“Just stay out of the way, ladies, and nobody will get hurt.” Other men were joining him, and she saw a few people running. The band still played “Sweet Betsy,” and in the distance people went about their business, unaware of what was happening near the quilt booth.
Miranda watched a man with a stubble of a beard and a scar on his right cheek step closer to her. His steely blue eyes gave her shivers. He grasped her jaw and yanked her head around so she had to look up at a dark, ugly man with a deep scar across one eye, his nose, and lips, another scar across his throat. “This is Juan,” the blue-eyed man told her. “Ol’ Jake ever tell you about Juan?” He squeezed her jaw painfully, and she could feel blood soaking her dress at the side.
Juan! Jake had mentioned the name several times. She remembered him saying something about how good the man was with a knife. Terror engulfed her, for that knife was stuck in her side now. A little deeper, and she would be dead. Jake! These men were after Jake! The one called Juan rode with Bill Kennedy.
This couldn’t be! Bill Kennedy had found them after all! She tried to wrench free, but Juan just held her tighter, yanking the knife from her side and putting it against her throat, pricking the skin. “Take it easy, mujer bonita,” the Mexican growled in her ear. “We will not kill you yet. We will wait and do it in front of your husband. But first we will have a good time with you, no? Now, you take us to Jake, or maybe I will change my mind and kill you now. I can push my knife a little deeper next time and maybe go all the way into your kidney. It will take you a while to die, and it will be very painful, but I assure you, you will die!”
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Miranda could not see the man who had spoken the words. She only felt Juan whirl, heard a chopping sound and a grunt. More people screamed and ran, and Juan held a bloody knife before her eyes. Had he just killed some innocent man who had tried to help her?
“We would have waited for the shooting contest, honey,” the blue-eyed man told her, “but then there would be a lot of men around with guns. We prefer to do it this way.” He patted her cheek, hard enough to make it more of a slap. “Now, just tell us where to find Jake. Maybe we can get to him before the rest of my men find him and the kid. Is that where the little boy-pup is, with his pa?”
“You’re Bill Kennedy,” she said, the words choked. She was already beginning to feel weak from loss of blood.
The man in front of her grinned. “I see Jake told you all about us. Now, where is he, sweetie?”
“He’ll kill you. You know that.”
“You let us worry about that. You just tell us where he is, and we won’t hurt the kid. But it’s got to be quick, honey. If my men find him first and I’m not there, they might act without my orders and shoot down the little pup like a bunny rabbit.”
She knew by his eyes this man would think nothing of killing a little boy. She had to get to Lloyd, even if it meant telling these men where Jake was. Jake was the only person in this whole crowd of people who might be able to help this situation, but how many of them were there? Would she see her husband gunned down today?
“Randy,” Hetta Grant cried. “What is going on? What can we do?”
“Nothing!” Miranda answered in a low voice, terrified Juan or Kennedy would hurt the woman. “Just please stay out of the way.”
Kennedy squeezed her jaw again. “Smart woman. Now, where is Jake?”
Juan kept a strong left arm around her, moving a hand to close it over her breast and wiping the blood that was on his knife onto the front of her dress, pressing the flat of it against her stomach to warn her how easily he could sink it into her. Miranda felt sick with fear and dread. “You’re fools to do this with so many people around,” she answered, her voice shaking.
Juan gave her a jerk. “Do not waste time, woman!” he growled in a chilling voice. “Your son’s life is at stake!”
Lloyd! “He’s over at the stands…where they’re holding the horse auction,” she told them.
Kennedy grinned. “Let’s go!”
They hurried off, forcing Miranda to go with them. Shock and pain and loss of blood left her weak, and Juan had to half drag her to keep up. She sensed there were a couple more men following. All around them people scattered and women screamed. Miranda could feel blood trickling down her right leg under her dress. She walked as fast as she could to keep her feet ahead of Juan’s, but it was impossible, and his boots kept kicking into her ankles. When she would start to fall, he would hoist her up again, making sure to keep a hand over her breast.
