“Billy Joe, where are you?” called a female voice. “Didn’t I tell you I needed the eggs before I could cook our supper?”
The lad went still, staring wide-eyed at Thorn, and Thorn stared back, equally dismayed. But there was nowhere to hide. The boy’s lips silently formed the words my ma.
“Billy Joe, who were you talking to?” his mother demanded from just outside the stall. “If one of your no-account friends is here distracting you when you should be doing what I asked, he’ll just have to go home. I—”
She pushed open the stall door, then shrieked as she spotted Thorn crouching in the straw. He saw her wrench the stick out of Billy Joe’s hand and take a firm hold on it—as if a stick could protect them from a desperate man. She pushed her son behind her, clearly determined to stand between him and danger. He was surprised she didn’t yell for her husband. Maybe the man was away from the house, still at work?
“Who’re you? And what are you doing talking to my son?” she demanded. “Billy Joe, run and fetch the sheriff!”
But Billy Joe remained rooted to the spot. “Ma, Mr. Thorn—he won’t hurt us,” he said. “He promised.”
It sounded to Thorn as if the boy was making a valiant effort to make his tone sound adult and reassuring, not frantic and whiny like a little kid’s.
“He’s wounded, that’s all. Ma, we gotta help him, we gotta!”
Thorn saw the woman’s eyes narrow as she listened to her son, then she aimed that piercing gaze back at him. There was not an ounce of belief in her eyes that he was anything but a low-down polecat.
Smart lady, Thorn thought. I wouldn’t believe that someone like me could be trusted, either, after looking at me. He braced himself, expecting to see the woman yank her son out of the barn by his collar, if necessary. Shortly after that, the sheriff would appear and the jig would be well and truly up. Thorn had to try to keep that from happening.
He raised both arms, wincing at the effort. He couldn’t raise the one that was wounded all the way up. Even just lifting it halfway hurt like blazes. “I really don’t mean any harm, Mrs. Henderson, ma’am. I just rode in here looking for...” A quiet place to die, he thought, but he didn’t want to say that and alarm her further. The idea of a dead body in her barn might cause the lady to swoon—though she didn’t precisely look to be the swooning type. She was actually rather pretty, in a quiet, careworn sort of way, or she would be, if she ever got some rest. She had hair of a hue he’d heard called ash blond before, and deep-set, gray-blue eyes that saw right through a man’s bluster. But even with the tiredness that etched her face, she had a quiet sort of dignity he respected. He hoped it wouldn’t make her madder that he’d used her name. “Peace and quiet...”
“That may be, but your horse has helped himself to an entire bucket of chicken feed,” Mrs. Henderson replied tartly, jerking her head toward the other end of the barn. “I certainly hope you have the money to square that with us. I can’t afford to buy more feed.”
“Sorry, ma’am, I’ll pay you for it, soon as I can,” Thorn murmured.
The woman made a dismissive gesture, as if she was accustomed to empty promises and had no use for them. “So how did you get injured? The truth now—I’ll know if you lie,” she said.
“I got shot at the bank when the men I was riding with robbed it,” he said, locking her gaze with his while hoping against hope she would read the message in his eyes that there was more to the story than that. Had she noticed the way he’d phrased it, saying that the bank was robbed by the men he was riding with—not by him? “I promise you, I intend no harm to you or your family, nor will I steal anything—beyond what my horse has already taken. I... I just couldn’t ride any farther.”
Her eyes left his and focused on his bloodstained shirt. “How badly are you wounded?”
“I was hit in the shoulder and the leg, and bled a lot. I think the leg wound may just be a graze. With a little care, though, I’m hoping I won’t get lead poisoning,” he added, with more confidence than he actually felt. But he hadn’t expired yet, so maybe there was reason to hope. “Soon as I’m fit to ride, I’ll leave here.”
* * *
Daisy Henderson heard the unspoken questions within his statement—would she provide the care he needed to recover, and let him stay hidden here until his wounds were healed?
“Oh, so you’re a gentleman bank robber, is that right, Mr. Thorn?” she retorted, allowing an edge of scorn into her voice. “So you weren’t the one who shot the bank president, or the teller?”
“Ma,” her son protested, clearly embarrassed that she was questioning his new hero. “He told me he didn’t want to hurt nobody. I think we should take him at his word.”
She rounded on the boy. “Billy Joe Henderson, I’ll thank you not to question your mother when I’m doing what I must to keep us safe,” she said. She wasn’t at all happy about the admiring tone in his voice in regard to the wounded man at their feet, and the way her son seemed to want to protect an outlaw.
“But, Ma...” Flushed and crestfallen, the boy stared at the hay under his boots.
A glance at the wounded man showed traces of discomfort in his eyes as his gaze shifted from her to her son.
“Billy Joe, mind your mother,” he said gently. “She only wants what’s good for you, and she has no reason to believe that I’m no danger to either one of you.” He turned back to Daisy. “And no, I wasn’t the one who shot the bank president or the teller. I was as surprised as the ones who got shot when the lead started flying. Griggs—that’s the leader of the gang—had said there was to be no shooting unless it became necessary. And it wasn’t necessary from my point of view—none of the bank employees had offered any resistance. The gang shot them purely for their amusement, far as I could tell,” Thorn said.
“If no one in the bank was putting up any resistance or trying to fight, then how did you get shot?” she asked, perplexed by his story. He talked about the gang as if he wasn’t one of them himself. But he must have been right in the thick of the robbery to have gotten shot.
“As we turned to leave the bank, I heard a bang and it felt like someone had punched me, and then there was this stinging in my shoulder. I looked around, and saw that the bank president was suddenly holding a revolver, of all things, aimed at me. And that was funny, really, since I’d put myself in range by trying to stop Zeke—Zeke Tomlinson, he’s one of the Griggs gang and the one who first started firing off his gun—from shooting anyone else. Then another member of the gang—Bob Pritchard—shot the bank president in the shoulder in retaliation, just as he was aiming to fire again. That’s the shot that grazed my leg. And then it was time for us to skedaddle.”
“No one’s looked at those injuries since then?”
“That’s why I wanted to go fetch the doctor for him, Ma,” Billy Joe interjected.
“As I was about to tell your son when you came in, ma’am, I figure your town doctor is pretty busy right now, just tending the bank president and the teller. He doesn’t need another patient.”
Daisy ignored that comment for now. “Billy Joe, go back into the house and stay there—right now,” she said firmly, when the boy seemed loath to leave. “You’re to keep out of the barn until I decide what’s to be done.”
Billy Joe’s lower lip jutted out rebelliously, but after uttering a big sigh, he trudged out of the barn, much to Daisy’s relief. She sighed herself and looked after her son for a moment before turning