“Damn it!” Lloyd looked at Katie. “You know how she’s been. This must have been awful for her. I’ve got to go to her!”
“Of course you do.”
“My daughter?” Lloyd asked again.
“The Mexican woman carried her off so she wouldn’t have to see her grandfather bleeding and wounded. She was crying, but she was okay.”
“Thank God Teresa was with them! She’ll take good care of Tricia,” Katie told Lloyd.
“And that’s all you know?” Lloyd asked Connor. “You’ve no idea how bad my pa was?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry. I heard the doctor say he was still alive. That’s all I know. I walked over to the telegraph office to tell them what happened so’s they could telegraph the news, and then an old man came over and said as how your mother said somebody should come and get you as fast as possible. I just got my new motorized bike, so I said I’d go. I took the train to Brighton and then rode here from there. I came fast as I could. Without having to rest a horse, I made it in two days.”
There might be an advantage to motorized vehicles after all, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now. Lloyd turned to Katie. “I already have Strawberry ready to ride. I was going to go out to the southeast quarter and check for more strays, but now I’ll have to ride to Brighton and catch that train. Pa would have left our carriage there to store while he and Mom took the train on into Boulder, so we’ll use that to bring him home…if he’s even alive.” His voice broke on the last word.
“Lloyd, Jake is tough as nails. You know that. You have to believe he’s all right.”
Lloyd looked at Connor. “Thank you for hurrying here to let us know. Rest yourself a spell. Katie has lemonade in an icebox inside. She’ll give you some.”
“Lloyd, what about Tricia? I should go with you,” Katie argued. “She’ll need her mommy.”
“You’re still nursing. You stay here. Evie will need your support, too. You know how she is about Pa. And if Brian and I go alone, we’ll be able to travel faster. Tricia is with Teresa, and she loves that woman to death. She’ll be fine.”
By then Evie had come running back. “Brian is getting ready,” she told Lloyd. “I missed what happened.”
“Connor can explain when Brian and I leave. We’ve got to get to Boulder and see about this. Pa is hurt, but this young man here doesn’t know for sure how bad.” He saw his sister’s terror. She worshipped her father, and after everything… He grasped his sister’s arms. “Evie, you know Pa. Is there a tougher man on the face of the earth?”
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I know, but—he’s still just human, Lloyd. Mother was always so afraid she’d see him killed in a hail of bullets. Maybe—”
“Don’t think that way! They thought I was dead, too, last summer in Denver, but I survived. Right?”
Evie nodded, suddenly hugging her brother. Lloyd put his arms around her. “Don’t you worry. He’ll be just fine.”
“It was quite something!” Connor told Evie. “Your father shot those men even while they held hostages right in front of them! A person couldn’t ask for a better show of gunplay than what people saw during that robbery!”
Evie put a hand to her stomach, remembering Dune Hollow…when her father shot the man holding her, using a rifle from so far away she couldn’t even see him. She’d felt the bullet whiz by her cheek, and the only thing she’d seen just before that was the glint of a rifle barrel. It would be impossible to make out anything else. She knew better than most how accurate Jake Harkner could be.
“I’m sure the papers are full of stories today,” Connor told them. “Jake Harkner, the famous ex-outlaw, foiling a bank robbery!”
“I wish I could have seen Grampa shoot those men!” Little Jake exclaimed.
Evie pulled away from her brother. “Go inside, Little Jake. Set out some glasses for your aunt Katie so she can pour some lemonade for all of us.” She saw a glint of tears in the eight-year-old’s eyes. Her son loved his grandfather beyond measure. He practically worshipped the man, and yearned to be all grown-up and able to carry his own guns. He and Stephen and Jake’s adopted son, Ben, had been hurt last winter trying to defend their grandmother when men came to drag her off. They rode out with Jake and Lloyd and several ranch hands to find and rescue her. They were just boys striving to be men, and the descendants of a man whose reputation would follow them everywhere. She looked up at Lloyd. “What about mother?”