Outlaw Hearts

by Rosanne Bittner

  He still wanted to hurt the man. Making a reputation for himself with these guns, making sure his father heard about it, would surely cause him some pain and feelings of guilt. His grandfather had been bad, his father had been bad, so there must be a bad streak in him too. It must be so, because he’d sure taken a liking to whiskey easily enough, and he didn’t mind at all when he got into fights and landed in jail. He needed to fight. It felt good to hit and hit and hit, even felt good to get hit back and feel pain; but no man’s fist had hurt him so deeply and fiercely as when his own father had hit him that day in his jail cell back in St. Louis.

  Why did the look on his father’s face that day still make him feel like crying? He didn’t want to feel sorry for him. He didn’t want to care. It seemed he was constantly fighting that side of himself that told him to go back, that tried to remind him of how things used to be between him and his father.

  He headed south. What better place to prove his reputation as the son of Jake Harkner than along the Outlaw Trail? He liked whiskey too much to hold a decent job, and he wasn’t about to give up the liquor. Maybe the only way to earn a living now was by the gun, the way his father had once made his money. There were still some pretty lawless places in the West. He’d find them, and the men who ran them. They’d soon learn that the son of Jake Harkner was to be every bit as feared as the father.

  He had no idea if Jake was still at Joliet, or where his mother and sister might be. He didn’t want to know. His mother and Evie wouldn’t like seeing him like this. He didn’t like hurting them too, but if that was the only way to hurt his father, then so be it.

  He drew his horse to a halt as a wave of nostalgia hit him again. He remembered his fourteenth birthday, the way Beth watched him, giggling and whispering with Evie. He remembered the pretty cake his mother had baked for him that day. Most of all he remembered his father bringing him that rifle. He looked down at his gear. He still carried that gun.

  Pa! a voice cried from within.

  No, this wasn’t good. He wasn’t supposed to get these feelings. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a flask of whiskey, uncorking it and taking a long swallow. He liked the way it burned from his throat all the way to his aching gut. Most of all he liked the way it helped him get through the painful memories, made him reckless, made him feel like he didn’t give a damn.

  He took one more swallow and put the flask away, then lit a cigarette and urged his horse into motion again. From what he’d been told, the Outlaw Trail ended somewhere up here in Montana near the old Bozeman Trail. He’d find it and head down into Wyoming, check out a place called Hole-in-the-Wall in the Wind River Mountains. It was time to start telling men who he really was and see how many wanted to try him out, see if he was as good as his father with the infamous Peacemakers he wore. If he got real lucky, somebody would come along who was faster, and that would be the end of him; he wouldn’t need whiskey anymore to end his pain. There wouldn’t be any pain; just the blissful peace of death.

  ***

  April 1889

  A biting mountain wind made Miranda shiver, and she had never felt more alone, never realized just how much she had depended on Jess’s friendship and quiet support. Now a preacher prayed over his fresh grave, and she could not control the tears. So much had been lost to her. She had still heard nothing from Lloyd, and the last time she visited Jake, he had tried to put on a good front for her, but he had a bad cough, and she was terrified of losing him the same way Jess had died.

  It had been a long, slow, agonizing death. The man had wasted away, his last days spent in terrible pain, every breath a gasp for air. She had stayed right by his side, held his hand, and he had admitted how much he loved her. She had assured him she loved him too, that if not for Jake, she would have gladly embraced him fully into her life. He had seemed comforted by that, and had clung to her hand in those last agonizing hours.

  It didn’t seem fair for a man to die like Jess had. And what if Jake died that way? He would suffer alone in that awful cell without her at his side. Evie wrapped her arms around her mother. Thank God for Evie and her husband. They were so good to her. They were after her to come and live with them, but she refused. Newlyweds should be alone. Besides, she was no shriveled old woman yet. She was only forty-three years old, still slender and strong, still plenty able to take care of herself. She had her work, enjoyed nursing others and birthing babies. She had remained living at the boardinghouse, and Evie had moved into the fine new frame home Brian had built for her.

