Chapter 3

Jacob didn't think there was much future with Marnie Lambert. She had told him that he was a good man. But he knew it wasn't really true.

Mistakes had been the story of Jacob Dunleavy's life. His mother had mistakenly walked on ice she was certain was frozen. She was wrong and crashed into a lake and drowned. Jacob was 7 years old.

His father had mistakenly walked into a bank during a holdup. The robbers had been frightened and killed him in only moments. Jacob had just turned 13. Suddenly, he was alone.

There was no family close by. He mistakenly believed that the ones further away would welcome him.

He made the long trip from Cincinnati to Independence, Missouri, on the family's mule. Carrying only his few clothes, his Colt revolver and a Winchester rifle, the trip had taken almost a year. But Jacob learned a great deal on the way. He traveled with a group preparing to head west and quickly learned to draw and shoot from horseback from one of the young men on the trip.

But Jacob mistakenly thought the man was his friend. The misconception was cleared up when the man tried to sell Jacob as an indentured servant in a poker game. Jacob showed the man how good a student he was when he called the teacher out and killed him.

Leo Redman was the first man killed by a boy known as Jake Dunn.

After the long trip Jacob expected a welcome from his long-ago cousins. But because he came without any money they turned him away.

From Independence, he signed on as a railroad porter but was released when he mistakenly mentioned to an affluent rider that he remembered him from the week before. The man's wife was unimpressed because she had thought he was in Chicago.

Somewhere in Nebraska, Jake Dunn became a gunslinger. He mistakenly thought it would make him a man. It didn't. It made him a killer, though.

Over the next five years, Jake Dunn killed indiscriminately. He killed because he was angry. He killed because he was sad. He even killed because he was happy.

He had killed men who were armed. He had killed men who were unarmed. He had killed boys who thought they were quicker even though Jake knew they weren't.

He spent hours drinking whiskey he didn't like and fucking whores he felt nothing but disgust for. He gambled in saloons and cheated men who made a living cheating other men.

But they never said anything because they mistakenly believed the baby-faced boy would kill them without a second thought.

Jake would have killed them. That was a fact. But he was starting to have many second thoughts.

It was during the summer of Jacob's 17th year when he finally started to feel remorse. His parents hadn't raised him to be a killer. They raised him to be respectful and respectable.

The next spring, Jake Dunn had left the employee of the man intent on owning all of a small Nebraska town. He had reverted to his real name and moved to Colorado. It was only 200 miles away but no one reconciled Jake Dunn, the young-looking gun hand, with Jacob Dunleavy, the handsome young man with such wonderful manners.

It was during the summer that Juliette Powers stole Jacob's heart. She was a merchant's daughter. He was a merchant's son. They had much more in common and they seemed destined to be lifelong companions.

Juliette agreed to his wife, a decision that was greeted with cheers from the girl's parents and her friends. Jacob was working as a ranch hand on a nearby farm and the family that employed him had come to think of him as a son in a few short months.

But then John Jones entered the picture. He was a smooth talker — a dandy. He flaunted his money and his Boston connections. And he set his sights on Juliette Powers.

It didn't take long before Juliette was under the man's spell. She disregarded her parents' warning. She disavowed her friends who protested. Then she stopped speaking to Jacob Dunleavy and disappeared. When she returned three weeks later, it was as Mrs. John Jones.

The town was aghast and her parents were mortified. But Jacob wavered between irate and despondent. During his darkest moments, Jacob thought about how easy it would be to kill Jones — and Juliette, too. He thought about calling the man out and murdering him in the street. And it would have been murder. Jacob could give Jones a 3-second head start and outdraw him.

Instead, he left Colorado one rainy afternoon and headed south, across the Oklahoma panhandle and into Texas.

It was a week after Marnie's return when Jacob and some of the hands joined other ranchers from the area in driving cows to Topeka. It had been planned for a month and Marnie insisted Jacob not change plans because of her return.

But she wondered if he would return with others in five or six weeks. She hoped he would.

Life on a profitable ranch was different that Marnie had expected. She didn't have to work beside the hands. In fact, she was in the way when she tried.

Jacob had introduced her to accounting and making sure the accounts that were coming in came in and the ones going out went out. He also started to work on training her to recognize quality horse and cow flesh. She was the owner of the spread and she needed to be able to make purchases and trades.

Especially when the time came for Jacob to leave.

Outside of working, Jacob had done his best to avoid Marnie. Susan had done her best to avoid everyone. She was unhappy and she wanted everyone to know it.

Jacob hoped she wouldn't run off before he returned but there was nothing he could do about it. Susan was Marnie's responsibility.

The cattle drive was an effort in boredom. There was occasional relief — a near stampede caused by a rattlesnake; a couple of bushwhackers who sought payment and were paid in lead; and a two-day stretch of nothing but rain and wind.

But in Kansas, things took a turn.

It was the second day after the group's arrival when Jacob felt a hand on his shoulder.

Most of the others had spent the night before in the saloons and brothels, making up for time lost on the trail. It had been four weeks since all the men had the opportunity to cut loose.

There were several small towns along the trail but the hardened hands knew the perils of trying to herd cows with a hangover. It was difficult enough when stone sober.

The Double-M ranch, Jacob had named it for Miss Marnie, had contributed only two dozen animals to the herd. Jacob had no interest in taking back any new ones but he wanted to look around.

It was during that process that a young man recognized him and approached him from behind.

The man knew Jacob from his days in Colorado, otherwise he would have known better than to sneak up on him. As it was, a second after his hand touched Jacob's shoulder, Jim Powers felt the cold metal of a Colt beneath his chin.

"Jesus, Jacob," the man said. It took a second for Jacob to recognize the man and he lowered his gun.

"Sorry, Jim," he said. "It was a tough time on the trail."

It was a lie but he didn't feel badly about it.

"Us too," the man said. "How are things going? You took off sort of fast. None of us knew where you went."

"It was time to go," Jacob said. He didn't need to say anything more.