“I think you have God’s permission to do what you have to do, Jake. Just remember what I told you about what happens after you get Evie back. And remember that you are always welcome at church. You are worthy in God’s eyes, and now you have a promise to keep. Randy is coming home, alive and well. Remember that. God is working in your favor. He will be with you when you ride out after Evie.”
Jake nodded. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am right. God bless you, Jake Harkner.”
Zilke left. “God be with Evie and my grandson,” Jake muttered. “And he’d better help me do this right.”
Thirty-three
No one talked. They just rode at a steady pace, fast enough to try to reach Dune Hollow in three days instead of four, slow enough to keep from killing their horses. Jake, Lloyd, Brian, Jeff, and four men from town—feed-store owner Ruben Tate, whose children were all grown; farmer Fenton Wales, whose wife had died and who had no children; hardware-store owner Harry Wilkes, who had one nearly grown daughter; and gunsmith Red St. James, who did have family but was adept with handgun and rifle. Ruben, Fenton, and Harry knew rifles well enough to hunt with them, but this time they would hunt men. Brian carried a repeating rifle loaned to him by Lloyd. Jake had deputized all of them.
Jake and his son are side-by-side, and right now it’s hard to tell them apart—not just in looks and ability, but also in their demeanor. Never has Lloyd more fully taken on the outlaw side of his father. If it weren’t for his long hair, it would be even harder to tell them apart. Jeff made notes in his head and wondered if he would live to tell his story. There are eight of us, but we figure up to fifteen men are with Marty Bryant. That’s two men each, if a person wanted to conveniently divide us up that way, but there will be nothing convenient about this, and I suspect that between Jake and Lloyd, few will be left for the rest of us to worry about.
But even that wasn’t much of a comfort.
They took roads, sometimes took shortcuts, waded through creeks, wove through heavy woods, climbed hills, wound through brush. Jake knew the country, and he was taking the shortest route to Dune Hollow. Every man along was afraid to talk to him—even afraid to talk to Lloyd, who adored Evie as his sister as much as Jake adored her as his daughter. Jeff had no doubt part of Lloyd’s devotion was because he’d never forgiven himself for abandoning his mother and Evie both when Jake went to prison. He felt as though he’d failed Evie then. He would not fail her now.
They stopped at noon again the second day, rested their horses, quietly ate biscuits, and drank coffee heated over a small fire.
“All of you listen up,” Jake said then, surprising them that he spoke at all. “All of you know what those men have likely done to my daughter. If any one of you ever talks like she should be ashamed, you’d better hope I don’t know about it. She’s the sweetest, purest woman who ever walked, so you will treat her as such, no matter what has happened. Plain and simple. Evie is a lady, through and through.”
After a moment of silence Red spoke up. “Ain’t a man here who doesn’t respect Evie, Jake.”
“If we thought any different, we wouldn’t have volunteered for this,” Ruben offered. “Anyone who knows Evie thinks of her as the kindest woman in Guthrie. She teaches Sunday school, knows her Bible, helps people in need, and she’s helped nurse a lot of us when we were bedded down sick or wounded at Brian’s place. We’ll find her, and she’ll be just as sweet and good when we get her back home.”
Jake smoked quietly, taking a few seconds to answer. “I like the fact that you said we,” Jake told Ruben. “You men are risking your lives here, and that says a lot for how you feel about my daughter. I’m grateful, and I know Lloyd and Brian are too. And if Lloyd and I do this right, we’ll be the ones taking the brunt of this thing and hopefully keep any of the rest of you from getting hurt. We’ll head out again soon. I know it’s a bitch riding this hard, but time is important. My plan is to ride around where they’re camped. They expect us to ride straight at them from the west, but that’s all open country, and they figure they’ll have a good view and we’ll have little protection.”
Jake knelt down and pulled an unburned stick from the fire, drawing in the dirt. “Here’s Dune Hollow. If we ride hard the rest of today, we can reach it late tonight. It’s called that because it sits in kind of a dip. From our direction, it doesn’t drop down that much.” He drew around the other side of the X he’d made. “But over here on the east edge is a pretty high ridge. We’ll go around to that so we can come up that ridge and be on top of them. They won’t expect that, because they know my temper, which means they figure I’ll come riding in hell-bent for blood, without thinking this out. I’m betting they figure I’ll charge right into that hollow from the west, not wanting to lose any time. That would leave me wide open for their guns, and they’ll figure once I’m in the hollow, I’ll be trapped because of that ridge to the east. Besides that, I’m banking on them thinking that it’s going to take me longer than this to find them, so they won’t be as alert as they would be a couple more days from now. They probably figure the man they left behind is dead. They don’t know he told me exactly where they were holed up. Our last bit of luck is that Marty Bryant doesn’t have the brains of a hummingbird.” The others laughed lightly.