Czytaj książkę: «Lawman In Disguise»

To Deb Siegenthal and Rhonda Gibson, the best encouragers anywhere, as well as being fine novelists themselves, and as always, to Tom

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Dear Reader

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Simpson Creek, Texas

August 1870

He was at the end of his strength, and he supposed this barn behind someone’s Simpson Creek house was as good a place to die as anywhere else. At least Ace, his horse, was apt to find some forage before he gave up on his master and wandered off. Thorn only hoped that if the law connected the riderless horse to the outlaws involved in the bank robbery, they wouldn’t be able to find him here, or they’d be apt to string him up before he could explain.

Sooner or later, he knew that he’d have to talk to local law enforcement. He’d explain that he was a State Police officer, assigned to infiltrate the infamous Griggs gang and collect enough evidence to bring them to justice for their many crimes. He was prepared for the local sheriff’s skepticism. Thorn just hoped it didn’t come at the end of a loaded gun. This town had shot him enough already.

Weakened as he was by the loss of blood, his dismount turned into an ungraceful collapse into the aisle between the stalls, observed by no one but a trio of chickens scrabbling along in search of bugs and stray oats. The chickens fluttered and clucked in alarm when he collapsed, and he groaned as the fiery pain of his wound punished him for the violent movement. But once they finished their squawking, they seemed content to leave him be. Ace sidled away uneasily before spotting a mound of hay in the corner with a bucket atop it, and ambling toward it, his injured rider forgotten.

Though his vision was blurry, Thorn could see that he was lying right in front of an open stall. The straw bedding looked far from new, but it would at least be 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 he knew he couldn’t move fast enough to stop Billy Joe if the boy took off—not with his injuries. “He’ll bring the law...”

“But I can’t just let you die!” Billy Joe insisted.

“Even if it was safe,” Thorn tried to explain, “your doc’s got work enough to keep him busy in town tonight.” He was trying to think of how to explain to the boy that other townspeople had been hurt in the robbery—the bank president and the teller—and that the doctor would be tied up tending to them, when both Thorn and Billy Joe froze at the sound of footsteps entering the barn and coming toward the stall.

“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 back to Thorn.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” she murmured. “He’s been through a lot in the past couple of years...and I don’t want you being here to disrupt our family after everything that’s happened already.”

Thorn looked puzzled. “Ma’am, I promise you that I’m no threat to your family, but if you think your husband would object to me staying here in your barn till I’m able to travel, I can move on.” Left unspoken was the fact that he also wanted her to avoid telling the sheriff his whereabouts. She saw that he was watching carefully for her reaction. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer to wait to move till nightfall, though...”

She’d hoped he wouldn’t guess her family’s situation, but he was too clever. “I... I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said, avoiding his eyes, “but I won’t lie. I’m a widow...have been for a couple of years now,” she added, when his gaze dropped to her clothes, which were shabby and threadbare, but definitely not the black of recent mourning. “Billy Joe is my only child, and there’s no one living here but the two of us. I don’t even have any kin still living. So there’s no one else to object to your presence. And that’s why I said Billy Joe had been through a lot lately...”

I should have said, “We’ve been through a lot lately,” she realized as soon as she had spoken. It sounded as if she didn’t miss her husband much, which was a horrible thing to admit to a stranger, even though it was true.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the wounded man said automatically. “And for how it’s affected your son. I’d guess that without a father around to set him straight, you’re not happy to hear your boy talking like an outlaw was someone to look up to,” he concluded for her.

“No, I’m not,” she agreed, and thought he saw too much with those dark, knowing eyes. She met his gaze with her chin upturned, daring him to criticize her parenting. He certainly wouldn’t be the first to think she couldn’t raise her son properly as a single mother. There were plenty of good people in Simpson Creek, as she knew firsthand. But there were plenty of mean-spirited gossips, too.

“And I can understand that,” he told her, looking as if he wanted to say more about why he understood. “Mrs. Henderson, I can’t tell you the whole truth about my situation—for the sake of yours and the boy’s safety and my own—but I can tell you I’m not an outlaw, and that I have an honest and honorable reason for riding with the gang. And I promise, you and your son have absolutely nothing to fear from me. If you’d be willing to let me hide here, I’ll leave as soon as I can after that, and you can forget you ever laid eyes on me.”

Should she take him at his word or not? Why should she take a chance that he was telling her the truth?

There was sincerity shining in his dark eyes, but she’d learned from bitter experience that sincerity could be faked. William Henderson, Billy Joe’s father, had been a sweet-talking man with a sincere expression on his face when they’d courted, but shortly after they’d wed, he had turned her life into a nightmare that had lasted until he’d been taken away to prison.

