The Boy and the Outlaw
Copyright© 2026 by Heel
Chapter 3
Morning came slowly to the desert, not as a gentle awakening but as a gradual surrender of the darkness to a pale, merciless light. The stars faded one by one above the distant mountains, and the cold that had settled over the sand during the night began to retreat beneath the growing warmth of the sun. Tina had barely slept, partly because of the pain in her left leg and partly because every time she closed her eyes she remembered George lying motionless in the road, his blood darkening the dust beneath him. The crude splint Thomas had constructed still held the broken bones in place, and the little sling beneath her heel kept the crushed part of her foot safe, but neither arrangement could make the injured leg feel like part of her body again. When she finally pushed herself upright, she looked at the boy sleeping a few feet away and wondered how someone so young could possibly carry the burden that had fallen upon him.
Thomas woke when he heard her moving and immediately sat up, rubbing his eyes with both hands before looking toward her leg. He seemed to check the splint first, then the straps around it, and only after he was satisfied that nothing had come loose did he look at Tina’s face. “Does it still hurt?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep, and Tina almost laughed at the simplicity of the question because there had not been a moment since the accident when it had not hurt. “Yes,” she answered, then looked at the worried expression on his face and added, “But I’m still here.” There was still fear in his eyes, but it had changed during the night, becoming mixed with something that Tina found harder to understand because she had never expected it from him. He was beginning to worry about her, even though she was the woman who had kidnapped him from his father’s stagecoach and carried him into the wilderness.
“We have to keep moving,” Tina said as she looked toward the mountains, and Thomas immediately glanced at the broken leg before asking whether she could walk. Tina answered that she could, with the stubborn certainty of someone who had survived too many difficult situations to admit that this one might defeat her, but when Thomas helped her rise, the truth came immediately. Tina placed her right foot firmly upon the ground and leaned on the crude crutches, while her injured left leg remained slightly lifted inside the splint and heel sling. The moment she shifted her weight forward, pain travelled through the entire leg like a hot wire, reaching from her ankle to her hip and leaving her breathless for several seconds. Thomas tightened his grip around her arm, frightened that she might collapse, and Tina almost told him to let go before realizing that without his help she would probably be lying in the sand again.
“One step,” Thomas said quietly, trying to encourage her, but Tina immediately told him not to count them. He looked up at her, puzzled by the sharpness in her voice, and Tina softened slightly when she saw that he had only been trying to help. “Why not?” he asked, and she looked across the enormous stretch of desert before answering, “Because if you count them, I’ll start thinking about how many are left.” Thomas considered that, then nodded as though the explanation made perfect sense. “Then just take this one,” he said, and Tina found herself almost smiling despite everything.
They began walking across the desert, moving so slowly that the landscape seemed almost motionless around them. The journey was painfully slow, and every few yards Tina had to stop while Thomas steadied her and waited for the worst of the pain to pass. The sun climbed higher until the air above the sand began to shimmer, and the distant mountains seemed to move farther away rather than closer, their blue-gray shapes wavering in the heat like something imagined rather than real. Tina’s lips became dry, and sweat gathered beneath her hair and along the back of her neck, while the rough branches of the crutches rubbed against her palms until the skin became red and tender. Thomas watched her carefully, learning to recognize the subtle changes in her breathing that meant she needed to stop even before she admitted it, and whenever she tried to continue despite the pain, he would quietly move closer and give her more support.
“You’re doing all right,” Thomas said after one particularly difficult stretch, and Tina glanced down at him. “You don’t have to tell me that,” she replied. “I know.” The boy frowned. “I was only trying to help.” Tina was silent for a moment before saying, “I know. That’s why I didn’t shoot you.” Thomas stared at her, uncertain whether she was joking, and Tina finally gave him the smallest smile. “Keep walking.”
After several hours, Tina finally stopped beneath the narrow shadow of a rocky outcrop and lowered herself carefully, keeping the injured leg extended and the heel suspended inside the sling. Thomas sat beside her and took the water bottle from his belt, handing it to her without drinking first, and Tina stared at him for a moment because there was so little water left that every swallow mattered. She drank only a small amount before giving it back, and Thomas looked at the bottle and then at her, clearly tempted to take more but deciding against it. “You need it,” he said, and Tina shook her head. “So do you.” Thomas looked down at the bottle. “But you’re hurt.” Tina sighed and answered, “That doesn’t make me more important than you.”
