Available July 7, 2015
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This is a little clip to show you that Jake’s son, Lloyd, is just a chip off the old block. Reporter Jeff Truebridge is with Jake and Lloyd as they hunt down a gang of outlaws, stopping at the home of a woman who was mother to one of them and wife to another. A very angry and formidable Lloyd, who is tall and dark and built just like his father, has ridden to the out-buildings, kicking open doors and looking for culprits.
Lloyd rode around from the other side of the house and up to Jake then. “I didn’t’ find anything, but I saw two men back there in the woods.”
“I saw them, too,” Jake said quietly.
Jessie gritted her teeth. “How in hell can you sit there on that horse, Jake Harkner, and tell me so casually about my son and my man bein’ dead – and you bein’ the one who killed them!”
Jake lit a cigarette and waved out the match before dropping it. “I can sit here and tell you casually because Lloyd and I saw what they did to an innocent girl. So – no – it didn’t bother me at all to shoot them both down and it doesn’t’ bother me to talk about it.”
Jessie finally set the gun aside. “They was still my husband and my son. Ain’t you got no feelin’s about that? You’ve got a son.”
“And my son knows that if he ever did something like what we found, I’d damn well shoot him myself for it! Are you saying it’s okay what they did? They raped a young girl and shot an innocent man in a bank robbery.”
Jessie looked away, blinking back tears. “Get the hell off my property, Harkner.”
“Well, right now you’re still basically a squatter in this part of Oklahoma, Jessie, and I’m a U.S. Marshal, so I have every right to be here. And before you claim I have no feelings I could easily have shot Brad all those weeks ago, but I didn’t. I thought about you losing Bo, so I took Brad down a different way so you’d have one son left.”
“Well, ain’t that just real decent of you!” The words were shouted from near the doorway, and a moment later Brad appeared, looking much thinner than the day Jeff watched Jake throw the kid off the board-walk in Guthrie. He walked outside, bent over like an old man. “I still can’t stand up straight, Harkner!”
“At least you’re alive,” Lloyd told him. “Consider yourself lucky, seeing as how it was Jake Harkner who took you down.”
“Yeah, well, your old man took me by surprise, else I’d have beat the shit out of him.”
“Well, when you’re all healed up, you come on into town and I’ll take you on myself,” Lloyd answered.
“There’s other ways of getting revenge,” Brad told him with a sneer.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
Brad grinned. “Just ways, that’s all. Family is family, Lloyd.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ole’ Jake here has a family of his own, that’s all. He ought to find out what it’s like to lose a loved one.”
As though sensing its rider’s fury, Lloyd’s horse whinnied and jerked backwards.
“You filthy sonofabitch!” Lloyd spat back. He reined his horse to a stand-still and started to dismount.
“Stay on your horse, Lloyd!” Jake warned, eyeing Jessie.
“He threatened the family!” Lloyd growled.
“Killing him won’t help!”
“Maybe not, but it would feel real good!” Lloyd glowered at Brad. “I’m real close to coming over there and breaking every rib in your body, you bastard! How does it feel having the shit kicked out of you by a fifty-six-year-old man? Kind of humiliating, isn’t it? Next time it will be somebody your own age, and you’ll spend a long time getting on your feet again, if ever!”
“You might not live long enough to try!”
Just then a movement came from Jake’s right. In an instant his gun was out and fired. Jeff’s horse skittered sideways, and a man at the far end of the porch fell with a hole in his chest.
The moment Jake fired the gun, Lloyd was off his horse, his gun drawn. He charged past Brad and into the house. … Jeff could hear him charging around inside the house, searching for anyone else who might be there.
(Jake questions Jessie and Brad, then gets into a confrontation with Brad as Lloyd exits the house)
Jessie started to reach for her rifle.
“Don’t do it, ma’am,” Lloyd told her, coming around the side of the house, his six-gun trained in her direction. “That’s my father, and woman or not, I’ll pull this trigger.”
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