Prescott raised his chin and ran a finger under his collar. “Your Honor, I would like to call Mr. Brad Buckley to the stand.”
Jake started to rise. “Damn it, stay put!” Peter told him.
“That man shouldn’t be in the same room as my family,” Jake growled.
“Jake, please stay calm,” Randy whispered. “They want you to get angry.” She clung tightly to his hand.
Lloyd leaned forward and touched Peter’s shoulder. “That sonofabitch has nothing to do with any of this! Get him out of here!”
“Lloyd, please!” Katie grasped his arm. “You still aren’t completely well.”
“Do we have a problem, Mr. Brown?” the judge asked Peter.
Peter pushed down on Jake’s shoulder as he himself rose. “Your Honor, Brad Buckley comes from a family of outlaws Jake had to deal with in Oklahoma. His word can’t be trusted.”
“Mr. Buckley can testify as to Jake Harkner’s brutality,” Prescott insisted.
“I’d like to show him some of that brutality right now,” Jake muttered under his breath.
“I will allow Mr. Buckley’s testimony,” the judge told Prescott, “but if one person in this courtroom bursts out with disruptive argument, he or she will be evicted.” He looked directly at Jake. “I will remind you, Mr. Harkner, that you will have your turn to rebut any comments made against you.”
Jake shifted restlessly.
“Grampa, you said to sit still,” Little Jake blurted out.
The whole courtroom roared with laughter. Even the judge laughed. The whole Harkner family covered their faces and laughed, and Jake looked back at Little Jake and winked. “You’re right. Thanks for reminding me.”
Peter grinned and shook his head, scribbling the words “Score One!” on his notepaper and shoving it over to Jake. Jeff laughed as he frantically wrote down what just happened.
Randall Prescott scowled. Brad Buckley took the stand as the judge managed to quiet the crowd again. Brad glared at Jake and Lloyd, a victorious look on his face as he grinned at them.
“Hello, Jake. Good to see you and Lloyd again.”
Jake could hear Lloyd breathing heavily behind him, and he knew it wasn’t just from pain. He wanted to land into Brad Buckley, and it was all Jake could do himself to hold back.
“The witness will refrain from addressing the defendant directly,” the judge ordered Brad.
Brad just kept grinning. “Yes, sir.”
Prescott asked Brad how he knew Jake.
“He killed my pa and my two brothers,” Brad sneered. “He used a marshal’s badge to give him permission, but he killed them nonetheless—carted my pa into Guthrie wrapped up like a sack of potatoes and dumped him in the street. The man is a killing machine. He killed more of my relatives and half the Bryant family when he went after them for a robbery, and more of them when they shot it out with him in Guthrie. Jake Harkner doesn’t shoot to wound. He shoots to kill, and he doesn’t feel a thing afterward. Any man who kills his own father isn’t gonna have any feelings for any other man he kills, reason or not. And he nearly beat me to death once back in Guthrie—broke my breastbone with the butt end of his rifle and then fired that rifle right next to my left ear so’s now I can’t hear out of it. He killed a lot of men when he was a marshal back in Oklahoma. He don’t give a man a chance, and he used that badge to be nothin’ more than an executioner. Don’t let his family fool you, Judge. Jake Harkner ain’t got no heart. I didn’t see that shooting at the Cattlemen’s Ball, but I’m guessin’ he could have let Mike Holt live. Yet he went ahead and blew his brains out anyway ’cause that’s how it works with Jake.” He leaned forward, sneering. “Ain’t that right, Jake?”
A look moved into Jake’s eyes that made Brad sit farther back in the chair again.
“You see that, Judge?” Brad said. “See that look? That’s Jake Harkner, the outlaw, and if you let him go, he’ll kill again.”
And it will be you, Jake wanted to reply. He forced himself to look away and wrote something on Peter’s notepad.
Brad stood up. “If they let you go, Jake Harkner,” he shouted, “and something happens to me, everybody will know who did it, and you’ll hang!”
Again the crowd mumbled, and women drew in their breath. The judge pounded his gavel.
“That will be enough of your antics,” Judge Carter ordered Brad. “Sit down!” He turned his attention to Prescott again. “Mr. Prescott, I expect your witnesses to just state facts, not stand and point fingers and shout their personal grudges.”