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* * *
He’d thought at first she was a dream, a vision conjured up by the effects of the laudanum, which fogged his brain and made opening his eyes wider than slits seem impossible. But he’d been aware of her presence and had even stolen a peek when she turned to stare at his wounded leg and shoulder, both now all properly cleaned up and bandaged.
Daisy. He’d heard the doctor call her that. The name suited her. Thorn could see that she’d been a beautiful woman once—and could be again, if someone cared enough to look after her. That careworn look would fade, he knew, with the right man at her side. Evidently, Billy Joe’s father hadn’t been the right man, not by a long shot, but Thorn could tell Daisy Henderson was a good mother to her son.
Suddenly—and quite illogically—he wondered what it would be like to be that right man for her, and for her boy. But there was no way that could happen. Not with him living a lie, pretending to be one of the Griggs gang. And not even as his true self, an officer of the law, constantly gone on missions to keep the peace.
He’d been so proud, so happy when he’d become a Texas Ranger. He’d been confident that his work would help make Texas a better, safer place. But he wasn’t a Texas Ranger anymore, he reminded himself. Not officially. There were no Texas Rangers—they had been disbanded when the carpetbaggers’ government took over the reins after Texas’s defeat in the War Between the States, and E. J. Davis, the new governor, had set up a new police department. The State Police were largely despised as tools of the Reconstruction government. Moreover, most of the men were motivated by greed rather than by an honest desire to serve, which meant that far too many were open to bribes and other dirty dealings. Instead of acting as an effective force against the growing lawlessness in the state, they were, in fact, part of the problem. But a Ranger leader whom Thorn respected, Leander McNelly, had encouraged him to join the State Police, anyway.
“Better times are coming, Dawson,” McNelly had told him. “This carpetbag Federal government won’t keep Texas under its thumb forever, and when it loses its grip, we’ll want to be able to start the Rangers up again. So go ahead and join the State Police if they’ll have you, and you can be our eyes and ears till those better times come. This way there’ll be at least one officer that’s not corrupt.”
The State Police had accepted his application, either because they were too disorganized to investigate his background and realize he’d been a Texas Ranger, or because there were others doing the same thing. It was a living, Thorn supposed, but it was quite a comedown from the real thing. Instead of keeping bandits out of the state, they were used as instruments to keep the conquered Texans afraid and compliant. It had been a relief when his division had been tasked with bringing down the notorious Griggs gang, and Thorn had agreed to go and join the gang to report on their movements.
So now I am a Ranger in disguise, disguised further as an outlaw, he mused. It was enough to make his head ache, trying to remember who he really was.
What he did know was that Daisy Henderson was a lady, as well as a kind and generous woman, and he was in no position to court her. But perhaps he could do some good while he stayed here, even if that “good” consisted only of providing temporary mentoring to a boy sorely in need of a father’s guiding hand.
Thunder rolled overhead, and a moment later rain began to patter on the roof overhead—or what’s left of it, he thought, as several drops found their way onto his head from above. Yes sir, if he stayed here, he was going to have to find a way to fix that roof for Daisy Henderson.
Groaning with the effort, he raised himself off the cot and dragged it to the side a few inches so the rain fell next to him, rather than on him. In doing so, he found the cloth-covered plate of food she’d left on the bale of hay, complete with a fork to eat with.
“Well, that’s a mighty fine reason to get out of bed,” he murmured, as the scent of the eggs and the sight of fresh bread and a little heap of preserves met his nose and eyes and set his mouth to watering.
As he pulled the plate onto his lap and put a forkful of eggs into his mouth, Thorn blessed Daisy Henderson for her kindness. And he vowed that he would never do anything to make her regret it.
* * *
Inside, Daisy was still trying to satisfy the curiosity of her wakeful son and prevent him from going out to the barn to check on their “guest.”
“So did the doctor have to dig a bullet outta Mr. Dawson, Ma?” Billy Joe inquired. “Do ya think he might give it to me, if he did?”
