She had light, sandy brown hair with sparkling light blue eyes. Jake was smitten before he could even return her smile. He forgot about the Winchester after they entered into a pleasant conversation.
After that first meeting, Jake managed to sneak off to Fort Benton as often as possible to see her again. He’d told his mother how he felt, and she was happy for him. For almost two years, he and Kay had arranged for secret, brief, but ever more passionate rendezvous.
The budding romance ended when his father discovered his secret in mid-August of ’78 and ordered him to break it off. It wasn’t that he didn’t approve of Kay. It was because he had been friends with Aubrey Jenkins and believed that Kay’s father had cheated Aubrey when he bought the store. Jake’s arguments had no effect on his father’s decision to ban him from seeing her again. After his father stormed out of his bedroom, Jake decided to empty his bank account and ask her to elope.
He managed to make one last stealthy trip into Fort Benton to tell her about his father’s prohibition. After a few minutes of heavy petting, he finally managed to explain. the situation and had no doubt that she would agree to run off with him. But when he told her of his plans to take his own money and elope, Kay had been shocked. She quickly suggested that she could accompany him back to the Elk while he apologized to his father for his behavior. She believed that if she met his father, she would be able to convince him to change his mind and approve their marriage. Jake was deeply disappointed and told her he could never apologize, nor could he live under his father’s shadow.
She finally explained that she couldn’t leave her family even if she wanted to go with him. She told him that her mother was deathly ill, and she had to help care for her younger sister and brothers after she passed. Jake hadn’t seen her mother in a couple of months and was almost ashamed of himself for asking Kay to leave her family. Even if she did come with him, he knew that she’d always harbor some measure of resentment. It was part of one of his mother’s lessons about women.
So, he’d returned to the ranch and told his mother of Kay’s decision. She knew he was heartbroken, but he was still only eighteen and she suspected that Kay Smith would just be the first in a long line of women who might disappoint him.
Jake hadn’t even told his mother of his new plan to enlist in the army. He had simply entered the actual fort of Fort Benton and talked to a sergeant who had given him some forms. It was on the evening before he was supposed to report for duty that he told his parents. His father’s reaction was as he had expected. He launched into a tirade of threats while his mother sat next to him without showing any reaction at all. His father had calmed down much sooner than usual, and Jake had been surprised that his father hadn’t threatened to disown him. He was of age now, so if his father suddenly died, then the ranch would be his. It was only later, when he was apologizing to his mother for keeping his enlistment secret that he learned why his father’s rage had ended so quickly. She told him that his father expected that the army would make Jake into a man capable of taking over the Elk.
As he lay on his bunk, Jake continued to review the memories of those almost daily shouting matches with his father. Jake knew that his father had been right in many of those fights but believed that the root cause for most of them was that his father wished his only son to become a dominating, almost cruel man. But the one thing that marked them as almost unique in common father and teenaged son confrontations was the lack of physical violence. No matter how angry his father was, he never even raised a hand to his firstborn.
As he stared at the shadowed ceiling above him, it was his father’s control over his anger that made it difficult for Jake to believe that his father had murdered his mother. When he returned to Fort Benton, even before he went to the ranch, he’d visit Sheriff Zendt to get more details.
_____
The next morning, Jake stood on the foredeck of The Ottawa as the medium-sized sternwheeler plowed against the powerful current of the Missouri River. He had been fortunate that the riverboat had been delayed because of a broken paddle. The next scheduled steamer wasn’t due for another two weeks.
He was no longer wearing his heavy woolen army blouse. He bought a light brown jacket before he left but his light blue denim britches and army boots didn’t identify him as a soldier. His blue cavalryman’s hat wasn’t that different from the Stetsons worn by many of the male civilian population. Only its color was different from those bought in the shops.
But what he wore or carried didn’t matter. The only thing that was important to Jake now was what had happened on the Elk Ranch and where his murdering father was. It had been three weeks since he had killed his mother and run off, so he could be anywhere by now. He expected to arrive in Fort Benton in three days and then he’d decide what
