Do Not Forsake Me(111)

Jeff scribbled notes as fast as he could, because Jake was apparently determined to get the story over with and definitely would not want to repeat it.

Jake angrily wiped at his eyes, staring at the fire the whole time he talked. “Then one day I had a shoot-out in a supply store in Kansas City, and a young woman with honey-blond hair and gray-green eyes witnessed it. She looked at me, scared shitless, and she pulled a little pistol from her handbag and shot me. And that, young Jeff, changed my life. You already know what happened then. That crazy woman has stuck by me through things that would horrify other women and send them running…but not Randy…” He wiped at his eyes again. “Not Randy.”

He abruptly changed the subject. “We’ll haul ass up to Hell’s Nest tomorrow and get there by the day after.” The change of subject was so immediate that it took Jeff a moment to realize he was done talking about his father. “If we can’t find out anything there, we’ll head home. I’m sure Lloyd would like to be with Katie, and we need to do something with young Ben, so let’s hope nothing else happens to slow us down.”

Jake looked over at Ben and put a blanket over him. He lit yet another cigarette and walked off by himself.

Lloyd looked at Jeff. “Now you know all of it. It’s not a pretty picture.”

Jeff stared at his notes. “No. It sure isn’t.”





Twenty-nine


He talks to little Ben almost like he’d talk to his own grandchildren, Jeff wrote on their fifth morning of travel. He had to hurry to finish his notes. Today they would reach Hell’s Nest.

This is not the heartless man some have made him out to be. On the outside, he is tough as nails. I would never want to be on the bad side of Jake Harkner. But on the inside, he is almost like a little boy wanting to be loved and wanting to love in return. I always thought that with human nature, black was black and white was white, but I am changing my mind. There is much more gray in this life than people realize.

Jake left young Ben at a rancher’s house three hours behind them. To Jeff’s dismay, the rancher was an old ex-outlaw married to a former prostitute, people only someone like Jake would actually trust with a little boy he cared about. Jeff had just about given up understanding the man and how he knew which people he could depend on. He’d promised Ben he would be back for him, and the boy had looked at Jake like a kid would look at his own father. He’d hugged Jake around the neck and cried.

“Look at me, Ben,” Jake told him, crouching down so they would be face-to-face.

The boy had reached out and touched Jake’s face lovingly.

“I will come back for you,” Jake promised him. “Believe that and don’t be scared. These are nice people, and I’ll only be gone for a few hours—maybe one night—and then I’ll be back for you. Do you believe me?”

Ben nodded and Jake hugged him, being careful not to embrace him too tightly because of his still-painful welts. He left instructions with the rancher to take Ben to Guthrie and the Donavans if he didn’t return from Hell’s Nest.

Now they approached the lawless settlement, and the man riding into town was a far cry from one who’d hugged a crying eight-year-old boy. He was all lawman and probably a lot outlaw, because this place was full of them.

“Do you expect much trouble here, Jake?”

“Can’t be sure. It depends on whether any of those men Marty Bryant has been running with are here. Just keep your eyes open and your gun ready. This place is nothing but the worst riffraff who have come to Oklahoma to hide out from the law. The whores are filthy women who will do things for money not even Dixie and her girls would consider. They’re the kind of women even I would never touch. If Marty Bryant is gathering men, I have a feeling that somebody here will know something about it.”

They reached the main street, where Jeff noticed two men lying passed out on the boardwalk. Piano music and laughter seemed to pour out of every saloon, and saloons made up about two-thirds of the buildings and tents in town.

“Hey, it’s Marshal Jake Harkner!” The words were shouted by a half-naked prostitute standing on the balcony of the only two-story building in town. “Hey, Jake, are you or that damn good-looking son of yours needing a good lay?”

“I’d be doing you a favor, Ida,” Jake yelled back, “so I shouldn’t need to pay for it.”

The woman shrieked with laughter. “Come and do me that favor, honey. I’m still waiting to be able to say I’ve been had by Jake Harkner.”

“Let’s go on up to the Land Rush Saloon,” Jake told Lloyd. “Jeff, just go along with whatever I do and don’t question it.”