The Last Outlaw

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Mother, you have to face the truth.”

  Randy looked at Cole. “You said they dragged him off, but they didn’t kill him.”

  “Ma’am, he had a broken leg, and then they dragged him. Ain’t no man gonna survive that. And even if he did, them men ain’t gonna let him live. There’s no sense thinkin’ otherwise.”

  Randy turned to Peter. “I should think we have a right to demand to see a body,” she told him. “Don’t we? Can’t we send someone to Mexican authorities and explain what happened and demand to know just what happened to my husband after they took him away? It was Mexican citizens who took him, not the law.”

  If not for the gravity of the situation, Peter would have smiled. Randy was not going to give up on Jake Harkner. “I can see what we can do.”

  “You do that, Peter.” She looked at the rest of them. “Until we have a body—some kind of real proof—I refuse to believe my husband is dead. Jake Harkner knows suffering, and he’ll bear it if he sees any hope of making it back here to his family, to little Tricia and Sadie Mae, to Ben and to the grandsons he so treasures…and to me! He’ll come back for me! He always does. He promised me he’d be back, and I choose to believe that he will. And you, Evie, need to pray that whatever your father is suffering now, God will bring him help and solace and take away his pain.”

  They looked at one another, trying to decide if Randy could be right or if she’d finally lost her mind. After all, how could Randy go on without the man who was her lover, her soul mate, her heartbeat?

  “Ma’am, you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Cole told her. “You don’t know them men down there. They’re bound to execute him. And they have a lot of power, even over the law.”

  Randy looked at Cole. “But when they took him away, he was still alive. Those men don’t know my Jake. He is a mean sonofabitch,” she repeated. “Lloyd always says so. Those men are going to make him very, very angry, and we all know what Jake is like when he’s angry. Even I don’t want to be around him when he’s like that. And pain doesn’t frighten him. I, for one, will never believe he’s dead until I have proof.”

  “Mother, don’t do this to yourself,” Evie begged.

  “Evie Harkner Stewart, what happened to your faith? You’ve prayed your father through prison and that leg wound back in Guthrie, and me through surgery, and it’s your faith that helped you survive. You prayed your brother back to life last year, and you prayed for me when”—her voice wavered—“last winter. And your father and I found each other again, and our love has never been stronger. Now you need to believe your father is alive and pray that whatever he is suffering, God will help him through it and bring him back to us. And right now, I need to be strong. Jake would want that.”

  She turned to Lloyd. “He would want that for you too, Lloyd. You are damn well your father’s son. You’re an absolute replica of the man, right down to your very soul. You need to go on with life, running this ranch, being a wonderful father and husband and brother and son. Keep this ranch going like it always has, because when Jake gets back, he’ll want to see that you’ve gone on just fine without him. He’d want that.”

  Who do you belong to?

  Randy nearly gasped when the words hit her. It was as though Jake was standing right beside her and whispering the words into her ear. She put a hand to her chest and nearly doubled over.

  Jake Harkner, she told him inside.

  Every beautiful inch of you.

  Randy put a hand to her quivering lips, new tears coming. “He’s alive. I know it. He’s alive. If he wasn’t, I’d know it.”

  Fifty-two

  They waited…and waited. It was another month, the end of August, when Peter showed up again at the J&L, this time with Jeff Truebridge. Once Jeff heard the story, he couldn’t resist being part of the search for Jake in Mexico. Not only was the subject of Jake Harkner’s possible demise a top nationwide story, but Jeff deeply cared. The whole family greeted him with hugs and handshakes, their tears mixed with Jeff’s when he and Peter brought them the bad news.

  “We got next to nothing as far as cooperation from Mexican authorities,” Peter told them.

  Jeff removed his ever-present wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief, then wiped at his eyes. “It’s pretty obvious the law in that area is run by this Don de Leon,” he told them, “and he refused to talk to us. He sent some older man who worked for him to speak with us and the Mexican authorities. He told us…” Jeff hesitated, wiping at his eyes again.

