She went into the shed and to the place where she had hung his saddlebags and extra supply packs. She rummaged through one saddlebag to see if she could find the gun oil and cleaning brushes so that she wouldn’t have to carry all his gear into the house. She pulled out one heavy leather pouch, and curiosity got the better of her. She opened it to find it was full of coins and a thick roll of paper money. “Stolen, no doubt,” she muttered. “Oh, Randy, you’re such a fool!”
She angrily pulled more things out of the saddlebag, looking for the gun-cleaning supplies. Out came another leather pouch, and again curiosity got the better of her. She wondered why she hadn’t thought to do this when Jake was more ill and she would have had time to carefully go through all his gear, perhaps find something important, something that would have persuaded her to turn this man in.
She opened the pouch, her eyes widening when she pulled out its contents. It looked at first like just a beautiful piece of jewelry, a woman’s necklace. After studying it a moment, she realized it was actually rosary beads. She didn’t know a lot about Catholics, but a Catholic girlfriend back in Illinois had shown Randy her mother’s rosary beads and had explained that they were used in prayer.
Had Jake stolen this sacred object? After all, rosary beads were a very personal thing, as far as she knew. To steal something like this seemed just plain mean. Were they worth something? This particular necklace was beautiful, the beads a shiny black with what looked like tiny rubies spaced at intervals between the black beads. A breathtaking cross was attached to the beads, decorated with more rubies embedded in what looked as if it might be real gold. In the center of the cross was a little porcelain replica of Christ.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Miranda gasped and turned to see Jake standing at the doorway to the shed. She felt the color coming to her face as she quickly put the beads back into the pouch. “I was looking…for your gun-cleaning supplies,” she stammered. “I didn’t think it was necessary to carry all this gear into the house—”
He came closer, taking the pouch from her. “These belonged to my mother,” he told her angrily. “Stay out of my personal things!” He shoved the beads and other spilled items back into the saddlebag and picked up a separate leather bag that had been attached to the saddlebags with a rawhide cord. He untied the cord and hung the saddlebags back over the hook where Randy had first put them. “This is all I need. Where are my rifle and my shotgun?”
Miranda, near tears, moved past him and dug the guns out from under the straw where she had hidden them. He grabbed them from her, looking disgusted at how dusty they were, then turned and walked out of the shed. Randy followed, closing and latching the shed door and walking to catch up with him.
“Jake, I was just—”
“You were trying to decide which things were mine legally and which were stolen,” he grumbled. “Did you find my money?”
“Yes.”
He stopped. “Take any?”
Her eyes widened in indignation. “Of course not!”
He turned away and kept walking. “Of course not,” he repeated sarcastically. “But you’re wondering if I stole it! Fact is, I did—some of it, anyway, from a sonofabitch who tried to attack me one night when I was camped alone. He figured he’d knock my brains out and steal my food and gear, but before he could raise a hand to clobber me with the rock that was in it, he found a pistol resting against his forehead, right between his eyes. Now there was one scared man, let me tell you! He handed over his own money right quick, money he’d stolen himself, he said, from a traveling salesman hawking everything from jewelry to pots and pans. I tied the guy to a tree so I could get some sleep, let him go the next morning before I left. He’s damn lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his head for sneaking up on me like he did!”
Miranda hurried to keep up with him, surprised at how briskly he was walking after being so sick. She supposed it was because he was angry. They reached the porch and he stopped and turned.
“I don’t steal things like rosary beads,” he told her angrily. He turned to go inside and she touched his arm.
“Jake, I’m sorry. I really was looking for your gun oil. I just…I’m curious to know more about you, and I couldn’t help—” She turned away, putting her hands to her flushed face. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“You know all you need to know about me. What the hell difference does it make anyway?” He went inside.
Miranda followed him in to see him shove his bowl and cup aside and drop the leather pouch on the table beside the revolver he had left there. He laid his rifles across the table, then went into the bedroom for a moment, returning with a pair of socks, one gun belt, and his second revolver. “Where in hell are my boots?” he asked. “I’m tired of going around barefoot.”
Miranda remained silent. She walked over to the cot and pulled the boots out from under it, bringing them over and dropping them beside him. “There’s no sense putting them on tonight. It’s nearly dark and you have what you need. You won’t be going out anymore.”
Jake scowled at her and turned away to pull on his socks. For nearly two hours he remained silent. Miranda cleaned up from supper, then picked up some knitting and sat down in a rocker beside the fireplace. Occasionally she glanced over at the table where Jake had his revolvers and rifle and shotgun broken down into pieces. He carefully cleaned and oiled every part, and she thought how he probably would make a good gunsmith, just as he’d suggested he might do.
She wanted to tell him so, but the anger remained in his eyes the whole time he worked. She felt like a fool for being caught rummaging through his things like a curious child; and she was fed up trying to tread lightly with her words, never knowing what would offend him and what would not. She decided that from here on, if he wanted to talk, she would let him start the conversation. It was a good thing if he could leave tomorrow. The better he felt, the ornerier he got…and, most likely, the more dangerous he became.
