Jake glanced at Evie, who just smiled and nodded. Only Evie would have thought to give Annie a Bible. It was a good idea. He nodded a thanks to his daughter before turning back to Rodriguez.
“¿Te recordaré de las cosas que le pedi a Gretta que te diera?”
“Sí, jefe, estan empacadas,” Rodriguez replied, assuring Jake everything was properly packed and nothing left out.
“Gracias, amigo.” Jake walked up to Outlaw and grimaced as he mounted up.
Cole took the reins to the packhorse and turned his horse, walking the horse slowly as he left and waited for Jake to catch up.
“One of you take Annie straight to Loretta,” Gretta told him. “Her full name and address are packed with the clothes I gave you. I don’t want that girl to know anything about me.”
Jake nodded. “I understand, but your daughter ought to know how much she’s loved by her real mother.”
Gretta shook her head. “It’s better this way. Just bring her home, Jake.” She met his gaze. “God go with you.”
Jake adjusted his hat. “That’s up to Him. It’s your daughter who needs His blessings, not me.”
Outlaw snorted and tossed his head, a big, strong, black horse that seemed made just for a man like Jake Harkner. The horse turned nervously in a circle. Jake scanned his family. He would never get over the fact that they all came from his blood. How could that be possible?
He looked at Randy. She’d made it all possible. “Lo nuestro será eterno, Randy… Esta tierra es eterno… Tu y yo estaremos unidos eternamente. Tu eres mi vida, mi querida esposa.”
He turned Outlaw and kicked the horse into a gentle lope.
Randy watched him ride off, as she’d done too many times before. “Que Dios te acompane, mi amor,” she whispered. She’d learned enough of the beautiful words of love he’d taught her to know how to tell him God be with you, my beloved. She turned and hurried into the house. She couldn’t watch him disappear over the distant rise. She made right for his chair, which was where she knew she’d sleep with his pillow until he returned. She couldn’t bear lying alone in their big bed upstairs. She curled up into the chair and studied the family picture above the fireplace. There sat Jake, in the center of it all, surrounded by his beautiful children and grandchildren. There was the man she’d met all those years ago in a supply store—bearded, angry, wild, dangerous, notorious…a wanted man who never once in his life had known love. She thought about his remark to Lloyd, the one that worried her most of all. In a way, I’ve always been alone.
It was then she noticed it on the fireplace mantel…a half-finished cup of coffee…and his uneaten biscuit.
Part Five
Forty-one
Jake watched out the window as the Southern Pacific steamed into Brownsville. Nothing looked the same. Considering the fact that he’d been only fifteen years old when he left, that was no surprise. A few motorbikes and motorized buggies chugged about, and electric poles and wiring were strung up and down the streets and alleys. It was no longer the lawless little settlement where he grew up…where a man could beat his wife and child almost daily and get away with it. That same man had even gotten away with murdering his wife and youngest son and secretly burying them, telling others they’d run off.
Didn’t anyone wonder why the man’s older son had stayed? No. No one asked questions. No one knew he’d stayed because the couple of times he did try running off, his father had made him regret it in some of the worst ways.
He’d missed Randy since the day he’d left, and right now, here in this place, he dearly wished she was beside him. “It’s been a long trip, Cole.”
“Yup.” A man of few words, Cole Decker took his dusty boots down from the back of the seat in front of him and made ready to get off the train. He’d cleaned up before leaving the ranch, and again two nights ago at a whorehouse in northern Texas, and Jake had done the same. Cole stayed all night with one of the women, but in spite of plenty of offers from the other whores, Jake had gone back to his hotel room and ached for Randy.
They’d either camped out or stayed in hotels the rest of the way, talking about ranching and cattle and women, pretty much in that order. Cole had finally admitted he’d been married…a long time ago. “It was after the war and my injury. She couldn’t handle the bum leg, and she ran off with another man. I hunted them down, and I killed him,” he admitted. “Came west, and that was the end of it.”
