The Last Outlaw(18)

Randy felt more of her old self struggling to come back. Most of their life it had been Jake who’d needed her, Jake who drew his strength from her. She’d been his only barrier from going over the edge into darkness. But the last few months, she’d been the one who needed him to keep her from falling. She wasn’t sure she could ever find the woman she used to be, but now she needed to be the strong one. She’d lost some of that strength when Lloyd was shot and she thought she’d lost her son…more when she sat through a hearing that could have resulted in her husband being hanged…and she lost the rest of it last winter…

She shook away the ugly memory. She must not think about it or she wouldn’t be strong enough for Jake right now. She had to find a way to put it all behind her and find the old Randy, the one Jake loved most.

He groaned again, this time louder. Randy noticed him clenching his fists.

“Jake, I’m right here! I’m right here!”

How many times had he told her that very thing over the last few months?

The doctor ordered a little more chloroform. For nearly an hour, he probed and stitched on the inside, then stitched up the outside, dousing everything with alcohol and iodine. Finally, he wrapped the wound, ordering men to come in and carry Jake to a bed in another room. Randy felt sick at his cries of pain.

Through a fog of loneliness and fear, she heard the doctor tell her he thought Jake would be fine, that he just needed to rest now…to sleep. She could stay with him. Everything happened in a shroud of disbelief and uncertainty…strangers…all strangers. All she wanted and needed was Jake.

The doctor walked out and closed the door. Randy realized she didn’t even know his name. She took off her hat, then looked down to realize she still had blood on the skirt of her dress. She should go back to the hotel, wash and change, and see about Tricia, but not yet. Not yet. She had to stay with Jake. He had to wake up and hold her first so she knew he’d be all right.

She removed her shoes, unpinned her hair, and let it fall. Jake liked it long and loose. She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Jake always told her how beautiful she was. Brad Buckley couldn’t change the way Jake Harkner touched her or made love to her or looked at her with those dark eyes and that melting smile.

A nurse brought his jacket into the room, as well as Randy’s reticule.

Shivering from shock, Randy set her handbag aside and picked up the jacket to pull it on, right over the jacket she already wore against the morning’s chill. Putting on Jake’s jacket made it feel like his arms were around her.

She lay down on his good side and nestled herself against him. “Don’t leave me, Jake,” she said softly near his ear.

“Mi esposa,” he muttered from somewhere in his own semi-consciousness. “Tu eres…mi vida.”





Seven


Attorney Peter Brown opened the newspaper, settling in behind his large oak desk in his home in north Chicago. The headlines stunned him.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered. “Jake did it again.”

He smiled and shook his head as he read the stunning, bold print.

JAKE HARKNER FOILS BANK ROBBERY IN BOULDER, COLORADO!

From outlaw to lawman to hero, Jake Harkner, the notorious outlaw turned U.S. Marshal, reprised his lawman instincts on June twelfth in Boulder, Colorado, when he shot it out with nine men who intended to rob the Boulder City Bank. The robbers were led by George Callahan, the nemesis of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The robbers killed bank teller John Drake and Boulder’s Sheriff Mike Billings. Harkner himself was seriously wounded, but is expected to recover. He single-handedly killed five of the nine men and wounded the other four. Callahan was among those killed.

“Of course he was,” Peter said softly. “The man seldom shoots to wound.”

Witnesses claim Harkner not only foiled the robbery, but also saved four hostages, his own wife and granddaughter among them. The other two hostages were a Mexican woman named Teresa Ramon and a retired school teacher, Mrs. Susan Bird, a resident of Boulder.

The article was by Jeff Truebridge, the same reporter who had gotten famous off that book about Jake three years ago. The man had news connections everywhere. Someone must have phoned him or wired him the news for the Chicago papers as soon as it happened.

Jeff lived in Chicago now, but had remained good friends with Jake and his family, and with Peter himself, who had his own fond but sometimes painful memories of Jake Harkner…and his wife. The article went on about the incident and about highlights from Jake’s past.

Peter didn’t have to read most of that. He already knew it all. He’d lived the wild story of Jake Harkner, U.S. Marshal, when he’d practiced law in Guthrie, Oklahoma.