Lawman in Disguise

by Laurie Kingery

  Billy Joe’s head sank on his chest as if he suddenly couldn’t hold it up anymore. “I reckon not...” he murmured. “Okay, I won’t steal no more food,” he said. “But we might as well enjoy the pie, now that I got it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Thorn said. “I think you need to escort that pie back to Miss Ella’s café, and take whatever punishment she wants to dish out—unless you’ve got money to pay her for it, that is.”

  “I ain’t got any money. And I ain’t gonna take it back,” he insisted, a stubborn look coming over his features. “The boys might see me, and they’d laugh at me.”

  “So you care more about what your friends think than about doing what you know is right?”

  Billy Joe dropped his gaze to his dusty shoes. “I—I guess not,” he mumbled. “Aw, Mr. Thorn, do I hafta take it back?”

  “Do you think I should take it back for you?”

  Thorn could see Billy Joe would have liked to take advantage of his offer, but knew he couldn’t.

  “Thanks, but someone might see you and recognize you as one of the robbers. ’Sides, you weren’t the one who took it. But Mr. Thorn, what if Miss Ella tells Ma what I done?”

  “Is taking it back the right thing to do, no matter what Miss Ella does?”

  Billy Joe let out a gusty sigh. “I... I reckon so.” The boy took a last regretful look at the pie, then put it back in his poke. “I’ll be back soon as I can,” he said, squaring his shoulders, then walking out of the barn.

  Thorn watched him go. The pie would have been a treat, but he hoped he’d helped the boy begin to change his attitude about outlawing and stealing. If so, maybe it was a start at paying back Daisy for all she’d done for him.

  * * *

  With supper done, and Billy Joe taking a much-needed bath, Daisy arranged a plate of food to take out to Thorn. She was tired from work, but eager to see him, especially after what her son had told her of the day’s events.

  She saw that Thorn had done some cleaning up while she’d been gone—he had shaved and there was a cake of soap and a damp towel in the corner of the stall, as well as a kettle, which must have held wash water. And he’d donned the spare shirt she’d seen in his saddlebags. The effect of these changes in the lamplight stunned her—he was one handsome man.

  Her face must have given away her thoughts, for he said, “Billy Joe tells me tomorrow is the Lord’s Day, so I thought I ought to spruce myself up a little.”

  “Yes, tomorrow’s Sunday, and this is the week I get to take Billy Joe to church, since I don’t have to work until suppertime.”

  Thorn seemed to consider her words, then looked at the plate she was carrying. She saw he was staring at the wedge of peach pie she had placed on it.

  “No, I didn’t bake the pie,” she told him. “This came from Miss Ella’s café. Billy Joe tells me he did some dishwashing there for her today, and she paid him with this pie. More than that, she wants him to come back after the noon meal each day and wash dishes for her, and she’ll give him fifty cents each time he does it. He’s quite proud of himself for getting a job—says he wants to help out with earning money—so I’m proud of him, too.”

  Thorn grinned. “Reckon you should be proud, Miss Daisy. That’s a responsible thing he did today, getting that job.”

  She handed over the plate, and sat down on a nearby bale of hay while he sat on his cot. “Thorn, I... I know how Billy Joe got the pie in the first place, and how he came to be washing dishes at the café.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “As soon as I came home, Billy Joe confessed to stealing it on a dare from his friends.”

  Thorn let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad he told you the truth.”

  “So am I,” Daisy agreed. “Can I ask—would you have told me if he hadn’t?”

  “No, Miss Daisy, I don’t believe I would’ve.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  “Well, ma’am, boys do a powerful lot of foolish things—things they’d never want their mothers to know about. But at the end of the day, what really matters is whether they’re willing to take responsibility for what they’ve done. Billy Joe did that when he went to Miss Ella and told her he’d taken the pie. Half the reason he was worried about going back to talk to her was that he was afraid Miss Ella would tell you what he’d done, and that you’d feel ashamed. I wouldn’t want to put that burden on you, or on him. Not when everything had already been set to rights by your boy.”

