Jake shook off the memories. “Sure, I’ll teach you some Spanish. Why not?”
They reached the house, where the women were standing anxiously on the veranda.
“Daddy! We heard shooting!” Evie exclaimed. “Are you okay? Where’s Lloyd?”
“Lloyd is fine. It was just some trouble between a couple of men back at the bunkhouse. They’re all drinking. Whiskey and bragging and cards don’t always go together too well. A couple of them decided they didn’t like me and Lloyd giving them orders, so they figured they’d make names for themselves with their guns. They found out it was a pretty stupid idea.”
“Jake! Tell me no one is dead!” Randy said, hurrying up to him. “You can’t afford to have something like that happen so soon after Denver.”
Jake moved an arm around her. “No one is dead. They’re just wishing they were dead.”
Little Jake ran up to Evie and gave her a hug. “I love you, Mommy!”
“Well, thank you! I don’t get that many hugs from you, Little Jake. And maybe I should stop calling you ‘Little’ Jake. You are really growing all of a sudden. I swear you’ve grown an inch in the last week!”
Little Jake pulled both his parents aside. “You should have seen it!” he said excitedly. “Grampa can pull a gun faster than a man can blink!”
Randy grasped Jake’s arm. “What was this whole thing really about, Jake? The men have had little tussles before, but mostly nothing serious.”
Jake frowned, leaning down and kissing her cheek. “I’ll tell you later.”
Now the boys were babbling about how fast Jake and Lloyd pulled their guns.
“Grandma, you should have seen it!” Stephen told her.
Randy looked up at Jake. “I have seen it,” she answered ruefully. She sighed and moved her arms around Jake. “I have seen it.”
Jake wrapped her in his arms.
Thirty-three
Late September
Jake finished his coffee after a hearty lunch and rose just as someone outside whistled.
“Jake, you in there? Got a rider comin’.”
Jake rose, grabbing his gun belt from where he always hung it over the door. He looked through the screen to see Vance Kelly standing at the bottom of the veranda steps. “Who is it?” he called out.
“It’s that marshal fella who came callin’ last spring.”
With a worried look, Randy turned from the kitchen pump where she’d been helping Teresa with dishes.
“He alone?” he yelled to Vance.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. If he was here to arrest me for something, he’d have five or six men with him.” He strapped on his gun belt. “Stay here,” he told Randy.
Ben came running from his bedroom where he’d gone after lunch to read his lesson for the day. Stephen and Little Jake were with him, all there for schooling with their grandmother. “What’s he here for, Pa?” Ben asked.
“We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?” Jake strapped his holsters to his legs and grabbed his hat. He put it on as he went out the door.
“Grandma, is it something bad?” Stephen asked.
Randy wiped her hands on her apron. “Let’s hope not. You boys stay inside like he told you to do.”
“I wish that man would quit coming here,” Little Jake grumbled.
Randy thought how big the boys were getting—even Little Jake had taken a sudden summer growth spurt. It was obvious by the longer legs he’d sprouted that he and Stephen, who was already a head taller than Ben, even though they were the same age, were going to be Harkner men through and through—in height and coloring and with that defensive edge Jake always carried. Jake and Lloyd were grooming the three of them to run the J&L someday, and she could already see the hint of “man” trying to burst forth from the “boy” in them. She’d also noticed how much more mature they’d seemed to become after Jake and Lloyd took them out for the talk they’d promised them. It had somehow changed them—made them more serious about things.
She joined them at the window as Marshal Hal Kraemer rode in, wearing the familiar duster that reminded Randy of when Jake dressed and armed himself with the same array of weapons Kraemer now displayed as he dismounted.
Terrel Adams and Charlie McGee accompanied Kraemer.
Randy whispered to the boys to be very quiet so she could hear what was being said.
“He’s a marshal,” Charlie was telling Jake in his drawling southern accent. “Couldn’t very well tell him he ain’t welcome.”
Jake leaned against a support post and lit a cigarette. “Who said he’s not welcome? As long as he’s not here to try to drag me off to jail, company is always welcome.”