“What’s going on there? What the hell are you doing to that woman?” someone shouted.
Bill Kennedy turned and fired. A second innocent person dead. Her fear faded into a dread of what this would do to Jake if he did survive, to know innocent people had died. Would she lose everything today? Her husband? Her son? Was this to be her destiny then, always to have her loved ones taken from her? “Please don’t hurt my son,” she begged.
Juan laughed. “Now you know the kind of man your Jake used to be, no? You have spread your legs for a man just like one of us, señora bonita, so you will not mind doing it for us too, no? We will all have a good time. Maybe I will not even kill you. Maybe I will keep you.” He squeezed her breast painfully and laughed. “After being with Juan, you will not want Jake anymore anyway.”
“Somebody get Jake!” a man shouted.
Kennedy shot again, hitting the man in the back. Three innocent people! Miranda could see the stands now, heard shouting, more screams, children beginning to cry. Plenty of the men sported guns because of the contest, but none seemed willing to get involved. A couple of men rode off on horses, deciding just to get out of there. The band stopped its playing. She could see Jake now, standing in the middle of a corral. To her horror, another man, obviously part of Kennedy’s bunch, held a crying Lloyd, pointing a gun to the baby’s head. The black stallion was trotting nervously in a circle around the inside of the corral fence.
So, the rest of Kennedy’s men had already found Jake. She spotted two more men lying dead, and her stomach churned when she saw that one of them was Joe Grant. He must have been watching Lloyd while Jake showed the stallion, and had likely lost his life trying to keep the outlaw from grabbing the boy away.
She took faint hope in the fact that Jake was still alive and standing, and he wore one of his revolvers. He had put it on because of the shooting contest, but it was only one gun with six bullets. How many men did Kennedy have along? People scattered, no one willing to argue now with the defiant intruders who seemed to think nothing of shooting people down in cold blood. Most people had run off; others stood transfixed, probably afraid that if they moved, they would be shot.
Now you know the kind of man your Jake used to be, Juan had told her. She would not believe he had ever been this bad. He would not stick a knife into a woman’s ribs. He would not threaten a little boy. Never. He would not rape, or come to something like this and shoot people down like rabbits. Still, he had ridden with these men at one time, and now it seemed he would pay a much higher price for it than if he had gone to prison. Her heart ached at the look in his eyes when Juan dragged her around the corral fence to stand next to the man who held Lloyd. The baby reached for her, screaming “Mama.”
“Let him go, you bastards!” Jake shouted. “Let him go to his mother and release both of them! You can have me if you want! Just let them go!”
People stared, no one making a move. Jake had never felt such desperate rage. This was his son! And the woman he loved more than his own life! Was that blood on her dress? What had Juan already done to her? The very thing he had feared most was happening. By some cruel twist of fate, Bill Kennedy had found him, and he knew that if he survived this, the sweet, gentle life he had found here was over. He had everything to lose, and he was not going to lose it without a fight!
“Oh, we’ll take you, Jake,” Kennedy shouted. “But you’
ve got to suffer a little first. You and your kid and your woman are comin’ with us.” He turned to one of the other three men who had come around to stand in front of Jake. “Shut that kid up. Gag him or something.”
“Leave him alone!” Miranda screamed.
One of the men untied a sash she was wearing around her waist and yanked it off, going up to Lloyd and tying it tightly around the baby’s mouth.
“Jake, what the hell is this about?” the small town’s mayor shouted.
“It’s about this man here being Jake Harkner, not Jake Logan,” Kennedy shouted. “It’s about him bein’ just like us once, rode with us back in Missouri, robbed a few banks, killed a few men, raped a few women—”
“You liar!” Miranda shouted.
Kennedy lashed out and backhanded her, and blood appeared at the corner of her mouth.
“Don’t you move, Jake,” Jeb called out when he saw Jake stiffen. “You just drop that gun.”
Jake stood still, weighing his chances, telling himself to hang on and make every shot count.
