Jake glanced at the black man. “You know anything about this?”
“Only what Frank there done told you.”
Jake tipped his hat. “Thanks for the information. Like I said, your rifles will be laying out in the road several yards from here.”
“What are you gonna do, Harkner?”
“I don’t know, but if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. And if you see Hash or any of these men he’s hired, you warn them that I was out here and if they want me, they can come and get me. If they want to die too soon, so be it.” Jake got Prince into motion and rode off. Jeff and Lloyd followed, Jeff’s heart pounding over the fact that any number of men could be waiting and watching, ready to shoot them down.
Lloyd caught up with Jake. “What do we do now, Pa?”
Jake scanned the road ahead. He took his six-gun from its holster and opened it to put a bullet in the empty chamber. “I’d like to go to the Buckley place and shoot every man there,” Jake answered, shoving a bullet into the gun and slamming it shut. “But they haven’t committed any crimes yet, and we’d probably be riding right into a trap if we go there. It sounds like they aren’t all there right now anyway, and I’d like to make sure we have every last one of them. Somehow we have to get a line on where they intend to all meet.”
“We’ll need more men for that,” Lloyd answered.
Jake holstered his gun and lit a cigarette, letting the horses walk casually to rest them. “We’ll see what else we can find out about where they are this trip, then go get Sparky and some other men when we have an exact location and rout them out. It’s a good thing you told Katie stay close to town, and I’m glad her folks are with her. Evie and Brian already know the rules. They should be safe for now.”
A still-restless Prince whinnied and shook his mane. Jake patted the horse’s neck.
“Maybe they’ll end up all talk and no action,” Jeff suggested, hoping he was right.
“Not Marty,” Jake grumbled. “He’s not going to let this go.”
“I don’t like any of this,” Lloyd fumed. “Let’s head for Hell’s Nest.”
“What’s Hell’s Nest?” Jeff asked.
Jake drew on the cigarette. “It’s a settlement with no name. That’s just the name I gave it.”
“It’s a hellhole, Jeff,” Lloyd added. “Towns and farms and the like have sprung up all over Oklahoma from the land rushes. Some are nice, like Guthrie and Edmond and Stillwater, but some never quite grew into a full-fledged town. They’re just settlements made up of the riffraff who came out in the land rushes just to hide out or find ways to live off of others or gamble and such. We’ve tracked a few train and bank robbers there, and a few rustlers who herded cattle there to keep a food supply going. Most of the worst of those who’ve come out here end up closer to No Man’s Land because there’s hardly any law there, and even Pa and I seldom go there.”
“These damn land rushes are a headache,” Jake added. “I’ve heard the government is going to open yet another section of Indian land for settlement. So much for treaties.” He rode several yards ahead of them.
“Are we safe?” Jeff asked Lloyd.
Lloyd watched his father. “Hell, no, but there’s nothing we can do about it as long as those men are scattered and we don’t know what they have planned. Our best bet to find something out is to go to Hell’s Nest. We have to take it easy on these horses in case we suddenly need to ride them hard, so we’ll make the best time we can without wearing them out.”
Lloyd rode to catch up to Jake again, and Jeff took a deep breath for courage, grasping the reins to the packhorse and following behind.
Twenty-five
“Lloyd.”
“Yeah?”
“Would you really have shot that woman?”
“If she turned that rifle on my pa? Sure I would. Her kind is no different from a man.”
They headed north, and Jeff and Lloyd rode lazily behind Jake, who insisted on staying several yards ahead of them to scout the woods and hills and scrub brush surrounding them. They had only a couple of hours of light left.
“Your mother’s a woman, and she shot your father when they first met, but he didn’t shoot back.”
Lloyd looked at Jeff and grinned. “Think about it, Jeff. Surely you’re not comparing my mother to someone like Jessie Buckley.”
“Well, no, but…it seems like your father would have shot back in self-defense.”
Lloyd shook his head. “Jeff, in my mother’s case, Jake knew he didn’t exactly have to worry about self-defense. She was just a scared young girl who reacted out of surprise and fear…not meanness. Pa knew the minute he faced her that she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, or so he tells it.”