“Keep an eye out!” he shouted back to the others. “They just might leave her off somewhere because she’ll hold them up. A person can freeze to death in no time out here! We’ll rest the horses five minutes and get going again!”
“They’re headed south,” Lloyd commented. “Looks like maybe for Little Jake’s Valley. That’s wide-open country. If we go riding into that valley, they’ll be waiting for us and pick us off like shooting tin cans off a fence.”
“None of it makes any sense,” Jake commented. “They know how well we know this country—know we’ll catch up to them. How can they possibly think they can get away with this?”
“Because Brad Buckley doesn’t have a brain in his head,” Lloyd answered. “You know he doesn’t think beyond the end of his pecker. The fucker just wants revenge, and he thinks because of what happened in Denver, you can’t do anything about it.”
“He’ll damn well find out different!”
“You still need to be careful, Pa. Mom will need you in the worst way, so you’ll need to be here for her, which means not doing something that will get you arrested.”
Jake glanced sidelong at him, the cigarette between his lips. “I think you tried convincing me of that back at the house last night.”
Lloyd pulled a cigarette from inside his sheepskin jacket. “I couldn’t let you just go riding off in a rage without thinking this out. And it was too damn dark to follow any tracks.”
Jake quietly drew on the cigarette. “Are we okay?”
Lloyd frowned as he struck a match and lit his cigarette. “What do you mean?”
“You were pretty serious back there. I think you really wanted to land a fist into me.”
Lloyd took a deep drag on the cigarette. “Well, Pa, sometimes I love you so much I really do want to land a fist into you just to straighten your ass out. If you will recall, you clobbered me pretty good when I visited you in prison.”
Jake turned away.
“Why did you do that, Pa? Think about it.”
Jake took another drag on his cigarette and watched the smoke combine with the steam his breath made in the cold air when he exhaled. “Because I loved you, and I wanted to stop you from going off and doing something stupid.”
“And there you go. Sometimes you love somebody so much you want to hit them because you’re scared for them.”
Jake shook his head and put the cigarette back between his lips. “Well, if hitting means loving, then my father must have loved the hell out of me,” he said, obvious angry sarcasm in the words.
“Yeah, well, that was a bit different.”
“Oh, it was a bit different, all right.”
Lloyd smoked quietly for a few seconds, aching for his father. “Do you think he loved you at all—I mean, even a little?”
“Hell no. Not even a little.”
“Why do you think he let you live? He killed the rest of his family, but not you.”
An almost evil darkness moved into Jake’s eyes. “He kept me around for something to beat on. I was his entertainment.”
Lloyd closed his eyes, finding it hard to imagine such hell, especially for a child. He couldn’t even come close to imagining being that cruel to Stephen.
Jake looked over at Ben and his grandsons. “You three staying warm enough?”
“We’re okay,” Stephen answered.
“I want you to be prepared for just about anything. I don’t know what we’ll find or how I’ll react, but you boys wanted to come along, and you deserve a piece of this. Just don’t be surprised by anything I do, and remember that no matter what I do, you boys have to handle things like this the right way when you take over this ranch someday.”
“We understand, Grampa,” Little Jake told him.
Ben nodded.
“And I don’t blame any of you for what happened, okay? Don’t ever think I blame you or that I don’t understand how you’re feeling, because I damn well do.”
“Thanks for letting us come, Grandpa,” Stephen spoke up.
Lloyd took a good look at them as Jake remounted. “You boys sure you can do this? You’re pretty beat up. Little Jake, how’s that cut on your head? Do you have a headache or anything like that?”
Little Jake shook his head. He’d been in a constant pout ever since everything happened. “You’re talkin’ like Grandma would if she was here, Uncle Lloyd, askin’ us if we’re okay. She’s the best grandma in the whole world.”
Lloyd nodded, as scared for his mother as Jake was. “Yes, she is, Little Jake. And she’s a real strong woman, stronger than your grandfather gives her credit for.”