Page 105 of Love’s Silver Bullet

He slowly rose to his feet like a man twice his age and gently buffed her arms. “Because I’m not normal, Sheridan,” he whispered. “I am a damaged man, who doesn’t deserve the happiness of a family of my own, not after destroying that very happiness for three people I loved in my life, cutting their lives off far too soon. I’m sorry, Sheridan, but I refuse to carry that guilt into a marriage.”

“Three?” Sheridan paused, confusion digging deep at the bridge of her nose.

“Yeah, three,” he said quietly, gently guiding her to sit back down in her chair before he did the same, head bowed and hands clasped between parted knees while he stared aimlessly at the floor. “Josie, my ma, and my stepfather, Dirk.”

“I …”—Sheridan blinked, suddenly aware she hadn’t considered why Jake had ended up in Sister Fred’s orphanage before coming to the Silver Lining Ranch—“don’t understand. What about Dirk?” she whispered, almost afraid to hear his answer.

Silence prevailed for several moments while the fire crackled and sparked. “He’s dead. Just like my ma and sister. And I killed him.”

Sheridan gasped, and his glazed monotone stare was suddenly back, telling her he was no longer present, but somewhere else in his dark and deadly past where demons haunted and hopes were denied. “He … he … was devastated when he finally came home that night and found …” His voice cracked as his Adam’s apple jerked hard in his throat, more tears swimming in his eyes. “I … was c-curled up in the c-corner in shock, h-holding my little s-sister while Ma still lay lifeless where I’d found her.” He swiped at his face hard, gaze never straying from the floor where the tragedy played all over again in his mind. “H-He had to pry … Josie … out of my arms b-because I w-wouldn’t let g-go …” A sob choked from his throat, but when Sheridan rose, he jabbed a shaky palm in the air to stop her, sodden eyes those of a haunted man. “No, Sheridan—let me finish, please.”

She slowly sat back down, heart breaking over the trauma caused to someone she loved.

His breathing was shallow as he continued, absently wiping his face with the sleeve of his coat. “He was such a good man, but I would never acknowledge that, never let him love me like he tried. He asked me what happened and I lied, too ashamed to tell him I wasn’t there when it occurred, wasn’t there protecting my family like I was supposed to, like he’d asked. And all because fishing”—he said it like a curse, harsh and bitter—“was more important at the time ...” His voice faded along with his presence as he traveled back into the past, the only sound that of his labored breathing and the hiss of the fire.

“What happened to him, Jake?” she whispered, and it was as if he’d only heard in his subconscious because he was still faraway when his low drone finally continued.

“I guess I was in shock for days because I wouldn’t talk, eat, sleep unless Dirk forced me. All I could do was stare, playing over and over in my mind the moment I could pull the trigger of my shotgun and murder the men who murdered my sister.”

A shiver shook through him as he rose to stand by the fire, laying a shaky hand on the mantle while he numbly stared into the flames. “Dirk was worried about me, I know, because he wouldn’t leave for days at a time, but finally he had to go back to town to do his job, and that’s when I left.”

“Left?”

“To find my ma’s and sister’s killers. It was Ace’s gang that killed her after all, and I knew I could find out who from the few gang members who’d escaped the lynching, some of whom relocated to Missoula. And I did,” he said in a voice as dead as his family, the edge of his lip curling with a hate like Sheridan had never seen in him before, except the time he beat up on Clay. “Rattlesnake Reno,” he hissed, “Frank Reno’s little brother who was even meaner than him, the both of them jealous of the control Ace wielded.”

Head bowed at the mantle, his shoulders sagged, if possible, even more. “When Dirk and the Montana Vigilantes strung Frank up, Rattlesnake and his gang vowed to get even, so I vowed to get even right back. Only a snot-nosed punk didn’t stand a chance against the likes of Rattlesnake and his ilk, so they turned the tables on me, tying me up and sending a note to Dirk. Said he needed to come alone if he wanted to ever see his stepson alive again.”

