Love’s Sweet Revenge(53)

Jake walked off into the darkness, and Lloyd jerked Clem to his feet.

“No! Don’t hit me again,” the man cried. “I was just jokin’! He took it wrong!”

Lloyd slammed Clem against the cook wagon, enjoying the sight of blood pouring from the man’s mouth. “This is how it is, mister,” he growled. “I should kill you myself for insulting my mother, but I’m in too bad a state right now to make logical decisions, so I’m leaving for a while in order to get rid of this strong desire to blow your head off!” He threw the man to the ground and turned to Pepper, resting a hand on one of his six-guns. “When I come back, I don’t want to see that man! Make sure he gets the message! I don’t want to see him riding in the distance beside us, or behind us, or after we reach Denver, because if I see him again I might not be able to keep from killing him! If my father sees him first, he’ll kill him. I’m trying to stay within the law, but right now it’s damn hard!”

“We’ll take care of it, Lloyd,” Cole told him. “You go see to your pa. I ain’t never seen a man that black-hearted mad in my life.”

“You’ve just never seen the dark side of Jake Harkner,” he answered, “until now. He fights it, but it’s there. It’s my mom who usually keeps him from falling over the edge.” He turned to Clem. “Go saddle your horse and ride out!”

“It’s dark!”

“Ride out!” Lloyd roared. He backed away and looked at Cole and Pepper. “Make sure he disappears,” he told them.

Cole nodded. “Sure, boss.”

Lloyd walked off into the darkness. In the moonlight he could see a figure standing bent over a few feet away, and he knew it would be Jake. The man had come so far in his ability to check his anger and keep the old Jake at bay, but Lloyd knew nothing could set him off much worse than for someone to insult Randy, and he suspected there was more…something to do with bad memories of his father. He carefully approached him.

“Pa, she’ll understand. This won’t hurt her near as much as it hurt you.”

“I screamed at her.” Jake bent over more. “I can hear my father…roaring at my mother.”

“Pa, you know you aren’t like him.”

“But I am! Sometimes I still am.”

“You could never be like him—not with your wife and the mother of your children—not with any woman. You never have been, and you never will be.”

Jake grasped his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ, she’s my wife! How could he say that?”

“Because he’s a stupid sonofabitch who would never understand what you and Mom share. Mom knows that, too. You being like this will hurt her far worse than anything somebody else says about her.”

Jake remained turned away. “I almost hit you.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t. And I know it wouldn’t have been me you were hitting. I’m also guessing that your hand is hurting pretty bad right now. That’s the hand that’s never been completely right anyway after—”

Jake turned to look at him. “After I did hit you—when you visited me in prison.”

“I was a complete asshole to you that day. You should have beat me to a pulp.”

They heard Clem arguing then.

“Ride off now, or we’ll finish what Jake started!” Cole yelled.

There came the sound of a horse riding at a gallop then, the hoofbeats quickly fading.

Lloyd closed his eyes and shook his head. “Pa, if I didn’t butt in just now, you’d be in trouble, like when you were out to kill young Ben’s father back in Oklahoma. You would have killed Clem if I hadn’t stepped in, and you’d go back to prison.”

“Which goes to show you I am like…” He turned away again. “My father.”

“Your father was a drunk and a rapist who beat and killed his own wife and forced himself on the young girl you loved. But when it comes to your loved ones, you go into that protective rage, probably because you love too much. So no, you’re nothing like him!”

Jake took a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “It’s the rage part that reminds me of him. Part of me says I didn’t really have to kill all those rustlers, but they threatened to come for Randy, and when it comes to her, something just…snaps.” He lit the cigarette. “Jesus, I screamed at her.”

“You were protecting her. You wanted her away from the men just then because of what was said. She knows that, Pa. Mom knows you better than you know you.”

Jake took a drag on the cigarette. “Yeah, she keeps telling me that, too.”