Outlaw Hearts(157)

“I wish you could come tomorrow again.”

He sighed. “I have to take that horse to Pueblo. It will just take a few days. I’ll come see you soon as I get back and we’ll meet here again.”

“Then come back just as fast as you can.”

“You know I will.” He met her mouth once more, and she eagerly gave him his pleasure. Lloyd Hayes was her friend, her lover, her man. He would always come first in her life.

***

Zane Parker shaded his eyes as he stepped away from the veranda of his sprawling ranch house. Jess York had ridden in to tell him Lieutenant Gentry and twelve of his men were riding onto Parker land and wanted to talk to him about “one of his men.”

Jess waited now beside his horse, wondering himself what was going on. The lieutenant had brought along a prison wagon, and the sight of it gave him a sick, uneasy feeling. He remembered a conversation with Jake only two weeks ago about meeting the lieutenant at Parker’s hoedown last month. Jake had been worried Gentry might know him from somewhere, but Jake couldn’t quite place him. Jess stood prepared now to ride out and warn Jake if this visit involved him.

Parker took a cigar from his mouth and walked a little farther away from the house, his balding head shining in the sun. “Hello, there!” he called out in greeting as the lieutenant rode up close to him. “You’re lucky I was here. I’ll be heading for Denver tomorrow on business.”

Gentry nodded to him, looking serious. He dismounted, shaking Parker’s hand. “Good to see you again, Mr. Parker, although my reason for coming isn’t sociable.” He glanced at Jess, remembered seeing Jess and Jake Hayes talking and laughing the day of Parker’s party. Men who worked together on a ranch often stuck together in other ways, and he had a feeling taking Jake Hayes might be a difficult enough task in itself. He didn’t need or want to go up against half the men on the Parker ranch. “Can we go inside? I need to talk to you in private.”

Parker shrugged. “Certainly.” He turned and led the man inside, and Jess mounted his horse, riding over to where Gentry’s men waited.

“Any of you know what this is about?”

They looked at each other before one of them answered. “We ain’t supposed to say. The lieutenant would have our hide. Besides, he hasn’t even told us the name of the man involved.”

Jess glanced back at the house. He had a feeling he already knew the name. “You boys just might have your hands full,” he told the soldiers. He turned his horse then and rode off, deciding maybe he’d better try to find Jake.

Inside the house, Parker started to close the doors to his parlor when Beth appeared at the doorway. “Father, what are those army men doing here?” She spotted the lieutenant and smiled. “Hello, Lieutenant Gentry.”

The man nodded, but did not smile.

“Beth, I want you to go to your room for the moment. The lieutenant wants to talk to me in private,” Parker told her. “Go on with you now.”

Beth wished her father would stop treating her like a child. She was old enough to be at his side, helping him make decisions like her mother used to do. She was a woman now, in every sense, and she felt like telling him so, but she was afraid it would turn him against Lloyd. “Yes, Father,” she answered, turning and heading toward the stairs.

Parker closed the doors and faced Gentry. “Would you like a drink, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir,” the man answered. “I don’t want to waste time, Mr. Parker. Every minute I’m on this ranch the word will spread through your men that we’re here. One of them, the one I’m after, is going to find out and I could lose him. I just came to explain to you first so you can order your men to stay out of this. I don’t want innocent people to get hurt. This is army business, and I’d like to keep it that way, but in a sense it does involve your daughter too. What I’m doing is for her good as well.”

Parker set his cigar in an ashtray, frowning. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Outside the doors, Beth snuck back to listen. She could see just a little through the crack between the doors.

Gentry took a yellowed piece of paper from inside his shirt. He unfolded it and held out an old wanted poster to show Parker. “It’s about this man, Jake Harkner. You know him as Jake Hayes. The reward on him is still good, and I aim to collect it.”

Parker’s eyes showed shock and disbelief as he took the poster and studied it. He shook his head. “I…I don’t believe this. How do you know this is even Jake, with that long hair and that beard?”

“I know because during the war I was a Confederate agent. I bought guns from him. He didn’t have all that hair on him then, but it was Jake. He was bad, Mr. Parker, as bad as they come. He killed men at the drop of a hat. It was wartime, so we didn’t particularly care how the man got us the guns, and I suppose the war can be used as an excuse for some of the things he did, but not the things he did before and after the war. He was a murderer and an outlaw from the time he was just a kid, when he murdered his own father.”