“Well, we might not leave till spring anyway. Winter isn’t exactly the best time to head for the mountains, and that’s where six months lands us. By the time we head for Colorado, I’ll have four grandchildren instead of two, and an extra son. How’s that for a worthless bastard like me?”
“You’re a lucky man, Jake.”
Jake nodded. “Damn lucky.” He sighed, staring at the doors as those inside started singing. Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.
Jake put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Jeff, I am going to make you a bet.” He squeezed his shoulder, then stood back and took one last drag on his cigarette.
“What’s that?” Jeff asked.
Jake tossed the cigarette into the dirt at the bottom of the steps. People inside the church continued singing. But that thy blood was shed for me. “I am betting you that when I walk into that church, people’s mouths will drop open in shock, and they will be so surprised that within one minute, all singing will stop. Five bucks says I’m right.”
Jeff took a watch from his jacket pocket. “All right. As soon as you go through that door, I’ll watch this thing. If all singing doesn’t stop within sixty seconds, you owe me five dollars.”
Jake nodded. “It’s a deal.” He took a deep breath as the hymn continued. Oh, Lamb of God, I come…I come. “Lord, I’d rather face ten men with guns than walk into that church,” he told Jeff.
“There’s no turning back now, Jake.”
Jake rubbed at the back of his neck. “I guess not.” After one more deep breath, he glanced at Dixie and tipped his hat, then removed the hat and walked inside.
Jeff watched the second hand on his pocket watch. After twenty seconds, he could tell fewer people were singing. After another twenty-five seconds, only a couple of people still sang. And just before the full sixty seconds, the singing stopped.
Jeff shook his head, smiling. “Jake Harkner, you sonofabitch.” He sat down on the steps to wait, his smile turning to a surprising urge to cry. He glanced at Dixie. She smiled and nodded, then walked away. Jeff sighed, wondering…hoping that Jake, and Lloyd, for that matter, would really find peace at last in Colorado. With men like that, who knew? He couldn’t stop thinking about the day they’d rescued Evie and how the man called Mike Holt had threatened Lloyd for shooting Mike’s brother. But Holt was on his way to prison. Maybe he would even hang. Jeff hoped for the latter.
Inside the church, the singing renewed, twice as joyful as before. Jeff quietly laughed. Right now Jake Harkner was going through pain worse than a gunshot wound. It was worth his five bucks just to picture it.
Epilogue
June of 1893 found a family heading west across the eastern Colorado plains…three men, three women, two older boys who chased each other around on horseback, one four-year-old boy who rode on his grandfather’s horse, three large wagons, several horses and a few cattle…and two babies, both little girls, one with auburn hair and very dark eyes, one with light hair and gray-green eyes that seemed to change with the light.
Back in Guthrie, Oklahoma, a young couple walked past rosebushes that had sprung up in regrowth from the summer before. They stepped into a little yellow house, excited that they had purchased the former home of the notorious Jake Harkner.
“What’s that lovely smell?” the young man asked.
The young woman breathed deeply. “Roses. It smells like roses in here.” She walked into the main bedroom, where someone had left a little vase of yellow roses, now drying up, but their aroma still strong.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
Jeff Quinn of Gunblast.com, for advice on firearms of the late 1800s.
My editor, Mary Altman, for a great job of making my books the best they can be.
Dana Alma, for her help with the use of Spanish in this story.
The many devoted fans who urged me to write this book and kept me going.
My agent, Maura Kye-Casella, for helping close the deal on a story that means so much to me.
* * *
Reference books:
Calhoun, Frederick S. The Lawmen: United States Marshals and Their Deputies. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Strickland, Rennard. The Indians in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Read on for an excerpt from
Love’s Sweet Revenge
From the author…
When I wrote Outlaw Hearts over twenty years ago, I never forgot my beloved Jake Harkner. Writing its sequel, Do Not Forsake Me, was a dream come true. I never felt Jake’s story was truly finished with that first book, and when Sourcebooks asked for a sequel, the story just poured out of me, mainly because I’d been totally in love with Jake for over twenty years, and I lived with this story. And then when I finished Book 2…well…we have Jake and Randy and the whole family heading for Colorado. Since I was still in love with Jake, I just had to follow them, because even I, the author, wanted to know what would happen when they reached the place where they thought that finally they would find peace.