“Jake’s a wanted man back in Missouri,” Jeb shouted to the others. “Don’t any of you be feelin’ sorry for him. There’s five thousand dollars on his head alive, three thousand dead.”
People mumbled. More women had scurried away, herding their children with them, taking a chance on being shot rather than letting their little ones witness what might happen.
“Joe! Joe!” Hetta Grant was running toward her dead husband, but several men grabbed her and held her back.
“Don’t go over there, Hetta!” one of them pleaded.
The woman began sobbing and crumpled to the ground. Lloyd kept up his screaming, the sobs muffled now by the hideous gag on the child’s mouth. He arched wildly to get away, and the man who held him had trouble keeping hold with one arm while he held a gun in the other. Suddenly the baby wiggled loose and started crawling under the railing.
“Let him go,” Kennedy ordered, grinning. “Let him go to his daddy.” The words were sneered sarcastically. “If Jake doesn’t want to give up his gun and come with us, the boy can be shot down just as easily there in the corral.”
“You’re making a mistake thinking I’ll go anywhere with you, Kennedy,” Jake answered, forcing himself to concentrate in spite of Lloyd running up and grasping his leg. He wanted desperately to get the gag off the boy, get him out of the way. He saw the terror in Miranda’s eyes, worried about the stallion hurting Lloyd, but he noticed by an alert side-vision that someone had grabbed the horse and tied it to the fence rail. The animal was whinnying and jerking his head, trying to get loose. “If you want me dead, do it right here.”
“Why, hell, Jake, then we wouldn’t get the pleasure of having a little fun with you and the woman first.”
“Exactly. You’re going to kill her and my kid anyway, so why not get it over with? I’d rather they died right here on the spot than suffer what you’d do to them if you took us away with you.”
Kennedy’s smile faded. This was not working out quite like he had expected. In his desperate desire to show Jake up in front of these people for what he really was, and to corner him and make sure he didn’t get away again, he realized he had not taken enough time to plan this. He knew how fast Jake could be, had watched this man shoot it out with more men than this and live to tell about it. Still, every man he had was a good shot, except Clarence still needed some practice. And where in hell was Clarence? He couldn’t see him, but then he couldn’t take his eyes off Jake right now either.
“What’s it going to be, Kennedy?” Jake asked.
Miranda watched him, saw in his face the old Jake. He was on even ground now with men he used to ride with. This called for the old ways, and the look in his dark eyes would have frightened her if she didn’t know him better. The meanness was back, the aura of danger.
“I’ll tell you what, Kennedy,” Jake was saying. “You go ahead and shoot me and my son. But I guarantee something. I guarantee that today you’re going to die too! No matter what else happens, before I go down, you’ll be dead, and I’ll shoot my wife myself if I have to, to keep your men from getting her. Make your choice, Kennedy! Back off and get the hell out of here right now, or die, because I’m not going anyplace with you, and neither is my wife!”
The few people left backed farther away, and Miranda’s heart beat so hard her chest ached. Lloyd! There he stood, hanging on to his father’s leg and sobbing, his little lips stretched tight from the cruel gag.
“What do we do, patrón?” Juan asked.
“Shut up!” Kennedy barked.
“I say I slit the woman’s throat right now!”
“I said shut up!”
“Don’t listen to him, Bill,” Jeb spoke up. “He knows he’s a dead man.”
Jake noticed the man’s left arm hung limply at his side. He took note of it, realizing Jeb could shoot only with one hand. He recognized Joe Stowers and Jeb Donner, but not the other two men who stood to his left and his right. He kept them in his side vision, counting. Six. Kennedy, Juan, Jeb, his front tooth still missing, Joe Stowers, and the two new men. Was that all?
Clarence watched from a barn behind Kennedy. He had never forgotten Jake’s gun in his mouth. He wanted to be in on this, but only if and when Jake went down or was taken away by Kennedy. Then he could strut in front of Jake and get back at him for the way he had humiliated him back in Virginia City; he could help torture the man and he could finally have a turn at the woman who had spurned him. He had never gotten used to these shoot-outs, was still nervous about such things after their narrow escape from the Wells Fargo men. He would stay near the barn until most of the shooting was over.