“Dr. Walker gave the bullet from his shoulder to Mr. Dawson,” Daisy told her son patiently, while hiding her dismay at his eagerness for gory details. She knew the boy would think Mr. Dawson had a greater right to the bullet than he did. “The leg wound was just a graze, as he’d thought.”
Billy Joe’s face fell. “But do ya think he’ll let me look at the bullet? I’d give it back, honest! And maybe he’d let me see his gun? Or I could—”
Daisy had had enough of this conversation. “The only thing you’re going to do tonight is head straight to bed. We’ve had enough excitement for one day and my shift at the restaurant starts at 6:00 a.m., you know, even if you get to sleep later. Settle down now and close your eyes.”
“Okay, Ma,” he muttered.
She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the top of his tousled head, and was rewarded with a grin. She was glad that at twelve, Billy Joe wasn’t yet too old for such motherly attention, and she hoped he never would grow too old to enjoy a mother’s kiss. He also wasn’t too old to try to break the rules, if he thought he could get away with it. She wouldn’t put it past her son to sneak out to “check” on Thorn, so she’d have to sleep with her ears open for the telltale creak of the floorboards.
She started for the door, then had a thought. “Billy Joe, if you want Mr. Dawson to remain safe, you can’t be telling all your friends that he’s in the barn—not even one of them, you hear?” It was clear to her from her son’s startled expression that he had been thinking about doing just that—putting Thorn Dawson on display in their barn for an audience of his admiring pals. “You tell anyone, and the next thing you know it’ll be all over town and the sheriff will put Mr. Dawson in jail.” And her reputation would be in tatters while her job would be long gone. But she couldn’t expect her son to fully understand that, or why it would matter.
“Of course I won’t tell anyone, Ma. Mum’s the word,” he said, shutting his mouth and turning an imaginary key in an imaginary lock there.
“Good boy. I love you, Billy Joe. Good night.”
“Love you, too, Ma. Good night.” He shut his eyes, and a moment later his regular breathing told Daisy that her son had surrendered to slumber.
But it was a long time before she slept. She couldn’t quite get Thorn Dawson’s face out of her mind, nor the change his arrival had made in her humdrum existence. It would not be a change that lasted very long, she knew. As soon as he recovered, he would ride out of Simpson Creek and out of their lives, and her dreary life would go on as before. It was the same return to humdrumness her son was dreading, she realized with a pang.
At times she wished her life could be less dreary, she admitted, but all the changes she had ever pondered making in her existence meant the chance of danger. And she’d never considered exposing herself and her son to danger worth the risk. They faced far too much danger already. If she could just keep herself and her son safe and secure, then she wouldn’t dare dream of asking for anything more.
Chapter Three (#ulink_98635db8-4e77-5a2e-b9f1-e7effcfce0b7)
After waking briefly when dawn light began to steal through the hole in the roof, Thorn had dozed again, only to be awakened by the arrival of breakfast. Based by the light angling through the battered roof, it seemed to be a few hours later. His plate of food was not delivered by Daisy Henderson as he’d hoped, but by her eager-eyed, energetic son, who brought his own breakfast with him. “So ya won’t have t’ eat alone, Mr. Dawson,” he explained.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Ma’s been at the hotel restaurant workin’ for least an hour now,” Billy Joe responded. “She has to get up afore the roosters t’ fix breakfast for the hotel guests and anyone else who happens to come into the restaurant. She left us menfolk our breakfasts on the stove and a note that I was to bring yours to ya soon as I got up.”
Thorn suppressed a smile at the boy’s labeling himself as a man. Without a father or older brother to look up to, Billy Joe probably did think of himself as the man of the house.
It was hard to be disappointed that Daisy hadn’t brought it, given the presence of this cheerful boy, who obviously thought eating with Thorn was a high privilege. But had she chosen Billy Joe to perform the task because she was in a hurry, or because she was avoiding Thorn?
“Your ma’s a good cook,” he murmured, savoring the taste of the crisp bacon and the perfectly scrambled eggs, despite the fact he’d had the same for supper. “The hotel’s mighty lucky to have her working for them.”
