Outlaw Hearts(108)

“What’s going on there? What the hell are you doing to that woman?” someone shouted.

Bill Kennedy turned and fired. A second innocent person dead. Her fear faded into a dread of what this would do to Jake if he did survive, to know innocent people had died. Would she lose everything today? Her husband? Her son? Was this to be her destiny then, always to have her loved ones taken from her? “Please don’t hurt my son,” she begged.

Juan laughed. “Now you know the kind of man your Jake used to be, no? You have spread your legs for a man just like one of us, señora bonita, so you will not mind doing it for us too, no? We will all have a good time. Maybe I will not even kill you. Maybe I will keep you.” He squeezed her breast painfully and laughed. “After being with Juan, you will not want Jake anymore anyway.”

“Somebody get Jake!” a man shouted.

Kennedy shot again, hitting the man in the back. Three innocent people! Miranda could see the stands now, heard shouting, more screams, children beginning to cry. Plenty of the men sported guns because of the contest, but none seemed willing to get involved. A couple of men rode off on horses, deciding just to get out of there. The band stopped its playing. She could see Jake now, standing in the middle of a corral. To her horror, another man, obviously part of Kennedy’s bunch, held a crying Lloyd, pointing a gun to the baby’s head. The black stallion was trotting nervously in a circle around the inside of the corral fence.

So, the rest of Kennedy’s men had already found Jake. She spotted two more men lying dead, and her stomach churned when she saw that one of them was Joe Grant. He must have been watching Lloyd while Jake showed the stallion, and had likely lost his life trying to keep the outlaw from grabbing the boy away.

She took faint hope in the fact that Jake was still alive and standing, and he wore one of his revolvers. He had put it on because of the shooting contest, but it was only one gun with six bullets. How many men did Kennedy have along? People scattered, no one willing to argue now with the defiant intruders who seemed to think nothing of shooting people down in cold blood. Most people had run off; others stood transfixed, probably afraid that if they moved, they would be shot.

Now you know the kind of man your Jake used to be, Juan had told her. She would not believe he had ever been this bad. He would not stick a knife into a woman’s ribs. He would not threaten a little boy. Never. He would not rape, or come to something like this and shoot people down like rabbits. Still, he had ridden with these men at one time, and now it seemed he would pay a much higher price for it than if he had gone to prison. Her heart ached at the look in his eyes when Juan dragged her around the corral fence to stand next to the man who held Lloyd. The baby reached for her, screaming “Mama.”

“Let him go, you bastards!” Jake shouted. “Let him go to his mother and release both of them! You can have me if you want! Just let them go!”

People stared, no one making a move. Jake had never felt such desperate rage. This was his son! And the woman he loved more than his own life! Was that blood on her dress? What had Juan already done to her? The very thing he had feared most was happening. By some cruel twist of fate, Bill Kennedy had found him, and he knew that if he survived this, the sweet, gentle life he had found here was over. He had everything to lose, and he was not going to lose it without a fight!

“Oh, we’ll take you, Jake,” Kennedy shouted. “But you’ve got to suffer a little first. You and your kid and your woman are comin’ with us.” He turned to one of the other three men who had come around to stand in front of Jake. “Shut that kid up. Gag him or something.”

“Leave him alone!” Miranda screamed.

One of the men untied a sash she was wearing around her waist and yanked it off, going up to Lloyd and tying it tightly around the baby’s mouth.

“Jake, what the hell is this about?” the small town’s mayor shouted.

“It’s about this man here being Jake Harkner, not Jake Logan,” Kennedy shouted. “It’s about him bein’ just like us once, rode with us back in Missouri, robbed a few banks, killed a few men, raped a few women—”

“You liar!” Miranda shouted.

Kennedy lashed out and backhanded her, and blood appeared at the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t you move, Jake,” Jeb called out when he saw Jake stiffen. “You just drop that gun.”

Jake stood still, weighing his chances, telling himself to hang on and make every shot count.

“Jake’s a wanted man back in Missouri,” Jeb shouted to the others. “Don’t any of you be feelin’ sorry for him. There’s five thousand dollars on his head alive, three thousand dead.”