She watched the tears slip out of his eyes, realized more fully the agony he had suffered in that prison cell. “You know there is no man for me but you, Jake Harkner. Why do you think I’ve stuck by you through all of this when there were so many times it would have been easy just to walk away from it all? You are my life, my strength, my reason for being.”
He put a big hand to the side of her face. “It’s the same for me. I just can’t believe you’re really here in my arms, mi querida.” He met her mouth again, and there was no more to be said. By the time he was finished loving her, a hint of dawn light could be seen through a crack in the window curtains.
Jake rested beside Miranda, pulling her back against him. “I’ll have to buy some new firearms before leaving St. Louis,” he told her in a sleepy voice. “I want the best before I go into outlaw country. I’d better practice some too. It’s been a long time since I held a gun in my hands.”
“You’d better buy me a new rifle too,” she answered lazily. “I’m going with you, you know.”
“No, ma’am. I’ll not take you into country like that, around men like that.”
“With you along, what could happen to me? And what if you get hurt, or what if Lloyd gets hurt? You wouldn’t find a doctor for two hundred miles in any direction. I’d be the closest thing to a doctor you’d have. He’s my son too, Jake Harkner, and I’m going to help you find him.”
“I said no.”
Miranda just smiled. “I’m going,” she said, settling closer against him. “I just got you back, and I am never, ever letting you out of my sight again. There will be no more arguing about it.”
She felt him sigh deeply. “Damn stubborn slip of a woman,” he muttered.
***
Miranda guided her roan mare along a canyon wall above the Green River. She led a shaggy, golden mare that carried their supplies, and Jake rode ahead of her on a buckskin gelding that closely resembled the now long-dead Outlaw. He had named the broad-chested, powerful three-year-old Bandit, and it had a black mane and black stockings just like Outlaw.
Miranda had traveled through the West and lived in it long enough not to be totally surprised by the scenery, yet this country was, to her memory, the most remote and desolate she had ever seen, except perhaps for the Nevada desert. It also carried a chilling beauty, a maze of buttes and mesas, of wide valleys dotted with green sage and bunchgrass. A rancher had headed them in this direction, where they would search through Brown’s Park for any news of Lloyd.
This was big country, and sometimes Miranda worried they might get lost and never find their way out. It was no wonder outlaws liked it here. There were thousands of places to hide or take cover, caves, box canyons. Brown’s Park was a forty-square-mile area that took in both northeast Utah and northwest Colorado. The Green River flowed through the middle of it, and the area was flanked by Diamond Mountain and Douglas Mountain, and a plateau called Owi-ya-kuts. According to the rancher, trappers used to gather here, men like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. Infamous outlaws such as Butch Cassidy still roamed these areas.
Only the lawless who used these places knew them well. Jake had traveled these parts himself after he’d left Miranda in California, and the only reason he had asked directions from the rancher was because they were approaching Brown’s Park from the east, a direction he had not used before.
It seemed with every day of travel Jake got healthier and stronger. The sun was already tanning him even darker, but he insisted Miranda wear gloves and long sleeves and a hat to protect her skin. She thought how good he looked on that big horse, how wonderful it had been to lie next to him under the stars, to make love by moonlight, to feel this newfound freedom.
To Miranda, it seemed they were lost in a maze of canyons and gorges and high plateaus, but she trusted Jake to find the way, and she was not afraid of trouble anyone might try to give them. Jake had bought the best in weapons, a Colt Frontier pistol for her protection, which she wore in a holster on her own hip. For himself he carried a new .45-caliber Frontier revolver that had a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel; a Colt Lightning magazine rifle that fired automatically without lever action; and a new sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun.
The firearms had been purchased in St. Louis with a special purchase order given to Jake by Judge Mitchell to buy necessary firearms to suit his taste, to be used on his job as Deputy Marshal. The cost would be paid by the U.S. government, which suited Jake just fine. He had bought the best, figured he could use Miranda’s snub-nosed pistol himself later. It was small enough to be hidden inside a jacket pocket or even a boot, but it packed a powerful punch.