Lloyd squeezed her a little tighter. “Hell, you know that mean sonofabitch doesn’t go down easy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek and turned to Jake.
“Thanks for the kind names you call me,” Jake quipped.
“Just saying it like it is,” Lloyd told him. Lloyd gently pushed his mother away and walked around to see the blood on the back of Jake’s sheepskin jacket. “Take off your jacket and let me look at that wound.”
“Leave it. I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding worse than you think, damn it! I saw enough blood after that gunfight back in Guthrie. I don’t need to see you nearly bleed to death again. For all you know, you need stitches.”
“And who will do that? You?”
“Hell yes. I would take great pleasure in yanking a needle through that wound and hearing you yell.”
Jake scowled at him as he removed the jacket. “I’ll just bet you would.”
“Let me at least maybe put some whiskey on the wound.”
Jake sighed. “Thanks for coming,” he told Lloyd, sincerity moving into his eyes then. “If something had gone wrong, they would have got your mother.” He winced when Lloyd tore open the back of his shirt. “You men start going through those men’s clothing and gear and see if you can find some identification,” Jake called out to Pepper and Cole.
“The bleeding is already slowing,” Lloyd told him. “I’ll splash some whiskey on it for safekeeping.” He walked over to his horse and took a flask from his saddlebag, along with a roll of gauze.
Jake glanced at a shaken Randy. “You really all right? You’re not hurt anywhere?”
She walked up to him and leaned against his chest as he moved an arm around her. “I’m fine.”
Lloyd returned with the supplies and Randy felt Jake jerk when Lloyd pressed the gauze against the wound, then splashed some whiskey on the deep cut.
“I’d rather drink some of that,” Jake told him.
“I expect you would.”
“I suppose I’ve added another scar my back,” Jake grumbled.
Lloyd glanced at his mother. She saw the pain in his eyes at knowing the scars on his father’s back were from Jake’s own father, put there by the buckle end of a belt when Jake was just a little boy. “I suppose so,” he answered quietly, “but I don’t think it will have to be stitched up. We’ll let Brian look at it when we get back.”
“God knows it’s a good thing your sister married a doctor,” Jake tried to joke. “He doesn’t need a practice of his own. His own family keeps him busy enough.”
Lloyd smiled sadly. “Yeah, well, if you’d learn to stay out of trouble, we wouldn’t need him so much.”
“Hey, Jake!” Cole called out as he rummaged through the clothing on one of the bodies. “Do you ever leave a man alive when you get into something like this?”
“Sometimes,” Jake answered, taking a cigarette from a pocket on the front of his shirt and lighting it.
“Well, remind me to always stay on your good side.”
“Just don’t try rustling any of my cattle,” Jake told him, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “When I start shooting, I generally don’t have time to be careful where I put the bullet. I figure it’s best to plant it where I can make sure the man shooting at me can’t shoot back any more.”
Lloyd made ready to wrap some gauze around the wound.
“Leave it,” Jake told him. “I’m more concerned about your mother. Just give me my jacket and one swallow of that whiskey.”
“I’m just fine, Jake,” Randy reminded him.
“No, you aren’t. You might have messed up that shoulder, and I know what something like this does to you emotionally.”
Lloyd handed his father the jacket and the flask. Jake took a deep swallow of the whiskey, which told Randy he was in pain because he never drank otherwise, at least not around her. She glanced at Lloyd and knew he’d realized the same.
Jake handed Lloyd the flask and grimaced as he pulled on his jacket. He pulled Randy close then, and she couldn’t help breaking into tears as she hugged him around the middle.
“I’m goddamn sorry,” Jake told her. “We had such a nice morning.”
“You didn’t ask for this.”
Lloyd lit his own cigarette. “Yeah, well, this didn’t just interrupt you and Mom,” he grumbled to Jake. “I’d just got back from several days out riding the east side to find Katie waiting for me,” he told Jake. “Then some of the men came to tell me there could be rustlers out this way. I’m as angry over this as you two are.”