“Time’s up, Mrs. Harkner,” one of the guards told her.
She saw the tiny glimmer of hope in Jake’s eyes quickly vanish at the words. “You think about what I’ve said, Jake. My strength comes from your own hope and faith.”
She kissed his cheek, and he breathed in the sweet scent of her, ached for her. Five more years was such a long time. Hell, even if he lived, he’d hardly be able to walk by then. What kind of man would she have coming home to her? A near cripple. His hip was getting worse, and his right hand had healed so poorly he doubted he had the strength in his fingers to pull a trigger. What kind of work could he do? How could she keep hoping like she did, keep talking like five years was just two weeks away?
“Take care of yourself,” he told her, kissing her forehead in return. How he wanted to kiss her mouth, but that would be torture.
“Take the basket, Jake.” She put the bread back into the basket and put the chicken back into the pan and covered it again. “I can get it when I come next month. Please take this back with you and promise me you’ll eat it. Please, Jake.”
He sighed deeply, picking it up and nodding. “I promise.”
“Let’s go,” one of the four guards told him, nudging him lightly with the barrel of his shotgun.
Jake watched Miranda a moment longer. She stood there straight and sure, showing pride and strength and trying to encourage him with a weak smile. God, how he hated the sight of her standing there alone. He gave her the best smile that he could, knowing she needed to see some sign that he was not giving up after all, and even though he knew a part of him was already dead.
He turned away and followed the guards inside without looking back again. The guards led him to his tiny cell, which for the moment he was not sharing with another prisoner. He’d had to pair up a few times, and it only made things even more miserable in the small enclosure.
“Any of you want some chicken?” he asked the guards. “I don’t think I can eat more than one piece.”
One of the men opened the basket and lifted the lid to the pan. “Smells damn good. You ought to eat it, Jake. Your woman brought it for you.”
Jake took out the loaf of bread. “Just leave me this.” He turned away and sat down on his cot while one of the guards locked the cell door. The men took the basket and walked off with it, one of them already chewing on a chicken leg. Jake looked down at the loaf of bread, broke it in half and put it against his nose and mouth so he could smell it. What memories that smell brought to mind, good memories of coming home to the smell of baking bread, being greeted by a slip of a woman with blue-gray eyes and honey-colored hair. What he would give to hold her again in the night.
Twenty-nine
Lloyd trotted his horse along the Milk River. Being back in the United States again brought back old aches and memories, but he had vowed not to give in to them. For three years he had lived in Canada under another name, working odd jobs, learning to enjoy whiskey to the point that it had gotten him into numerous fights and landed him in jail more times than he could remember. He had thought that by going away and shedding his infamous name he could somehow find himself, discover if he had it in him to be the no-good his father had once been. He expected he had proved that he could. He’d done enough drinking and fighting to earn him some kind of bad marks; and in trying to forget Beth he’d lain with plenty of whores, taking his need for Beth out on women who meant nothing to him, some pretty, some damn ugly, most forgotten by the next morning.
He was tired of Canada. It was too damn cold there for most of the year. Montana wasn’t much better. He’d head south, maybe find a way to hook up with the kind of men his father used to ride with. He’d heard from plenty of men about the Outlaw Trail. A lot of men he’d run into in Canada were bandits and outlaws who had fled the States. They knew a lot about places like Brown’s Park and Robber’s Roost. Most of them had also heard about Jake Harkner, but he’d never told any of them he was Jake’s son.
Maybe now it was time to find out what being a Harkner really meant, how people would treat him. One thing he had learned while in Canada was how to use his father’s guns. They were damn good six-shooters, perfectly balanced, with beautiful ivory handles, and he figured he was as fast with them now as his father had once been.
He still wanted to hurt the man. Making a reputation for himself with these guns, making sure his father heard about it, would surely cause him some pain and feelings of guilt. His grandfather had been bad, his father had been bad, so there must be a bad streak in him too. It must be so, because he’d sure taken a liking to whiskey easily enough, and he didn’t mind at all when he got into fights and landed in jail. He needed to fight. It felt good to hit and hit and hit, even felt good to get hit back and feel pain; but no man’s fist had hurt him so deeply and fiercely as when his own father had hit him that day in his jail cell back in St. Louis.