“Buckley was…in a hurry! He didn’t want…to wait for me.” Beck reached up to put his hand against the cut on his head. Jake turned to Lloyd, and the look on his face made Lloyd fear his father was about to have a heart attack and die. “Pa, let us go on without you. We can do this. You look really bad.”
“I’m fine!” His voice was gravelly with rage and devastation. He walked closer to Beck. “We have a right to hang this man for burning down the barn. A man died in that fire! That’s murder. And taking your mother is kidnapping.”
“No! Don’t hang me! Please!” Beck collapsed. “My head! My…head!” He groaned, rolled sideways into the snow, then onto his back. He looked at Jake pleadingly before his eyes rolled back so only the whites showed. He suddenly stiffened.
Lloyd frowned. “Pa, I think he just died.”
Jake pushed at his body with his booted foot and got no movement.
“Is he dead, Grampa?” Little Jake asked.
“I hope he is dead,” Stephen spoke up.
“Brian, get over here,” Jake told his son-in-law.
Brian finally let go of Little Jake, whom he’d held onto through the entire ordeal. He walked over and knelt beside Ronald Beck. He felt for a pulse, then sighed. “I think Stephen got his wish. He’s not breathing.” He rose. “Could be a broken rib punctured a lung, or maybe it was that last blow to the head. You came awfully close to his temple, Jake. I suspect he was bleeding inside the skull.”
Jake glanced at the boys. “I told you there would be violence. I hope you boys understand a man can’t always behave like this. All of you know right from wrong, and you’ll likely be better at handling these things when you grow up than I am. Rodriguez can take all of you back home if this is too much for you.”
“No, sir, we aren’t going anywhere!” Stephen told him. “We came to help, and I think me and Little Jake can help more than you think.” He looked at his cousin.
“Can’t we, Little Jake? Remember that big crack in the rocks we found by that cabin at Fire Valley?”
Little Jake’s eyes lit up. “You mean Little Jake’s Valley,” he said proudly. “And yeah, I remember that big crack.”
“Me, too,” Ben added, his face brightening.
“Stephen, what are you talking about?” Lloyd asked.
“That time late last summer when you and Grampa took us with you to Little Jake’s Valley to shoot rifles and look for wild mustangs, you let us play up at that cabin. There’s a cliff right behind the cabin with a big crack in it.”
“I know that. The cliff must be a good twenty feet higher than the cabin. It butts right up against it.”
“Me and Little Jake and Ben looked into that crack and wanted to see how far it went. So we wiggled into it sideways,” Stephen told Lloyd.
“You could have got wedged in there and been trapped!” Brian scolded.
“It gets bigger when you get in there,” Little Jake told his father. “We just kept goin’, and it got wider at one spot, then smaller again.”
“It kept going up, and we just kept following it because we wanted to see how far it went,” Stephen explained. “It ends out at the big rise that leads up to the cabin from the side. We went back the other way and ended up right back at the cabin.”
“We never told you because we thought you’d be mad at us for going in there,” Ben told Jake.
Jake frowned. “You saying you boys could get close to that cabin without being seen?”
Stephen nodded. “Ben can’t now ’cause he got a lot bigger over the winter. But I’m still tall and skinny, and Little Jake is, too. Those men will be watching for us all to ride in across the valley—figure we’ll make good targets, I’ll bet. But you guys could ride around the outer rim to the north side behind trees and boulders above the cabin, while me and Little Jake sneak through that crack and come out to the side of the cabin where they don’t see us. We could chase off their horses so’s the men in there can’t run out and get away.”
“You gotta ride straight up from the valley to get to the cabin otherwise,” Ben added. “This way you’d be closer without them seein’ you, and you could use all those big boulders for cover. Without their horses, they’d be trapped in there.”
“Yeah!” Stephen added. “You’d have to be on foot if you go around behind it up high, but at least you’d be close enough to shoot at ’em without them seeing you coming.”
Jake looked at Lloyd.
“It’s too dangerous,” Lloyd commented. “That damn crack could have changed or moved, and they could get trapped in there, let alone the kind of men who are in that cabin. The boys could be shot. We can’t risk it.”