“Fine. But if he goes toddling up behind a horse, you’d better make sure he understands it’s dangerous. And do it in a way that makes him think twice about doing it again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He walked toward the door.
“Jake.”
He turned, keeping the boy in his arms and patting his bottom.
“I mean it. I need your help in this. Jake, I think I’m going to have another baby. I can’t take care of a newborn and be running after a two-year-old who won’t obey me.”
He watched her lovingly, slowly setting Lloyd back down to the varnished hardwood floor Miranda kept dusted daily. “You’re making me do this twice?” he teased. “Hell, I’m not sure I can do it right one time around.”
“You’re doing just fine. Just go tend to your chores.”
He gave her a rather tentative smile, his emotions mixed. The responsibilities were growing. There would be a second child depending on him, another mouth to feed, another baby to love and to look up to him as a father. He walked closer to Miranda, bending down and kissing her cheek. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“What if it’s like the last time, maybe worse? I can’t lose you, Randy. I can’t do any of this without you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m sure Mrs. Grant and some of the other neighbor women will help when the time comes, which won’t be until at least next March. Now get going.”
He kissed her once more, then left her, picking up Lloyd on the way out. Miranda walked to the door to watch them head for the barn, Lloyd riding on his father’s shoulders again and laughing. She thought what a sweet and peaceful sight it was. Lloyd had been like a healing ointment to his father’s tortured soul. Already they were so close. She prayed nothing would ever happen to destroy that.
***
Bill Kennedy put a fat cigar in his teeth and settled into the tub of hot water, making a growling sound of pleasure as he let the warm water come up to his neck. “You can scrub my back and anything else you want to rub after I soak a few minutes,” he told the young Mexican woman whose job it was to keep adding buckets of hot water as the tub water cooled. The woman stared at Kennedy dully, a mixture of hatred and resignation in her dark eyes. It was obvious she hated her job, and that pleased Kennedy, made him feel powerful. She worked here, therefore she had to do what he asked. He gave her a wink and she turned away.
Three other Mexican women kept clean towels coming, provided soap and were required to scrub down any man who asked. Kennedy and his men had been told this was the most luxurious bathhouse in San Diego, and they had all converged on it after a hot, dusty trip back from Mexico. The others laughed and splashed and made lewd remarks to the Mexican women. Juan stood up and gestured with his penis, and the men laughed more, Clarence asking the women if any of them would please get in the tub with him and let him give them a soap massage of their own. He reached up and felt the breast of one older woman when she bent over to give him a towel, and she slapped his hand.
Clarence made kissing sounds at her and picked up his own cigar from a nearby ashtray. He thought how good it felt to be here after over a year of running. He watched Jeb Donner use his right arm to support himself as he knelt into his own tub. Jeb had lost almost all use of his left arm after the shoot-out with Wells Fargo detectives up near San Francisco over a year ago. Jeb had been slammed with two bullets that day, one in his left shoulder and another that smashed his left elbow. The trap the lawmen had laid had come close to killing all of them. Brad and Luke, Buffalo and Frank were dead. Juan still limped from a bullet to his right thigh that had broken a bone. Joe had taken a bullet in his side, but he’d lived.
The terror of that day still haunted Clarence. He’d never been that scared since the day Jake Harkner stuck a gun into his mouth and threatened to pull the trigger. He’d never seen so much shooting in his life, and he hoped he never would again. He felt lucky to have gotten away with his life, and he had even considered leaving Kennedy, going back to Virginia City and staying with his uncle a while until things cooled down.
They had eluded the law by heading north and making those who hunted them think they had gone to Canada. Instead, after finding a farm family who put them up and treated their wounds at gunpoint, they had circled around and headed back south, killing the entire family first so that they could not identify them. They had moved on through the Nevada desert and into Utah, where there was a whole network of hangouts for outlaws all along a north-south trail from Arizona clear into Wyoming called the Outlaw Trail. It was a haven of caverns and canyons and desolate country where no lawman ventured, unless he wanted to commit suicide. It was along that trail that Kennedy had picked up the two new men, Oran Peters and Cliff Remington. With himself and Kennedy, and longtime gang members Juan, Joe Stowers, and Jeb Donner, Kennedy’s gang now numbered seven.