The young man’s eyes widened then when the black stallion suddenly broke loose and reared, running between Jake and where Kennedy and Juan stood with Miranda. After that everything happened so fast he could hardly believe what he was seeing. With the speed of lightning, Jake ducked down, his gun drawn and fire spitting from its barrel. More people screamed and ran, and in spite of his wife being used as a shield by Juan, Jake’s first bullet hit the man square in the forehead, knocking him backward.
Jake was screaming for Miranda to hit the ground as his next bullet hit Kennedy. It all happened in perhaps three seconds, and Clarence realized how good Jake had to be to risk shooting at Juan when he could easily have missed and shot his own wife. The rest of the men were firing back at Jake, who scrambled on the ground clinging to his son with one arm and keeping the boy under him for protection. He moved around, bent over, trying to use the frightened, pacing stallion as a shield. Several of the bullets from the other men’s guns hit the horse, and it crashed to the ground, whinnying and kicking wildly. Jake kept firing, even though it looked as though he’d been hit. Joe and Jeb cried out and fell, and Oran and Cliff started running. His shirt stained with blood, Jake rose, and Clarence noticed more blood near his hip. Jake raised his revolver and fired, hitting Oran in the back. He whirled, getting a shot off at Cliff, also in the back.
Six shots, six men. Clarence realized that meant Jake’s gun was empty. If he moved fast enough, this was his chance for fame—to be the man who killed Jake Harkner. He could collect three thousand dollars! He would never go up against him if Jake had a loaded gun, but now…
Miranda was screaming Jake’s name. “Stay there!” he ordered, not sure he’d gotten all of Kennedy’s men. He let go of Lloyd and scrambled to reload, got only one bullet in the gun’s chamber when he saw someone running toward the corral. He ducked over a violently sobbing Lloyd when a seventh man started firing at him. The first two bullets missed, the third grazed across his shoulder but did little damage. The man hesitated then, and Jake took advantage of the moment. He rose and fired. The man grunted, his body jumping slightly into the air before crashing backward into a watering trough with a splash.
Jake quickly reloaded again, waited, saw no one else
who looked eager to challenge him. He looked down at Lloyd, while a dazed crowd gawked at the bloody sight around them. Two innocent bystanders were groaning with bullet wounds they had suffered from stray bullets. Jake reached for Lloyd to get the baby to his feet and take off his gag, but the boy screamed and fought him, afraid of the blood on his father, and of the smoking gun in Jake’s hand that had roared in his ears. He sensed his father’s fury, and he looked at him with terror in his eyes.
Devastated, Jake watched his son scramble over to his mother…his mother, her dress soaked in blood. Kennedy had destroyed all that was dear to him, and in spite of his bleeding wounds and the fiery pain in his right hip, he managed to stay on his feet and walk over to where Kennedy lay. He stared down at the man, heard him moan. So, he was still alive. He finished reloading his revolver.
Onlookers remained stunned, hardly able to believe what had just happened. Jake Logan, or Jake Harkner as the outlaws said he was called, had taken down six men without a miss, even though one of them held his wife as a shield, and even though Jake himself was wounded. He’d hardly had time to reload more than one bullet when he shot down the seventh man. Now that the gun battle was apparently over, they all remained rigid and staring, still trying to grasp all that had happened. They watched Jake point his gun at Kennedy’s head, and no one made a move to stop him.
“You’ll never do this to me and my family again,” he said gruffly. People gasped when Jake deliberately fired the gun.
Miranda jumped at the roar of yet another gunshot. “Jake, you can’t—” she protested.
Jake turned to her, panting and bleeding. “Never again,” he repeated. He limped to every man he had shot, and wherever he walked, people backed away. He looked down at the man who had fallen into the watering trough. He was wounded and struggling to get out. Jake recognized him as Clarence Gaylord.
“You little sonofabitch!” he snarled.
“Please! Let me go!” the young man begged.
Outlaw Hearts Page 29