“She’s been the cook since mean ol’ Mrs. Powell died,” Billy Joe informed him. “Before that she was a waitress there, and we didn’t ever think she’d get to be the cook, ’cause it seemed like Mrs. Powell would probably keep the job until she was a hunnerd,” Billy Joe reported. “But she died, and that was good, ’cause a cook makes more money and we needed some more of that around here.”
“You sound pretty glad that the woman died,” Thorn commented drily.
Billy Joe had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m glad Ma got the job, but I’d have been just as glad ’bout that if Mrs. Powell had quit or moved away or somethin’. I’m not glad she died.” He paused, then added stubbornly, “But I ain’t all that sad, either. She was old and mean, and she treated my ma bad. I don’t like anyone bein’ mean to Ma.”
“I reckon I can understand that,” Thorn said. “So now she’s treated better at the restaurant?”
Billy Joe shrugged. “Some better. She gets paid more, so that’s good. But there’s still that nasty old Mr. Prendergast, the proprietor,” he explained. “He’s real bossy. Always fussing over every little thing, like he’s lookin’ for a reason to complain or to tell Ma that whatever she’s doin’, she’s doin’ it wrong. Never happy with nothin’. And Ma thinks the lady who’s the waitress now, Miss Tilly, wants her job—to be the cook, I mean. Miss Tilly’s always braggin’ about the great dishes she can make. But I’ve had her cookin’ some now and then and her food ain’t got nuthin’ on Ma’s,” the boy declared loyally.
There was always some bad apple at a workplace making trouble for others because they were jealous or spiteful, Thorn thought. And that was not counting the problems that came from an overly particular boss. As much as he disliked his current task, he was glad he had some independence in the way he made his living. It would drive him loco to work in an office somewhere and have some boss always looking over his shoulder.
From what little he had seen so far, Thorn judged Daisy Henderson to be a proud woman, not a complainer—especially in front of her son, for whom she seemed to want to set a good example. So if the boy had surmised that much about her workplace problems, Thorn suspected she was ill-treated indeed. Which went further to explain the woman’s careworn expression, and once again he wished he were in a position to do something about it.
“Tell me ’bout the outlaw life, Mr. Dawson,” Billy Joe pleaded around a mouthful of eggs. “Bet you’ve had some great times.”
Thorn winced inwardly. There it was, the very thing Daisy had voiced a fear of: her son thinking that being an outlaw was glamorous and exciting. Maybe the one thing that he could do for her would be to nip that idea in the bud and turn Billy Joe onto a better path.
“A few,” he said. “A very few good times, and a lot more times when being an outlaw was dangerous and dirty and we were hungry and cold—or hot—and tired of running and hiding from honest folks.”
The boy’s eyes clouded with suspicion. “Ma told you to say that, didn’t she? She don’t want me to be an outlaw, but wants me to grow up to be a clerk at a stuffy ol’ store, or somethin’ like that.”
“But that’s not what you want,” Thorn said, dodging the question.
The boy screwed up his face. “Naw, what kinda life is that?” he asked, his voice disdainful. “I’d rather be out ridin’ free, with no one to tell me what to do. Like you do.”
If the boy only knew. “But whoever led the outlaws would tell you what to do,” Thorn pointed out.
“Yeah, of course. Somebody has to be the leader,” Billy Joe agreed. “But if I was the bravest and fastest and smartest of the gang, pretty soon I’d get to be the leader, right? And all the men would have to do what I said.”
“Maybe...” Thorn said, picturing Griggs, the head of the gang he’d been riding with for the past two weeks, who was easily the laziest and most cowardly, selfish man he’d ever met. Griggs never risked his own hide if he could order one of his men to do the chancy jobs. Smart, though—he definitely was that. As cunning as a snake, and every bit as mean. His men didn’t necessarily look up to him or respect him, but they did fear him, and he used that fear to keep them in line—for now.
“Usually someone has to die before there’s a new leader,” Thorn murmured. “And until you were in charge, what about having to steal from a nice lady like your ma? You’d have to do it if the leader said so,” he added, when he saw doubt creep into the boy’s eyes.
