Love's Sweet Revenge Page 40

  “Let Jake and Lloyd handle this!” Brian ordered his son. “We need information, Little Jake. You calm down!”

  “You’re a sonofabitch!” Little Jake snarled at Beck while Brian still held him. “Grampa’s gonna kill you for hurting my grandma!”

  Stephen ran up and kicked dirt on the man, and Ben came up behind him and kicked him in the rear.

  “You boys get back now,” Jake told them. He walked up and shoved Beck onto his back with a booted foot, holding his foot against his throat. “You want to live?”

  Blood poured from both sides of Beck’s mouth, and he kept one knee bent in an effort to protect his privates, while his left leg was sprawled out oddly sideways. “My leg! My leg!” he screamed.

  “I’ll stomp on it if you don’t help us find my wife!” Jake threatened. “And I don’t want any lies!”

  “I’m tellin’ the truth!” Beck nearly sobbed. “We was just supposed to burn the barn…make sure you lost a few horses and feed for…shootin’ half my hip away and blowin’ Clyde Pace’s fingers off!” He winced and groaned. “My leg!”

  Lloyd walked around the other side of Beck. “We could legally hang you just for that!” Lloyd told him. “Pepper died in that fire, you bastard!”

  Beck’s eyes widened. “Oh, man, we didn’t mean for nobody to die in it!”

  “Too late!” Cole spoke up. “My best friend died a horrible death on account of you! If Jake don’t kill you, I’ll kill you! It won’t be the first time I’ve killed a man. Jake knows I ain’t no angel, and he won’t stop me!”

  “Wait!” Beck begged, looking up at Jake in wide-eyed terror. “I can help! Jake, I didn’t mean for somebody like Pepper to die or for that Buckley kid to take your wife! That wasn’t part of the deal!”

  Jake took his foot away and pulled out his .44 and cocked it before pointing it at Beck’s head. “This thing has a hair trigger, so if I think for one minute you’re bullshitting me, I’ll get all upset and might accidentally kill you!” he growled. He knelt down and shoved the gun against Beck’s cheek. “How in hell did you get mixed up with Brad Buckley?”

  Beck grimaced in pain. “Gretta’s place…just before you…came to Denver and…got in that trouble.” He gritted his teeth when Jake shoved harder. “Buckley was there…with Mike Holt. Me and Clyde and…Tucker…we…got to know ’em…found out about Holt wantin’ Lloyd dead, and Buckley…he hated you. He told us about all the shit that happened…back in Oklahoma.” He tried to scooch away, his eyes wild. “Please don’t…pull that trigger! I know what you did to Mike Holt!”

  Lloyd shoved a foot against Beck’s back so he couldn’t wiggle any farther away. “We know Clem Sutton was part of this!” he growled. “How in hell did you meet up with Clem? You never worked for us the same time he did.”

  Jake shoved the gun harder against Beck’s cheek, and Beck cringed, making a childish squealing sound. He spit more blood.

  “Goddamn it, I think some of my teeth are loose, and I think I’ve got some broken ribs,” he repeated. “And my leg—” He broke into tears. “Please don’t—” he whined.

  Jake shoved the gun harder. “Fuck your leg! I’ll break your other leg if you don’t talk!”

  “You’re lucky your balls are still attached to the rest of you!” Lloyd stormed. “Did my mother cry like you’re crying now? Did she beg Buckley to let her go?”

  “I told Buckley…he shouldn’t take her—”

  “The hell you did!” Lloyd knelt down and grasped the man’s hair, pulling hard. “Tell us how you all ended up in on this together!”

  Beck spit more blood. “That night…after meetin’ up with Buckley and Holt at Gretta’s place…me and Clyde and Tucker went out and got…drunk with them. Buckley thought it would be a good idea for me and Clyde and Tucker to try gettin’ a job…at the J&L…get to know the lay of the land so’s Buckley could make plans…’cause he knew he couldn’t…come on to the J&L…so he needed somebody to…help him.” He looked at Jake, his eyes showing his terror. “Then you shot Mike Holt…and Buckley got run out of Denver…so me and the boys decided to get a job with you…anyway…’cause you were so famous and all…figured we could take you and make a name…for ourselves. When you…shot us up and kicked us off, we went back to Denver, lookin’ for work. Clem…he showed up at that same tavern one night…braggin’ as how he’d like to kill…Jake Harkner on account of you’d…beat him up bad. So we got to talkin’ about…how we could all…get even with you. We’d all…worked on the J&L…so we knew winter was the best time to sneak in…when not so many men was out watchin’ the borders.”