“Again,” Thorn continued, “I know you have no reason to believe what I’m about to tell you, but I’ll say it, anyway—I’m a Christian, law-abiding man, Mrs. Henderson. The Bible is my guide.”

William had said he was a Christian man, too, but he’d twisted the Scriptures to excuse his cruelty to her till she’d almost stopped believing there was a God who cared what happened to her and her little boy. It wasn’t until her husband was killed in a prison riot that she felt able to take an easy breath and start to believe in God’s care for her again.

“Then why are you—” she began, then caught herself. “Never mind—you said you couldn’t say, so I won’t press you to give me an answer you can’t give. I’ll just say that I’m a Christian woman, too.”

At least she tried to be, even though it was hard. Was it truly Christian of her to distrust Thorn—to distrust nearly every man she encountered—because of her abusive late husband? Forgiveness was something she struggled with. She knew it was her duty as a Christian, but it was so very hard to find forgiveness in her heart for the man who had beaten her and Billy Joe for all those years.

Had the Lord sent Thorn to her as a test, to see if she could show compassion and understanding to a man who, by all appearances, was a criminal like her husband? Maybe. The Bible said the Lord worked in mysterious ways—certainly they’d never been clear to her. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to bring herself, and especially her son, closer to God—to live within His plan for their lives.

“We go to church every other Sunday,” she informed Thorn, “which is all I can get off from work, whether Billy Joe’s wanting to attend or not. And I try to get him to go without me when I’m working. I’m trying to be the best ma I can to him. I’m hoping if I ‘train my child up in the way he should go,’ as the Bible says, he’ll turn out to be a better man than his father was.” And what of the example she herself set for her son? Could she teach him a lesson in Christian compassion by letting Thorn stay with them?

The man in question was now staring at her, and she guessed he was wondering if she was always so forthright with strangers. But she had always used that very plain speaking as a sort of armor against the world.

“I have an idea,” he began with some hesitation, “if you’re going to let me stay, that is. You might use that permission to motivate your son, since he wants you to help me. Tell him I can only stay if he does whatever you say, whatever he’s been reluctant to do...such as finishing his chores, going to church, minding his manners and suchlike. But that’s up to you, ma’am, of course—you know your son best, and I hope you don’t mind the suggestion.”

She blinked in surprise, then considered what he’d said. “You know, that’s actually a good idea,” she murmured after a moment. She could use this to teach her son about being a Christian, and give him a reason to behave, all in one. “Very well, Mr. Thorn...you may stay—for now.”

“Much obliged, ma’am. I won’t give you cause to regret it.”

But could he really promise that? Even if she believed him, that he was riding with the outlaws for an honorable reason, he was still technically on the run from the law. If her neighbors found out she was harboring a fugitive, she’d never survive the scandal...

She asked another question to distract herself from that worry. “Umm, you didn’t say, exactly—is Thorn your first or your last name?”

“First name,” he said, and his face twisted as if the name caused him to feel bitter. “Last name is Dawson.”

He must have seen the skeptical look on her face. “I’m telling you the truth, Mrs. Henderson.”

“All right then,” she said. “You can stay here until you’re well enough to ride off, Mr. Dawson. But I can’t have you dying on me. Having a dead outlaw’s body in my barn would be a little hard to explain. Simpson Creek has a very good doctor, and I insist on having him see you. I have no nursing experience, so I need his guidance on how to treat you, if you’re to recover. You can tell him the same thing you told me,” she added quickly, guessing he was about to protest. And that made her irritable. She was trying to help him, and he wanted to question that?

“And you needn’t look so doubtful,” she snapped. “Dr. Walker isn’t your usual small-town quacksalver. He knows all the latest things in medicine, and I’ve seen him save folks who were at death’s door. He doesn’t use all those snake oil remedies like calomel, either.”

“All right, all right,” the wounded man said, waving a hand in surrender. “Have him come—if he’s not needed treating the others in town.”

She saw him wince and guessed that the movement sent fresh, stabbing waves of pain lancing through his wounded shoulder. Either that, or he felt guilty at the thought of the bank president and teller who had been shot.

“I’ll send Billy Joe for him,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ll tell him to go straight to the doctor’s house, and not to breathe a word of your presence here to any of his no-account friends.” She could easily picture Billy Joe, flushed with triumph at having a “real gen-u-ine outlaw” in his barn, bragging to all his pals. As Daisy turned to leave the stall, she said a little prayer that her son would be obedient enough to follow her command. She still didn’t know whether or not to believe the man who lay in the stall when he said he wasn’t an outlaw, but just this once, she’d take on faith something she’d been told. She just hoped she wouldn’t come to regret trusting him in her and Billy Joe’s lives.