The Last Outlaw(145)

Little Jake—whom everyone now called “just Jake”—moved beside his father and started crying. Brian put an arm around him. Evie looked up at Lloyd, and Lloyd pulled her into his arms.

“My God, he’s alive,” he wept into his sister’s hair.

And Randy kept running. She fell twice. She didn’t feel the cold snow at all. She just ran. Jake kicked his horse into a faster run and climbed off it before it even came to a halt.

“Evie, he’s limping,” Lloyd said.

Evie let go of him and watched. “But he’s alive! Dear God in heaven, he’s alive!”

Randy left all of them behind. She reached Jake, and there was nothing to say. He grabbed her up and turned with her, keeping her feet off the ground until he stepped wrong and they both fell into the snow.

“I have a bum leg, Randy,” he told her.

“Jake, just hold me! Hold me! Hold me! Nothing else matters! I knew you were alive! I knew it!”

They rolled over and over in the snow, until they were covered in white.

Jake buried his face in her hair, breathing deeply of its rose scent, then buried his face against her neck. “My God, I can’t believe you’re in my arms. For a long time I was sure I’d never hold you again.”

“Don’t let go, Jake!”

“I sure as hell won’t!” He breathed deeply of her familiar scent. “By God, you’ve been baking that bread, haven’t you? The best goddamn bread in the whole country. I can smell it on you.”

Randy couldn’t talk for her tears. Jake found her lips, and her mouth had never tasted so sweet.

For Randy, his kiss had never been so precious. For several minutes, they just lay in the snow, holding, touching, kissing, unable to speak until Randy finally found her voice again.

“Jake, how? When?”

“It’s a long story, mi querida esposa. An old Mexican man found me and took me to a cave where he lived. He was some kind of hermit, gave me food and water, a place to rest. But what really saved me was thinking about you…and my family…and little Sadie Mae and the chickens.”

More kisses. More tears.

“Chickens? Jake, what on earth—”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. I just want to look at you.” His eyes were wet with tears as he kissed her hair, her eyes, her lips, her throat. “I was so scared you’d give up if you thought I was dead. My God, you look so good, baby.” He wiped at tears, then used his thumbs to wipe away Randy’s tears. “It’s that promise I made that kept me going through the worst pain and blackness of my life. That promise that I’d come back.” He looked down at her, just then coming to his senses and realizing she wore no coat. “Randy, you’ll freeze to death!”

“I don’t feel it. I saw you coming, and I just started running. Oh, Jake, we searched for you. The Mexican authorities kept telling us you were dead, but I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it!”

“Terrel rode in with me. He told me Cole made it back, and Annie is all right.”

“Yes. Oh, Jake, Cole was so heartbroken. There is just so much to talk about. Little Jake won’t let us call him that anymore. It’s just Jake. And Katie had a baby—another boy. And Evie is pregnant again. And Cole has been visiting Gretta a lot. She closed her place and runs a rooming house now and—”

He cut her off with another kiss, a deep, long, warm kiss of a man hungry for much more. “We have so much catching up to do, so much to say. I found her, Randy. I found my mother’s grave and—”

“Cole told us, Jake. I’m so, so sorry you went through that alone.” They continued kissing over and over. Randy put her hands to his face. “Let me look at you.”

Jake smiled as she ran her hands over his face and into his hair. “Jake, you look the same, but you’re so much thinner.”

“That bread and your homemade pies will fatten me up soon enough.” He pushed some of the hair off her face. “Tell me you didn’t starve yourself like last winter. You look thin, baby, but not as bad as then.”

“I’ve been eating as best I can. The children made me eat.”

Jake sobered. “They whipped me, Randy, as bad as a man can be whipped. My back is worse than before. Scar tissue doesn’t heal easily. It took weeks for the skin to close up. And the pain… I forced myself to think about you. I saw your face. I heard your voice. I saw you walking to greet me, like you used to do back in Guthrie.”

“Oh, Jake, I heard your voice. And I felt you with me. I felt it when you were in pain. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been for you.”