  “Not just him,” Daisy replied. “You helped set it to rights, too. He says you insisted that he take it back and accept whatever punishment Miss Ella wanted to dish out.” She smiled. “It’s a good thing for him that Ella Bohannan is such a kind person.”

  “I think you can be rightly pleased with your son, Daisy,” Thorn said, his face serious. “It can’t have been easy, taking that pie back and admitting what he did.”

  She let him see her gratitude as she met his gaze. “I think I have you to thank for making him do the right thing. If you hadn’t been here, he would have hid it in his room and eaten the whole thing without telling me, or he’d be defying me about taking it back. He’s needed a good man to model himself after, Thorn. Thank you for being that man today.”

  “I’m not so sure I deserve that label, but I was happy to help,” he murmured, as if it hadn’t been that big a deal.

  Abruptly, Daisy worried that what she’d said would make Thorn get the idea she was hoping he’d stay around and continue to help her keep her son on the right path. She knew that wasn’t possible. Thorn Dawson wouldn’t be staying. She always had to remember his presence was temporary. But how ironic—a bank robber teaching her son right and wrong.

  “I wish...” he began, then his voice trailed off and he looked away.

  “You wish what?” she asked, though she knew she should leave it alone and say good-night. Was he wishing things were different, and he could court her like an honest, free man, or was that only her wishful thinking?

  “Never mind,” he said, still not looking at her. “It was just foolishness.”

  Perhaps it was, and she wasn’t about to be foolish, too. “I’m keeping you from eating,” she said, rising. “And I better go make sure Billy Joe is washing behind his ears. Good night, Thorn.”

  “Good night, Daisy. Sleep well.”

  The words seemed to resonate between them in the dusty, hay-scented barn. Sleep well. She thought it might be a long time before she fell asleep tonight.

  Chapter Seven

  In his dream, he stood at the altar with Daisy, embracing her, giving her his first kiss as her husband. Her lips were soft and impossibly sweet, and he was thinking himself the most blessed man in the world to have won this woman.

  Then, suddenly, she was looming over him in the dark stall, no longer just a figure in his dream. She shook him, her glowing lantern jabbing painful shards of light into his sleep-blurred vision. “Thorn! Thorn! You’ve got to wake up!”

  “Daisy? What the...” Whatever her reason for being here and waking him at this late hour, he knew that it had nothing to do with any fantasy he’d formed in his dreams. If she was waking him in the middle of the night, it wasn’t to declare her love, but rather because something was wrong. Drawing on the training he’d received as a Texas Ranger, he forced himself to alertness, to sit up and try to focus on the woman crouched over him.

  She wore a shawl thrown over her dress, and her hair fell down her back in a night braid, gleaming dully gold in the lantern light.

  “It’s Billy Joe! He’s missing! He’s not in his bed!” she cried frantically.

  Now Thorn was fully alert. “He’s gone? Where could he have gone?”

  What a foolish thing to say. If Daisy knew, she wouldn’t be out here asking him, near hysterical with fear.

  “I wa
s hoping he’d come out here to talk to you,” she said, “though I didn’t know why he’d do that at this hour...” Tears streaked down her cheeks now, glimmering in the lantern light.

  “Was he upset about anything when you went to bed? Did you have to correct him about something?” Was it possible the boy was still vexed about having to take the pie back? Thorn had thought that incident had ended well, but he could have misjudged Billy Joe’s reaction...

  “No, no...” Impatiently, Daisy shoved her braid back over her shoulder. “Everything seemed fine...but then I woke up feeling like something was wrong, and I went to look in on him, and he wasn’t there! Thorn, you’ve got to help me find him! What could have happened for him just to disappear?”

  “What time is it, anyway?” he asked, out of curiosity, not because it mattered.

  “I—I didn’t look at the grandfather clock as I left the house,” she admitted, “but it’s got to be after midnight, at least. Where could he have gone in the middle of the night?”

  “Calm down, Daisy, we’ll find him. He can’t have gone far,” Thorn said, striving to be calm so she could regain her composure. “We’ll walk down the street—we’re sure to find him somewhere.”

