Do Not Forsake Me

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Eight or ten, somethin’ around that many,” Jessie answered for Brad. “And no, we ain’t seen Marty Bryant, but we heard he was the one makin’ all the plans. Now leave my son alone.”

  Jake let go of Brad and grabbed Jessie’s rifle out of her hands. “What are they planning?”

  “I don’t think they even know. It’s just all talk.” She finally looked up at Jake, glaring at him through eyes narrowed from hatred. “I’m thinkin’ Marty might have gone to that no-name town north of here to look for help.”

  “Hell’s Nest?”

  “Maybe. I didn’t think it had a name at all, but that’s a good enough one.”

  “Who’s back there in the woods?” Jake asked her.

  “Just an old black man who’s been helpin’ me out, and my brother, who came to live with us a few weeks back. They ain’t no danger. They was just out there gatherin’ wood.”

  “They had rifles.”

  “Everybody carries rifles out here when they go into the woods. There’s always a need for meat, and you never know when you’ll see a deer or a rabbit. They ain’t gonna go up against the likes of the great and mighty Jake Harkner!”

  Jake walked off the porch. He mounted Prince, and Lloyd remounted his own horse beside Jake.

  “Those two extra men can help you bury Luke Cummings,” Jake told Jessie. “I’ll leave your rifle a few yards out as we leave. I don’t trust you any more than I trusted your husband, Jessie. I don’t intend to get shot in the back.”

  He turned his horse and rode past Jeff. “Put that six-gun away,” he told him without looking at him. “You don’t need it.” He rode on down the entrance road that led to the woods.

  Reluctantly, Jeff put his gun back in its holster as Lloyd rode up beside him. “Let’s go.”

  They left, with Luke Cummings lying dead with a hole in his chest.

  Jake stayed ahead of them until they came across the two men working in the woods. The men stood still as Jake approached.

  “Hand those rifles to the men behind me,” Jake told them.

  Eyeing the marshal’s badge and intimidated by all of Jake’s weapons, they handed the rifles to Jeff and Lloyd as they rode closer.

  “Wha’d we do?” the black man asked.

  “Nothing—except that you work for Jessie Buckley. You ask her why I took your guns. Your rifles and Jessie’s rifle here will be found several yards ahead, and I don’t want to be able to see either one of you going for them until we’re completely out of sight, understand?”

  Both men nodded. “You do somethin’ to my sister?” the white man asked.

  “No. But there is a dead man back there you can help her bury. You just remember what I said. I’ll be looking back, and I’d better not be able to see either one of you till I’m too far away to tell. Got that?”

  The black man nodded, but Jessie’s brother folded his arms and put on a show of not being afraid. “You’re that marshal, ain’t you? Jake Harkner—the one who half killed my nephew.”

  “He had it coming.”

  “Yeah, well, Hash and Marty Bryant are fixin’ to kill you, Harkner. They’ve got upwards of ten men ridin’ for them, maybe more than that.”

  Jake glanced at Lloyd, who just shook his head. Jake looked back at Jessie’s brother. “Where did they get that many men?”

  The man shrugged. “It ain’t hard to find men who want to be a part of killin’ Jake Harkner. They’ve been pickin’ them up here and there for over a year, before the robbery and all that’s happened since. The men they hired wasn’t with the Bryants and Buckleys who robbed that bank. Marty and them boys did that all on their own—did it just to rile you. The bank money was s’posed to be used to pay off the men. Marty figured to kill you when you came after them, but you go down hard, Harkner. They underestimated you and that kid of yours. But this time they’re ready for you, with plenty of guns to bring you down. Most of them men stayed on even without the money, on account of they think killin’ you is worth hangin’ around.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “All over—mostly places where other outlaws and men with no families or jobs hang out. You probably know those places, seein’ as how you’re no better than they are. Marty’s been wantin’ to kill you ever since you destroyed his eye in that barroom brawl. Like I said, he helped with that robbery just so’s you’d come lookin’ for him. Figured him and the men with him could take you down when you came after them.”