By the time the guns were taken apart, cleaned and oiled, and put back together again, it was very late, and Miranda had finished the sleeve of the sweater she was knitting. Jake turned up the table lantern and raised one of the revolvers to its light, then began mechanically working the revolving chamber, using the gun action itself. He cocked the gun, pulled the trigger. Click. Cock and click. Cock and click, peering through each open cavity as the chamber turned. He whirled the chamber twice, then he loaded the gun. He picked up the second revolver and did the same, cocking it and pulling the trigger, checking to be sure it was working properly. He loaded the second gun.
Miranda started a second sweater sleeve, feeling nervous at the sound of the whirling and clicking. This was the first time she had been alone in the house with him when he felt good and was getting back his strength. He had his guns back, and he was angry with her. Had she been wrong to trust him? Wrong to believe him when he said he never harmed women? Now he was cocking his Winchester, checking it, loading it. “You want me to clean your rifle for you?” he suddenly spoke up.
It had been so long since he had said anything that the words startled her. She looked over at him and saw that his eyes did not show quite so much anger now. “I suppose it needs cleaning,” she answered. “My father used to do it. It hasn’t been cleaned since he was killed, but then it hasn’t been used, either.”
Jake finished polishing the barrel of his shotgun, then laid it and the Winchester carefully across the end of the table. He rose and walked to the wall against which her rifle stood. He brought it back to the table and began taking it apart. “I took the beads from my mother’s jewelry box after my pa killed her,” he said then, surprising Miranda with the statement. She had no idea he was still thinking about the rosary beads. “I knew Pa would try to sell the necklace, so I hid it. I caught him tearing through her things one day, and I knew what he was after. It was the only thing of value she owned. Her grandmother had giv
en it to her. It was made by a goldsmith friend of her grandfather’s—has real rubies in it.”
Miranda continued knitting. “Your mother was a religious woman then?” she asked carefully.
“When you live with someone like my father, you do a lot of praying.”
Miranda took her eyes from her knitting and watched him for a moment. Do you ever pray, Jake Harkner? She decided she had better not ask. It sounded like a question that might bring back his anger. “How did you come to know so much about firearms?” she asked. “It’s one thing to know how to shoot a gun, but you take them apart to the last little screw and put them back together again.”
“You use guns enough, depend on them to keep you alive, you learn how to take care of them. A clean, well-oiled gun won’t backfire on you or fail you when you need it most. It will shoot straighter and react quicker when you pull the trigger. It even comes out of a holster faster.” He opened the Winchester and began running a brush through the barrel. “I just made myself learn. Comes with the trade, like you knowing how to cook and knit—or even knowing about doctoring from helping your father.” He picked up a long rod and oiled a rag, then shoved the rag through the inside of the gun barrel. “Your pa ever hit you?”
Miranda returned to her knitting. “No. He was a good man, gentle, caring. He loved helping the sick, until my mother fell and he couldn’t save her. He got a little harder after that, gave up doctoring. He was never really very happy after that.”
Jake snickered sarcastically. “Well, I’m sorry for all you’ve been through, but even at that, you’ve led a charmed life compared to mine. You’re lucky you had a nice, normal life for as long as you did—parents who really loved each other, a father who knew how to treat his children. That brother of yours must be an ungrateful brat, taking off on your pa like that. If I had had a father like yours apparently was, I never would have left. To this day I still have nightmares about mine. He even made me drink slop water once, after he’d already washed in it and spit in it—”
“Jake, don’t—”
“I just want you to understand about me, that’s all. I don’t know why I want you to understand. Maybe it’s because I know you’re wondering if you’ve done the right thing, putting me up like this. I can’t guarantee that I won’t go right back out there and kill again. You’d best understand the kind of men I rode with at times, like Kennedy and his bunch. They’re as bad as they come, murder for no good reason, rape innocent women. Kennedy’s right-hand man is a Mexican named Juan Hidalgo. He carries the biggest knife you ever saw and can throw it almost as fast as a man can pull a gun. He can do other things with that knife that would make you sick if I told you. I rode with them for a while, so I’m judged by what they did, and I probably deserve it. I told you I’ve never hurt a woman, but I’m no damn saint either. I’ve done some pretty bad things. I don’t know why it matters to me, but I want you to understand why I’ve gotten into a way of life that I can’t get out of. I got into it because of something that happened between me and my father.”
He pulled the rag out of the barrel and then began polishing the outside of it. “Sometimes fate puts you on a road you don’t want to be on, Randy. Other men come along who won’t let you get off it. Once men find out you’re good with a gun, it becomes a challenge. They track you down, brag that they’re better, make you draw on them. Eventually you get a reputation with the gun, and no decent person wants anything to do with you. You can’t get a job, nobody trusts you, but you have to survive, so you fall in with another way of life. Add to that the fact that you know you’re no good in the first place, because your father has told you so all your life; and on top of that you don’t have much education, you can barely read; and you’ve never in your whole life lived like normal people; you’ve had the love beaten out of you before you even understood what love is…and you end up a Jake Harkner.”