“I’d never let no outlaw steal from my ma,” the boy insisted. “Not ever.”
“But you’d steal from someone else’s ma? Any lady you robbed might have a boy of her own, waiting for her to bring that money home. What are they to do if you take that money away?” Billy Joe didn’t have an answer for that, so Thorn let him chew on it for a bit before attacking the argument from another angle, one he hoped would be even more persuasive.
“I reckon you’d like to get married someday, wouldn’t you? Find a nice lady like your ma and have sons of your own? Daughters, too.”
“Well, sure. I’d settle down some day, after I’d had enough outlawin’... Amelia Collier at school, one of the twins, said she’d marry me when we grew up if I stayed around Simpson Creek,” he said proudly. “She’s pretty and sweet, and her father owns a big ranch outside of town.”
“You think Mr. Collier would let his daughter have anything to do with a man who used to be an outlaw? A man with a price on his head, who’d robbed folks, maybe killed someone?”
Billy Joe was quiet. “I’d never kill no one, ’less they were bad. And I wouldn’t hurt nobody here, anyway. I’d go away somewheres, and have some fun where there ain’t nobody I know to stop me, or to tell my ma mean stories of what I done an’ make her sad. I’d be far away, till I’d had my fill of outlawin’, and then this here town is where I’d come home to. But I ain’t ready to be stuck here for the rest of my life just yet. I wanna get out and see the country—maybe the world, even.”
Thorn couldn’t argue with that hunger to see what the world looked like outside of the place where you were born and raised. He’d been eager to escape from his home and his father’s bitterness, though he’d stayed in Texas and protected the state against the Indians during the war years.
Other young men he knew had gone to the army, eager to see a bit of the country. He’d heard many a sad tale of what they had encountered from those who returned—and of course, there were many of them who had never made it home to boast of all that they had witnessed.
During Thorn’s own travels, he’d seen many different places, and found that the world outside of his hometown wasn’t so very different from what he’d known before. No matter where he went, some people were kind and others were cruel. Some spots were beautiful and others were ugly. Some folks were happy and settled, while others were restless and sad. That was just life, no matter what scenery surrounded it.
The only thing that truly made one place more special than any other was having people there who loved you, and who you loved. That was what made a place a home—and it wasn’t something Thorn had had in a long, long time. Billy Joe had that right here, with a mother who would clearly do anything for him, but he was too young to really appreciate it. The grass wasn’t always greener on the other side of the fence, but Thorn would never convince this boy of that.
“You could serve in the army for a spell,” he pointed out. “You’d see some sights that way, then you could come home and marry your Amelia, knowing you had your good name and something to be proud of.”
“Join the army? Then I’d have to take orders all the time,” Billy Joe said, his voice scornful. “Besides, I’m a Texas boy—no way I’d join up with a bunch of bluebellies tellin’ me what to do.”
Thorn couldn’t suppress a wry smile. “Billy Joe, unless you’re the president or a king or something, you’re always going to be told what to do by someone,” he said. Come to think of it, he doubted even presidents or kings really got to do whatever they wanted; they had too many responsibilities on their plate for that. “That’s part of living, and being a man.” But he could tell the boy wasn’t convinced.
While he was still wondering how to persuade Billy Joe that being an outlaw wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, he heard footsteps outside. Tensing, he reached for the Colt he’d left under his pillow—and found it was no longer there. Had Daisy Henderson disarmed him, while he was under the powerful influence of laudanum? He couldn’t exactly blame her for taking the precaution, but it left him feeling entirely too exposed. As injured as he was, he couldn’t fight his way out of trouble with his fists. He needed his gun. Foolish, to have let his desire to be free of pain put him in such a vulnerable position.
He hadn’t long to wait to see who it was. A moment later Dr. Walker pushed the creaking door aside and stepped into the stall. But he wasn’t alone. A tall, well-built man with a tin star on his chest followed.
Thorn stiffened. He’d hoped the doctor would keep his presence here a secret, as he had requested, but Walker hadn’t. Evidently his concern for the town’s safety overrode his promise.