  Miranda did not doubt that before too many months she would be helping deliver her own grandchild. It was obvious Evie was ecstatically happy. She remembered the glow of that first time of becoming a woman. She had felt it with Mack, but that was such a vague memory now. She had experienced it again with Jake, remembered the wild abandon he brought out in her, the almost painful passion and aching need. If he could ever be free again…

  Still, even if Jake were freed now, there would be so much healing to do, and there’d always be the pain of Lloyd’s absence that would keep them from being truly happy. Jake simply had to live long enough to be released. His deteriorating condition haunted her nights, and combined with the last two agonizing weeks sitting day and night with Jess, nursing him, bathing him, trying to make him eat, wishing she could help him breathe, she was exhausted.

  “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,” the preacher was saying.

  “Oh, Jess,” she whispered, wiping at her eyes again. “I’m so sorry.” She leaned down and put some wild geraniums on the grave. She had found them sprouting up through lingering snow on a hillside behind the boardinghouse, their bright red beauty reminding her there was life after death, and hope in times of darkness. “I did love you, my dear friend.”

  How was she going to tell Jake he was really dead? They all knew it was coming, but the actuality of it still hurt. The preacher said a final prayer, and she turned to Evie and wept in her daughter’s arms.

  “He’s better off now, Mother. He can finally be with the wife and daughter he lost in the war.”

  Several men who had known and liked Jess moved past the grave, stopped and spoke with Miranda.

  “Some of the ladies at the church have prepared a meal,” the preacher told the men. “All of you be sure to stop by Evie’s house and have a bite to eat. Jess would have liked you to enjoy a good meal in his honor.”

  The men nodded and thanked him. “We’ll stop over,” one of them told him. “We’ll give Mrs. Harkner and her family a few minutes here at the grave.”

  Everyone left but Miranda and Evie and Brian. The minister stayed behind to see what he could do to comfort them. Miranda was in tears again, embracing her daughter.

  “You mustn’t worry about Father,” Evie was telling her. “He’s strong and he loves you. He’ll make it until he can be free again.” Evie patted Miranda’s shoulder. “And I don’t care how much he is against it. I’m going with you to see him next time. I don’t care what shape he’s in or how terrible that place is. He’s my father, and I love him. I want to tell him so. I want to see him again, touch him again.”

  “It will break his heart for you to see him that way,” Miranda wept.

  “He just thinks it will. I think he’ll secretly be happy about it, and I want him to meet Brian.” She pulled away. “Besides, I don’t trust those doctors who work at the prisons. I want Brian to look at him. I want Father to meet my new husband, and I want him to see a doctor who knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I think she’s right,” Brian spoke up. “I’d like to take a look at him myself, Randy, considering that bad cough you described. Besides, I’d like to meet this infamous father-in-law of mine.”

  Miranda managed a meager smile. Brian was a good man, a dedicated doctor. He was fair-skinned, with sandy hair and blue eyes, a sharp contrast to his dark-skinned, dark-haired wife. He was a handsome young man, not re
ally very tall but built solid. He had a crisp smile and a wonderful sense of humor that helped put patients at ease. She was grateful that he was obviously good to Evie, for the girl simply glowed with happiness, except for today. Today they both felt the sorrow of the loss of a good friend. Evie had long ago taken to calling Jess “Uncle Jess,” and Miranda knew her daughter felt a painful loss at his death.

  She wiped at her eyes. “We’ll go next week. Jake will be furious at first that I brought the both of you, but he’ll get over it. I long ago stopped getting upset at his temper. He’s all bluff most of the time.” She looked back at the grave. “Jess knew that too.”

  The preacher came up and put a hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “Some of the ladies from the church have prepared a meal and are ready to bring it over to Evie’s house as soon as you go back,” he told her. He looked at Brian. “You make sure this woman eats right and takes care of herself, Doctor.”

  “Oh, no problem there,” Brian answered. “She’s my most important patient.” He took his mother-in-law’s arm and led her away from the grave and back toward town, noticing someone walking hastily toward them then. A man called out to her.