  Lloyd jerked his head back. “What about Brad Buckley? He was forced to leave Denver! How did you end up with him?”

  “We all got jobs…at the railroad depot. Needed time to…plan and…lo and behold…Brad Buckley came back to Denver on a train one day…and we all…got back together. Buckley, he came up with the idea of…burnin’ down one of your barns. He was…glad to know men who’d worked on the J&L. But I swear, Jake…the thing…with your wife… That was all Buckley’s idea.”

  “You and the others abused my wife and beat on my grandsons!” Jake growled. “Boys! Just boys! Nobody hurts anyone in my family and gets away with it!” Jake slammed the barrel of his gun across Beck’s face, and the man cried out, staying on the ground and begging Jake not to shoot him. He curled up, bawling like a baby.

  “What have they done with my wife?” Jake roared.

  “N-nothin’,” Beck answered. “Not…yet. Clyde and…Tucker… They don’t want nothin’ to do with hurtin’ her.” Beck’s words were muffled against the snow as he kept an arm up against his head. “It’s…Buckley who kept sayin’…what he was gonna do to her. I got…throwed by my horse. That’s how you…found me. My leg hurt somethin’ awful…and I couldn’t get up. The others…just left me behind.”

  Jake jerked him onto his back again. A deep gash on his right cheek was bleeding profusely. “So your first story about leaving them to come and tell us where to find my wife was a lie to save your ass! You saw us coming and figured to make up something that sounded good.” He pressed the barrel of his gun painfully against Beck’s eye. “You’ve told us two stories, Beck! How about the truth this time? Where did they take my wife?” he demanded, unmoved by the man’s weeping. “Is she warm? Did any of you hit her?”

  “No! Not me!” Beck sobbed. “Buckley…he hit her. The more she fought, the more he hit her. He threatened…to do things…with her…but we didn’t want…no part of that. They’re takin’ her…to that old cabin on the west side…of Fire Valley. Me and the boys…told him that was a good spot…’cause they can see you comin’ from the cabin. They’re gonna…hole up there and…take you down.”

  “And through it all you didn’t do a thing to help my wife, did you?” An enraged Jake brought his pistol hard across the side of Beck’s head, this time near the temple. He got off the man and holstered his gun, walking a few feet away and bending over in grief at the thought of Buckley hitting Randy, maybe doing something worse.

  Beck rolled over again, managing to get to one knee. Blood dripped onto the ground from his mouth and from the cuts from Jake’s pistol-whipping and split skin at his forehead where Little Jake had hit him with the rock. He wept from the sharp pain in his scrotum and his broken leg. “I couldn’t…help her. Buckley…would have shot me!”

  “Well, now I want to shoot you!” Lloyd seethed. “You should have taken your chances with them!”

  “Buckley was…in a hurry! He didn’t want…to wait for me.” Beck reached up to put his hand against the cut on his head. Jake turned to Lloyd, and the look on his face made Lloyd fear his father was about to have a heart attack and die. “Pa, let us go on without you. We can do this. You look really bad.”

  “I’m fine!” His voice was gravelly with rage and devastation. He walked closer to Beck. “We have a right to hang
this man for burning down the barn. A man died in that fire! That’s murder. And taking your mother is kidnapping.”

  “No! Don’t hang me! Please!” Beck collapsed. “My head! My…head!” He groaned, rolled sideways into the snow, then onto his back. He looked at Jake pleadingly before his eyes rolled back so only the whites showed. He suddenly stiffened.

  Lloyd frowned. “Pa, I think he just died.”

  Jake pushed at his body with his booted foot and got no movement.

  “Is he dead, Grampa?” Little Jake asked.

  “I hope he is dead,” Stephen spoke up.

  “Brian, get over here,” Jake told his son-in-law.

