The Last Outlaw(42)

There followed two hours of sheer bedlam. The ranch hands surrounded Lloyd and Jake outside with questions about the fracas and reports on roundup and branding, while the women cooked inside the main house. Nothing felt better than the whole family being together, which was why Jake had insisted on keeping a big house with lots of bedrooms. Stephen and Little Tricia slept there practically as much as they slept at home. All the kids loved Randy’s cooking and being around Jake, whom they considered the toughest, most famous man on the face of the earth. Lloyd had to shake his head over that one.

Once in the house, Jake insisted on holding the two babies for a while, little Donavan and Evie’s new baby girl, Esther Miranda. They let Tricia and her cousin, Sadie Mae, sit on his lap, while Randy constantly reminded the girls not to hug their grandfather too tightly or crawl all over him the way they usually did. Sadie Mae pulled his shirt up unexpectedly to see where Grampa had been shot, and then she started crying.

The women were all over her tears, and Lloyd wondered if there would ever be any semblance of order in the growing mob of brothers and sisters and cousins the family had become.

One thing that gave him the most joy was noticing how his parents kept glancing at each other. Things were definitely better, and Lloyd suspected they’d rather have some time alone, something they hadn’t had since they left for Boulder in the first place. Randy walked to where Jake sat in his favorite big chair near the fireplace and put out her hands. “Come to the table, Jake.”

Jake grasped her hands, and she helped him up, a rather comical sight with him so big and his mother so small. He watched them kiss, and his mother put an arm around Jake as he walked to the table.

They all took their seats, and Jake asked Evie to say grace. Evie looked at him in surprise. “Did I just hear my father ask me to pray?” she asked teasingly.

“Yes, you did.”

“You never ask me to pray.”

“First time for everything, baby girl. Your prayers are strong. Mine don’t hold water at all, so just say grace and don’t ask questions.”

Lloyd grinned. Typical Jake Harkner comment. Jake was feeling better, and it wasn’t just his side that was healing.

“And include a thank you that your mother is eating better and smiling more.”

“Jake, she doesn’t have to do that,” Randy protested.

Lloyd studied his mother closely. Was she actually blushing a little? He glanced at Evie, who just shrugged before offering the prayer. The whole family dived in then, and Randy filled her plate and ate as though truly hungry. Lloyd wondered if maybe the shooting had been good for his mother. It had forced her to be stronger.

As soon as they finished eating, the boys continued to insist Jake tell them the story about the bank robbery all over again. Little Jake was the most excited, using his fingers to mimic handguns as he yelled “Bang! Bang! Bang!” when Teresa retold what it was like to feel Jake’s bullets whizzing over her head.

Lloyd stepped outside to have a cigarette, and Evie followed him out. “Lloyd, did you see? Mother seems better.”

Lloyd drew on the cigarette and leaned against the porch railing. “Yeah, she does. I don’t know for sure what happened, mind you. She was still bad when we got to Boulder, and no better after that damn shoot-out—at least from what I could tell when we got there. She looked really bad. Pa was still concerned, and I could see him sliding backward, you know? He was about to do something crazy, I think, as if that shoot-out wasn’t bad enough. It’s probably a good thing he was injured. It kept him from… I don’t know. Something he probably would have regretted. You know how he is. He told me that before the shoot-out he got into it with Brady Fillmore over that stolen steer, but there was more to it than that. I think maybe Fillmore said something about Mom. It doesn’t take much of that kind of talk to set Pa off.”

“We all know how ornery he can be.”

Lloyd studied his sister, never quite able to stop worrying about her since her ordeal at Dune Hollow, even though it was almost five years ago. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. It just scares me to think of something happening to Daddy. I’m so relieved he seems to be recovering.” She sat down in a wicker chair. “Should I ask him about Mother?”

“Absolutely not. It’s something private, or Pa would have told me. Just leave them alone. God knows they’ve worked their way through enough other bad times that could have pulled them apart. If they can rise above this one and find each other again, there isn’t much else that could come between them. And don’t ask Mom. God knows, one wrong word might embarrass her or send her back to silence. She’s eating and talking, so let it be.”