  “Mrs. Harkner! There you are!”

  Brian frowned, wondering who this was. Miranda and Evie both continued to be approached at times by curious onlookers or newspaper reporters, asking questions about Jake and about Lloyd. It irritated Brian to no end to have Miranda and Evie both harassed by rude people who kept bringing up painful memories for them. When they had first arrived in Laramie City, they had been followed around almost constantly, but for the past year things had finally died down and they had been pretty much left alone.

  “I’m Tom Chadwick, from Cheyenne,” the stranger told them. “I’ve just moved here to start my own newspaper. I, uh, I heard all about you, saw you coming up here today for a burial. I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about the man who died. Did he know Jake Harkner? Did he ride with him once?”

  “For Pete’s sake, mister, can’t you see these women are in mourning?” Brian fumed. “What a damned rude thing to do!”

  The man reddened. “Well, I just…I thought—”

  “Jess York was his name,” Miranda put in. “He was my husband’s best friend. They knew each other back during the war. Jess had lost his wife and daughter to raiding Union soldiers, so he took to gunrunning for the Confederates. Is that enough for your story, Mr. Chadwick?”

  The man whipped out a pad of paper and a pencil. “Yes, yes.” He met her eyes. “Mr. York stayed here in Laramie with you and your daughter then, to kind of watch over you while you wait for your husband to be released?”

  “He was a loyal friend,” Miranda answered, suspicious of what the man was thinking. “Yes, he had promised Jake to watch out for us.”

  “That’s enough,” Brian said, leading Miranda away from the man.

  “Oh, wait! Mrs. Harkner, I heard something in Cheyenne you might want to know.”

  Miranda stopped and turned, hoping for news about Lloyd. “Yes?”

  Chadwick shoved the pad of paper back into a pocket on the inside of his winter coat. “Someone called me from the newspaper office in Cheyenne. Great inventions, those telephones, aren’t they? Who would ever have thought a while back that there would be railroads connecting East and West, or contraptions we could talk into and speak to somebody miles away?”

  Miranda thought how wild this West was when she and Jake first came out here. So much had changed. “Yes, they truly are a miraculous invention. What did you hear from Cheyenne, Mr. Chadwick?”

  “Well, they say it was a Lieutenant Gentry who turned in your husband four years ago. Is that right?”

  The remark brought a sharp pain to Miranda’s heart. “Yes.”

  Chadwick grinned. “Well, ma’am, maybe it will give your husband a little satisfaction to know Gentry is dead. He was transferred from Colorado to Arizona. He’d gotten promoted to general, so he decided to stay in the army. At any rate, he was out on patrol, and he and his men were attacked by renegade Apaches. Killed every last one of them. Tortured and scalped them. I just thought maybe you’d like to know.”

  Miranda felt a glimmer of the satisfaction of revenge, but it was dimmed by the fact that Gentry’s death had come too late to help her husband. “Yes,” she answered. “It’s just too bad that didn’t happen a few years earlier. If it had, my husband wouldn’t be rotting away in prison right now, and we would still have our son with us.” She faced the man squarely. “Don’t bother me again, Mr. Chadwick, unless you have news about my son.” She turned away and headed toward town with the preacher and Brian and Evie.

  So, she thought, Lieutenant Gentry was dead. What good did that do anyone now, except the satisfaction of knowing perhaps he had never even got to spend all his bounty money. She hoped he was tortured longer than any of the others, that he was now burning in hell!

  ***

  Jake stayed on his cot when the new prisoner was brought in along with a second cot. Two guards positioned the legs of the upper cot into the holes in the legs of Jake’s cot to create a bunk bed for the new man who would share the tiny cell with Jake. Jake made no move to get up, stared at the springs overhead, hated the closed-in feeling that engulfed him when he had to look up at another bed.