Thorn couldn’t argue with the man’s priorities. In Walker’s place, he’d have done the same.
Billy Joe’s face went white with shock, his eyes gleaming with anger at the betrayal. He’d have to be careful here, Thorn thought. Billy Joe was already inclined to sympathize more with lawbreakers than with the men who upheld justice and order. And if he saw Thorn, whom he seemed to like and respect, hauled away by the sheriff, it would just worsen his opinion of lawmen.
“Mornin’, Dawson. I see you made it through the night all right,” the doctor said in his breezy Yankee accent. It had been quite a surprise to hear it the previous evening. To distract Thorn from the pain of having his wounds cleaned and bandaged, the doctor had told him the story of how he’d grown up in Maine, but then befriended a Confederate colonel who had been badly wounded near the end of the war. The doc had explained how he’d helped his friend journey home to Texas once the war was finally over, and had found himself falling in love with the state and choosing to make it his home. That he’d found love with a Texas belle in Simpson Creek had merely cemented it. “How’s the pain?”
“Tolerable,” Thorn said, his eyes darting from the Billy Joe to the Simpson Creek sheriff. “Billy Joe, go back in the house.” He didn’t want the boy to be present when the lawman led him off with the come-alongs he saw sticking out of his back pocket.
Billy Joe had evidently seen them, too. He leaped to his feet and faced the sheriff, fists clenched at his sides. “No! You can’t take Mr. Dawson! He ain’t one of the ones you’re really after, one of them men who went firing off their guns—he didn’t shoot nobody!” Billy Joe cried. “Besides, he’s wounded! He needs to be here where we kin take care of ’im!”
“Billy Joe, I said go into the house,” Thorn said, keeping his voice calm, even as he kept an eye on the sheriff. “Remember, we were just talking about how a man always has to take orders from someone, and this is one of those times,” he said. “Go inside, and everything will be all right.”
Billy Joe whirled to face Thorn. “I won’t let him take you!” he cried, red-faced now with fury. “I won’t!”
“Billy Joe, I said to go inside,” Thorn repeated. “Please.” His eyes dueled with the boy’s for a long moment, then all at once Billy Joe abruptly turned away and ran out of the barn. A moment later the sound of a door slamming door reached their ears. Thorn guessed the boy had been close to tears, and hadn’t wanted anyone to see that.
He glanced at the sheriff, then turned to the doctor.
“Dawson, this is Sheriff Bishop,” Dr. Walker said. “I thought it best to apprise him of your presence, and let him hear your side of the story.”
“I understand, Doctor. Sheriff.” Thorn acknowledged the lawman with a nod.
Dr. Walker said, “While I’m cleaning and changing these bandages on your wounds, why don’t you ask him your questions, Sheriff?” He set his bag down in the straw.
“Yeah, I could use the distraction,” Thorn said. “The doc’s carbolic stings a mite.” He said it with a grin, wanting to lighten the grim, cold look in the sheriff’s eyes, but the ice in them didn’t melt one little bit. Good for him. Clearly, the man was nobody’s fool. And he took his job and his responsibility to the town seriously, exactly as he should. But that admirable toughness might make it difficult for Thorn to turn the sheriff into an ally.
“All I know so far is what the doctor told me you said yesterday—that you’ve been riding with the Griggs gang, taking part in their robberies and raids, but you claim not to be one of them,” Bishop challenged. “Is that true?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Then suppose you tell me right now what you were doing, robbing a bank with them yesterday? If you’re going to stay here in my town while you recover, then I need more of an explanation than I’ve gotten so far. Unless you want to receive the rest of your care in one of my jail cells, that is,” he added.
Thorn raised a hand—the one that wasn’t clenched into a fist, since the doctor was sponging that burning liquid over the wound in his shoulder—to indicate he was willing to talk, as soon as he could do so without groaning.
