Jake snickered sarcastically. “Well, I’m sorry for all you’ve been through, but even at that, you’ve led a charmed life compared to mine. You’re lucky you had a nice, normal life for as long as you did—parents who really loved each other, a father who knew how to treat his children. That brother of yours must be an ungrateful brat, taking off on your pa like that. If I had had a father like yours apparently was, I never would have left. To this day I still have nightmares about mine. He even made me drink slop water once, after he’d already washed in it and spit in it—”
“Jake, don’t—”
“I just want you to understand about me, that’s all. I don’t know why I want you to understand. Maybe it’s because I know you’re wondering if you’ve done the right thing, putting me up like this. I can’t guarantee that I won’t go right back out there and kill again. You’d best understand the kind of men I rode with at times, like Kennedy and his bunch. They’re as bad as they come, murder for no good reason, rape innocent women. Kennedy’s right-hand man is a Mexican named Juan Hidalgo. He carries the biggest knife you ever saw and can throw it almost as fast as a man can pull a gun. He can do other things with that knife that would make you sick if I told you. I rode with them for a while, so I’m judged by what they did, and I probably deserve it. I told you I’ve never hurt a woman, but I’m no damn saint either. I’ve done some pretty bad things. I don’t know why it matters to me, but I want you to understand why I’ve gotten into a way of life that I can’t get out of. I got into it because of something that happened between me and my father.”
He pulled the rag out of the barrel and then began polishing the outside of it. “Sometimes fate puts you on a road you don’t want to be on, Randy. Other men come along who won’t let you get off it. Once men find out you’re good with a gun, it becomes a challenge. They track you down, brag that they’re better, make you draw on them. Eventually you get a reputation with the gun, and no decent person wants anything to do with you. You can’t get a job, nobody trusts you, but you have to survive, so you fall in with another way of life. Add to that the fact that you know you’re no good in the first place, because your father has told you so all your life; and on top of that you don’t have much education, you can barely read; and you’ve never in your whole life lived like normal people; you’ve had the love beaten out of you before you even understood what love is…and you end up a Jake Harkner.”
He began carefully oiling the mechanical parts of her father’s Winchester. “Don’t be feeling bad about putting me up, and don’t think I’m not grateful. I just want you to know that no matter what lawless things I’ve done, it’s like I said. I wasn’t with Kennedy and his men that day of the bank robbery and the abduction in Missouri, but somehow the rumor got spread that I was. You know the rest.” He rubbed briskly at the metal parts of the rifle. “I’m sorry I yelled at you out there at the shed. I’ll get out of your way tomorrow and you can start getting ready to go to Nevada. I hope you find your brother, although I’m betting he’s not worth you going through all that danger. He might not even be where you think he is. What will you do then?”
Miranda didn’t want to talk about herself. He had opened up to her again, and she wanted to know more; but she knew he had offered all he was going to offer. Her heart ached for him. She wanted to tell him it was never too late for a man to change his ways, never too late to learn to feel love. She had never known his father, but she hated him for literally destroying what might have been a decent young man. Why shouldn’t Jake Harkner be hard and mean and angry with the world? He had seen his little brother and his mother beaten to death, had suffered great emotional and physical pain at the hands of a brutal father who had never loved him, who had convinced him he was a bastard.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I might like it there, might find a job. I’ve heard there is all kinds of work for a woman in a busy mining town. They say women can make a fortune just cooking for all the men there looking for a hot meal.”
Jake glanced at her, thinking of one occupation that could earn a woman who looked like Miranda Hayes a virtual fortune; but she was no easy woman. As though reading his mind, she suddenly returned to her knitting, looking embarrassed.
“You’d better keep this rifle handy, and that little pistol of yours. I don’t think you realize how a woman like you will look to men who haven’t seen a decent female in months,” Jake told her. He turned his eyes back to the rifle. “After a while a man gets sick of the painted whores who’ll go with any man with a coin in his pocket.”