Still only twenty-one and the youngest of the group, Clarence felt proud to be a part of this formidable bunch of outlaws who took what they wanted wherever they went—money, women, anything they needed. It was mostly women he couldn’t get enough of, and the innocent ones who protested pleased him most. He drank down some whiskey. This was the good life, a hell of a lot better than sitting around listening to his uncle preach. The way he lived now was dangerous and daring, but he liked the power that came with being one of Bill Kennedy’s men. He had gotten pretty good with his gun, thanks to lessons from Bill and Jeb. After each robbery that turned out especially lucrative, they lived high on the hog, buying new clothes, buying the prettiest women.
That had been the case after their last robbery of a little bank in some nameless town in Arizona, where they had found a surprising amount of cash on hand. They had ridden into Mexico to lay low for a while and now returned, coming up into Southern California. Here in San Diego they had bought new clothes and decided to get baths and shaves. His new felt hat hung on a hat rack nearby, and he wore a diamond ring on his right hand. Nearby lay his brand-new .45 Peacemaker with a cutaway trigger guard to make his draw and shooting time even faster. The gun rested in a new gun belt with his name etched into the holster.
The only trouble they had found since fleeing Northern California was along the Outlaw Trail itself. At a place called Robber’s Roost they had run into two men who had known Jake Harkner in his gunrunning days, men Jake had known before he took up with Bill Kennedy. They seemed to have a certain loyalty to Jake and didn’t like the idea that Bill Kennedy had been hunting for him. One of them, who called himself Jess York, claimed Jake had saved his life once, and he didn’t want anything to do with anybody who was out to kill Jake. He and several other men had come after Kennedy, warning all of them to forget about finding Jake. That was the only time Clarence could remember Bill Kennedy and even Juan running from anything, but it was obvious the men meant business.
Clarence had realized then that being an outlaw didn’t always mean just the law was after you, but sometimes men of your own kind. Word had spread, and they had suddenly become unwelcome practically everyplace they stopped along the Trail. They had been forced to the southern end, into Arizona, and after the bank robbery there, they had finally gone on into Mexico. After a few weeks in Mexico, Kennedy had decided to come back north, this time into Southern California, where they weren’t so well-known. There was plenty of wealth to be had here too, and they could always make it back to Mexico, where the law couldn’t touch them, in just a few days. And in Mexico there were no outlaws who wouldn’t make them welcome there. In fact, Kennedy had made friends with some rough-looking banditos and was planning to do business with them, raiding Southern California towns and ranches and trading horses, guns, and women to the banditos for Mexican gold.
One of the bathhouse women gave Kennedy a copy of a San Diego newspaper, and the man handed it over to Clarence, the only one among them who could read well. “Take a look, boy. Let us know what’s goin’ on around here th
at’s exciting.”
Clarence took the newspaper and studied it, proud to be the best educated one of the bunch. They all seemed to look up to him a little for that, all except Juan, who had no respect for anything. Clarence stayed away from Juan, after an argument they’d had over which one got to rape a young Mexican girl first. Juan had come after him with a knife, and Kennedy had managed to talk the man out of using it on him. Clarence had seen Juan’s “talent” with the big bowie he carried, and he wanted no more run-ins with the man.
“Nothing much here,” he said aloud. “They’re having some kind of sailboat races off the coast.”
Kennedy chuckled. “Big deal. This town’s a little too big for my liking anyway. We’ll hit a few saloons tonight with our new duds, find us some card games and some women and get out of here in a couple of days. I like these Mexican women. The ones who are easy are hot mamas who know how to please a man, and the ones who aren’t easy fight you so hard they’re even more excitin’ than the whores.” He laughed a throaty laugh, joined by the others.
