Do Not Forsake Me(163)

Jake grinned. “Can’t blame you there, Son.”

“Yeah, well, don’t you tease Katie about it. You know how easily she gets embarrassed.”

“That’s why teasing her is so much fun.”

“I mean it, Pa. I know you.”

“I’ll try my best to be good.” Jake kept Randy close as he watched Cole and Pepper rifle through the pockets and saddlebags of the dead men. “How in hell did you know there might be trouble?” he asked Lloyd.

“That courier from Denver, Jason Hale, saw them from Echo Ridge. He was on his way to us with some news, and he knew we wouldn’t likely be herding cattle to Denver this early in the season. When we heard there might be rustlers out here, we rode half the night trying to catch up with them, or with you—whichever came first. I was hoping you’d miss them all together, but no such luck.”

“Hale never comes out in the middle of the week like this,” Jake commented. He kept an arm around Randy as he took another drag on his cigarette. “What did he want?”

Lloyd seemed hesitant. He sighed before answering. “It’s not exactly good news. Jeff Trubridge wired us about something he thought we should know right away. Trouble is, Jason gave the note to Evie and it upset her. Brian is home now, though, so she’ll be all right. He always knows how to reassure her.”

Jake came instantly alert and Randy felt a sick alarm as the both faced Lloyd. “What’s wrong?” Jake asked.

“Lloyd, is Evie okay?” Randy pressed. “She’s going to have another baby and shouldn’t get upset.”

“Baby? Sis is pregnant again?”

“Yes, though don’t let on that you know. She’s going to tell us at Sunday dinner. I already told your father to act surprised.”

“What the hell is wrong?” Jake asked, raising his voice more. “Why is Evie upset?”

Lloyd rubbed at his eyes. “Shit. I didn’t know she was pregnant again. That just makes things worse.”

“Makes what worse?” Jake asked.

Lloyd pulled the note from his pocket and handed it to Jake, then looked at his mother. “Mike Holt is out of prison—won some kind of appeal. He’ll come after me as sure as the sun shines every day.” He turned to Jake then. “The past just keeps on rearing its ugly head, doesn’t it?”

Jake closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. “Thanks to me.”

“I didn’t mean it that way, Pa. This one is my fault too, for shooting Holt’s brother in the back. But after what happened to Evie—”

Randy saw it then—that little flame of Jake Harkner that lived in her son. The dark, vengeful side. She always hated seeing it because Lloyd was raised in love. He never knew the horrific childhood his father grew up with, and he was far more forgiving than Jake, but he had the ability to wreak revenge if warranted, the ability to shoot a man with no regrets if that man dared to harm one of his own.

“I just don’t want that man to suddenly show his face to Evie,” Lloyd told Jake. “I don’t think she could handle it if she saw even one of those men again.”

“We should have killed every last one of them when we had the chance,” Jake stewed.

“We couldn’t just execute the ones left alive, Pa, much as we would have liked to. But you would have ended up back in prison, and Evie would have never lived that down. We couldn’t let her see her father and brother deliberately murder those men. And maybe she was able to forgive them, but having to face any of them again…who knows what that would do to her? If she’s having another baby, that’s a damn good sign her and Brian’s marriage is healed. I’m just trying to figure out if we should discuss this with her or just leave it alone and hope the bastard doesn’t show up.”

“I’ll decide when the time is right to talk to her about it,” Randy told them. “She might even bring it up herself.”

“Let me talk to Brian first,” Jake told her.

“Katie will be none too happy about this either,” Lloyd told them. “This will scare her to death after all that happened back in Guthrie. I left her in the barn and took off without even explaining anything, but she’ll find out before I get back and she’ll be upset.”

“You probably should have stayed with her and let the other men come out here,” Jake told him.

“When my parents could both be in trouble?” He tried to make light of the situation as he gave his mother a teasing grin. “I figured I’d better try to keep this old man from getting himself into more trouble. Sometimes I’m the only one who can do that.”