Jeff looked at Lloyd, who put a finger to his lips, warning Jeff not to say a word. Jeff quietly finished his beans.
Twenty-four
Jeff was sure he’d feel a bullet in his back any moment. Leading the packhorse, he rode behind Lloyd, who in turn stayed behind Jake as the three of them followed a narrow road through an open field still full of dried, yellowed cornstalks from the year before. Jake had told him the Buckley farm wasn’t all that big, and already Jeff could see a two-story house made of rough, unpainted wood, a poorly built and already-sagging porch running across the entire front of the building. The Buckleys and Bryants were part of the earlier settlers who’d moved into Oklahoma Indian country before it was even legal to do so. Jake wanted to kick them out, but a judge had ruled they had a right to stay because they were peacefully homesteading and hadn’t bothered the Indians.
“Peaceful, my ass,” Jake had grumbled that morning. “I’m going to write that judge and tell him what I think about his ruling and why he’s wrong. Jeff, I might need your help wording the letter properly.”
Right now a letter was the last thing on Jeff’s mind. He thought he’d seen at least two men lurking in the woods that bordered the cornfield. He figured if he saw them, Jake and Lloyd had probably spotted them also. A barn and shed sat to the right of the house, and Jeff wondered if men were hiding inside, watching them, waiting to gun them down. All kinds of visions danced through his head as they drew closer to the house.
Someone stepped out the front door then, brandishing a rifle. It looked to Jeff like a woman, but her size and the way she was dressed made it difficult to tell. She was tall and skinny, wearing a man’s pants and a plain, homemade cotton shirt that hung outside the pants. Her graying hair was once apparently twisted into a bun but now hung in uncombed strands that had worked their way out of the pins and ribbon that held the rest of it up.
“You stop right there, Jake Harkner,” the woman yelled, raising the rifle.
To Jeff’s amazement, Jake didn’t slow down, but he pushed his duster behind his right gun. Lloyd rode at a faster gait toward the outbuildings.
“Put that thing down, Jessie,” Jake called back. “You’d be hanged, woman or not.” He rode close to the front porch while Lloyd rode straight into the barn to Jeff’s right. Jeff wasn’t sure which Harkner to keep an eye on, Jake or Lloyd. He pulled his six-gun just in case he might need it.
“I can draw and shoot before you pull that trigger,” Jake was warning Jessie. “You haven’t even cocked that rifle yet. Even if you manage to get a shot off, you’ll be dead just the same, if not by my gun, then by Lloyd’s.”
Jeff wondered if they would really shoot a woman. Jessie kept the rifle raised. “Maybe I don’t care, Harkner. Maybe I will get the both of you, and even that four-eyed little kid behind you.”
“Shooting a United States Marshal is definitely a hanging offense, Jessie, and hanging is a terrible way to die.”
The woman lowered the rifle just slightly. “It’s how you should have died years ago, you murderin’ bastard! If they’d hanged you for all the crimes you committed, you wouldn’t have been alive to kill my husband and my son! The only boy I have left is still in bad pain from what you done to him.”
To Jeff’s relief, Lloyd rode back out of the barn. He headed to a shed next, staying on his horse as he kicked the door in, his gun drawn.
“Brad tried to challenge me to a gunfight,” Jake explained to Jessie. “Would you rather I’d shot him?”
The woman lowered the rifle even more. “I hate you, Jake Harkner, and so do the Bryants! They’re gatherin’ lots of men, and they’re gonna come for you.”
Lloyd rode around the back of the house, apparently to make sure no one was lurking back there.
“How many men, Jessie?” Jake asked her.
“Why would I tell you?”
“Because that way when I bring them all in, you’ll get the credit and you won’t go to jail right along with them for withholding evidence.” Jake took out a cigarette. “I have a couple of death certificates for you, Jessie. Proof your son and husband are dead and buried back in Guthrie. That’s why I came here. You should know I made sure the undertaker placed a couple of crosses at their graves.”
“Well now, ain’t that just real decent of you, puttin’ crosses on their graves,” Jessie sneered.
Lloyd rode around from the other side of the house and up to Jake. “I didn’t find anything, but I saw two men back there in the woods.”