Both of them had a lot in common—an outlaw past that included some ugly events. Both were once wanted men. Jake knew if it weren’t for Randy, he’d be a lot like Cole. Wandering, no family, no real purpose to life other than survival, bedding a whore once in a while, getting drunk and into an occasional fight. One brave little slip of a woman had kept him from all of that. He’d tried to go back to it when he left her in California, but once a man had a woman like Randy in his bed and in his mind and heart and blood, there was no turning away from her. And no going back.
He shook away the thought. “Let’s get our horses off this train,” he told Cole.
The men got up, attracting stares. Both were well armed, both intimidating. Cole was average height, but broad-shouldered. He’d accepted Jake’s request to ride with him because he knew the mission, and Jake knew he could trust Cole with Annie if he didn’t make it out of Mexico alive. Cole was the type who’d lay with a whore every night if he could, but he’d never touch an unwilling woman or an innocent young girl. He was simply a man who’d had his heart torn from his chest by a woman whose love wasn’t strong enough to handle what war had done to him. Deep hurt sometimes made a man do things he would never ordinarily do. He’d killed his wife’s lover and had ended up a drifter, a cowboy, a man who’d given up on living any other way. And other than Pepper, who’d died in that barn fire last year, Cole was their best ranch hand. He’d been with them since they first came to Colorado to build the ranch.
They disembarked the train and walked to the cattle cars where their horses were kept, most of their gear still packed on them. It took several minutes to get them off the train.
“I have something to take care of,” Jake told Cole once they left the depot. “I’m tired as hell, but this can’t wait.”
“I understand. You want me to go with you? I know all about what you’re lookin’ for, Jake. Lloyd said he wished you wouldn’t go alone.”
Jake mounted Outlaw. “Lloyd’s a good son who worries too much.” He lit a cigarette. “I’ll be okay. You get us a room. While you’re at it, you might want to ask around about a whorehouse across the border where they keep the best girls. People need to think we’re down here looking to buy horses and cattle—might as well make it look like we’re wanting a good time on the side, so no one suspects the real reason we’re asking. And see if you can find out anything about Sidney Wayland. Tomorrow morning we’ll head into Mexico. If we’re lucky, the man will be at that whorehouse when we get there.” He held Cole’s gaze. “I meant what I said when I told you to just get the hell out of there with that girl if things work out the way I plan, Cole. Me—I’m not leaving there without killing Wayland. If he’s not there, I’ll hunt him down, but I’m not going home until he’s dead. You have no obligation to do one damn thing but get that girl back to Denver.”
Cole nodded. “I understand, but I’m used to havin’ your back, Jake. And huntin’ down Wayland could land you in a Mexican prison, which I hear is worse than death.”
“You just go home and protect Lloyd’s back. I’ll feel better knowing men like you and Terrel and Vance are at the ranch, looking out for my family. As far as I know, my past is done catching up with me, Cole. Maybe my family can have some peace from now on.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “And after today, maybe I can have some peace too. There’s one more thing left for me to do to get rid of my past.” He turned Outlaw and headed away from the train depot.
Forty-two
Jake was
a bit overwhelmed by how much Brownsville had grown. When he’d fled this area at fifteen, the city had been an infant, barely two years officially a town. Before that, it was nothing more than a dusty, lawless, unorganized hodgepodge of farmers, ranchers, outlaws, saloons, and whorehouses, as well as an almost evenly mixed population of whites and Mexicans. He had a vague memory of his father being good-looking, tall and strong…brutally strong. And his personality when drunk had made him an ugly, ugly man. Someone had once said his own toughness came from his father’s beatings…and maybe it did.
He searched the business signs, riding up and down every street until he found what he was looking for…a mortuary. It was set back off the road, several headstones of various shapes in front. He trotted Outlaw up to a hitching post at the front door and dismounted, aware that a couple of women outside, looking at headstones, now stared at him instead. He tipped his hat to them. “Ladies.”
