Virgil had already used his pocketknife to dig the bullet out of Billy’s chest. Only time would tell if it had pierced any of his essential organs. Muttering all the while about wasting perfectly good liquor, Jasper had poured a stream of rotgut whiskey into the angry wound. Billy’s inert form had twitched in agony. Esmerelda had forced herself not to turn away, one hand cupped over her mouth to muffle her guilt-stricken sobs.

They’d escaped Eulalie without incident. No one had even bothered to stop them. After all, there had been no money stolen from the Eulalie First National Bank, no crime committed. Except for the one committed against Billy by her brother. But Esmerelda couldn’t bear to think about Bartholomew right now.

The buckboard shimmied to a sudden halt.

“Enos, trot your bony ass over here!” bellowed Virgil from somewhere up ahead.

Enos swiveled around and shyly tipped his hat to her. “Pardon me, ma’am. I do believe my p-presence is required at yonder fork in the road.”

He hopped nimbly to the ground and went loping off into the night. Esmerelda climbed to her knees to look over the wagon seat. The four men were indeed gathered at a fork in the dirt road. They appeared to be arguing. She caught snatches of profanity and glimpses of wildly gesticulating arms.

Of course, it was Virgil who lost the ability to whisper first. "We ain’t got no choice, boys!” he roared. “He’ll die if we don’t!”

“But if we do, he’ll wish he had,” Jasper replied grimly.

Sam shot the wagon a furtive glance. Esmerelda tried to duck, but it was too late. She’d been spotted. Responding to Sam’s nudge, Virgil stretched out his colossal arms and gathered his brothers into a secretive huddle.

A few minutes later, Enos came trotting back to the wagon. As he bounded into the seat, Esmerelda asked, “What is it? Is there a town nearby? Your brother still needs a doctor, you know.”

Enos pulled his hat down low, shading his eyes from her probing gaze. “Don’t you worry yore p-p-pretty little head about a thing, ma’am. We ain’t g-gonna let him die.”

Then he slapped the reins on the mule’s back and tugged with all the strength in his wiry arms, turning the buckboard toward the left fork.

Despite her noble intentions, Esmerelda dozed off with Billy’s head cushioned by her lap. Some time later she awoke with a start. The wagon’s motion had frozen to eerie stillness. Billy’s pallor had deepened to an unhealthy flush. She gave his brow a tender stroke before carefully wiggling out from under him.

Sadie whimpered as Esmerelda climbed to her knees, knuckling her bleary eyes. Clouds had smothered the moon while she slept. A violent gust of wind scattered them across the sky like giant tumbleweeds.

Moonlight streamed down, revealing that the wagon had come to a halt at the foot of a deeply rutted dirt track that wound up a shallow slope. Billy’s brothers sat silent and motionless, gazing toward the top of that hill.

Unsettled by the dread in their expressions, Esmerelda followed suit. All she saw was a ramshackle barn and a rickety structure that looked more like a shack than a house silhouetted against the night sky. A crumbling stone chimney clung to one wall of the house like a withered vine. A sagging tin roof sheltered the narrow porch. A dead oak stood sentinel at the crest of the hill, its once-mighty trunk split into a jagged fork by some ruthless bolt of lightning. A melancholy air of abandonment hung over the entire place. If it had been a piece of music, Esmerelda thought with a faint shiver, it would have been played in D minor.

“Is this our destination?” she whispered to Enos’s back.

Enos nodded grimly.

Esmerelda didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed. But she did know she was growing impatient with their dawdling.

“Then let’s proceed, shall we?” she said briskly. “Your brother is in desperate need of a clean, warm bed and some fresh bandages.”

Virgil cleared his throat. Sam hemmed and hawed. Jasper fixed his hard-eyed gaze on the distant horizon, as if he’d like to be anywhere else in the world at that moment. Not one of them would meet her eyes.

Oddly enough, it was shy, timid Enos who finally worked up the courage to swivel around on the wagon bench and face her. He tugged off his hat, wringing its brim in his tense hands. “We c-cain’t go no farther, ma’am,” he said with genuine regret.

“What do you mean you can’t go any farther? Of course, you can go farther.” She pointed at the house. “All you have to do is drive this wagon to the top of that hill.”

Virgil clambered down from his horse. “Enos is right, honey. You’ll have to go on alone from here.”

“Alone?” Esmerelda echoed. She cast the house a dubious look. It was beginning to look more haunted by the second.

