jingle of bridle hardware. He lay still, too weak to move, let alone resist whatever was about to happen.
Where was he?
How long had he been here?
But the answers to those questions would have to wait.
“Don’t look like he’s been dead long. The buzzards ain’t even got to him yet.” The gritty voice was close by. “Don’t see no bullet wound neither.” Rough hands fumbled in the hip pockets of Joe’s pants. “Empty as a granny’s tits.”
“Well, turn him over,” said the nasal voice. “He’d better have somethin’ worth takin’.”
Big hands gripped Joe’s shoulders, lifted them slightly, and wrenched him over onto his back. The pain stabbed like a hot knife through his ribs. Shocked awake, Joe groaned and opened his eyes.
Startled, Clem, a husky, coarse-looking man with a stubby black beard, cursed and let him go. Joe fell back onto the ground.
“Holy hell, the bastard’s alive,” Clem said. “What do we do with him now, Slinger?”
The nasal-voiced man, mounted on a good-looking bay, was weasel thin. Otherwise, he looked enough like Clem to be his brother. He shrugged. “We could leave him. Don’t look like he’ll last long out here. But on the chance that he could live and turn us in for the reward, it might be smart to shoot him.”
Joe’s mind was still foggy, but he’d heard enough to surmise that the two men must be outlaws. He was too weak to fight or run. All he could do was keep quiet and trust to luck.
Clem scowled down at him. “Aw, Slinger, he’s just a kid. Not much older’n Benjy was. What do you say we haul him home and let Pa decide what to do with him?”
“Doesn’t look to me like he’d last that long,” Slinger said. “Here.” He lifted a canteen by its strap from the saddle horn and flung it down to his brother. Clem twisted out the stopper, lifted Joe’s head with one hand, and tipped the canteen to Joe’s mouth. Joe gulped the cool, fresh water. He was still weak, but at least he was becoming more aware.
“So . . . Can you talk now, kid?” Clem replaced the stopper in the canteen.
Joe nodded. “Yeah, a little.”
“What’s your name?”
“Joe.” He was about to give his last name, then hesitated, suddenly cautious. “Joe White.”
“Well, Joe White, do you think you can ride?”
“Sure.” The motion of the horse would be agony on his ribs, but it would be better than being shot or left out here to die.
Slinger frowned down at Joe from the saddle of his tall buckskin. “You can ride behind me. But you’d damn well better hang on. If you fall off, nobody’s going to stop and pick you up again, hear?”
“I hear.” Teeth clenched against the pain, Joe let Clem help him to his feet and boost him up behind Slinger’s saddle. When the horse began to move, at a brisk walk, every step made him want to scream. But he hung onto Slinger, biting back the urge to cry out.
Whatever happened next, he swore silently, he would get through it. He hoped to see Sarah again, but even if he didn’t, he would survive to confront Benteen Calder, the soulless bastard who’d gone off to find his cattle and left him to die in that wash.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TWO OUTLAWS RODE AT A STEADY BUT UNHURRIED PACE, SLINGER in front with Joe clinging on behind the saddle, and Clem bringing up the rear. When they finally came to a halt, the sun hung low in the western sky.
By then, Joe was almost unconscious from pain and fatigue. Only the awareness that if he slid off the horse, he’d be left behind, had given him the strength to lock his fingers onto Slinger’s belt and keep them there. He was so weak that once the horse stopped and the outlaw moved forward, forcing his grip loose, Joe slid down the horse’s flank and collapsed on the ground with a grunt of pain. As he lay there, too spent to open his eyes, the conversation seeped through the fog in his mind.
“What the hell’s this?” The gravelly voice belonged to an older man. “I send you off to scout for a herd, and you bring me back somethin’ that looks like a dead squirrel.”
“We didn’t see no sign of a herd, Pa,” Clem said. “But we found this kid half-dead on the prairie. Since he seen us, we figured we’d best not leave him there.”
“Shit, Clem, you coulda shot him and saved yourselves