  Jake’s horse pranced nervously sideways. “You know how that turned out.”

  “Then Hash and Marty will just find some other way to get you, Harkner.”

  Jake pushed back his hat. “Why are you offering this information?”

  “Because I don’t much like Hash Bryant. He started this whole thing, and now my brother-in-law and one of my nephews is dead. Only trouble my sister’s husband got in before this was fistfights and maybe jackin’ under the skirt of some other man’s wife. I’m tellin’ you right now that Jack Buckley didn’t have no part in rapin’ that young gal. Bo might have, but not Jack. It was the Bryants who did that. I know them.”

  “Are all of these men Hash and Marty have been hiring at Hash’s place now?”

  “No. Last time I was there, it was just Hash and two other men. He was braggin’ that they all had plans to meet in a couple of weeks and figure out what they’d do to finally get to you. He might have picked up a few up at that hellhole of an outlaw town north of here. He don’t want them all in one place on account of he’s heard how you have ways of bringin’ down a lot of men when they’re all together. He heard somethin’ once about how you took down twelve or fifteen men up along the Outlaw Trail a couple years back…somethin’ about goin’ after your kid.”

  Jeff glanced at Lloyd, who rode closer to Jake.

  “So they intend to spread out somehow?” Jake was asking.

  “I honest to God don’t know.” The man looked Jake over, studied his weapons. “I just know I don’t want no part of any of it. I heard about the big shoot-out back in California all them years back, and that gunfight in Guthrie last month. If they want to go up against Jake Harkner, that’s their business. But I don’t know when or where they’re gonna meet, else I’d tell you. I’m just lettin’ you know they’ve got somethin’ goin’—maybe rob another bank or somethin’ else that would bring you out to them. They’ll try for you again—only Hash knows he’ll need more men than that first time. That’s why he’s findin’ as many as he can. Cur dogs like to run in packs.”

  Jake glanced at the black man. “You know anything about this?”

  “Only what Frank there done told you.”

  Jake tipped his hat. “Thanks for the information. Like I said, your rifles will be laying out in the road several yards from here.”

  “What are you gonna do, Harkner?”

  “I don’t know, but if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. And if you see Hash or any of these men he’s hired, you warn them that I was out here and if they want me, they can come and get me. If they want to die too soon, so be it.” Jake got Prince into motion and rode off. Jeff and Lloyd followed, Jeff’s heart pounding over the fact that any number of men could be waiting and watching, ready to shoot them down.

  Lloyd caught up with Jake. “What do we do now, Pa?”

  Jake scanned the road ahead. He took his six-gun from its holster and opened it to put a bullet in the empty chamber. “I’d like to go to the Buckley place and shoot every man there,” Jake answered, shoving a bullet into the gun and slamming it shut. “But they haven’t committed any crimes yet, and we’d probably be riding right into a trap if we go there. It sounds like they aren’t all there right now anyway, and I’d like to make sure we have every last one of them. Somehow we have to get a line on where they intend to all meet.”

  “We’ll need more men for that,” Lloyd answered.


  Jake holstered his gun and lit a cigarette, letting the horses walk casually to rest them. “We’ll see what else we can find out about where they are this trip, then go get Sparky and some other men when we have an exact location and rout them out. It’s a good thing you told Katie stay close to town, and I’m glad her folks are with her. Evie and Brian already know the rules. They should be safe for now.”

  A still-restless Prince whinnied and shook his mane. Jake patted the horse’s neck.

  “Maybe they’ll end up all talk and no action,” Jeff suggested, hoping he was right.

  “Not Marty,” Jake grumbled. “He’s not going to let this go.”

  “I don’t like any of this,” Lloyd fumed. “Let’s head for Hell’s Nest.”

  “What’s Hell’s Nest?” Jeff asked.

  Jake drew on the cigarette. “It’s a settlement with no name. That’s just the name I gave it.”