  “My God,” he continued. “Jake’s just about the toughest man I’ve ever known. Being his friend has been the best thing that ever happened to me. When I got to know him… I never dreamed he could be that good of a friend. Being able to say I rode with Jake Harkner is my proudest honor.”

  “What did that Mexican man tell you?” Lloyd asked, fearing the answer.

  “He said—” He put his glasses back on. “I don’t know how to tell you without just saying it flat out. The don accused Jake of stealing from him. We all know it was that girl, but he claimed it was horses, which he said gave him the right to kill Jake. He admitted Jake had a broken leg and was pretty battered from being dragged for a ways. They didn’t do a thing to wrap or set his broken leg, and the don ordered him—” He removed his glasses again. “God help me get over this,” he wept. “He ordered him…to be whipped until he passed out.”

  “Oh, my God, Jake!” Randy bent over in her chair, her head in her hands. “Jake! Jake!”

  “It’s a good thing we talked you into staying here and letting us go,” Peter told Lloyd. “You’re as bad as your father with that temper of yours, and you probably would have done something to get yourself in trouble too. You probably would have gone after that wealthy don and ended up missing, just like your father.” He sighed. “According to the old man, some of de Leon’s men took Jake into the desert to die a slow death,” he finished, his own emotional pain obvious in his voice. “The don’s words were to let the buzzards finish him off.”

  “Daddy!” Evie groaned. “How could God let this happen?”

  “But we still don’t have a body, do we?” Lloyd growled. He stood behind Katie, refusing to sit down or to cry. “Did anyone take you to where they left him to die?”

  Peter reached over and touched Randy’s shoulder. “Yes.”

  “And?” Lloyd looked ready to grab something and throw it.

  “No body,” Peter told him. “The old man swore that’s where they left it, but they’d stripped him naked, so there were no clothes left to prove anything.”

  “Not even any bones?” Lloyd asked, feeling ill at having to put it so bluntly.

  Peter shook his head.

  “Then my mother might be right. It doesn’t matter if it was buzzards or ants or coyotes or anything else. I’ve seen enough animals with their bones picked bare to know there is always something left. Always something! The only way there would be nothing left is if the body got moved—or if he lived.”

  “Or was buried,” Peter reminded him.

  “Who would bother, out there in the desert?” Lloyd argued.

  “But how can a man survive something like that?” Katie asked.

  “Father is no ordinary man,” Lloyd insisted. “Over time, I’ve come to think like Mom. She says she has felt Jake with her, and so have I.”

  Randy looked up at him. “Lloyd, what happened?”

  Lloyd nervously began smoothing Katie’s hair away from her face, his voice broken from the pain in his heart. “I heard his voice.” He held his chin high, his jaw flexing from a struggle not to completely break down. “Last night. I was dead asleep, and someone called my name, clear as a bell. I actually grabbed my gun, because I thought someone was in the room. I love you, son, he said. I got up and turned on a light, but no one was there. Katie slept right through it.”

  Evie raised her head an
d looked at him. “I heard him too!” She wiped at tears. “I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid you’d all think I was losing my mind—or letting prayer give me false hope.” She turned and looked up at Brian, who stood behind her, grasping her shoulders. “Brian, I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs to heat some coffee, and I could swear he was standing right behind me. He whispered in my ear. My angel, he said.” She jerked in a sob. “As God is my witness, someone spoke to me. I turned, and no one was there.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I’d like to think you’re right, but from what we heard and what we saw where he was left…the condition he must have been in. There’s no way he could have survived. Not on his own. It was obvious the don is a powerful and ruthless man. He would not have allowed Jake to live.”

  “I hate to say it,” Brian told them, “but an untreated broken leg goes wrong terribly fast. He wouldn’t have been able to walk on it, and lying out there in that kind of heat… Even if he somehow lived, he’d lose that leg to infection.”

