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“If this is a joke, Brother, it ain’t funny,”he grumbled, removing his hat and slapping him on the shoulder.

This prompted a low, agonized moan. “What the fuck, Seth? The bullet didn’t do me in, so you intend to?”

“Bullet! You were hit? Where?”

“My left side,”he grunted.

“Dammit, Judd. Why didn’t you say something?”

“It hurt like hell at first then went numb, so I decided to tough it out.”

He was no doctor, but numb didn’t sound good. “Can you get down?”

“The question is, when I fall on my face, can I get up again?”With a pain-riddled moan and a grimace of agony, Judd swung his leg over.

He would have lifted him down, but his brother’s pride wouldn’t allow that, so he stood by, ready to catch him as he slid under his own power to the ground. When his feet touched down, and he cursed at the jolt of pain, Seth winced in sympathy.

“Here, lean on me,”he offered, knowing Judd was really hurting when he did without complaint. “There’s a fallen tree over there you can rest against. Then I’ll start a fire and have a look.”

“No fire. We won’t be here long enough for that.”

The brothers looked up to find Thorn standing beside them. They were so focused on Judd’s injury, he’d ridden up unnoticed.

“What are you doing here?”Judd demanded. “The meetup point was in St. Louis.”

“Change of plans,”Thorn said as he spat a stream of tobacco. “I didn’t like the looks of the north road so we doubled back.”His narrow-eyed gaze landed on Seth. “You got five minutes to patch him up.”

“We’ll be here as long as it takes,”he muttered, turning to survey the clearing.

He’d need water, which was plentiful with the nearby river, but he had little in the way of supplies.

More concerning, his understanding of treating gunshot wounds was limited to staunching the bleeding and getting the patient to a doctor pronto.

“You can stay as long as you want, pup, but the rest of us are moving out—with the cash.”

“Like hell you are,”Judd said, his hand moving to the butt of his gun.

“His wound needs tending,”Seth bit out as he lowered his brother onto a patch of thick grass by the fallen tree. “After that, I need to find him a doctor.”

He could hardly stand Thorn, especially his stench, since the man seemed to have a distinct aversion to soap and water.

And the sound of his voice, which included a lisp, set histeeth on edge.

Ike felt the same way, and the more his brother got to know him, the more he agreed he needed to get rid of him quickly.

That would have to wait until Judd healed enough to go toe to toe with theson of a bitch, however.

“Find a doctor on your own damn time. We’re riding. If you’re not there when we settle up, the rest of us will share your portion.”

“You’re not in charge here, Thorn,”Seth exclaimed while surging to his feet. Taller than the older man by half a foot at least, he used his height to loom over him, hoping to intimidate. “You’ll wait on Judd, who is.”

Thorn stared down at the silent, motionless man on the ground, his uneven breathing that whistled a bit upon each exhale the only sound in the night other than croaking frogs.

Then he spit another stream of tobacco juice into the dirt.

This time, it landed near Judd’s boot, and the disrespect caused Seth to seethe inside.

“I’ll give you a quarter hour, no more.”His gaze narrowed with disdain when it shifted to the man half his age challenging him.

“As for you, pup. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.

When big brother here cocks up his toes and goes to meet Deadeye in the hereafter—which by the looks of him could be any second—we’ll take a vote on who will lead us from here on out.

”With a smug smile on his ugly face, he reached up and patted Seth’s cheek.

“If you’re lucky, we’ll keep you around to clean the privy and empty our spittoons.

When you’re not standing around holding the horses while the men take care of business, that is. ”

Pup was as bad as kid and did nothing to bolster the tough, take-no-shit image he wanted to portray to Thorn.

His amusement vanished when Seth caught his wrist in a punishing grip and twisted his arm behind his back.

He wrenched it higher, bending the older man forward as he leaned over him and snarled in his ear.

“Pup that I am, I could snap the bones in your arm without breaking a sweat.”

“Enough, both of you,”Judd directed in a surprisingly robust voice. “There’s no time for squabbling when the law and a posse of irate locals whose money we stole are likely gaining on us.”

“Breaking his arm won’t take a second,”was Seth’s curt reply.

“I said enough,”his brother insisted.

Seth didn’t release him right away. Instead, he imagined how nice it would be after days of verbal jabs ranging from smug insinuations to overt insults to snap Thorn’s bones like a twig.

It showed the extent of his self-control that he hadn’t lost his temper and lodged a bullet between his bushy eyebrows, which came close to numbering one rather than two.

“Your pissing contest is gonna have to wait,”Judd barked. “For now, I need to be patched up so we can get back on the road.”

Since the dark stain on his brother’s shirt had grown larger since their arrival, guilt over their fight while Judd lay injured and bleeding made him let Thorn go, albeit with a slight push.

Off-balance, he stumbled forward, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on a tree before regaining his composure.

Unwilling to take any insult lightly, especially from a“kid,”Thorn turned, ready to attack.

But the distinct click of Judd cocking his Colt Walker . 45 stopped him in his tracks.

“For Christ’s sake,”Judd hissed, aiming his revolver at Thorn’s chest. “I don’t know how Deadeye took this crap for over a decade. I’m bleeding here!”

The older man shot Seth a look that promised retribution then stalked toward the riverbank. Forgetting him the next instant, he crouched and got to work, exposing the wound in Judd’s side.