  “You get to stay with somebody famous,” a third guard told the new man. “Your bunkmate is Jake Harkner. Used to be the fastest gun anywhere around till he busted up his own hand in a temper fit.” The guard chuckled and the other two left the cell. The third man closed and locked the door. “Next meal is at six, Peterson. Try to get along with Harkner. He gets a little ornery sometimes. Maybe the two of you can practice drawing on each other to keep busy.” He laughed again and turned away.

  “Fuck you,” the one called Peterson muttered. He turned to Jake. “You really Jake Harkner?”

  Jake felt the cough coming again and he sat up to clear his lungs. This cough was getting worse, and he wondered if he had tuberculosis, or maybe he was dying from the same lung disease that had killed Jess. Poor Jess. Jake had gotten the news in a letter from Miranda. His best friend was dead, and he had wanted to die himself at the news. Another ray of hope was gone, and now Miranda was even more alone. He coughed for several seconds before he could answer his new cellmate. “Yeah, I’m Jake Harkner,” he finally answered, “and I’m not feeling too great, so don’t try to strike up a conversation.” He felt like he was burning up with fever, yet he felt cold at the same time. He pulled a blanket around his shoulders.

  “I’ll be damned,” the one called Peterson answered. “Ain’t that a coincidence? I get put in with Jake Harkner. Hell, man, you are famous! I read about your trial and all.” The man rubbed at the scratchy prison suit he’d been given to wear. “These things ever get any softer?”

  “Never,” Jake answered, lying back down, shivering in spite of the sweat on his brow. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Peterson looked around the small cell. “I don’t think so.”

  Jake watched him a moment, always hating having to get used to some new man. Peterson was perhaps a little younger than he, not quite six feet tall, he guessed. He was freshly shaved, a requirement of every new prisoner, although once inside, the opportunity to bathe and shave came up only once a week. He looked like a man who had led a hard life. His face showed several scars from cuts, probably from fights, and two teeth were missing on the bottom. His dark hair was thinning, and he had the paunchy look of a man who drank too much and didn’t take very good care of himself.

  “This is what I get for stealin’ a few horses,” he grumbled, standing at the bars and trying to see down the narrow hallway of cells. “I couldn’t help killin’ that damned rancher. The guy was shootin’ at me. What was I supposed to do?” He turned and faced Jake. “Hell, there was a time when a man could get away with murder out here. Not anymore. The West is gettin’ too dam
ned civilized, you know it? Too damned civilized. I expect you feel that way too.” He rubbed at his chin. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Men on the old Outlaw Trail talk about you a lot.”

  “I said I didn’t want to carry on a conversation right now.” Damn the pain in his chest. God, it hurt just to breathe.

  Peterson shrugged. “Fine with me.” He sat down on the one stool in the cell. “I guess that means you don’t want to hear about your son.”

  The mention of Lloyd made Jake sit up so suddenly that he hit his head on the frame of the top bunk. He winced and put a hand to his head, glaring then at Peterson, forgetting about his cough, his fever and chills, the pain in his chest. “My son? You’ve heard of him? Seen him?”

  Peterson grinned. “I figured as much. The kid ain’t been to see you, has he? How long you been in here?”

  “Four years.” Jake rose, walking over to stand at the cell door, grasping one of the bars. The cough overcame him again, and it took him several seconds to find his breath again. “What about Lloyd? What do you know?”

  Peterson frowned at the sudden desperate look in Jake’s eyes. He shook his head. “The kid ought to come see his pa. He’s carryin’ a big grudge, ain’t he? That’s too bad. You don’t look too good, Harkner. You got TB or somethin’? The boy ought to know you’ve got that cough.”

  Jake ran a hand through his damp hair. “I’ll be all right. Just tell me what you know about my son. Where is he? I’ll give you a month’s ration of cigarettes if you’ll tell me what you know.”

  Peterson chuckled. “Hell, you don’t have to pay me to tell. Men like us, we have to stick together. Hell, I feel honored just bein’ in the same cell with you. How long you in for?”

  “Four more years. You?”

  “Ten. Ten fucking years.” The man let out a sigh and rose. “You want a smoke?” He walked over to his little sack of supplies and took out a cigarette.