Do Not Forsake Me(26)
Randy caught sight of him in a mirror. His sudden shifts in mood worried her. She knew every look, every mood, every tone of his voice.
“What’s wrong, Jake?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Jake?”
“Nothing.” He finished buttoning her dress. Randy turned, grasping his arms and feeling tense muscles.
“You made a point of piling all us women and the grandkids into the back of the Donavans’ wagon to come over here from church. You pretended like we were making a game of it—telling Stevie and Little Jake to see which one of them could keep his head down below the sides of wagon the longest. The sides of that wagon are a good two feet high. What were you protecting us from?”
He sighed, studying her eyes. “Bo Buckley and Gordy Bryant are in town, along with one other man. I’m not sure who the third one is. He might be a hired gun.”
“And naturally they are very unhappy about having relatives sitting in jail, wounded and waiting for a prison wagon.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “Just be careful the next few days. Try to stay home. Peter Brown doesn’t expect you to work when I’m home, so you don’t need to be out walking around. Tell Evie to do the same. I’ll go over to the jail tomorrow and check things out and try to find out how soon that prison wagon will get here.”
“Do you think they’ll try to help their brothers escape before it does?”
“Men like that will try anything.”
“Well, Lloyd needs a few days alone with Katie, which means that if something new comes up, you’ll go riding off without him.”
Jake stepped back, putting out his arms. “Randy, this is me—Jake. In all these years, what have I not been able to handle on my own?”
“You came pretty darn close to not handling Kennedy’s bunch.”
He shook his head. “There were seven of them. They all died, and we didn’t. What does that tell you?”
Randy rubbed at her temples. “Oh, Jake,” she groaned.
Someone knocked on the door. “Dad, come on out of there,” Lloyd yelled through the door. “What the heck is going on?”
“What do you think?” Jake joked, in an obvious attempt to brighten his wife’s mood and erase the worry.
“Katie and I are supposed to be the newlyweds, Pa, not you and Mom,” Lloyd answered.
They could hear Evie and Brian laughing in the background.
“We’ll be right out,” Randy called to Lloyd. Then she let out a short scream when Jake suddenly picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“Let’s give them something to talk about,” he said, climbing onto the bed with her.
Randy laughed and jumped off the bed, hurrying to the door and opening it.
Lloyd stood there leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded.
“Could you two stop long enough to come and eat with the rest of us?”
Randy re-tucked a pin at the side of her hair. “It’s all your fault.” She leaned up and kissed Lloyd’s cheek. “We are very happy for you.” She hurried into the kitchen. Lloyd grinned when he heard Evie teasing their mother about behaving herself.
“Tell your father to behave himself, not me,” Randy answered. All three women laughed.
Lloyd turned to watch his father climb off the bed. Jake walked over to a dressing table and picked up a comb, running it through his hair.
“Last I knew, you were the old man of the family,” Lloyd teased.
Jake put down the comb and faced him. “Don’t make me have to hurt you to prove I’m not as old as you think.”
Lloyd closed the bedroom door. “You want to go out there in the street and prove it?”
Jake took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. “Hell, no. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
Lloyd laughed. “You wish.”
“Believe what you want, if it makes you feel better, Son.”
Lloyd sobered. “I know when you’re keeping something from me, Pa. I saw a worried look on your face when we came out of the church, so don’t try to cover it up by joking about other things. What’s wrong?”
Jake took a drag on the cigarette. “Nothing I can’t handle on my own.” He headed for the door, but Lloyd planted his hand against it.
“We don’t keep secrets anymore. Remember?”
Jake scowled. “You’re as bad as your mother. She noticed I crammed all the women and kids into the back of the Donavans’ wagon on the way back here.”
“Yeah, well, I noticed too. The kids and probably Katie thought it was just a game, but we knew it wasn’t. What were you protecting them from?”
Jake kept the cigarette at the corner of his lips and walked to a bedroom window, pushing a curtain aside as though to check what might be outside. “We have a couple of visitors in town,” he answered, telling Lloyd what he’d told Randy.