  “It’s a hellhole, Jeff,” Lloyd added. “Towns and farms and the like have sprung up all over Oklahoma from the land rushes. Some are nice, like Guthrie and Edmond and Stillwater, but some never quite grew into a full-fledged town. They’re just settlements made up of the riffraff who came out in the land rushes just to hide out or find ways to live off of others or gamble and such. We’ve tracked a few train and bank robbers there, and a few rustlers who herded cattle there to keep a food supply going. Most of the worst of those who’ve come out here end up closer to No Man’s Land because there’s hardly any law there, and even Pa and I seldom go there.”

  “These damn land rushes are a headache,” Jake added. “I’ve heard the government is going to open yet another section of Indian land for settlement. So much for treaties.” He rode several yards ahead of them.

  “Are we safe?” Jeff asked Lloyd.

  Lloyd watched his father. “Hell, no, but there’s nothing we can do about it as long as those men are scattered and we don’t know what they have planned. Our best bet to find something out is to go to Hell’s Nest. We have to take it easy on these horses in case we suddenly need to ride them hard, so we’ll make the best time we can without wearing them out.”

  Lloyd rode to catch up to Jake again, and Jeff took a deep breath for courage, grasping the reins to the packhorse and following behind.

  Twenty-five

  “Lloyd.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you really have shot that woman?”

  “If she turned that rifle on my pa? Sure I would. Her kind is no different from a man.”

  They headed north, and Jeff and Lloyd rode lazily behind Jake, who insisted on staying several yards ahead of them to scout the woods and hills and scrub brush surrounding them. They had only a couple of hours of light left.

  “Your mother’s a woman, and she shot your father when they first met, but he didn’t shoot back.”

  Lloyd looked at Jeff and grinned. “Think about it, Jeff. Surely you’re not comparing my mother to someone like Jessie Buckley.”

  “Well, no, but…it seems like your father would have shot back in self-defense.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “Jeff, in my mother’s case, Jake knew he didn’t exactly have to worry about self-defense. She was just a scared young girl who reacted out of surprise and fear…not meanness. Pa knew the minute he faced her that she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, or so he tells it.”

  They rode on in silence while Lloyd smoked.

  “What do you know about the big Kennedy shoot-out back in California?” Jeff asked him then.

  Lloyd kept the cigarette at the corner of his lips. “You’ll have to ask my father about the details. I was the baby in his arms then, younger than Little Jake. That’s why it upset Pa like it did. Anyway, I guess he got shot in the hip, and my mother suffered a stab wound. Pa left her again because he knew bounty hunters would hear about the shoot-out and come looking for him. He hid out in Wyoming in Outlaw Trail country for almost two years. My mother gave birth to Evie while he was gone.”

  Jake continued riding ahead of them.

  “Mom suspects, and so do I, that he lived pretty wild for a time…maybe even was with other women as he tried to forget my mother, thinking it was best that way. But he loved her too much to stay away, and she damn well knew that if he could find a way for them to be together again, she’d go to him. He changed his last name and found a job on a ranch in Colorado, and he sent for her…and we had about fifteen years of a good life there. Pa thought he’d finally found a way to live peacefully and not be found, but some soldier who remembered him from his gunrunning days during the war came for him. That was the first time I even knew about his past. He’d never told me. He was scared I’d be ashamed of him.”

  Lloyd finished his cigarette and threw it down. “The sad part is, I was ashamed. I thought my pa was the greatest man who ever walked, and then I found out he was a wanted man. I abandoned him while he was in prison—left for almost four years. I headed out to prove I was just as worthless as my father—learned how to use his guns, got into a lot of trouble. My pa got released and he came for me.”

  He stopped and eyed the woods around them. “I’ll never forget letting them all down for four damn years. I should have been there for my mother and my sister, let alone my pa. I was the man of the family.” He shook his head. “Now we’re closer than ever, and I’ll never abandon or forsake Pa or my mother or Evie again, Jeff. Never. Period.”

  Jeff tried to put it all together timewise. “Those two years he was gone…your mother forgave him for…you know…?”

