Jake just shook his head. “Did my daughter beg and cry like you’re doing now?”
The man just looked at him and sobbed.
Judging them is up to God, Daddy. I forgive them.
Jake wished he knew how to forgive.
You have to forgive yourself, Jake, and your father. You’ll never be free until you can do that.
They were his father…all of them…every man who’d died by his guns. Jake realized it was done now. Done. He felt strangely relieved.
He turned away.
“Not one man here says a word about this,” he warned. “Or about Lloyd shooting that man earlier.”
“Ain’t a man here who blames either of you,” Red told him.
“Jake, every one of us would like to kill these men, but we just can’t do it, and neither should you,” Ruben told him. “There’s laws now about things like this, and you know it.”
Jake rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah…I know. And I’m forever grateful to all of you,” he told them.
Jeff came back with Brian’s horse, a now-dressed Little Jake sitting in front of him. Harry Wilkes followed with Jake’s horse. Jake stumbled to the animal and grasped the pommel, resting his head against the saddle.
Jeff led Brian’s horse around the side of the cabin. Moments later he rode back to where Lloyd still sat and dismounted, lifting Little Jake down. The child immediately ran to his grandfather.
Jeff knelt in front of Lloyd. “You all right?”
“I will be. Flesh wound, but it knocked me down good. It hurts like hell.”
Jeff watched Jake lift Little Jake with his good arm, and the child hugged his grandfather around the neck and kissed his cheek several times over. “This will bother him for a long time, won’t it?” Jeff commented to Lloyd.
“Pa?” Lloyd smiled sadly. “You never know for sure what’s going through that man’s head. Yeah, it will bother him. He wants real bad to flat-out kill the rest of those men, but he’ll respect what Evie wants. I’d like to kill them too, but that would break Evie’s heart. The hard part for Pa in all of this is Pa figures this is all because of who he is, but being able to hold Little Jake and knowing my sister has a man like Brian to help her… That helps, but he won’t really be okay until he gets home to my mom. She’s his medicine. I guarantee he’s thinking about her right now. Thank God she’ll be all right.” He winced and pressed his hand to his side, then reached up with his other arm. “Help me up, Jeff.”
Jeff took his hand and let Lloyd use him to get to his feet. “Speaking of your mother, Lloyd, I think Jake promised her he’d go to church if she came through her surgery without cancer. Do you think he’ll really go?”
Lloyd smiled more fully, the humor of that promise lightening his mood. “Well, you don’t promise something like that to my mother without keeping the promise. She’ll hold him to it.” He grinned at Jeff. “That will be something to see, won’t it?”
“I think it will be how I end the book…Jake Harkner, notorious outlaw, feared lawman, a man who smokes and cusses and spends time at brothels…taking his guns off and walking into church. Hell of an ending, isn’t it?”
Lloyd smiled sadly. “It sure is. I’ll bet it’s already eating at him that he made that promise. He’ll try to figure a way out of it, but my mom will absolutely hold him to it.” He looked toward the cabin. “And Evie—it will help her a lot to see Jake walk into church. Hell, she holds him right up there next to God to begin with.”
Both men grinned.
“That’s a hell of a comparison,” Jeff remarked.
Jake yelled at Jeff to come and help him wrap his arm.
“I’m not sure it’s safe to go over there,” Jeff quipped.
“I’ll go with you.” They both walked toward Jake, Lloyd leaning on Jeff’s shoulders and grimacing with pain.
“Lloyd, you said once that Jake fills up a room when he walks into it, but sometimes he fills up the whole damn country,” Jeff quipped. He glanced up at Lloyd. “You do know you’re just like him, don’t you?” Jeff added.
Lloyd stopped walking. “I know. I have to watch myself because I’m too much like him.”
“Lloyd, you shot that one man down after he gave up his guns.”
Lloyd gave him a dark look. “It’s done, and the other men here have agreed not to talk about it,” he told Jeff. “Don’t you write about it. And I shot him because he didn’t help my sister, plain and simple.”
“And I’m guessing that’s exactly the kind of thing Jake would have done in his early days.”