  Brian finally let go of Little Jake, whom he’d held onto through the entire ordeal. He walked over and knelt beside Ronald Beck. He felt for a pulse, then sighed. “I think Stephen got his wish. He’s not breathing.” He rose. “Could be a broken rib punctured a lung, or maybe it was that last blow to the head. You came awfully close to his temple, Jake. I suspect he was bleeding inside the skull.”

  Jake glanced at the boys. “I told you there would be violence. I hope you boys understand a man can’t always behave like this. All of you know right from wrong, and you’ll likely be better at handling these things when you grow up than I am. Rodriguez can take all of you back home if this is too much for you.”

  “No, sir, we aren’t going anywhere!” Stephen told him. “We came to help, and I think me and Little Jake can help more than you think.” He looked at his cousin.

  “Can’t we, Little Jake? Remember that big crack in the rocks we found by that cabin at Fire Valley?”

  Little Jake’s eyes lit up. “You mean Little Jake’s Valley,” he said proudly. “And yeah, I remember that big crack.”

  “Me, too,” Ben added, his face brightening.

  “Stephen, what are you talking about?” Lloyd asked.

  “That time late last summer when you and Grampa took us with you to Little Jake’s Valley to shoot rifles and look for wild mustangs, you let us play up at that cabin. There’s a cliff right behind the cabin with a big crack in it.”

  “I know that. The cliff must be a good twenty feet higher than the cabin. It butts right up against it.”

  “Me and Little Jake and Ben looked into that crack and wanted to see how far it went. So we wiggled into it sideways,” Stephen told Lloyd.

  “You could have got wedged in there and been trapped!” Brian scolded.

  “It gets bigger when you get in there,” Little Jake told his father. “We just kept goin’, and it got wider at one spot, then smaller again.”

  “It kept going up, and we just kept following it because we wanted to see how far it went,” Stephen explained. “It ends out at the big rise that leads up to the cabin from the side. We went back the other way and ended up right back at the cabin.”

  “We never told you because we thought you’d be mad at us for going in there,” Ben told Jake.

  Jake frowned. “You saying you boys could get close to that cabin without being seen?”

  Stephen nodded. “Ben can’t now ’cause he got a lot bigger over the winter. But I’m still tall and skinny, and Little Jake is, too. Those men will be watching for us all to ride in across the valley—figure we’ll make good targets, I’ll bet. But you guys could ride around the outer rim to the north side behind trees and boulders above the cabin, while me and Little Jake sneak through that crack and come out to the side of the cabin where they don’t see us. We could chase off their horses so’s the men in there can’t run out and get away.”

  “You gotta ride straight up from the valley to get to the cabin otherwise,” Ben added. “This way you’d be closer without them seein’ you, and you could use all those big boulders for cover. Without their horses, they’d be trapped in there.”

  “Yeah!” Stephen added. “You’d have to be on foot if you go around behind it up high, but at least you’d be close enough to shoot at ’em without them seeing you coming.”

  Jake looked at Lloyd.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Lloyd commented. “That damn crack could have changed or moved, and they could get trapped in there, let alone the kind of men who are in that cabin. The boys could be shot. We can’t risk it.”

  “But, Pa—” Stephen begged.

  “I’m not putting any of you in that kind of danger,” Lloyd interrupted. “If your grandmother lives through this, it would break her heart to realize one of you was hurt or killed over it.”

  The three boys pouted. “We can do it, Pa!” Stephen declared boldly. “We can ride, and we know all about takin’ care of cattle and horses, and you’ve been teachin’ us how to handle rifles and how to handle the men.” He sat straighter in his saddle in an effort to seem bigger than he really was. “You gotta see we’re getting to be men now, too. Grandma says we are.”

  “And you took us hunting last fall,” Ben put in. “If I can shoot a deer, I can handle a rifle good enough to help give cover for you and Jake once Stephen and Little Jake chase off those men’s horses.”

  “You gotta let us do this, Uncle Lloyd,” Little Jake added with a dark, determined look in his eyes. He glanced at his own father, sure Brian was just as against this as Jake and Lloyd were. “We know how to herd cattle and rope calves, and we know you have to make sure they don’t overgraze certain sections, and we know how to store feed and hay and how much to give the horses,” he said proudly, turning to his grandfather. “You and Uncle Lloyd don’t realize how much we already know, Grampa. And we’ll be safe in that crack in the rock. They’ll never know we’re there.”