  “But you shouldn’t be out walking. Your wounds... And what if you see someone who recognizes you from the bank robbery?” she fretted.

  “Daisy, I can’t let you go out there looking alone,” he told her, and added firmly, “I’ll be fine. And I doubt any of the decent people who might have seen me in the bank that day will be out and about at this hour. Maybe Billy Joe and his friends are having a midnight poker game at the saloon,” he suggested, trying to inject a little levity into the situation.

  But Daisy was past levity. “George Detwiler wouldn’t let boys into his saloon,” she snapped. “Especially not late at night. But you might be right, Billy Joe might have gotten up to some tomfoolery with those boys he runs around with. Maybe he thought he had something to prove after you made him take the pie back.”

  Thorn thought she might well have put her finger on it. And suddenly he remembered one of the tales he’d told Billy Joe of his boyhood, how he and his cousins had gone skinny-dipping by moonlight with a jug of moonshine...

  It was a possibility that Billy Joe might have followed his example, but Thorn didn’t want to suggest that yet. Chances were they’d find him before they got that far. He knew the body of water that gave the town of Simpson Creek its name lay at the end of Main Street, just beyond the little church. Maybe they’d meet the boy before they got that far, Billy Joe strolling toward home, carefree after too many glugs of a shared jug of homebrew, with no idea his absence had been noted.

  Moments later, they were walking down the street toward the far side of town, with Daisy glancing nervously around her. “I wish we didn’t have to walk right down Main Street,” she whispered. “If anyone sees us...”

  “There’s no one to see us,” he told her. “Look, even the saloon’s dark as a pile of black cats.”

  Thorn understood her fear, for a respectable woman wouldn’t be out at this hour strolling with a stranger. But she needn’t have worried. It wasn’t likely they’d encounter anyone, let alone someone she knew. The town of Simpson Creek was well and truly asleep. But to be safe, he’d make sure they crossed to the opposite side of the street when they got to the jail, just in case Sheriff Bishop or a deputy was guarding someone there, and happened to be awake.

  There was no Billy Joe loitering outside the closed saloon, nor did they see him as they passed the hotel, the mercantile, the bank, the post office, the barbershop, the jail or the undertaker’s establishment. The town was silent but for the gentle sighing of a breeze out of the south and the hoot of an owl from one of the trees in the churchyard as they neared it.

  The farther they went, the tenser Daisy grew. “What am I going to do if we don’t find him, Thorn?” she asked as they approached the church. “We could go back down Travis Street,” she said, indicating a lane that ran parallel to Main. “That’d be another place to look, and it’s the street the sheriff lives on. If we can’t find Billy Joe, then we’ll have to go there to report him missing...” There was an edge of panic in her voice as it trailed off.

  Thorn heartily prayed that wouldn’t be necessary, and not just for her or the boy’s sake. No matter where Billy Joe was, he could imagine the no-nonsense sheriff’s reaction to seeing Thorn Dawson was out strolling the street with Daisy, helping her look for her son.

  “If I have to tell the sheriff I can’t find my boy—”

  And then Thorn heard something—so faint it might have been another night bird’s call. But he held up a hand and uttered a sharp “Shhh.”

  There it was again—a distant whoop and a splash.

  “Thorn, what is it?”

  “I think we’ve found them,” he muttered, already planning to give Billy Joe a piece of his mind, and began striding forward while Daisy still stood there, trying to figure out what he’d heard. But when the next boyish guffaw reached their ears, she ran to catch up with him.

  “Wait! They mustn’t see you!” she whispered urgently, catching his wrist.

  She was right. If the boys saw a stranger with Billy Joe’s mother, the word would spread like a prairie fire, and Daisy would have bigger problems on her hands than disciplining a rebellious boy. So Thorn crouched in the undergrowth below a cottonwood, where he could see what was happening, and waited. He’d stay silent and out of sight for now, but he was going to give Billy Joe a talking-to when they got back to the barn, that was certain.