Sheridan could only stare in horror, barely breathing as his voice carried on, a low and foreboding hum like the one in her brain.

“And he did,” he whispered with a slow shake of his head, as if he couldn’t believe anybody would love him enough to do just that. “Rattlesnake’s lookouts confirmed that Dirk was alone. ‘Send the boy out first,’ Dirk called from behind the protection of a boulder. Rattlesnake shoved me out the door with my hands bound and bleeding behind my back, no less than six guns trained on me while I stumbled across the yard. ‘You try to run, Wheeler,’ Rattlesnake yelled, ‘and both you and the boy are dead.’”

Jake’s body trembled as he stood before the fire, and Sheridan knew he was weeping again while he clenched a fist on the mantle. “‘Jake, run to me!’ Dirk shouted again, and I did, tears streaming as he swallowed me up in those big arms that had tried to love me so many times before.”

Several heaves wracked Jake’s body before he spoke again, his words hoarse and halting as if every one cost him a breath. “‘Go,’ he told me, cutting my bonds before hugging me tightly, nodding toward where he’d tied up his horse. ‘Through the pass to Rattlesnake Creek, where a posse is waiting, then go back home. And wait for me with your gun trained out the window, you hear?”

“‘Yes, sir,’ I said, hugging him back for the first time in my life. ‘And I’m so sorry, Dirk, for running away, but I just wanted to make them pay.’ ‘I know,’ he said in my ear, and to this day I can still feel his love in that kiss he placed on my head, his genuine caring in the touch of his hand rubbing my back. ‘And they will. But I need to know you’re safe first, so you go, son, now, all right?’ Nodding, I pulled away, but not before he called out one last time. ‘Jake,’ he said, and I turned to see a love in his eyes greater than any I’d ever known. ‘From now on, it’s you and me, son, and we’re family. I love you like you’re my own, and I don’t ever want you to forget that, you hear? Because today—right now—is our new beginning, understood?’”

“‘Yes, sir,’ I said, barely able to see him for the tears in my eyes. So, I did what he asked for the first time in my life—and the last—because I left to get the posse. But I didn’t go home. I waited a while, then followed them back, trembling behind a rock while the shooting went on and on …”

Head bowed, Jake seemed to waver in front of the mantle, body sagging as the horror of his story lingered in the air like the fumes from the fire. “I remember praying for one of the few times in my life, like Dirk always tried to teach me to do, only it didn’t work, Sheridan.”

His hand trembled to his eyes, as if to block out the revulsion of that awful day. “When the smoke cleared, the gang was all dead and half of the posse”—his shoulders shook with several sobs as he dropped his head, voice dropping to a pained rasp along with it —“while Dirk hung from a tree behind the cabin, swinging in the breeze.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Bile rose in Jake’s throat as always when he thought of that day, choking his air until his sobs finally broke through, ravaging his body as he mourned on the mantle.

He heard Sheridan’s gasp of horror, and this time there was no stopping her. She ran to embrace him from behind, and he knew from the frantic grip of her hold that she longed to help absorb some of his pain.

The moment he felt her touch, he turned and clung with all of his might, weeping in her arms like that lost little boy still trapped inside his own personal hell. His saltwater dampened her neck as they stood there, quivering in place until his grief was spent, and only then did she lead him to the sofa against the far wall facing the fire.

“No one should ever have to go through something that brutal, Jake, much less a child.” Just a mite of a woman, and yet she bundled his weary body in her arms like an angel sent from above, desperate to soothe by rubbing his back like Dirk had done for him that awful day, whispering her love all the while.

Like salt in a wound of love betrayed.

When his body finally stilled, he slumped back against the sofa completely drained, eyes glassy as they stared at the ceiling in a daze. “Who does that?” he whispered, a thread of disbelief lacing his tone. “Who lays down his life for a kid like me not even his own blood, a sinner who ruined his life, spurned his love?” He felt the tragedy of it all etched into every line of his face even while his voice sounded far away, shadowed in awe.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.