They looked him over, appearing wary of the guns he wore, yet curious. The younger one smiled at him. Jake smiled back and went inside, surprised at how calm he felt. Maybe it was knowing that, if he was lucky, he could finally do something to honor his mother. Or maybe his brain was fooling him. At times like this, he didn’t trust his own emotions.
Inside, he found a tall, bony man dressing out a corpse. He looked up at Jake and nodded, stepping aside. “Doesn’t he look nice?” he asked, indicating the dead man. He smiled through yellowing teeth, and the black-silk suit he wore appeared to have seen better days. “I think the blue suit is best on Mister Clay, don’t you?” the man asked Jake. “Are you a relative?”
“I’m a possible customer,” Jake told him. “I want a headstone made. I just don’t know where it will go yet.” He took a piece of paper from a shirt pocket and handed it to the mortician. “That’s what goes on the headstone.” He lit another cigarette as the man read the note, frowning.
“‘Evita Ramona Consuella de Jimenez,’” he read. “And”—he squinted—“‘Thomas.’” He looked up at Jake. “Just Thomas?”
“I don’t remember his middle name,” Jake answered. “He was my…” There it came. The rage! He had to keep it at bay! He wished Randy were with him. She could always calm him in moments like this. “…my little brother. The woman was my mother.”
“Thomas doesn’t have a last name?”
Harkner. It was my mother’s last name too. “I don’t want the last name shown. It would memorialize my father, and I don’t want to honor the sonofabitch in any way! Just put ‘Beloved Mother and Brother’ after the names and don’t ask questions.”
The mortician scrutinized him, noticing the guns, the size of the man. “I’m Orlando Bruce, and I own this place. And you don’t look like any ordinary man. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Jake Harkner, and I have to get across the border tomorrow, so I need this settled today. How much will the stone cost?”
“Jake Harkner?” The man stepped back a little. “The outlaw? The gunfighter?”
“Once upon a time, mister. I’m just a rancher now. Promise me that stone will get engraved and properly set. My problem is to decide where.”
“Sure, but Mister Harkner, I’m considered the official historian for Brownsville, and you’re a part of the history down here. Nobody ever thought you’d come back, and you never did. Then some of us saw that book about you and learned the truth. I mean, for a while you were wanted for murder, you know. Over your father’s murder, and the young girl he was found with.”
Jake turned away. My God, Randy, I need you. He hadn’t expected this…hadn’t expected to run into someone who knew so much about it. “I figured that story faded years and years ago,” he said, struggling to find his voice. Fifty-four years since I helped bury my brutally beaten mother and brother! How could it possibly suddenly be so clear in my mind? How could it feel like it had been only a few days ago? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He’d had it all figured out. It would be easy. He’d just find where his mother and brother were buried and put a headstone there and feel better about it all.
“No, sir,” Bruce told him. “Everyone knows the story, and of course, every town has its old ghost tales or sensational stories about its beginnings. The famous Jake Harkner being raised right here in Brownsville, that’s one of the draws here. You know—like the birthplace of Billy the Kid or Wild Bill Hickok, or the Coles and the Youngers. Nobody ever figured you’d actually show up here. The little stone-and-cement house you lived in…where your pa was found with that girl…it still stands. Once in a while, a traveler goes to see it.”
A blackness enveloped Jake’s heart and mind so heavily he thought he might pass out. He grabbed hold of a support post inside the mortuary and bent over.
“Mister Harkner?”
“Where?” Jake groaned the words. “Where is the house?”
“Out of town a little ways. If you stay on the main street and head east, you’ll see it on a little hill. There isn’t much left of it—no roof or anything, and no interior but one wall—otherwise, just the outside walls. The city took over the property and kept it for storytelling, an attraction, so to speak.”
The man’s eyes widened at the look on Jake’s face when he turned toward him. “An attraction? An attraction?” Jake roared.
