Love’s Sweet Revenge(20)

Jake leaned down to kiss her. Randy thought how few women could have a moment like this with their husbands while surrounded by seven men he’d just shot dead. She hugged him tighter. “Oh, Jake, don’t let go for a while.”

“I never let go of you, even when we aren’t together.” Jake watched the other men start digging graves closer to the trees. “I suppose you’ll want to pray over those no-goods,” he told Randy.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“If it was up to me, I’d strip them down and leave them for the buzzards.”

Randy laughed through her tears, needing the relief from the tense drama of what had just happened. His remark was so typical of Jake Harkner. “Oh, Jake, God is going to have a time with you when you get to heaven,” she teased, her ears still ringing from the boom of her husband’s guns.

“Yeah, well, I think He and I will have a whole lot to talk about. Let’s just hope that conversation takes place a good ten or twenty years from now.”

Randy hugged him tighter, unable to begin to imagine life without this man. Always there was the worry that the next gunfight would be his last. “I love you, Jake.”

He sighed, rocking her slightly in his arms. “We’ll go back to that cabin again before summer is out. I promise.”

“Can we stay even longer next time?”

“Sure we can.”

“Jake, I’m scared for Lloyd.”

“Nothing will happen to Lloyd or anybody else in this family. I won’t let it.”

That’s what worries me even more. Randy looked up at him, felt his lips on hers in an oh-so-familiar kiss.

Lloyd glanced their way, then returned to digging a grave—more men dead from his father’s famous guns, and now Mike Holt was on the loose. He hated to face it, but had a sick feeling this was just the beginning of new troubles for him and his father.





Six


Red St. James swallowed another shot of whiskey, studying the man who’d just come into the Okie Saloon. He wasn’t a regular. For the most part, a man could pretty much figure who’d show up which nights and where he’d sit, which ones played cards, and which ones always sat at the bar and gabbed. Guthrie had its share of saloons, and most men had their favorites.

“I won’t be in here much after this.” The words came from Red’s friend, Fenton Wales. “You know how it is for a farmer come spring.”

Red nodded, still watching the stranger. There was something familiar about him.

Fenton removed a rather soiled hat and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “What the hell are you looking at, Red?”

“That stranger that just walked in. He looks familiar.”

Fenton turned to look. The man sat at the bar, his back to both of them. “I can’t tell without seeing his face.”

“Can I get you boys anything more?” A well-known prostitute-turned-barmaid sauntered close, her buxom figure pleasantly filling out a deep purple taffeta dress that showed just a hint of cleavage. It was obvious to any man that there was much more bosom billowing beneath her fitted bodice.

“Dixie, the law doesn’t allow us to order what you have to offer.”

Dixie grinned. “Now, you boys know I shut down my place months ago. I’m getting too old for that, and things weren’t the same after Jake Harkner left town with that gorgeous son of his. I am working an honest job here, boys, and just wanting to know if you want more drinks.” She looked both men over seductively. “Now, Red, you’ve got a wife at home. So even if I was still in business, and in spite of those big, strong arms and that barrel of a torso and handsome grin, I wouldn’t do business with you.” She jerked on his red beard, then glanced at Fenton. “But you, you big ole rugged farmer, if I was still in business, you’d be welcome…with open, uh, arms, if you get my meaning.”

“I get it all right,” Fenton joked. Laughter filled the room.

“Is it true Jake Harkner never monkeyed around them times he visited your place?” Red asked with a wink.

“And risk losing that wife he worships?” Dixie grinned. “Honey, I’d have liked nothing better than to have that man in my bed, but no, we were just good friends.”

“Well, a man…or woman…couldn’t ask for a better friend than Jake,” Fenton told her.

Red noticed that mentioning Jake’s name caused the stranger at the bar to turn and look.

“You’ve got that right,” Dixie answered Fenton. “I hope Jake and his family have found some peace in Colorado. I have to say, though, I miss that handsome outlaw something awful, just awful. And that son of his…” She shook her head. “I never knew God could make men that good-looking. And then he had to up and get married. Life just isn’t fair.”