was up. And if her suspicions were raised, she was the sort to poke and prod until she found an answer. Once Tilly started digging around to try to find answers, Daisy might as well invite the waitress home to meet Thorn Dawson there and then, because there would be no hiding the secret from her any longer. Nor would there be any way to keep her from spreading the story all over town, and putting the worst, most damaging slant on it that she could. The only way to prevent that disaster was to keep Tilly from suspecting anything at all, for as long as Daisy could.
“Then why don’t you sit down here and eat it?” he said, gesturing toward the cot.
“Oh no... I couldn’t...” she mumbled.
“Couldn’t what, eat in front of me? Just because you don’t have enough for both of us? Please, don’t let that stop you. It hasn’t been all that long since I ate that big breakfast you left for me, so I’m not hungry, but sounds like you are. You’d be keeping me company,” he coaxed.
Uneasily, she sat down on the end of the cot. “What...what’s Billy Joe doing?” she said. “I expected to find him in here with you. I hope he hasn’t been plaguing you with his chatter.”
“Not a bit,” Thorn assured her. “He brought me my breakfast just as you instructed, then went back in the house when the sheriff and the doc came. You might find he’s gone back for more shut-eye. Growing boys like him need their sleep.”
Her patient was probably right, Daisy realized. Billy Joe seemed able to stay awake all night if one of his pals loaned him a penny dreadful to read, but he could be almost impossible to wake up in the morning. Some days when she had to go to work before it was time to get him out of bed, she’d awakened him, only to learn later that he’d fallen back to sleep after she’d left, and was tardy to class. At least school was out for the summer and she didn’t have to worry about that problem right now.
Thorn gestured toward her little paper-wrapped plate. “Come on, open that up and eat your meal. As a mother of a boy like Billy Joe, you’ve got to keep up your strength.”
The truth of that made her smile, and she obediently unwrapped the chicken and dumplings. “All right, then.” She hoped he wouldn’t just silently watch her eat—she couldn’t imagine swallowing a bite under his dark-eyed regard.
“Why don’t you tell me some more about yourself?” she asked him, to turn the focus away from herself.
He smiled as if he sensed her need for diversion, and was willing to indulge her. “What would you like to know?”
“Well...” she said, searching for something to ask. “Start at the beginning. Where are you from?”
His smile tightened a bit, as if this was a painful subject, but he answered readily enough. “My sisters and I were raised on a hardscrabble ranch near Mason, Texas.”
“Sisters?”
At that, he relaxed a bit. “Yes, ma’am—a whole passel of them. I have five sisters.”
“No brothers?
“No, I’m the only boy.”
“Are your sisters older or younger than you?”
“All older. My parents kept trying for a boy, you see, and finally they got me. But my ma, she passed on when I was young. My sisters were the ones to raise me, really.” He kept her entertained for the next bit with stories about his antics as a child, and the struggles his sisters had getting him to behave. “As soon as I was old enough, my pa was putting me to work. I learned responsibility and hard work early, but that just meant that any little bit of time that I had free, I was looking to find some mischief to get myself into. I’m sure I was quite a trial to my sisters, but they were always very good to me, all the same.”
“Is your family still there out by Mason?”
“They sure are, though they’re not still on the ranch itself. All my sisters married, and that meant they had to go where their husbands could find work, or where they could acquire some land. I’m just thankful that none of them had to go too far. There wasn’t enough of our ranch to split it between all of us, so my father left the whole property to me. He passed on some years ago, so one of my sisters, Ellanora and her husband, Hap, are living on the ranch now. They’re holding it until the day I return to live there.”
“And that’s what you plan to do when you’re—” Daisy tried to find a delicate way to bring up the outlawing that was occupying him and keeping him from his ranch for now “—through with the gang?” she concluded.
“That’s been the plan,” he agreed. “Ellanora always said the house was mine whenever I wanted it, but I’ll probably just build another house either for them and their young’uns or a smaller house just for me. Either way, I reckon I’ll add their names to the property deed, since it wouldn’t be right to make them start over somewhere new when they’ve taken good care of my ranch so long.”
How very decent of him, she thought, but then everything this man did seemed to be decent and fair. She just didn’t understand how he came to be an outlaw—and at the same time, not an outlaw, if his word could be believed. She hoped she would get the full story someday.
Daisy thought she noted a certain wistfulness in his face when he spoke of his ranch. “Do you think you’ll go back to live there soon?” she asked.
His gaze left hers and he stared into a shadowy corner of the stall and shrugged. “Maybe. Ranching’s hard work, so I don’t want to wait until I’m too old to do it. And what I’m doing now...well, a fellow doesn’t want to stay in it too long. It’s the kind of work that can be dangerous if he’s pushed himself too far or overstayed his welcome...”
Was he doing that now, overstaying his welcome? Daisy wondered. She wouldn’t force him to leave, not before he was recovered, but that didn’t change the fact that he was making her life more dangerous every day that he stayed. Why was he lying here, wounded, in her barn? If it was true that he wasn’t an outlaw, what sort of dangerous game was he involved in, and why couldn’t he simply tell her the truth? Didn’t she deserve that?
Suddenly, she had to know. “Thorn, then why—”
“Now you know all about me,” he said quickly, before she could complete her question, “so I think it’s time you told me at least a little about yourself.”
Oh, I hardly think I know all about you. But she guessed he wasn’t ready to tell her any more now, at least. Perhaps he never would be.
“There’s very little to tell,” she said, also shrugging. “My parents settled in Simpson Creek shortly after it was founded, and I grew up here. I met my husband when he attended a social put on at the church—he’d just come to Simpson Creek to live—and we were married shortly afterward. Why, I didn’t even know his middle name till we were standing up in front of the reverend,” she added with a little laugh that contained no mirth. Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
“Which was...?”
At first she didn’t understand what Thorn was asking, and her confusion must have shown, for he added, “His middle name?”
“Oh! Wilbur,” she said, with a brief smile. William Wilbur Henderson. She’d almost laughed out loud, right there at the altar, when the reverend had first said it. It was fortunate for her that she hadn’t, though it wasn’t until some days later that she’d learned how dangerous laughing at her new husband could be. How dangerous doing anything around William could be, if he was in the wrong sort of mood.
“What did he do? To make his living, I mean,” Thorn asked.
Daisy was glad he’d clarified his question. For a second she’d panicked, thinking Billy Joe might have mentioned that his father had died in prison, and Dawson wanted to know the crime he’d committed. Or that maybe he’d already guessed how abusive her husband had been and was asking what he had done to her. She wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Perhaps she never would be.
“Oh,