“Says here they’re planning to bring in a railroad to Southern California, partly following the old San Antonio–San Diego stage route.” Clarence looked over at his boss. “Hell, at the rate they’re bringing railroads out here now, we might as well start robbing trains instead of banks and stagecoaches. Now that they’ve completed the transcontinental railroad, they’ll be putting in more tracks all over the place.”
“Yeah, and bringing in more civilization and more law,” Kennedy complained. “And don’t be tellin’ me what kind of jobs I should pull.”
Clarence reddened a little. “Sorry, Bill.” He always felt his position among them was tentative, and did his best to prove he was worth having along, even though he had never quite gotten used to being the target of lawmen’s bullets. He turned back to the paper, hoping to find something to interest Bill Kennedy and stay on the man’s good side. He turned the page and saw a headline reading Come to the Fair. He read on a ways and then spoke up.
“Some small town east of here name of Desert, they’re having a fair—stitching contests, baked goods, a horse auction—hey, and a shooting contest! Hell, we could go there and win every prize they got. Nobody in a little town called Desert is going to be any good with a gun.”
“Now that could be fun, boss,” Jeb Donner spoke up, rubbing at his left arm. “If the town is small enough, while everybody is at that fair, we could check out the bank, break in, and rob it before anybody knows what’s happening. Maybe there isn’t even any law there.”
“Yeah, and maybe there’s no bank either!” Joe Stowers said, joking.
They all laughed again, all but Clarence, who sat up straighter in his tub. “Hey, Bill, listen to this!” They all looked his way. “It says here that the prize this year at the shooting contest will be a hundred dollars instead of fifty, and that they’re offering a special challenge to outsiders. They have a citizen of their own that none of the locals can beat. They want to draw as many people as they can and will take side bets on top of the hundred-dollar prize.”
Kennedy smiled smugly. “Well, the guy might be good, but he would never beat any of us.”
“That’s not what’s important here, Bill. What’s important is the man’s name. It’s Jake Logan.”
Kennedy’s eyebrows arched. “Jake Logan?”
“Jake Logan,” Clarence repeated. “Doesn’t that make you wonder? If this guy is so good that they’re challenging men from all over to try to beat him, then he must be damn good. How many men do you know named Jake who are that good with a gun?”
Kennedy just sat there a minute, then straightened, looking over at Juan, who was beginning to grin. He looked past the man at Jeb. “What do you think, Jeb?”
Jeb’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the thought of possible vengeance, finally, after three years of searching! Actually, they had given up looking for Jake, but just the slim hope of finding him brought new life to his veins. “I think we ought to check it out. We know Jake came to California. Maybe he picked that little-ass town so he’d be harder to find.”
“If it is Jake, patrón, when I am through with my knife, I will personally drink his blood and spit it in his face!”
Kennedy looked back at Clarence. “Boy, I knew there was a good reason to keep you on. If you couldn’t read, we’d never have known about this.”
Clarence grinned with pride, his teeth already stained brown from chewing tobacco. The two teeth in front that Jake had blackened were getting even more rotten. He had finally done something that showed them he was valuable to the gang. If this Jake really was the one they were looking for, he’d be favored in Kennedy’s eyes the rest of their days. He checked the article once more. “We don’t have much time. This is an old paper. The fair starts in two days.”
“Well then,” Kennedy said with a sly grin, “looks like we’ve got some riding to do.” He settled back into his bath water. “Boys, let’s get done with these baths and get dressed. We’re goin’ to a fair!”
Seventeen
Miranda set her pies on the checkered tablecloth beside the tags designated for her entries. The judging would take place in one hour. She mingled with the other women, many whom had become close friends. They exclaimed over other entries, fancy meringues, cinnamon-topped apple, berry pies oozing their sweet juices over the edges of the pans.
