The Last Outlaw(17)

“Jake, I’m here. I’m here,” Randy told him again. “Are you still awake? When I saw you unconscious in the street—”

Jake actually opened his eyes again and managed to reach up and grasp her hand, squinting from pain. “Button?”

“She’s fine. She’s with Teresa at the hotel.”

“That…other lady…”

“She wasn’t hurt. She and her husband are so grateful to you.”

He noticed the bruise on her cheek. “You’re…hurt!”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a bruise.” Randy squeezed his hand. “Jake, you have to hang on. Don’t you die on me! You can’t leave me! You can’t leave me!”

He closed his eyes again. “Lloyd always says…I’m too mean to die…remember?”

Randy smiled through tears and leaned down to kiss him lightly. “I can’t do this without you, Jake,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t leave me!”

He kept hold of her hand. “I’m…right here. Don’t be scared.”

“Mrs. Harkner, you’ll have to move out of the way,” the doctor told her. “I’ve got to get the bullet out and make sure there isn’t some serious internal damage. I have to find out where all the bleeding is coming from.”

“But I have to be with him.”

“Then move around to stand at his head. If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can stay while I take out the bullet and sew him up.”

Randy found some of her old strength at the man’s remark. “I’ve got the stomach for it,” she answered curtly. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve got the stomach for, the things I’ve been through or the things my husband has been through. He’s a strong, tough man—probably the toughest you’ve ever worked on.”

“His age?”

“Almost sixty-two but going on forty—that’s how tough he is.”

“Most folks know about Jake Harkner, ma’am. You don’t need to explain to me. But I need to stop this bleeding.” He looked at one of the nurses. “Give him some chloroform.” The doctor removed the blood-soaked wad of gauze from the wound, touching around it with his hands.

Jake grimaced and stiffened from pain. “Jesus, Doc, that hurts like hell!”

Randy ached for him, keeping her hands on either side of his face.

“You telling me where it hurts helps me know about where the bullet is,” the doctor told Jake.

One of the nurses gently pulled Randy’s hands away from Jake and laid a damp white cloth over Jake’s nose and mouth. In moments, he went limp again.

“Don’t give him too much,” the doctor told her. “He’s a tough man and can take some of the pain. Too much of that stuff can affect the heart, especially for an older man.”

Randy’s stomach tightened. Could the chloroform kill him? Not Jake! How many old bullet wounds did he already have? His father’s beatings didn’t kill him. The awful shooting back in Guthrie, where he nearly bled to death from a leg wound, didn’t kill him. The wound he’d suffered in the shoot-out back in California didn’t kill him. My God, how long ago was that? Lloyd had only been a baby. Acute pneumonia in prison didn’t kill him. He was the toughest man she’d ever known…and yet the gentlest…with his little granddaughters…with Evie…with her…in the night…

The doctor went to work, and at first, Jake didn’t seem to feel anything. Randy thought about that first time they met…Jake barging into a dry goods store where she’d been shopping. He was a gruff, bearded, wanted man then, an outlaw who’d ended up in a shoot-out right in front of her. She’d been so afraid of him that she shot him herself with a little handgun, and he just looked at her—so surprised. He could have killed her then, but he just ran out.

He’d lived through that wound, too.

“I took a bullet out of Jake myself once,” she told the doctor rather absently. “He was only thirty then. It’s a long story—how it happened.” And later, he saved my life. I was hurt and he was so good to me, so gentle with me, and we knew we were in love.

Jake groaned, and she leaned down and kissed his forehead, terrified he’d wake up too soon and feel the awful pain. “Jake, I’m here.”

“Yo te amo…”

“I love you, too. Don’t you die on me, Jake.” She leaned close to his ear. “Remember that night in the wagon—that first time we made love? We didn’t even know where we were, and you were so scared to love someone. A big, brave, wild outlaw, running from the law and running from love. I was the one thing you couldn’t fight and you couldn’t run from, Jake Harkner.”