“Antagonizing him does us no favors,”his brother ground out through gritted teeth.

“So you’ve said before.”Seth grunted as he peeled away layers of blood-soaked cloth. “But I’m not a pastor, and fuck knows I’m no saint, so this turning-the-other-cheek bullshit is over.”

When he pulled back the last layer and exposed the bloody furrow the bullet had dug out of his side, Judd hissed in pain. Seth reared up onto his knees, tearing off his shirt for bandage material since their supplies were slim.

“Just a scratch, my ass,”he muttered as he quickly ripped the broadcloth into strips. “It’s at least an inch deep and oozing something fierce.”

Bending close, he noticed a steady river of blood an inch above the wound and carefully wiped it dry. It only lasted a moment but exposed the source—a pea-sized entry wound.

“Hell,”he whispered as he tore more strips from his shirt. “They got you twice.”

“Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention—”

When Seth pressed a wadded-up section of the sleeve against the hole, Judd’s hiss of pain cut off what else he would have said.

“This is beyond my basic skills. You need a doctor.”

“Staunch the bleeding and get me up on my horse. I’ve survived worse.”

“When? I’ve been riding with you since I was ten and have never seen you lose this much blood.

”He wadded up more material and pressed them against the wound then tore what was left into strips and tied them together.

“Sit up,”he urged. “I need to wrap these around you to hold the bandages in place.”

Judd couldn’t do it without help, adding to Seth’s concern. When he was patched up as much as possible, he boosted him onto his horse. Once on top, he stepped back, watching to see if his brother could stay seated, then had to grab his arm to keep him from falling off the other side.

“You won’t make it a mile without falling off and breaking your neck,”he predicted angrily.

“Tie me on, then,”Judd shot back.

Muttering under his breath, he did exactly that because his brother was stubborn, and, once his mind was set, there was no talking himout of it. Trussed up like a felon being carted off to the state penitentiary, he swayed in the saddle while Seth led his horse.

He whistled for the others. “Let’s head out.”

They’d been waiting and moved on horseback into the clearing.

“Where’s Ike?”Seth asked, seeing only Thorn and Stan.

“He stuck with the original plan,”Stan replied. “Said he’d meet us in St. Louis to divvy up the money.”

“Since he has half of our half, he sure as hell better,”Thorn muttered as he spurred his horse and led them back onto the trail.

Seth fell in behind them, Judd’s horse in tow. The pace was fast, and he soon had a crick in his neck from looking over his shoulder every other minute to check on his brother.

How he stayed conscious, he’d never know, but each time they stopped to change horses, piss, or refill their canteens, pain ravaged Judd’s expression.

He’d grunt or nod if any of the men asked how he was doing, keeping his words to a bare minimum.

Seth figured that was a good thing; he needed to preserve his strength if he was going to make it.

About midway, as dawn broke in the eastern sky, Seth was re-dressing his wounds with another ripped-up shirt from his saddlebags.

The bullet holes still seeped blood at a rate more rapid than he liked.

As he retied the saturated strips—he’d rather have clean ones, but he worked with what he had—a shadow fell over them.

Thorn stood over them, staring at Judd’s sweat-beaded face, unable to miss the shiver that swept through him every few moments.

“He’s fevered,”he said, stating the obvious. “If you can’t get some water down him, he ain’t gonna make it.”

What did he think he was? An idiot? At every stop, he tried coaxing him to take a few sips before Judd pushed the canteen away. But his concern for his brother overshadowed his desire to spar with Thorn.

“He’ll die if I don’t get him to a doctor. Maybe I should double back to that town we passed. The one with the vineyard. Hermann, I think it was.”

“Deputized citizens out for blood are bound to be hot on our back trail,”Stan advised. “Best press on to St. Louis as quickly as possible and get him to a hospital.”

“They’ll have wired every sheriff and police department between here and the Mississippi about the robbery. What am I supposed to do, walk up to a hospital as pretty as you please? I’ll do it to save him, but Judd won’t thank me for it.”

“Judd sure as fuck won’t,”his brother chimed in, his voice reed thin and raspy.

“I know of a place,”Thorn stated.

He was instantly suspicious. The outlaw had a hard time taking orders from a younger man and didn’t bother to hide it. If Judd died, there was one less man to split the money with and to challenge him. Seth’s voice had an edge to it when he asked, “What place?”

“It’s called the Pleasure Palace,”Thorn said with a broadening grin. “An old friend of mine runs it.”

“You want me to take him to a whorehouse?”Seth asked, incredulous. “That’s not the care he needs.”

“This ain’t no ordinary whorehouse,”a still-grinning Thorn advised. “They cater to special tastes and sometimes things get out of hand, so the madam keeps a physician on retainer.”

“You think she’ll just call him up for a bunch of dusty outlaws who arrive on her doorstep?”

“For a price, she’ll do anything,”he said with a nod before his eyes narrowed. “But it comes out of your share.”

He glanced at Judd, who nodded in agreement.

“Lead the way,”Seth urged.

They mounted up, ready to head out in seconds. No one helped as he hoisted his brother, not light by any means, into his saddle. Instead of leading Lightning, Seth swung up behind Judd. Without support, he’d never make it through two more hours of hard riding.