“Yeah! Boom! Boom! Boom!” Ben put in, his blue eyes sparkling. “I’m glad you’re okay, Pa,” he told Jake.
Jake took them aside. “You boys listen to me. What just happened couldn’t be avoided, but there was a time when I would have shot those men dead. I have to be careful now how I handle myself. I knew they’d never outdraw me anyway, so I just made sure they were hurt enough that they couldn’t shoot back again, even if they tried. You just have to remember there are a lot of new laws that can get you in trouble, like how I got in trouble in Denver. Understand?”
The boys nodded. “They said somethin’ bad about Mommy and my sister,” Little Jake pouted. “I wanna go hit ’em! That Clyde is a sonofabitch!”
Jake looked at Lloyd. “Get over there and make sure the men know not to talk about this in front of Brian or Evie,” he told them. “I’ll tell the women it was just a fight over cards that got out of hand, and these men were drunk and thought they could take us. We knew they were drunk, so we just wounded them and kicked them off the J&L for causing trouble.”
Lloyd nodded. “I wish this was the old days. I’d have killed Clyde and made up an excuse for doing it!”
“If he makes any more trouble, I’ll kill him!” Jake seethed. “They’d better understand it would be best to never step foot on the J&L again.”
“Oh, the men and I will make that very clear. Get the boys out of here, Pa. And explain to them not to talk about this in front of Evie.”
Jake put his hands on Ben and Little Jake’s shoulders and walked all the boys over behind a barn, where he stopped and knelt in front of them. “You three heard what those men said, and you know it’s not true,” he told them.
They nodded.
Jake turned to Little Jake. “Do you understand what they meant about Sadie, trying to say she’s not really your daddy’s baby?”
“I know what they meant,” the boy pouted. “I ain’t a kid about them things, Grampa. I seen what those men did to Mommy back in Oklahoma. I was there.”
His frankness reminded Jake of himself. He closed his eyes at the memory of cigarette burns on his grandson’s belly after he found him and Evie at Dune Hollow. He addressed all the boys. “All right, all three of you need to understand how bad it would hurt Evie, and Brian, too—if they knew what those men said. And I know for a fact it’s not true. So none of you is going to say anything about what really happened, understand?”
They nodded again.
“It was just a drunken fight,” Ben spoke up. “That’s what we’ll say.”
Jake studied the young man he’d rescued from an abusive father in Oklahoma and adopted as his own. He couldn’t be more pleased at how Ben was turning out. “That’s a good explanation, Ben.” He looked at the others. “Stick to the same story, understand?”
“Will my dad be okay back there with those men?” Stephen asked.
Jake saw the worry in the boy’s eyes. He still had nightmares about thinking Lloyd might die in Denver. “He’ll be fine. He’s got all the other men behind him, and by now, those three know better than to mess with your father.” He rose and headed back to the house with the boys. “You boys remember that men get drunk and tend to want to strut their stuff and brag a little. Sometimes it ends up in a fistfight. You just have to keep an eye out and keep the help in line now and then. And you have to get rid of the real troublemakers. You can’t run a ranch well if you have to worry about somebody always causing trouble.”
“Señor, what is happening?” Rodriguez came running over to them from his cabin. Teresa was standing on the porch, watching.
“Just a little trouble over at the bunkhouse. We took care of it.”
“I heard shooting. Is anyone hurt?”
“Oh, someone’s hurt, all right. Lloyd is taking care of it. And it’s your day off, Rodriguez. Go on back and enjoy it.”
“Sí, señor. Next Friday I am planning a big Mexican cookout!” he added. “I know how much you like Mexican food, sí?”
“¡Sí! ¡Bueno!”
“Grampa, did you learn Mexican from your mother?” Little Jake asked. “Is it okay to talk about her?”
Jake felt the stabbing pain of watching his mother die. “Yes, it’s okay to talk about her,” he answered, “and yes, I learned Spanish from her, but mostly I remember it from growing up in Texas around others who used it pretty regularly.”
“Will you teach us some Spanish?” Stephen asked.