suffered terrible fits of tremors and periods of hallucination, screaming that snakes were crawling on him. He shouted obscenities at his father, calling him every horrible name he could think of, including murderer and rapist and bastard. Jake refused to buckle, but Miranda knew the words gouged deep into his soul, in spite of the fact that he knew they were spoken only because of Lloyd's desperate need for whiskey. Along with a cleansing of Lloyd's body of the need for whiskey, there also seemed to be a cleansing of the soul for both Lloyd and Jake.

It was four days before all three of them enjoyed a solid night's sleep. Charlie had buried Hank Downing the day of the shooting, and over the last few days more men from Hole-in-the-Wall had shown up out of curiosity, having heard that Jake Harkner had gone after Jube Latimer. They helped Charlie bury Latimer and his men, and Miranda did not doubt that word of what had happened here would be on the lips of men in these parts for a long time to come.

On their fifth morning at the ranch, Miranda awoke and stretched to realize it must be later than she usually awakened. She was surprised she had slept so well. Jake and Charlie had brought in cots from the bunkhouse for her and Jake to sleep on in the main room of the house so that they could be close to Lloyd. Jake had not really slept much since finding his son, had spent most of the last three days and nights watching over Lloyd. Often Miranda would wake up in the night to catch him smoking in the dark. She knew the worry over Lloyd that kept him awake was only enhanced by the painful back wound from the pitchfork that had left a deep cut across his shoulders, so that every arm movement was agony.

At last, this morning, Jake still slept. She looked over at him, hoping it would not be long before they could all just go home. Jake was only now beginning to return to the gentle, loving Jake who did not have that awful look in his eyes. It had taken the man time to control the rage he had felt over what had happened to his son, to calm the fierce temper that had given him the edge he needed to take on Latimer and his men. Right now he looked more peaceful than she had seen him look in years. She wanted to touch him, hold him, but she did not want to wake him. God knew he needed the sleep.

She rose quietly and went to check on Lloyd, surprised to find him wide awake and looking out the window. He turned to meet her eyes, and she saw in that moment her real son, the one she had known before Jake was arrested. He looked better today, and she realized he had actually slept all night for the first time since they'd found him, without waking up and yelling for a drink. He smiled with a hint of sadness. “Hi, Ma.”

Miranda moved closer, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “How do you feel?”

He sighed. “Weak. But the pain isn't so bad anymore.” He looked her over. “I can't believe you and Pa came here looking for me. You especially. You could have been killed, or something worse.”

“I was not about to let Jake come alone. I just got him back after four years of prison. Besides, I knew you could be hurt and I might be the only one who could help.”

He reached out and took her hand. “How did you get Pa to let you come?”

She smiled. “I have my ways.”

Lloyd grinned. “Yeah, he is pretty soft when it comes to you.” His smile faded. “You must both hate me. I deserted you, walked out on Pa, left you and Evie to fend for yourselves.”

She squeezed his hand. “Lloyd, there is absolutely nothing a child can do to make his parents hate him. Nothing.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You had a right to be angry with your father, disappointed in him. But you also have a special gift now that your father never had, Lloyd. It's something I know your father would give anything for.” She stroked his hair back from his forehead, thinking how utterly handsome this son of hers was, how wonderful it felt to have him looking at her with the gentle eyes of the old, trusting Lloyd. “You have a chance to make amends with your father. That's something Jake never had. If you think it hasn't bothered Jake that he killed his father, you're very, very wrong, Lloyd. That is what led to his confusion, to the desperate kind of life he led for so long. He was only fifteen, Lloyd. He didn't know what to do, where to turn. There was no one he could go to but the outlaw friends of his father, and he got caught in a vicious circle, thinking he was no good because his father told him so every single day of his life.”

She reached over to a stand beside the bed and picked up the cross and rosary Jake had left there. She held it up. “Jake never showed you this. It belonged to his mother. She was a good and gentle woman, sold to a brutal man. Jake's father killed her, and killed Jake's little brother. He beat your father viciously from the earliest Jake can remember. Your father saw some terrible things when he was growing up, Lloyd, but he knew that there must be some kind of goodness in this world. It just took him a long time to find it; and he always kept this to remind him of it.”

She pressed the cross into Lloyd's hand. “Your father is
not
the bad man his own father was. He has his mother's goodness in him, and so do you. I hope to God you never believed those rape charges. The woman he risked his life to save the day of that robbery finally came forward to testify that your father had nothing to do with that robbery or her abduction that day. He actually rescued her and brought her back home. She had been living in Europe these last few years and didn't know your father had been put in prison. It was not an easy thing for her to come forward like that, but because of it, your father is free now, and we can be a family again, Lloyd. Please, please come home with us. Evie is married to a doctor now, and she's expecting a baby. She wants so much for her brother to come home.”

Lloyd lifted his hand and studied the cross. “I don't know if I'd fit in anymore. There's too much to forgive.”

“There's
nothing
to forgive anymore. Don't throw away the gift of family, Lloyd. Your father knows how important family is. He never had the love and support you have always had. To him it's a wonderful blessing, something to be treasured. I'm not saying Jake didn't do other bad things. It's a fact that he did. He was an outlaw, but he was also a lost little boy just lashing out at the world that had hurt him so much. The man I married, the man who was such a good father to you, is nothing like the outlaw. You have to admit, Lloyd, that you could not have asked for a more loving, attentive father.”

