The Last Outlaw(135)

Her tears subsided a little. “Yes.”

“And would he want you to give up on him like this?”

She straightened a little, still clinging to Peter’s hand. “No.”

“Then you need to keep the faith, Randy, for Jake’s sake. You might be right. He might be alone, and he might be in pain, but you are what will help him through whatever has happened. Okay? He needs to feel you with him and remember you’re waiting for him. If you’re going to fall into a puddle of tears and give up on him, he’ll feel that too, don’t you think? Isn’t he better off if you’re strong and have faith that God will watch out for him?”

Randy sat all the way up. “You’ll wait with us, won’t you?”

Peter nodded. “I’ll wait, but only if you stay strong. You know damn well how strong Evie’s prayers are, so let’s just all pray for Jake. And you remember what a tough man your husband is. The man can be leather and stone when he needs to be. Any little boy who can survive what Jake survived is even tougher as a man.”

Lloyd looked at Evie. She could see how much he hated admitting Peter was good for his mother, but right now, Peter was the only one able to calm her down. He turned away, pacing. “Damn it,” he growled. “Damn it, Pa, what have you gone and done?”

Evie walked up to her brother and touched his arm, feeling the hard anger running through him at the moment. “Daddy will be all right,” she told him. “I just know it.” She squeezed his arm and turned to the others. Little Jake stood near his grandmother, fighting his own tears.

“Let’s all pray,” Evie said.

They bowed their heads, and Randy squeezed Peter’s hand so tightly that her knuckles went white. Evie managed to get through an intense prayer while struggling against her own need to break down and weep. She knew her mother’s strong intuition when it came to her father. If the woman felt he was in pain, he probably was, and that tore at Evie’s heart. Next to Jesus Christ, she worshipped her father as the strongest man on the face of the earth. Whatever was wrong, he could surely get through it.





Forty-nine


Jake strained against the ropes that held his wrists to two posts. He did all in his power to stand on just his good leg. The pain in his broken left leg was enough to beg God to let him die. Through a haze, he saw the fancy-dressed don approach him.

“By now you know that I am Don Jesus Ricardo de Leon,” the man sneered, “and I know you are the famous gunman from America. Soon I will report you as dead, Jake Harkner! You stole the woman who was to be my virgin mistress. They say you paid big money to spend the night with her. You took her virginity, and then you tried to steal her away. You killed the men I paid to bring her to me. No one goes against Don de Leon! Especially no American!”

Jake grimaced with the ungodly pain as the man walked in a circle around him. He wore only his denim pants, and he knew the left leg of those pants was soaked with blood from his broken leg. He’d been stripped to the waist, and he knew what was coming. He refused to speak, and he refused to cry out. God, if this man is going to kill me, just let it happen quickly!

“I see that you have many scars on your back.” The don walked around to stand in front of him again. “Scarred tissue does not heal well when it is reopened.” He leaned closer. “And I am going to reopen your scars, Jake Harkner. And then I am going to feed you to the buzzards and let them finish you off. You will die feeling them pulling the meat off your back and your leg. You will die feeling them peck out your eyes.” He stepped back, turning to someone. “Open up every scar on his back!” he ordered.

Jake had no idea where he was. Still somewhere in Mexico. That’s all he knew. God willing, Cole had made off with Annie and was well on his way north. He knew the skin on his arms and chest and back was already torn from being dragged. He’d have been killed right then if Don de Leon hadn’t ordered it to stop. He wanted Jake still alive so he could make him suffer even more.

Somewhere in the swirl of black pain, Jake knew what was coming. He gritted his teeth. He’d never once cried out when his father used the buckle end of a belt on him, and he wasn’t going to cry out when de Leon’s whip lashed into him.

That promise proved hard to keep. He knew that when the first horrible sting came. He heard the loud snap of the whip, and he forced his mind to fall deep into the world of blackness where nothing hurt and nothing mattered. He’d learned to do that as a boy, and he could do it again.

Time and the number of lashes faded into a shroud of smoky clouds around him. Randy. He had to think of Randy…another lash.