  Lloyd shrugged. “I think it’s just an understanding between them—a bad time that neither of them likes to talk about. Pa tried to pretend he could forget her. He’s done that a couple of times, but it never works. Anything he might have done didn’t matter, because the man is crazy in love with my mother and always will be. Under normal conditions, he’d never cheat on her. He loves her too much.”

  Jeff nodded. “From the short time I’ve known them and seen them together, I can tell there is something really special there. It doesn’t take long to see it.”

  They exited the woods and rode into more open country. Lloyd rode at a faster trot to catch up with Jake.

  “We need to make camp soon,” Jake told them. “I’m figuring we’re close enough to Dixie’s place to sleep there tonight if we push the horses a little this time. We wouldn’t lose any time and we wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground. And Dixie’s men can tend the horses there, rub them down, give them good feed, and shelter them in the barn.”

  “Dixie’s place? Hell, Pa, I’m a married man now.”

  Jake gave him a wink. “Jeff isn’t.”

  Lloyd grinned, then laughed. “You wouldn’t really do that to him, would you?”

  “Why not? The kid needs a lesson in women.”

  Jeff rode closer. “What’s going on?”

  Jake grinned. “I just figured that since it’s on our way and we need to make camp, we’ll sleep at a house called Dixie’s Place tonight. We’d have real beds for the night, and we won’t lose any time.”

  Jeff studied Jake’s grin. “Wait a minute. Is this Dixie’s Place what it sounds like?”

  “You bet,” Jake told him. “You are going to learn what to do with a woman, Jeff.”

  “I’m not going to any whorehouse.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Jeff. You’ll be just fine,” Jake told him, laughing again. “You do plan to get married someday, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Don’t you want to be the one to know what he’s doing on your wedding night?”

  Jeff reddened. “I know what to do.”

  “Jeff, don’t pretend you’ve been with a woman, because I know you haven’t. If you’re going to travel with me and write a book about me, you’re going to learn about that side of my life. And who knows? You just might enjoy it.”

/>   Lloyd and Jake both laughed, and Jake kicked Prince into a gentle trot. Lloyd and Jeff kept up.

  “You behave yourself while we’re there, Pa.”

  “I always do.”

  “Yeah, well, Dixie loves your handsome ass, and you’re in a bad state.”

  Jake smiled sadly. “I just need someone like Dixie to talk to. Don’t worry about it, Lloyd. And I’ll damn well tell your mother, because the woman always knows if I’ve been there. I don’t know how she does it.” He sobered. “She’ll understand.”

  They rode quietly for a while.

  Jake finally spoke up. “We’re just going to have some fun with Jeff.”

  Lloyd knew his father was sick with worry on the inside. This thing with Jeff gave him something to laugh about. He needed to laugh.

  “Your mother knows she can trust me,” Jake added. “In the morning, the horses will be well rested and we’ll head for Hell’s Nest.” He gave Lloyd a teasing glance. “Maybe I’m the one who should keep an eye on you. Like you said, you’re a married man now.”

  “Hell, I’ve been so busy trying to get Katie pregnant, I’m worn-out.”

  Jake laughed again, and Lloyd decided that if taking Jeff to Dixie’s would keep Jake in a better mood, then it could only be a good thing. Jake had a great laugh, the kind that made everybody else grin, but Lloyd knew there was a deep terror behind the laughter.

  Twenty-six

  “Well, if it isn’t the handsome outlaw!”

  A voluptuous, rather plump, worn-down woman with painted eyelids walked off the front porch of a tidy two-story brick building.

  “Dixie!” Jake called to her as he dismounted and tied Prince to a hitching post.

  The woman walked up to him, and Jake put an arm around her bare shoulders. Jeff just watched in wonder, feeling awkward and uncomfortable…and curious.

  “Give us a kiss, you worthless sonofabitch,” Dixie insisted.

  Jake leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. She kept an arm around his waist and looked up at Lloyd. “And you brought the son again. Lord God, I don’t know which one of you is the best-lookin’.”