  “Yeah!” Stephen put in. “We promise to come right back out if we can’t make it through. We won’t do anything stupid. Please, please let us do it. You said we could help save Grandma.”

  “You gotta let us help,” Ben spoke up. “We saw what they did to her, and I don’t think I can ever forget not bein’ strong enough to help her. If you ride up to that cabin to help and they shoot you dead before you can even get there, then nobody can help her. And if you go around behind and start shootin’ from there, they can run out and ride out through the valley before you get all of them. By the time you got your own horses to go after them, they’d have a big head start.”

  “With Grandma inside the cabin, you wouldn’t have time to go after them,” Stephen added.

  Jake looked at Lloyd. “They have a point. We can’t waste one extra minute getting your mother out of there. Going up through the valley will take longer, and we risk being target practice for them.”

  Lloyd turned to Brian. “You’re Little Jake’s father. You have just as much say in this as anyone.”

  Brian sighed, turning to Little Jake and seeing the excitement in his eyes. “I haven’t been able to stop my son from doing much of anything he really wants to do.” He looked at Jake. He remembered the time in Guthrie when Little Jake was much smaller. He’d run out of the house and down the street when Jake was in the middle of a shoot-out. Little Jake had thought he could help his grandfather. “You know how stubborn he is. If I don’t let him do this, he’ll grumble and stomp and pout for weeks. And be that as it may, I think these boys need and deserve to help any way they can. They need to feel they’re an important part of this. I can’t believe my own words, but that’s how I feel.”

  Little Jake grinned. “Thanks, Pa! Grampa will make sure nothin’ happens to us.”

  Brian kept his gaze on Jake. “You know how it feels, Jake, to not be big and strong enough to stop your father from what he did to your mother. You’ve lived with that your whole life. Maybe we should take the chance on the boys not having to live with the same memories.” He shifted his gaze to Lloyd. “I hate to say they’re right, and I hope to hell I don’t live to regret it, but I think you should let them try this.”

  Lloyd studied the boys, then turned away for a moment, torn with indecision. He looked at
Jake. “What do you think?”

  Jake looked down at Ronald Beck’s body. He shivered from the bitter cold, again feeling sick at how cold Randy might be right now…if she was still alive. “I think we don’t have a whole lot of choice.” He met Lloyd’s gaze, his eyes bloodshot from no sleep. “And I think we have to hope this is due to your sister praying over this. Maybe the boys finding that crack was a godsend.” He shared with Lloyd the weight of what this could mean—both of them feeling the horror of what it would mean if they lost one of the boys over this.

  Lloyd took a deep breath and looked across the open land toward Little Jake’s Valley. “I’m going to trust in Evie’s prayers.” He walked over to his horse, pulling out his repeating rifle. He handed it out to Stephen. “Take this with you—just for protection in case it’s needed.”

  The boys squirmed excitedly in their saddles.

  “Thanks, Pa!” Stephen answered, taking the rifle and shoving it into a boot on his saddle.

  “These are dangerous men, Stephen,” Lloyd warned. “You and Little Jake stay right inside the crack in that cliff where they can’t see you if you think for one minute you can’t get those horses out of there without being seen, understand? If you see your grandmother, don’t go try to help her. We’ll take care of that. You just get those horses out of there. You’re men in a lot of ways, but you aren’t man enough yet for the kind of men at that cabin.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Little Jake promised.

  Lloyd glanced at Jake. “I don’t know any other way to get to that cabin unseen than on foot, like they said.”

  “If we get going right now, we can get there by dawn.” Jake headed for Midnight and mounted up.

  “What about Beck’s body?” Brian asked.

  “Leave it for the wolves,” Jake answered coldly. “They’re plenty damn hungry this time of year. By spring there won’t be enough of him left to recognize.” He turned his horse and scanned the rest of the men. “And remember one thing. As far as we know, none of the men involved in this even has family. I know for a fact Brad Buckley has none left. They could all disappear from the face of the earth and no one would know or care, so it doesn’t make much difference what we do with them.”