Do Not Forsake Me(3)

“Sí, amigo.”

“Estoy ansioso para poner en orden este asunto y regresar a mi esposa.”

The old man grinned more. “Ah, señor, lo comprendo.”

The conversation answered one of Jeff’s questions: Jake Harkner did sometimes speak in Spanish. Jeff didn’t understand what was said, except that he knew esposa meant wife. Supposedly Harkner’s mother had been Mexican, and one rumor was that Harkner’s father had killed the woman. No one knew any details, and all had advised Jeff never to ask Harkner about it…or if he’d really killed his own father. The subject was apparently closed for the man, and Jeff swallowed at the thought of trying to bring it up. He watched Harkner hand his shotgun to his wife.

“Get farther back,” he warned her. “I’ll be finished here in a few minutes, and I’m tired as hell. You should go back to the house. I’ll be along.”

“I’m not going anywhere until that young man across the street goes back inside. I don’t like the looks of this, Jake.”

Jake sighed. “You just be careful with that shotgun. It’s still loaded.”

Sparky came out of the jail then to greet Jake. “Damn it, Jake, you have to quit rounding up so many of these no-goods. You’re crowding my jail.”

Jeff caught a quick grin on Harkner’s face. The man actually smiles!

“Sorry about that, Sparky. Want me to shoot a couple of them to give you more room?”

Sparky guffawed at what Jeff hoped was a joke, but he wasn’t so sure Harkner didn’t mean it.

“Send a wire to Edmond and have them send a wagon up here for this bunch,” Jake told the sheriff then. He handed over a bank bag obviously stuffed with money. “This has to be returned to the bank in Edmond. And when you send that wire, tell Sheriff Kennedy there that they’ll need extra men to take this bunch back to Edmond. A marshal from Oklahoma City can take them from there. They’ll likely be hanged or sent to the federal pen in Michigan. I’ll come around Monday to sign papers.”

The marshal took another cigarette from a pocket inside his vest as Jeff dared to step even closer. He rolled up his shirtsleeves against the warming temperatures, and Jeff noticed that although Harkner was in his midfifties, his forearms showed hard muscle. Handsome Outlaw is very fitting, he noted. He watched the man light his cigarette. As he did so, the marshal glanced at Jeff, and the look in his dark eyes was stunningly suspicious and threatening. Jeff stepped back a little and nodded to the man. Harkner’s eyes said it all: he didn’t like strangers watching him. His eyes showed a combination of curiosity, distrust, and a warning to stay out of his way as he looked Jeff over, summing him up. Obviously not impressed and sensing no danger, he gave him a brief nod and turned away.

“Stay back like I told you,” he told his wife. “Go around behind that wagon.” He nodded to a freight wagon parked just a few feet away.

Rather reluctantly, Miranda walked closer to the wagon, still holding Jake’s shotgun. Jeff scooted a bit closer to her as Jake walked back to the men he’d brought in. The young man on the boardwalk let out a blistering tirade of threats and insults as Jake untied the dead body and yanked it from the horse, letting the body fall to the street. It landed stiff and still bent.

“Somebody take care of this one,” he ordered. “Take him over to the undertaker.”

“Murderer! That’s what you are, Harkner! A murderer with a badge!” Brad continued screaming. “Everybody knows you’re nothing more than an outlaw with permission to kill!”

Jake walked back to the other three men, Guthrie’s Sheriff Sparks walking with him, holding his shotgun ready as Jake untied each man and jerked him off his horse, in spite of their injuries. He seemed to be ignoring the young man on the boardwalk, but Jeff suspected he was very much aware.

“Someone go get my son-in-law to take a look at these men,” Jake spoke up. A young boy ran off.

Son-in-law is a doctor here in Guthrie, Jeff wrote. That was something else he already knew. It was so hard to imagine Jake Harkner had a lovely daughter who was married to a doctor. They had a son named after Jake, or so Jeff had been told. Jake’s own son, Lloyd, also had fathered a little boy.

A grandfather. Jake Harkner is a grandfather. I can’t seem to put the two together—the grandfather and the mean-looking cuss I am watching right now.

Brad continued to harass Jake. “Harkner, you can’t throw my pa down like so much garbage! I’ll kill you for that!”

The crowd quieted. People backed even farther away. Jeff glanced at Miranda Harkner and saw the worry in her eyes. How many times had she been through something like this?