For a while they remained beneath the rock, listening to the faint whisper of wind moving over the sand. Tina looked at Thomas and wondered what he must be thinking about his father, his home, and the people who would already be searching for him, and she almost asked whether he was frightened that William Bell would never find them. Instead, she mentioned George, perhaps because talking about the dead man was easier than thinking about the living people they had left behind. “He talked too much,” Tina said after a long silence, and Thomas looked at her with surprise. “George?” She nodded. “All the time. Sometimes I thought he could talk even while sleeping.” Thomas gave a hesitant little smile, and Tina found herself smiling too as she described George as reckless, irritating, stubborn, and sometimes almost unbearably foolish, but she also told him that George had been loyal and brave and that he had always believed the two of them could escape any trouble they found themselves in.
“Did he know you loved him?” Thomas asked quietly.
Tina’s smile disappeared.
She looked toward the horizon, where the mountains shimmered beneath the heat. “I don’t know,” she said after a while. “I never told him.” Thomas remained silent, and Tina rubbed her thumb against the wooden handle of one of the crutches. “People like us don’t talk about things like that.” The boy looked puzzled. “Why?” Tina gave a tired laugh. “Because talking about something can make you realize how much you have to lose.” Her voice became quieter as she spoke, and eventually she looked away toward the empty horizon because she did not want the boy to see how much the memories still hurt.
Tina finally admitted that George would have stopped if he had been with her, and Thomas listened without interrupting until she had finished. He told her that if she were hurt, he would stop too, and Tina swallowed hard before quietly acknowledging that George would indeed have done exactly that. “You’d really stay?” she asked. Thomas nodded. “Someone has to help you.” Tina stared at him for several seconds because the promise had come from someone who had every reason to hate her and almost no reason to trust her. Thomas had no weapon, no experience, no knowledge of the wilderness, and no reason to trust her, yet he had decided that he would stay beside her simply because someone had to. Tina had spent years believing that survival depended upon taking whatever you needed before somebody else could take it from you, and now this child was teaching her something she had forgotten, something much more dangerous than cruelty because it required a person to care.
They continued toward the mountains once the worst of the heat had passed. The landscape remained almost painfully empty, with only scattered bushes, rocks, and distant ridges breaking the endless brown and gold of the country, and Tina began to understand how easily a person could disappear here without leaving a trace. Every step became an argument between determination and pain, and the pain was winning more often as the afternoon wore on. Thomas took her arm whenever the ground became uneven, warning her about stones and holes and occasionally moving ahead to clear a safer path through the roughest patches. Tina hated needing him, but she hated even more the thought of falling and discovering that there was no one else in the wilderness who would help her rise.
“Careful,” Thomas said when she nearly caught the end of one crutch on a stone. “I saw it.” Tina steadied herself and gave him an irritated glance. “Then why didn’t you move it?” He looked at the stone. “I thought you saw it too.” Tina stared at him, and for a moment neither spoke. Then, despite the pain, she laughed quietly. “You’re going to make a terrible bodyguard.” Thomas smiled.
“I’m only ten.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“It is a little bit.”
They had just crossed a shallow depression between two rocky ridges when Thomas suddenly stopped, and Tina noticed the change in him immediately because the boy had become completely still, his face turned toward the ridge ahead of them. At first she heard nothing except the wind, but then came the faint scrape of movement against stone, followed by a man’s voice carrying unevenly across the open ground. A figure appeared at the top of the ridge, swaying slightly as he stood beneath the afternoon sun, and Tina immediately recognized the unmistakable signs of heavy drunkenness in his movements. Something about the man’s posture made the hairs rise along the back of her neck, because he was looking at them not with curiosity but with the calculating interest of someone who had suddenly noticed how vulnerable they were.
The man was a Native man, alone and carrying a bow with a quiver of arrows across his back. His clothes were dusty and worn, and he moved with the uncertain balance of someone whose judgment had been badly impaired by alcohol, but there was nothing harmless in the way his eyes fixed upon Tina and Thomas. He looked at Tina’s injured leg, then at the crude crutches, and finally at Thomas, apparently recognizing the two of them as vulnerable travellers who would have difficulty escaping. Tina had seen that expression before in men who believed weakness gave them permission to take whatever they wanted. She immediately moved Thomas behind her, despite the pain the movement caused, and reached slowly toward the pistol at her waist.
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