“I’m working for the State Police,” he said eventually. “My orders are to infiltrate the Griggs gang so that I can warn the authorities where the gang is likely to strike next. The goal is to set a trap to catch them in the act, so they can be brought to justice.” He kept his eyes locked on Bishop’s, and as he expected, suspicion remained in the lawman’s steady gaze. “You don’t have to believe me,” Thorn said. “You can telegraph the State Police headquarters in Austin. Address it to Captain Hepplewhite and he’ll confirm my identity and my assignment.”
“You’re working with the State Police,” Bishop repeated, with the same curl to his lip he might have had if Thorn had said he was employed by Ulysses S. Grant or William Sherman.
“Yes, although at heart I still consider myself to be a Texas Ranger rather than a state policeman. I was a Ranger and stayed here to protect Texas rather than going off to war, and God willing, I’ll be able to call myself a Ranger again someday.”
He thought the frost melted a little in Bishop’s eyes at his last remark, but the lawman’s tone was as cold as ever when he spoke again. “If that was the plan, why weren’t you able to warn us before our bank was robbed?”
“I just joined the gang a fortnight ago. Griggs doesn’t fully trust me yet, so he doesn’t confide his plans to me,” Thorn said. “His closest men watch me like a hawk. Reckon it’ll take a while before they trust me enough so that I’ll know of a holdup far enough ahead of time that I can sneak away to warn the law. Meanwhile, my orders are to play along with whatever the gang chooses to do, so that I can win their trust, while avoiding harming the citizenry, of course.”
“Sounds like the kind of harebrained scheme the carpetbag government police would come up with,” Bishop said with a sneer. “What makes you think they’ll ever trust you that much, if you’re not shooting innocent people right along with them? Maybe they’re just playing along, pretending to trust you, till they catch you ratting on them.”
His last remark played right into Thorn’s deepest fear. He’d been warned that the plan was dangerous, that the Griggs gang would show no mercy if they found him out.
“Maybe they are,” he agreed. “It’s the chance I’ve agreed to take.” The gang would just continue hurting decent people until they were stopped. Thorn might not be proud to say he was a state policeman, but he’d certainly be proud to play a role in stopping Griggs and his gang. And besides, it wasn’t as if anyone would miss him if he failed and paid the ultimate price.
He’d thought his last admission would be enough to satisfy Bishop, but evidently the lawman was even harder than he appeared, for his gaze remained narrowed. “What makes a fellow willing to take such a risk as you’re taking, Dawson? Money?” he murmured, in a tone that suggested the topic was of only mild interest—though the intensity in his eyes told a different story.
“They’ll pay me well enough, if I succeed,” Thorn drawled, in that same careless tone the sheriff had used.
“Maybe so, but I don’t believe that’s all there is to it,” Bishop shot back. “What is it you’re atoning for?”
The man was too shrewd. Thorn shifted his gaze, hoping the other man hadn’t seen the wince that gave away how accurate the shot-in-the-dark question had been, and set his jaw. “I reckon that’s my business, Sheriff, especially since it has nothing to do with the Simpson Creek bank or anything else about this town. And I’ll tell you right now that Mrs. Henderson and her boy have nothing to fear from me.”
He kept his eye staring unblinkingly at the man, hoping the sheriff could see how deeply and truly he meant the words. After a long moment, the lawman shrugged. “You can keep your secrets, Dawson. But you go back on your word and do one ounce of harm to Mrs. Henderson and her boy, or anyone else in this town, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
Thorn could tell the sheriff meant what he said. Good thing he’d rather die than harm one hair on Daisy Henderson’s head—or Billy Joe’s. But couldn’t his presence here potentially harm her by sullying her reputation? He’d have to remedy that as soon as he was able—by leaving once he’d recovered enough to be able to ride again.
“By the way, Dr. Walker, how’re your other patients doing? The teller and the bank president, I mean?” Thorn asked. In truth, he had been worried about the two bank robbery victims, but he also hoped his query would further strengthen the evidence that he was a good man.
Dr. Walker looked pleased that Thorn had inquired, but Sheriff Bishop showed not so much as a flicker of approval. The man would be an excellent cardsharp, if he ever decided to give up being a lawman, Thorn thought. His face revealed nothing.
