“Mmm-hmm.” Jake sighed. “And we all know why he did it.”
“Daddy, I think he really cares about you,” Evie told him.
“I suppose. I just couldn’t get over wondering if he was going to leave his wife behind and try riding off with your mother when they left here.” He winked at Randy.
“Well, maybe you would have been perfectly happy if he’d left his own beautiful wife behind,” Randy quipped.
Jake grinned. “She wouldn’t last two days on the J&L as a true rancher’s wife.”
“They don’t make them like Mom,” Lloyd put in, reaching over to take Katie’s hand, “except for my sister and Katie.”
“Yes, well—” Randy stopped for a moment as she scanned more of the letter. She put a hand to her mouth and started laughing. “Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” She laughed again.
“What is it?” Evie asked.
Randy handed her the letter and wiped at what was left of her tears as Evie looked at it and then also broke into laughter.
“Oh, this is wonderful!” she told them. “We’ve got Daddy and Lloyd both on this one!”
Jake rose and moved to lean against a porch post. “All right, what are you talking about?”
“Oh, Daddy, you are always trying to embarrass us, especially poor Katie. Now we have one on you!” She laughed again. “I have a feeling Peter was wishing he could see the look on your face when we read this to you. He knows it would embarrass you.”
Jake shook his head, taking the cigarette from his lips. “Get on with it, Evie.”
Evie chuckled with teasing glee as she continued the letter. “The J&L is like heaven, according to Katrina, and since Jake is always looking at me like I might try running off with Randy at any moment, I thought he should know what my wife said about him. She told me she thought Jake was”—Evie again stopped to laugh. She could hardly stop long enough to get the words out—“quite magnificent.”
“Magnificent?” Lloyd asked.
“Magnificent!” Evie repeated.
They all broke into hearty laughter, including the three boys.
“Grampa’s magnificent!” Little Jake screeched.
Jake just shook his head and grinned, then pulled his hat farther down over his eyes.
“I’ll be sure to tell the boys out at the bunkhouse that from now on they should call you ‘The Magnificent Jake Harkner,’” Lloyd teased.
“You do that, and I’ll put a pitchfork in you,” Jake answered.
“I’ll bet women like Dixie and Gretta would agree with Katrina’s description of you, Daddy,” Evie put in.
“Oh, he’s magnificent, all right.” Randy laughed. “He has a magnificent bravado when it’s necessary, and sometimes just a magnificent ego around women!”
“Oh, wait!” Evie told them. “There’s more! Wait till you hear what Peter’s wife says about you, Lloyd!”
Lloyd frowned. He stood up and walked closer to Jake. “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
“Well, according to Katrina—” Evie broke into laughter again. “Oh, this is so hard for me to say about my own brother.” She wiped at tears of laughter and read, “Not only does she think Jake is a magnificent specimen of man, but she said that Lloyd is like a—” She laughed again. “Lloyd! My brother! Oh, this is too much.”
“I think we need to leave,” Lloyd told Jake.
Jake moved closer to the porch steps. “I’m thinking the same thing.”
“Oh, it’s so much fun embarrassing you,” Evie told them. “It says here that Katrina compared Lloyd to a Greek god.”
The women broke into screeching laughter.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake told Lloyd.
The men headed down the steps.
“You sure you can work alongside a Greek god?” Lloyd asked Jake, the ring of the women’s laughter filling the air.
“As long as you can admit your father is magnificent.”
“He’s a magnificent sonofabitch who can’t stay out of trouble. That’s what he is.”
They kept walking while the rest of the family continued their laughter.
“Do Greek gods wear their hair down to their waist and wear chaps and spurs?” Jake asked his son.
“Hell, I don’t know. I never studied them much. Maybe I should start.”
“Well, you have a goddess of a wife. That’s a start.”
“She’s something, all right. Any woman who puts up with a Harkner man deserves to be called a goddess.”
“That’s for damn sure.” Jake stopped walking. “Do you realize we’ll never live this down if the men hear about it?”