LITMIR.BIZ

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a little softer than the dirt. Smothering more groans, he crawled toward it.

      He hoped whoever found his dead body wouldn’t be too upset by the discovery. It might have been nice to have a cold sip of water before he breathed his last, but one couldn’t have everything... As soon as he reached the dark haven of the middle of the stall, oblivion overtook him and he closed his eyes.

      He awakened with a start some time later to the sound of the barn door creaking open and footsteps trudging toward him. How much later it was, Thorn wasn’t sure, but the light from the barn door hadn’t faded much, so he guessed it to be late afternoon.

      “Dumb ol’ eggs,” he heard a boy’s voice mutter. “Why do I always hafta be the one to gather ’em?”

      Thorn froze. If the boy was hunting eggs, his search might very well bring him into this stall, and he would be discovered. The boy sounded young. Young enough to be scared at the sight of a man badly wounded? Or old enough to be ready and willing to defend his family’s barn from intruders? There was no way to tell, which meant the safest thing for Thorn to do would be to hide somewhere out of sight. But there was no time to find another hiding place, and he certainly didn’t have the strength to run.

      Was his horse still in the barn? He listened, and sure enough, he could hear the beast’s teeth grinding away at something at the end of the barn aisle. Maybe Thorn might be able to reach Ace and flee before the boy could set up a hue and cry...

      “Hey, fella, where’d you come from?” he heard the boy call out, and Thorn knew that the kid had spotted his horse. “Ma ain’t gonna be happy you found her bucket of chicken feed. Let’s move you into a stall, and I’ll pull that heavy saddle off so’s you can rest for a spell while I find out where you come from.”

      Thorn heard Ace’s snort of displeasure as he was pulled away from the source of his snack, the clop of his hooves down the aisle, the creak of a stall door opening on rusty hinges. The kid had chosen another stall, so Thorn was safe for now...but he couldn’t count on that safety lasting. Not when the boy was bound to start searching for how Ace had gotten into the barn in the first place. As if responding to his fears, he heard the lad’s sudden intake of breath, and his shocked question, “Is that blood?”

      Thorn’s wounds must have leaked blood onto the saddle. Oh no, had he left a trail all over the barn floor, as well? He knew better than to be so careless. If nothing else, being an outlaw for the past few months had taught him how to cover his tracks. But he’d been so exhausted, he hadn’t even thought to check to see what kind of trail he was leaving behind.

      The door to the stall where Ace had been led slammed shut, and Thorn heard the gelding shift restively. The boy’s footsteps quickened and came closer as each stall door was opened and shut. His vision had been fuzzy around the edges when he’d entered the barn, but he thought there’d been only about four stalls...

      He wished there’d been enough hay to cover himself with, or something to hide behind, but he doubted that would have worked, anyway. Stifling a groan, he crouched with the intent of grabbing the boy and putting his hand over the kid’s mouth until he could convince him to keep quiet—

      Then the door of the stall where he lay was yanked open. “Mister! What are you doin’ there? Stay where you are, or I’ll beat your brains out!” the boy cried with surprising ferocity, given his small size. He had grabbed up a piece of wood that looked as if it had played a role in stickball games, and was swinging it around in a threatening manner, as if he’d be only too glad to make good his threat. He looked to be about twelve or so, Thorn thought, a boy on the cusp of adolescence and feeling the need to prove himself.

      “Quiet down, b-boy, I...I won’t...won’t hurt you, I promise I won’t,” he muttered, reaching for him, but the boy danced back out of his reach. Thorn knew he wasn’t up to clambering to his feet and grabbing the lad, but apparently he looked more dangerous than he actually felt at the moment because the boy kept a wary eye on him, obviously ready to act if the intruder tried anything.

      “Won’t h-hurt you,” Thorn repeated, hoping he sounded convincing. “Don’t want to hurt...anybody. Need...help...” His legs wouldn’t hold him up any longer and he sank back into the hay, feeling the sweat dripping from his forehead. And the blood still dripping from his shoulder. At least the wound on his leg seemed to have closed up.

      “Who are you?” the boy asked, daring to come closer as he stared at the man.

      “My name’s Thorn,” he said. “What’s yours?”

      The boy’s expression was fearful, as if he thought possessing his name would give Thorn some power over him, but evidently he thought it was only fair to supply it, since the man had admitted his own.

      “Billy Joe...H-Henderson,” he quavered, in a voice on the edge of deepening into manhood. “What happened t’ you? Did you get attacked by Injuns?”

      Thorn felt his lips curve upward slightly at the question, and Billy Joe looked embarrassed, as if he had already realized his guess was ridiculous. Attacks by Indians certainly happened often enough—in fact, Thorn thought he’d heard tell that this town had had problems with them before—but his injuries certainly didn’t fit the profile. If Comanches had attacked, the whole town would have heard the war whoops and the commotion, and there’d be more victims than just this one man. Besides, he didn’t have any arrows sticking out of him and he hadn’t been scalped...

      He saw the boy’s face change the moment he realized the truth.

      “You’re one of them bank robbers, ain’t you?” the boy breathed, clearly awed. “You got shot makin’ your getaway, right? You’re a real live outlaw.”

      Thorn started to shake his head, then stopped and stared at Billy Joe, trying to think what to tell him. He couldn’t tell him the truth—that he was working secretly to infiltrate the gang on orders from the State Police. A boy couldn’t be expected to keep a secret like that, and Thorn would be in serious danger if his true identity was exposed. But if the boy thought he was an outlaw, surely he’d feel obligated to run to the sheriff, or at least to tell his pa, who would then go to the sheriff himself.

      “Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody,” Billy Joe whispered, crouching low and holding out his hand to the man. “I want to be an outlaw, too, when I grow up, so I won’t turn you in. I seen you and all the other outlaws gallopin’ away after the holdup—not close-like,” he told Thorn quickly, as if he thought Thorn would worry that he could identify all of them. “But my friend Dan was just comin’ out of the mercantile with his ma, across from the bank, and he told me all about what he saw. Wait’ll I tell him you was hidin’ out in our barn,” he said, obviously feeling honored.

      “You just said you wouldn’t tell anybody,” Thorn pointed out. “I could be in danger if you did.”

      The boy looked startled. “Oh, I wouldn’t tell till after you got away,” he hastened to assure him. He still looked nervous, and Thorn realized in that moment how he must look to the boy, with his shirt blood-spattered, his eyes probably wide and wild, and his face pale from the loss of blood. He was certain he looked dangerous, and to a boy that had to seem a lot more exciting than the ranchers and farmers he probably saw every day. Thorn wasn’t really surprised that he dreamed of being an outlaw. Boys dreamed of all sorts of foolish things.

      “You are one of them outlaws, aren’t you?” Billy Joe persisted.

      Thorn nodded, watching the boy. “Yes, I was with the gang that robbed your bank today.”

      “Ain’t my bank, Mr. Thorn—my ma and me, we don’t have so much as a plugged nickel in it. We ain’t got enough money to keep any in a bank. So why are you all bloody?” Billy Joe asked.

      “I got shot during the robbery,” Thorn admitted. “I lost a lot of blood.”

      “I gotta get you some help,” Billy Joe told him. “The doctor—”

      “No, you can’t bring the doctor here!” Thorn cried in alarm, jerking his hand out, though

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