  “I’m so sorry to say this,” Peter said, “but hearing his voice—it could be his spirit talking. From someplace else. Evie, maybe you simply prayed him to heaven. We searched all the surrounding villages, and no one knew of him. Believe me, we did everything we could to try to find out what might have happened to him if he didn’t die. But it would have been virtually impossible for any man to survive what was done to your father. And maybe”—he squeezed Randy’s shoulder—“maybe coyotes or whatever did drag his bones away. Besides that, the desert sun can turn bones to dust.”

  Lloyd turned away. “Not right away,” he insisted. “It takes years.” He leaned against a doorjamb and held on to it. “Pa! It can’t be this way! It can’t be this way! He should be buried here on the J&L, up at that line shack, where Mom wants to be buried beside him. It can’t end this way. Not for a man like Jake Harkner.”

  “I don’t even know what to report to the newspapers,” Jeff told them. He swallowed and sniffed. “The man made me famous. That book earned me a writing award. Little did I know how unfinished it was when I had it published. Jake Harkner, The Legend and The Myth. Now the legend is—what the hell really happened to the man?”

  “All we can do is pray for his soul,” Evie told them. “We have to behave as though Daddy were gone. He always said he’d have a hard time getting into heaven because of the life he led, but I’ve never feared for one minute that God would turn him away.”

  “We should have some kind of ceremony,” Katie told them, rubbing at her now-growing belly. “And we need to remember that Jake Harkner isn’t dead. He lives in Lloyd and Evie and all his wonderful grandchildren and the one I’m carrying now. Jake never thought he would end up with such a big, loving family, so he…he died a happy man. That’s the only way we can face this and live with it.”

  Lloyd turned from the pantry doorway and looked at his mother. “Somehow, we have to put this to rest. We need to go on as a family.”

  Peter kept rubbing Randy’s shoulders. “Jake was definitely one of a kind,” he offered. “And he most certainly lives on. He’s standing right in front of us over there in that pantry doorway.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “No. There’s nobody like my pa.” He turned and walked out. Katie quickly got up and ran after him.

  Randy could hardly feel her own body. How was she going to go on? How? She’d never even slept in their bed in the loft since that last night they made love before Jake left for Mexico. Jake! You promised you would come back! You promised!

  This wasn’t real. It simply couldn’t be. Her whole life had been centered around Jake Harkner. Who was Miranda Hayes Harkner? She’d melted into a man named Jake all those years ago in the back of a wagon, and she’d never emerged as just Randy since then. It had always been Jake and Randy.

  Darkness engulfed her, a darkness that took away all reality.

  Fifty-three

  Another week passed.

  Nothing.

  Late August moved into mid-September.

  Nothing.

  Peter drank some of the coffee Randy had just poured for him. He watched her stack some dishes and pump water into the kitchen sink.

  Busy. Always busy. She was constantly cleaning or cooking or trimming her roses or sewing or reading to Tricia and Sadie Mae. He knew it was all a facade—stay busy, don’t think about the very real possibility that Jake Harkner was never coming back. Don’t allow herself to believe that for one minute, or she’d fall apart and never recover.

  Ben left for chores, and Peter decided to take this rare moment alone with her to settle what needed settling. “Randy, sit down, will you?”

  She stopped what she was doing and just stood at the sink a moment. “You’re leaving.”

  “Honey, I have to. I have a wife and a lot of work waiting for me in Chicago. Jeff has to go too. His wife could deliver at any time, and he’s praying he’s not already too late. We’ve done all we can possibly do to find out…what happened.”

  “To find out if Jake is really dead,” she said rather coldly.

  Peter sighed and rose. He walked up to her and grasped her arm, turning her. “Randy, look at me.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Your eyes will tell me the truth, and I don’t want to hear it.”

  “My darling Randy, I am not going to make you admit Jake isn’t coming back. I just want you to prepare yourself…to face the fact that Jeff and I and most everyone else believe the worst, but I’m not saying you have to give up hope. Please look at me.”