“Mister, you asked, I told. Don’t take it out on me if it upsets you.”
“Do you own a maul? Some kind of sledgehammer?”
“Yes, sir…out back, standing against the wall.”
Jake headed into the back of the business.
“Hey! That’s where I live back there!”
Jake ignored him and charged through the man’s living quarters, ignoring a woman peeling potatoes in the kitchen. She gasped and watched him, then looked at her husband. “Who is that?”
“Jake Harkner, that’s who!”
“The famous one?”
Her husband didn’t answer. He followed Jake through the back door, where Jake tore through tools in the backyard until he found the sledgehammer.
“Mister Harkner, what the hell are you doing? That stuff belongs to me!” He stepped well away when Jake whirled, sledgehammer raised.
“Mister, I’m borrowing this. I’ll bring it back.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills, not even counting them. “There’s your pay for the headstone. I’ll tell you where to put it when I get back, and then I’m leaving for a few days. When I come through here again, that headstone had better be where I tell you to put it, or I’ll use this goddamn sledgehammer on you, understand?”
Orlando swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“And is my father buried somewhere around here? And the girl?”
Orlando stepped even farther away. “The parents came and got the girl, or at least that’s what the historians tell us. They took her to Mexico and buried her there somewhere.”
Santana! I’m so sorry.
“Your father was buried in an old graveyard that doesn’t exist anymore. It got flooded out bad in a hurricane a long time ago, thirty years or more. A lot of the graves got washed away, and the old, decayed bodies mixed up together. They had to be reburied in a mass grave in the new cemetery. There aren’t even any headstones.”
“Good! That’s how John Harkner should have been buried, with no kind of acknowledgment.” Jake struggled not to throw up…not to scream…not to cry out in anguish. It was all here. It was all right here, not the past any longer.
The little boy in him wanted to go to his knees and weep. Randy! My God, Randy! You said you’d be with me if this happened.
He had to think of that…only that…Randy. He charged away, walking around the building and still carrying the sledgehammer. He headed for Outlaw and mounted up, then noticed Cole a few yards away. “I told you to get a hotel room!” he shouted.
“Sorry, Jake. Lloyd told me that no matter what you said, I should stay with you when
we got here, maybe lag behind but keep an eye on you. And from the way you look right now, I’m guessin’ he was right.”
“This is personal!” The words were growled from somewhere deep inside.
“I know, Jake. I know.”
Jake turned Outlaw in a circle, wielding the sledgehammer. “Follow me if you want. We might have to get out of Brownsville tonight after all.” He charged away on Outlaw. People stared as he tore through the main street and headed out of town. Some had to jump out of the way, and one woman screamed. Cole followed, bringing the packhorse along. After several minutes of riding, Jake finally pulled up, staring at a huge hackberry tree on a hill. Partway up the hill sat a completely deteriorated stone house and nothing else. It looked naked and lonely.
Naked and lonely, like I felt at eight years old when you made me help bury my mother! John Harkner might as well have been standing right in front of him, and Jake wished he were. Because then he could beat him until he broke every bone in his body, then bash his head in with the sledge hammer. He dismounted and walked up the hill, walked around the house. He removed his hat and tossed it aside, then unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it aside also. He removed his vest, his shirt, leaving on only a sleeveless T-shirt as he let out a roar unlike Cole had ever heard, like a wild animal. He started wielding the sledgehammer against the crumbling stone walls still standing, battering them with a mighty strength Cole didn’t think the man could possibly still have in him. He slugged and pounded and hammered and battered for what must have been two hours, growling with each hit, demolishing every stone and the cement that held them until there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. He went to his knees then, tossing the sledgehammer aside. He put his hands to his head and sobbed.
Cole dismounted and slowly walked up the hill, not sure what to do or say. He picked up Jake’s gun belt and hat and clothes, then dared to step closer. “Tell me what to do, Jake.”
The Last Outlaw Page 30