  There were perhaps six or more youths frolicking in the creek, which at this location and time of year was shallow enough for boys their age to stand up in. The low-growing plants and saplings that lined the bank were festooned with their clothes.

  “Billy Joe Henderson, you come out of there this instant!” Daisy cried, leaning over the water and beckoning, rigid with mixed fury and relief.

  Along the creek, boys yelped in alarm and stared in horror at her, some crouching lower in the water, some darting longing glances at the scattered heaps of clothes on the shore, too far away to grab.

  Billy Joe stood in the middle of the stream, staring at her. “Aww, Ma, we were just swimmin’...”

  “In the middle of the night? You could have drowned! Another boy did, years ago, pulling just such a stunt as this. Not another word out of you,” she warned, when Billy Joe seemed about to protest further. “Unless you’re going to apologize for running off in the middle of the night and leaving me worried sick about you. Don’t even try to justify disappearing like you did without a word to me! Come out of there this minute!” She jabbed her finger at the bank.

  Thorn couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy’s embarrassment at being found like this by his mother, but privately believed it might do Billy Joe some good. Perhaps in future he’d hesitate before going along with a half-witted plan like this one, knowing how humiliating it could be if he got caught by his mother in the act. Thorn saw the shame-faced look the lad was wearing as he trudged out of the creek and onto the bank, water streaming off him in rivulets that spattered on the bank, and figured that lesson was taking hold. To her credit, Daisy kept her eyes averted and searched through the heaps of clothing. When she recognized her son’s shirt and pants, she tossed them to him, then turned her back while he put them on.

  “The rest of you better do the same and go home, or I’ll tell your parents,” she told the other boys, who remained in the water.

  Thorn thought it best to retreat to the churchyard until Daisy and Billy Joe returned from the creek, in case any of the other boys obeyed her command too quickly.

  A few moments later, Billy Joe, trudging at his mother’s side, started as Thorn emerged from the shadows of the church porch.

  “Thorn, you’re...here?” he quavered, barely looking up, his
shoulders hunched.

  “Yes, I’m here—or did you think your mother should have to walk through town alone in the dark, worried sick about what had happened to you?”

  Billy Joe actually flinched under the lash of Thorn’s voice. “I’m sorry, Ma...”

  “You’re sorry?” she repeated, her voice thick with tears. “I was so proud of you for doing the right thing about that pie, and then you scare me like this,” she murmured, the tears escaping now, gleaming on her cheeks in the moonlight. “Why—”

  “I had to show them I wasn’t yellow, Ma—like they said I was after I returned the pie,” he explained. “So I dared them to sneak out and go skinny-dipping with me...”

  Thorn’s gaze met Daisy’s defeated eyes and he smothered a sigh. For all his protestations of maturity, Billy Joe was still very much a child inside—one who longed for the approval and acceptance he had never received from his father. How could Thorn leave them, when the boy needed his guidance as much as Daisy needed a man to love and protect her?

  Yet he had no choice. The knowledge weighed down his steps as he followed mother and son back to the Henderson home.

  * * *

  He’d thought after their midnight adventure the night before, Daisy would choose to sleep late rather than go to church as she’d originally planned. But she and the boy left, dressed in their Sunday best, just as the bells started to peal from the other end of town. On second thought, maybe she’d figured Billy Joe needed a dose of the Lord more than ever, after his reckless adventures. Whatever her reasons for going, Thorn was glad that they’d departed, since it gave him the chance to do something he’d been wanting to accomplish for what felt like a very long time.

  The sun beat down upon his back, but Thorn ignored the heat and took a deep satisfaction from the neat rows of shakes he pounded over the larger of the two holes in the roof of the barn. He’d waited a little while after the steeple bell stopped chiming, so that anyone walking to church wouldn’t spot him on top of the barn, and now he enjoyed the fresh air and bird’s-eye view of the peaceful, quiet town as he worked. He’d have to listen for the bells to toll again, signaling the end of the church service, to make sure he got inside in time. But if he worked steadily he figured he could get the second, smaller hole closed before he left his high perch and returned to his hiding place in the barn.