Lloyd's eyes misted, and he squeezed the cross. “That's the hell of it. He had a right to hate his father. I didn't. Not really. I was just so angry, I guess, that he never told me. I thought we were so close. Even at that, maybe we could have worked it out if not for Beth.” A tear slipped down his cheek and he wiped at it, embarrassed. “I loved her, Ma. I still do.” He breathed deeply and swallowed. “I don't understand why she got married so quick. Her father must have forced her into it. I know she loved me. Every time I picture her with some other man, it makes me feel crazy, and then I need a drink, and that leads to blaming Pa all over again, makes me hate him.” He sniffed and wiped at his eyes with his fingers. “Not anymore, though. What's done is done, I guess, and you're right about family. I want to come home. As soon as I felt Pa's arms around me when he cut me down out there, I knew I loved him and wanted to come home.”

He looked past her then to see Jake standing in the doorway. “I'm sorry about Beth, son,” the man told him, his own eyes looking misty. “Damn sorry.” Jake came farther into the room, running a hand through his hair, still looking tired.

For the first time since Jake had rescued him, Lloyd took a good, clear-minded look at his father, realizing how much he had aged. His hair was peppered with gray, and the lines of hard prison life showed around his eyes; but he was still a good-looking man with an air of strength and power about him. He noticed the man limped a little as he walked around to the other side of the bed. He had a vague memory of the shoot-out in California, had a feeling the hip wound was from that and not from taking a fall from a horse, as his father had once told him when he was younger. There were so many things he wanted to know the truth about.

“I thought I heard voices in here. You look a lot better today,” Jake was saying.

“I feel better.”

Miranda rose, deciding to leave the room and let them talk. “You two need some time alone. I'm going to make both of you a nice, big breakfast,” she told them. She leaned down and kissed Lloyd once more, then left, closing the door behind her.

Jake sat down in a chair beside the bed. “You still hate me for not letting you have the whiskey?”

Lloyd closed his eyes for a moment. “No. I'm sorry for the things I said, Pa. I'm sorry for a lot of things. I never hated you. I just
wanted
to hate you. The whiskey made it all easier.”

“You've got to stay away from it, Lloyd. I lived with that hell for the first fifteen years of my life, with a man who went crazy when he drank. That's just the way it is for some men, and you're one of them. The difference is, my pa was mean clear through, and
all
the time. Whiskey just made him even meaner. I've got scars on my back you've never seen because I never let you. I didn't want to have to explain about a father who beat me with the buckle end of a belt from when I wasn't more than two; who murdered my mother and my little brother. You think it's terrible that I shot him, but he was a brutal, brutal man. He was raping a young girl I cared about very much, and I didn't know how else to stop him. After that, I didn't know how to stop
myself
from falling into a life of crime. It just seemed like that was all I was fit for, and I had nobody to guide me.”

He stopped to light a cigarette he had brought into the room with him, leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It's not like that for you. You had
me
to guide you, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that the path you're taking will only lead to a life of pure hell, full of regrets that eat at you on the inside like a cancer. If you hate things about my past so much, then why create one just like it for yourself?”

“I don't know.” Lloyd stared at the ceiling. “I just wanted to hurt you like you had hurt me. Why didn't you tell me a long time ago, Pa?”

Jake took a deep drag on the cigarette, blowing out the smoke with a deep sigh. “I was afraid. From the day you were born I knew that through you I could somehow recapture my own youth and relive it in a whole different light. I could be the father
I
never had. I was ashamed of the man. I never wanted you to know the kind of man your grandfather was, and I sure as hell never wanted to see the same shame in your eyes for me that I had for him. I saw it the day you visited me in jail back in St. Louis.”

Lloyd turned to look at him, for the first time noticing the crippled look to his right hand when the man put the cigarette to his lips again. “What happened to your hand, Pa?”

Jake took the cigarette in his other hand, flexed the crippled one as best he could. “I, uh, I made a vow when you were born, Lloyd, that because of my own pa, I would never, never lay a hand on you. That day you visited me, after I hit you, I felt a rage at myself. I guess I started hitting the wall, so they tell me. I didn't stop until I broke pretty near every bone in my hand, wasn't even aware of what I was doing until I wore myself out and couldn't keep it up.”

“My God, Pa…I didn't know.”

Jake smiled sadly and shrugged. “I can still shoot a rifle with it, but I have to rely on my left hand now to draw and shoot a revolver.” He took another drag on the cigarette, staring at the floor then. “You want to talk about pain? I know pain, Lloyd, from this hand to bullet wounds to brutal beatings to losing someone you love. There isn't one loss or form of pain you can suffer that I can't understand.” He raised his eyes then to meet Lloyd's gaze. “But I'll tell you one thing. I'd take on every bit of your pain too, if I could do it. I'd take away the physical pain, the whiskey jitters, the pain in your heart over Beth, I'd gladly suffer all of it if there was any possible way I could take it all off you.” He blinked back tears. “But I can't, and that's the hell of it.”

Lloyd put a hand to his eyes. “I'm sorry, Pa, about your hand, about deserting you like I did.”

Jake rose and put the cigarette into an ashtray. He leaned over the boy, grasping the head rail of the bed with one hand. “I'm not telling you these things to make you feel sorry for me or to try to force you to love me, Lloyd. I'm telling you so you understand what you mean to me. You could torture me, verbally abuse me the rest of your life, whatever. It wouldn't change how I feel about my son. It wouldn't keep me from turning right around and helping you the minute you asked for it. I'll always be here for you, Lloyd, any time you need me. I understand all the hurt, all the pain. You have advantages I never had, and you have a family's love. Don't turn away from all of that, Lloyd. Don't let my sorry life destroy your own good one. That was always my biggest fear.”

Lloyd opened his fist to look at the cross. He handed it to his father then. “Ma told me this belonged to your mother.”

Jake sat down on the edge of the bed, taking the cross from him and studying it a moment. “For a long time this was my only link to goodness in life, till I met your mother. The woman is nothing short of a saint for the things she's had to put up with being married to me.” He sighed deeply. “I just hope to hell I'm the one who dies first, because I couldn't go on without her.”