Lloyd turned away, feeling helpless and angry and frustrated and wanting to explode with his own need to get back to Guthrie. He walked up to Jeff. “I don’t know what the hell to do, Jeff. There is only one of me, and my mother needs me, my father needs me, my sister probably needs me by now, maybe my wife…or my son…or both.”
Jeff dismounted. “Lloyd, Dixie is right. You and Jake need to eat and get some real rest.”
“I’ve got no appetite and neither does Pa.” He wiped at tears. “Jesus, I’ve never seen him this bad, and I’ve never felt this much…I don’t even know what to call it. It’s worse than rage. There isn’t even a word for it.”
“You’re your father’s son, Lloyd. Right now you’re closer to nitroglycerin than dynamite.”
Lloyd threw his head back, shaking his hair behind his shoulders. “The trouble is, I can probably take this constant riding and no sleep better than Pa. If he keeps this up, he’ll die. If he does, I’ll go after Katie and Evie on my own, and there’s going to be a bloodbath like you’ve never seen, because I might not have anything left to live for!”
Dixie came back out with a gunnysack of food. She handed it to Lloyd, then stepped back, seeing the same broiling storm in Lloyd’s eyes as the one in his father’s. “My God,” she muttered. She turned to Jake. “You listen to me, Jake Harkner! You get hold of yourself and you get your thoughts together. You need to plan this. You need to calm down and plan this. And you have to forget you’re a marshal and go back to the outlaw inside of you. That’s how you will do what you have to do. You have to forget your feelings for Evie and those grandbabies and just act, Jake. No feelings! Feelings are killing you! Use your goddamn good sense and your great skills and those famous guns and go get your daughter and whoever else they might have taken. That’s the only way you will be able to help her, Jake. Do you know what I’m saying?”
He met her eyes, and Dixie saw the Jake she’d never really known in his early days, the one she knew dwelled deep inside Jake Harkner the U.S. Marshal—now just a man on a mission of murder and revenge. “I almost hurt a woman back there, Dixie…a whore who wanted me to screw her for information about my own family—information she wasn’t going to tell me otherwise. You would never do that.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. If I knew something like that, I’d ride to hell and back to find and tell you.”
“I’ve never hurt a woman in my life, but I hated her for that. For a minute I wanted to strangle her. It was like…like…”
“Your father? No, it wasn’t, Jake. Your father didn’t need a reason to hurt a woman. You had a reason—and you know down deep inside you never really would have hurt her. It sounds to me like she would have deserved it, but mean as you are, you never would have gone that far. Jake, you have to reach down inside and use that meanness the right way—use it to go find your family and do what you have to do to get them back. You need to be cold, Jake—colder than the man who used to ride with outlaws, colder than the man who killed the whole Kennedy gang and killed all those men when you went after your son.” Dixie kept her distance, truly taken aback by his demeanor. “And you have to remember what your son is going through right now, Jake. I know how bad you’re hurting over this, but Lloyd’s own wife and son might also be involved. That kid is living in hell right now with worry. He’s hurting just as much as you are, and you need each other. You can’t think this is just your own agony, Jake, because it’s Lloyd’s too. You need to be strong for each other.”
Dominic came outside to tend to the horses. Jeff dismounted and explained what was going on, and the stable hand ranted in Spanish over Jake’s dilemma. He took Ben’s hand and asked if he would help with the horses. “Jake, I will bring you fresh horses as fast as I can.” Dominic headed for the barn with Ben. Jeff followed to help.
Jake sat down on the steps to wait, and Lloyd joined him. Neither spoke for a few minutes. Both smoked.
“Don’t let them take you, Pa,” Lloyd finally spoke up. “They’ll kill you sure as shit, and they won’t be quick about it. There has to be a way out of this without you giving yourself up like a goddamn martyr.”
“They want you too.”
“I fucking know that!” He wiped at his eyes again. “Sweet Jesus, I’ve had trouble helping Katie face what I do for a living. Now this. If they…” He got up. “Our marriage will never survive this.”