The boys squirmed excitedly in their saddles.
“Thanks, Pa!” Stephen answered, taking the rifle and shoving it into a boot on his saddle.
“These are dangerous men, Stephen,” Lloyd warned. “You and Little Jake stay right inside the crack in that cliff where they can’t see you if you think for one minute you can’t get those horses out of there without being seen, understand? If you see your grandmother, don’t go try to help her. We’ll take care of that. You just get those horses out of there. You’re men in a lot of ways, but you aren’t man enough yet for the kind of men at that cabin.”
“We’ll be careful,” Little Jake promised.
Lloyd glanced at Jake. “I don’t know any other way to get to that cabin unseen than on foot, like they said.”
“If we get going right now, we can get there by dawn.” Jake headed for Midnight and mounted up.
“What about Beck’s body?” Brian asked.
“Leave it for the wolves,” Jake answered coldly. “They’re plenty damn hungry this time of year. By spring there won’t be enough of him left to recognize.” He turned his horse and scanned the rest of the men. “And remember one thing. As far as we know, none of the men involved in this even has family. I know for a fact Brad Buckley has none left. They could all disappear from the face of the earth and no one would know or care, so it doesn’t make much difference what we do with them.”
Cole nodded. “We get your meanin’.”
“It would be like none of this happened,” Jake added. “I never want one word of this to go outside of this ranch—or for the public to know my wife was involved in any of this. I’ll not have her talked about. You men keep that in mind.” He turned Midnight and rode off.
The men looked at each other, thinking the same thing. None of them cared to cross Jake Harkner.
Little Jake glanced at Ronald Beck’s dead body. “Is Grampa gonna kill the rest of ’em?” he asked his father.
Brian rubbed at his eyes. “I expect so.”
“Good,” Ben added.
“He’d probably try to handle this differently if this didn’t involve your grandmother,” Brian added. “And after what happened to your mother, Little Jake, I don’t blame him. But you boys need to keep it straight in your heads that you can’t always handle things this way.”
“We know, Uncle Brian,” Stephen told him.
“Let’s get going,” Cole told them. He deliberately rode his horse over Beck’s body before heading out after Jake and Lloyd. Everyone else charged ahead to catch up with Jake, leaving a bloody, broken Ronald Beck behind for the wolves.
Thirty-nine
“Are you scared, Stephen?” Little Jake shimmied ahead of his cousin as they made their way through a literal crack in the earth.
“Kind of,” Stephen answered, looking up a good seventy feet or more at the sunlight above. He clung to his father’s rifle, trying to be careful not to scrape it against the rocks as he skimmed sideways through the crevice, which in places seemed almost impassable. “I’d be more scared if we were doing this alone, but Grampa and my dad will be out there in the rocks, covering us when we make off with those men’s horses.”
“I wish Ben could have come with us, but he’s gettin’ real big. I don’t think he would have fit.”
“Heck no.” Both boys spoke just above a whisper.
“Will you shoot one of ’em with your rifle?” Little Jake asked.
“Pa told me to use his rifle just for self-defense if I have to.”
“What if they see us and come after us? I’m gonna shoot ’em.”
“How are you going to do that?”
Little Jake stopped and reached under his shirt, pulling out a Colt .45 from the waist of his pants.
“Little Jake!” Stephen stared wide-eyed at the handgun. “Where’d you get that?”
“Cole’s saddlebag. I seen him put it in there for a spare when we packed to leave the ranch.”
“You could accidentally shoot yourself—or me! You shouldn’t have that gun! Grandpa will be really mad! So will your dad!”
“I don’t care. Them men did bad things to Grandma, and I’m gonna kill ’em!”
“You’ll get in trouble, that’s what! Or get shot!”
Little Jake shook his head. “I’m not scared at all.” He put the gun back and started shimmying along the crack again. “What do you think they’ll do to Grandma?”
Stephen sucked in his belly to get through an especially narrow space. “I think Grandpa is scared they’ll do something men do to women only in a nice way when they love ’em. Grandpa sure wouldn’t want them doin’ that to Grandma, ’cause she’s his and she’s old and she’d feel bad. He loves her an awful lot. My pa loves Katie, too. I hear them at night sometimes. Pa says it’s okay when you love a woman, but you gotta love her a lot. You’re not supposed to do stuff to her if she doesn’t want you to.”