He began carefully oiling the mechanical parts of her father’s Winchester. “Don’t be feeling bad about putting me up, and don’t think I’m not grateful. I just want you to know that no matter what lawless things I’ve done, it’s like I said. I wasn’t with Kennedy and his men that day of the bank robbery and the abduction in Missouri, but somehow the rumor got spread that I was. You know the rest.” He rubbed briskly at the metal parts of the rifle. “I’m sorry I yelled at you out there at the shed. I’ll get out of your way tomorrow and you can start getting ready to go to Nevada. I hope you find your brother, although I’m betting he’s not worth you going through all that danger. He might not even be where you think he is. What will you do then?”
Miranda didn’t want to talk about herself. He had opened up to her again, and she wanted to know more; but she knew he had offered all he was going to offer. Her heart ached for him. She wanted to tell him it was never too late for a man to change his ways, never too late to learn to feel love. She had never known his father, but she hated him for literally destroying what might have been a decent young man. Why shouldn’t Jake Harkner be hard and mean and angry with the world? He had seen his little brother and his mother beaten to death, had suffered great emotional and physical pain at the hands of a brutal father who had never loved him, who had convinced him he was a bastard.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I might like it there, might find a job. I’ve heard there is all kinds of work for a woman in a busy mining town. They say women can make a fortune just cooking for all the men there looking for a hot meal.”
Jake glanced at her, thinking of one occupation that could earn a woman who looked like Miranda Hayes a virtual fortune; but she was no easy woman. As though reading his mind, she suddenly returned to her knitting, looking embarrassed.
“You’d better keep this rifle handy, and that little pistol of yours. I don’t think you realize how a woman like you will look to men who haven’t seen a decent female in months,” Jake told her. He turned his eyes back to the rifle. “After a while a man gets sick of the painted whores who’ll go with any man with a coin in his pocket.”
“Please don’t talk that way,” she said, her cheeks feeling hot again.
He sighed, picking up the rifle stock and oiling the wood. “Sorry. I just want you to think twice about what you’re doing. It’s like the sheriff said. You’re a beautiful woman and unattached. That’s awful ripe bait for lonely men. Most will respect the lady that you are, but don’t count on all of them knowing or caring about the difference between a proper lady and one that’s not so proper. My mother was a proper lady, a good woman. I guess that’s why in spite of the life I’ve led, I’ve always respected a good woman.”
Miranda felt a rush of warmth at the words. “Well, I guess I should say thank you, if you meant that as a compliment.”
“I did.” He amazed her with a smile and a wink. Miranda felt herself blushing more. She set aside her knitting and added more wood to the fire, thinking about his warning about Nevada. She knew he was right about the danger of going into wild country like that alone. Even if she traveled with others, who was really going to care anything about her?
Somehow it all came together then. Jake Harkner was going west too. Why not hitch a ride with a man who could protect her better than anyone else she knew? But would he protect her? She glanced sidelong at him, watching him work. Maybe the only reason he hadn’t harmed her here was because she was so close to town and someone would find her. Maybe alone with such a man, day and night out in the middle of nowhere, would be another matter. Still, when he had spoken about respecting a good woman, something rang true in his voice and his eyes.
Yes, Miranda, she thought, you truly have lost your mind. She stirred the coals. “You really shouldn’t leave tomorrow. I’ll worry about you, Jake. You can’t tell me you aren’t still in pain.”
He began putting her rifle back together. “Sure I am. That doesn’t mean I can’t travel. The worst is over. I’ll heal just as well on the back of a horse as in that bed,
and it’s too dangerous for both of us for me to be here. If someone did discover me and there was a shoot-out, you could get hurt.” He looked at her. “You changed the subject. We were talking about you going to Nevada and how I think it’s too damn dangerous. Take it from a man who knows how most of those worthless bastards in places like that think. That’s no place for somebody like you.”
Miranda had the strange sensation that she’d lost control of her speech and thoughts, that the normally sane and logical Miranda Hayes had vanished in the last few days and a stranger had occupied her body. “What if you took me?” she found herself asking.
The room hung uncomfortably silent for a moment as their eyes met. A look of astonishment moved through Jake’s eyes, followed by cynicism. “I didn’t think you were that crazy.”
She folded her arms, stepping closer. Why are you doing this, Miranda? she argued inwardly. “I need to go to Nevada, Jake, and you said yourself how dangerous it is. I could have turned you in a long time ago, but I didn’t, so you owe me something, besides the fact that you’ve been sleeping in my bed for over a week, eating my food. I cleaned up after you when you kept losing everything I put in your stomach. I’ve bathed you, cut your hair, taken a bullet out of you; and you’ve told me things I’ll bet you’ve never told anyone else. I think we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends. I’ve helped you. Now you can help me. I think it’s the perfect solution. I can go ahead to Independence like I said I’d do, and we could meet somewhere along the way. No one in Kansas City will know what I’ve done once I leave, and we wouldn’t have to travel completely alone together. Maybe I’ll join a wagon train, and you could join up later as just a traveler going in the same direction. Then you’d be along if I had any problems, and I’d feel safer knowing you were there.”
Outlaw Hearts Page 9