“There are so many more entries this year,” Miranda said to Hetta Grant.
“Oh, you’ll still win a prize, I just know it. Nobody makes a pumpkin pie that ends up as light as yours. Why, I could eat a whole pie in one sitting.”
Both women laughed, and they wandered to the table that held cakes. Hetta was older than she, a woman whose children were already grown. Miranda enjoyed their talks, enjoyed the woman’s company when she had stayed with her while Jake was hunting mustangs. He had captured the black stallion, his pride and joy. He had brought it to the auction just to show and advertise the animal for stud service.
Lloyd was with his father. The boy refused to leave the man when they were in a crowd. He was shy, but where most toddlers clung to their mothers in such times, Lloyd clung to his father. She knew she would have to get over to the horse-showing stands soon and take the boy whether he liked it or not, since Jake did not like him playing around the unpredictable stallion. She smiled at how excited Jake was this year about the auction. He had several quality horses to sell. They would make a good profit.
“This fair is much bigger than last year’s,” she told Hetta.
“Thanks to Joe’s advertising in San Diego,” the woman answered, putting an arm around her waist and walking with her to where handmade quilts hung on display. “I think the challenge involving your husband and the shooting contest is what brought a lot of these people. I notice there are a lot more men here this year. They probably want to know who Jake Logan is.”
Miranda felt a hint of alarm. “Did Joe use Jake’s name in the newspaper article?”
Hetta laughed lightly. “Yes. Jake didn’t want him to, but Joe thought that giving a name for people to look for would make it even more interesting.”
Miranda stopped walking and faced the woman, unaware that a bearded, blond-haired young man who had spotted her was running off toward a scarred Mexican who carried a big knife. “Hetta, Jake asked Joe not to use his name. He would have preferred the challenge against one man wasn’t even mentioned.”
“It’s all right. It’s all in fun, dear. Come now, let’s see if any of these other women can make a quilt pretty as yours.”
Three other women friends caught up to them. One, Betsy Price, was a year younger than Miranda and a newlywed. Betsy and Miranda worked together on church projects for the one-and-only church in town, a Catholic mission around which the little settlement had been built.
Desert had never been so busy or so populated. Baked goods, quilts, canned goods, an
d all sorts of homemade wares were on display in the town’s only street. Jake had joked once about it being called “Main” Street. Only Street is what it should be called, he had said. There were booths set up for children’s games and for adult games. In the distance some children played tug-of-war with a rope over a man-made mud puddle, their parents cheering them on. The weather was beautiful, and Miranda thought what an enjoyable day it was going to be. She had made a picnic lunch of fried chicken, which they would share with the Grants. She decided to ignore the uneasy feeling she had over Jake’s name being used in the San Diego newspaper, and she decided it would be best not to mention it to Jake. The town was full of strangers, but they all seemed to be good-natured people come to enjoy the fair, many of them probably here for the one-hundred-dollar pot raised for the shooting contest. Since there was a charge to enter the contest, even with the hundred-dollar prize, Desert stood to raise a good deal more than that from the entries; and to top off the day, she was confident Jake would be the one to walk off with the prize.
Behind her, the blond-haired young man was pointing her out to the Mexican with the ugly scar. A few people glanced at the Mexican, thinking to themselves how very ugly he was and not too sure he and the men some of them had seen him ride in with were the kind they wanted around Desert. The blond-haired man left, flagging down some more of his friends, and the Mexican and a light-haired, blue-eyed man walked casually toward where Miranda stood visiting with her women friends.
Somewhere in the distance a band struck up “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” and it was the last lovely memory Miranda had of that day. A strong hand suddenly came around her middle, and something poked her sharply at her right side, making her gasp. “Miranda Logan?”
Her name had been spoken by someone with a raspy voice. She started to struggle away, but whatever was poking her cut deeper, and she cried out with the pain of it. She heard the women around her screaming, and some man was waving a gun at them.
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