  Randy finally looked up at him. He studied the gray-green eyes that had always fascinated him. Her exotic eyes were part of her beauty. He had no doubt they were part of the reason Jake had fallen for her. A man could get lost in those eyes. “Please tell me you’ll write, and that you’ll send for me or come to me in Chicago if you truly need me. I’ll go crazy with worry over you.”

  “Peter, I have a whole great big family to fall back on.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not the same, and you know it. Randy. I have big shoulders. You can cry on my shoulder any time you need to.”

  Randy put a hand on his chest. “You have a wife, Peter.”

  “And she knows all about our friendship—and that’s what it is. God knows when I was still single I longed for much more, but I knew better than to consider such a thing. Even so, I intend to remain a damn good friend, and I will always care about you. There is no changing that, and Treena knows it. And if you reach a point where it might help you get over this, you come to Chicago. Treena will welcome you with open arms, and Lord knows she can take you to all the best places a woman would want to see—the best shopping, stage performances, museums, you name it.”

  Randy shook her head. “You truly are my best friend, Peter Brown, but it wouldn’t do any good for me to leave this place that Jake and I love so. I could go away for a year, but when I came home, all the familiar things around me would just hit me even harder. Leaving won’t change anything, Peter. It won’t take away the memories. It won’t heal the hurt. Only time can do that, and I’m not sure what’s left of my lifetime will be long enough.”

  He put a hand to the side of her face. “Then promise me you will take the comfort of your children and grandchildren and remember they need you. And not for my sake, but for Jake’s, because he’d want that. He’d want you to eat right and take care of yourself. Promise me you will do that, if not for me, then for Jake, whether he ever comes back or not.”

  Randy grasped his hand and kissed his palm. “I promise.” She withered a little, leaning forward to put her head on his shoulder. “Jake Harkner is the toughest, most resilient man I’ve ever known, and that’s why I cling to the hope he’s still alive. God knows what he’s suffering right now, but one thing I’m sure of is that he’ll do anything it takes to get home…to the J&L…to his children and grandchildren…and to me. He’ll do
everything in his power to keep his promise that he’d come back. That’s all that keeps me going.”

  Peter wrapped her in his arms. “And how long will you cling to that hope before facing the truth?”

  Her eyes teared. “As long as necessary…until I know I can handle the worst. Right now, I can’t. And I feel him with me, Peter. I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel him with me. And I actually think he wouldn’t mind you holding me.”

  Peter grinned. “I’m not so sure about that, although he did tell me once, when I took you away for that surgery, that you needed holding. I think the permission he gave me was only for then. If he walked in here right now, it might be a whole different story.”

  Randy smiled through her tears. “Maybe. You know Jake.”

  “Oh, my dear, I know him all too well.” He rocked her in his arms. “And I want him to come back as badly as you do, because I know what this is doing to you, and your happiness is all that matters to me. If I thought for one minute that wild ex-outlaw ever once abused you, things might be different. But I know he’s never treated you with anything but adoration. Anyone can see it in his eyes, and sometimes the look in those eyes can be pretty intimidating, but never when he looks at you.”

  Randy straightened and kissed his cheek. “Peter, you are a good friend, and I’m so glad you came when you did. God meant for you to be here for me. Having you to talk to has helped me so much. And thank you for the invitation to come to Chicago, but I wouldn’t fit in there. As sweet and accommodating as I know Treena would be, I would still feel out of place. I’ve lived out here in the Wild West too long to feel comfortable in a big city. And it wouldn’t be fair to Treena, no matter how accepting she might be.” She pulled away but kept hold of his hand. “I’m sure she misses you terribly. You go home to her, Peter. I promise I’ll be all right. And I promise to write and tell you every single thing that’s happening. But I can’t promise I’ll ever accept that Jake isn’t coming home.”