“Marty sure as hell knows we’re here now,” Harry Wilkes said excitedly.
“I want him to know,” Jake told him. “Marty scares easy. You boys did a good job picking your targets. I’ll have Marty Bryant shaking like a tortured puppy before this is over.”
“Jake, we can’t be sure how many more there are inside that cabin, or anywhere else,” Fenton Wales commented.
A covered wagon below rocked from the movement of men inside, and more had run into a barn. Someone opened a wooden shutter that had covered the cabin window. “That you, Jake?” Marty yelled from below. His voice seemed to echo in the morning air.
“You should be wishing it wasn’t, Marty!” Jake yelled back, keeping behind brush cover near the top of the ridge.
“How’d you get here so fast?” came Marty’s reply. “What are you doin’ up on that ridge?”
“You didn’t plan this out very well, Marty. I have the advantage now, so send my daughter and grandson out, or you won’t live to see the sun set!”
“I ain’t never comin’ out! You come on down here instead.”
“Is Dell with you, Marty? Do you want to see your little brother get killed today?”
“Dell is a man now. He done learned with your daughter! And he’s the one who attacked that stagecoach and freed me!”
“Yeah, Jake!” It was Dell who shouted then. It sounded like his voice came from the barn. “Your daughter’s a sweet one, that’s for sure!”
“Jesus Christ,” Lloyd groaned. “I can’t wait to kill that little sonofabitch.”
“Hold it!” Someone below shouted the words. A man came running out of the barn. “Let me leave, Harkner! I never touched your daughter! It was the rest of ’em! Not me!”
Brian put his head down on his arm. “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered. “I can’t take much more of this.”
The man who’d come out of the barn put his hands in the air. “I’m unarmed!”
“That’s my sister down there! Did you try to help her?” Lloyd yelled.
“I…no… I was outnumbered!”
“He didn’t try to help on account of he was havin’ at her like everybody else!” Dell shouted, followed by laughter.
Lloyd rose, taking aim with his rifle.
“Get down!” Jake ordered.
“Sonsofbitches! I’ll kill every one of them!” Lloyd swore.
“Lloyd, he’s giving himself up,” Jake warned.
Lloyd crouched back down and looked at Jake with a dark, hateful glare. In that moment, Jake saw himself, the old Jake, the outlaw Jake. “Don’t do it, Son.”
“Do what?”
“You know what! Don’t do it! I’ve been there, and that hatred and thirst to kill will destroy you. Remember that Evie is watching us.”
“You heard what they said!”
“I want to kill every one of them as much as you do,” Jake growled. “But you start shooting the ones giving themselves up, and Marty might shoot Evie just for spite, and we could both end up in prison if we don’t handle this right!”
Lloyd rubbed at his eyes and turned his attention back to the hollow. Just then, the man who’d decided to give himself up started running.
“Now, Pa?”
“Hell, yes.”
Lloyd aimed and pulled the trigger. His rifle shot cracked through the air and the man went down.
Men below began cursing a blue streak.
“Murderin’ bastard!” one man shouted.
“It was you that shot him, wasn’t it, Lloyd Harkner? You’re as bad as your pa!”
“I take that as a compliment,” Lloyd shouted back.
“That was my brother,” another man shouted. “He wasn’t even armed!”
“The way I saw it, he was running from the law,” Lloyd shouted back, actually grinning. “It’s not my fault the sonofabitch gave me an excuse to shoot him. The rest of you would be wise to give yourselves up right now!”
“So you can shoot us when we put down our guns?” Dell shouted. “You and your pa ain’t no better than vigilantes.”
Jake looked over at Red and the others. “What do you think, boys? Are we all vigilantes?”
“Hell, yes,” Red answered. “Once this is over, you can hang every one of them that’s left as far as we’re concerned, Jake.”
Jake turned his attention back to the hollow, where men remained hidden. “I’d sure like to, but Evie’s down there,” he told Red. “I have a feeling she’d be mighty upset by that, in spite of what she’s been through. We can’t let her see us string up a bunch of men.”