Love’s Sweet Revenge(105)

Two different men testified to what they saw—both telling the same story about how fast it all happened. They testified that after Jake blew a hole in Mike Holt’s head, he then rose and told everyone in the room that if they wanted to know what the outlaw Jake Harkner was like, they’d just met him. That he waved his gun at everyone in the room and demanded help for his son and warned that if anyone tried to take him away for what he’d done, he’d kill them.

“It all happened in seconds,” the second witness, Seth Kramer, told the spellbound audience. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Mr. Harkner was like a roaring grizzly bear. It’s hard to explain the way he looked and acted.”

“Did he look like a madman? A murderer?” Prescott asked.

The witness glanced at Jake. “I wouldn’t say that. He looked more like…like… Well, I said he was like a grizzly, so I guess you’d compare it to how a mother grizzly rips into anyone she thinks is threatening her cubs—something like that.”

Peter glanced at Jake and smiled softly. He quickly wrote a note.

That will help you.

Peter rose then. “Mr. Kramer, are you saying the whole incident looked more like a crime of passion?”

“Well, I guess so. I mean, the man just saw his son murdered—or at least he surely thought the boy was dead, and what Mike Holt did was deliberate murder. I have a son, and I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing Mr. Harkner did if the situation presented itself.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kramer.”

Prescott stepped closer to the witness. “And if you did find yourself in the same situation, Mr. Kramer, and you were able to wrestle the culprit to the floor like Mr. Harkner did, would you have blown his head off? Or would you have held him there and waited for the authorities?”

The room hung quiet. The witness, a small, balding man who seemed honest, glanced at Jake again. “I don’t know for sure. I like to think I’d wait for the authorities, but I’m not Jake Harkner.”

“You mean you’re not a murderer!” Prescott urged.

“Your Honor, I object to that statement,” Peter interrupted. “Mr. Prescott is leading the witness.”

“I agree,” the judge answered. He looked at Kramer. “Explain what you meant by saying you’re not Jake Harkner.”

“Well—” Kramer swallowed. “I didn’t mean that he was a murderer. I just meant that he’s lived a hard life and then was a U.S. Marshal in a really dangerous place where he faced some of the worst outlaws and such. It…it would probably be easier for a man like him to kill someone than for a man like me. And it was his son lying there. I think maybe he just reacted more like a lawman than an outlaw. He did have the look of an outlaw about him, but he was in kind of a rage over his son. He even—” Kramer hesitated.

“Even what, Mr. Kramer?” Peter asked.

“Well, I don’t want to embarrass a man like Mr. Harkner, seeing the reputation he has, but…well…his voice broke up really bad when he was giving those orders to help his son. It was like he…like he was trying not to cry. I don’t see that as something a murdering outlaw would do.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Prescott muttered.

Peter grinned. “Thank you, Mr. Kramer. You’ve been very helpful.”

The judge told Kramer to step down, and Peter turned to Jake, still smiling. He gave him a nod.

“I believe you have some character witnesses, Mr. Prescott,” the judge told him. “Just be sure what they have to say has true bearing on what happened.”

“It does, Your Honor.” He turned to face the audience. “The prosecution calls Mr. Henry Porter.”

Whispers moved through the crowd, and Jake just closed his eyes and shook his head as the owner of the clothing store where he’d bought his suit took the stand. Prescott established that Henry Porter was the owner of Porter Men’s Wear on Sixteenth Street in Denver and that the night before the Cattlemen’s Ball at the Brown Palace, he sold a suit to Jake Harkner. “And please tell us, Mr. Porter, what happened while Mr. Harkner was in your store.”

Porter held his chin high as though greatly pleased to gossip about Jake. “Well, he was in the dressing room, not even fully clothed, when Miss Gretta MacBain walked into my store—which that harlot is prone to do, flaunting herself in front of my male customers in an effort to advertise her house of ill repute.”

“And what did Miss MacBain do?”

“She walked right into the dressing room, and Mr. Harkner made not one objection! In fact, I heard laughter!”