“Yeah, alone,” Jasper drawled, the mocking curl of his lip reminding her achingly of Billy. “We ain’t welcome here.”

That didn’t exactly surprise Esmerelda. She couldn’t imagine many places where the Darling gang would be welcome. “Just where exactly is here?” When they exchanged furtive glances instead of answering, she sighed with exasperation. “Surely you could at least accompany us to the door. Help me explain what happened to whoever lives here…?”

Although she continued to press, her desperate pleas fell on deaf ears. Virgil was already hefting Billy out of the buckboard and draping him stomach-down over his mare’s saddle. After a moment of consideration, he drew one of his own pistols and shoved it into Billy’s empty holster. Then, ignoring Esmerelda’s continued protests, he clamped his meaty hands around her waist and swung her out of the wagon. Enos reached into the bed of the wagon and tossed her trunk and violin case to the ground. Sadie jumped down, landing on all four paws with an offended “oomph.”

Virgil pressed the mare’s reins into Esmerelda’s hand. “Don’t you worry none, honey. Our Billy has always been lucky when it comes to cards, women, and gettin‘ shot up.”

“That was before he met me,” she said glumly. After all, she’d interrupted his poker game, scared a woman off his lap, and nearly shot him through the heart at their very first meeting.

As Virgil mounted his horse, Enos ducked his head and said, “G-g-good luck, ma’am.”

“She’ll need it,” Jasper added with a derisive snort.

Esmerelda studied the expectant expressions on their faces. She studied the reins in her hand. She studied the top of the hill. They plainly intended for her to climb that hill on her own, leading Billy’s horse behind her.

Billy’s ragged groan at that moment firmed Esmerelda’s resolve. If there was help for Billy in that house, then, by God, she was going there, even if the devil himself stepped out on the porch to greet her, pitchfork in hand.

Straightening her shoulders to a regal angle she was certain her grandfather would approve of, she began to march up the hill, thankful for Sadie’s stalwart presence at her side. She could feel Billy’s brothers silently watching her.

She’d just topped the hill when the first shotgun blast shattered the night.

Acting on pure instinct, Esmerelda grabbed Billy by the seat of his trousers and dragged him off the horse. She landed on top of him in the tall grass, covering his body with her own. From Billy’s brothers she heard a frantic jingling of harnesses and scattering hoofbeats that faded to distant echoes. So much for expecting any help from them. She lay with her eyes clenched shut, hardly daring to breathe. Even unconscious, the feel of Billy’s hard, lean body beneath hers gave her a sense of security in a world turned topsy-turvy.

“Who the hell goes there?” shouted someone in a hoarse rasp that could have been either male or female.

Esmerelda opened her eyes and nearly yelped aloud to find Billy staring up at her. Oh, Lord, she thought, her clumsy handling must have killed him. Then he blinked and she realized the fall had simply jarred him to consciousness.

“Ma?” he whispered.

“Oh, you poor dear,” Esmerelda muttered. “The fever must be making you delirious.” This hardly seemed the time to remind him that his mother was dead. After all, what could be the harm in offering him such a simple comfort in moments that might very well be his last?

“That’s right, darling,” she murmured, stroking his sweat-dampened hair. “Mama’s here.”

She even dared to press a maternal kiss to his cheek. When she lifted her head, Billy’s eyes were narrowed in a confounded squint. Esmerelda was taken aback. He was staring at her as if she’d lost her wits. She had almost convinced herself it was nothing more than a grimace of pain when he closed his hands around her waist and heaved her off of him with surprising strength.

. Billy straightened to his knees in the tall grass, then staggered to his feet, weaving heavily. “Ma?” he called out. “It’s Billy. I’m hurt, Ma. Real bad.” He stumbled a few feet toward the house before dropping back to his knees. “I need your help.” His voice faded to a mumble. “I need you.”

Esmerelda’s mind reeled. She would have sworn Billy had implied that his mother was dead, but she’d obviously been mistaken. She breathed a quick prayer, thankful to have found help for him.

The shotgun belched again, its fiery breath strong enough to ruffle Billy’s hair. “Get the hell off my land, boy, before I pump your belly full of buckshot.”

An eerie calm descended over Esmerelda. She scrambled to her feet and marched toward the house, jerking Billy’s pistol from his holster without breaking her stride.

He grabbed for her, but got only empty air. “Don’t beg on my behalf, woman,” he ground out between his clenched teeth. “I won’t have it.”

Esmerelda had no intention of begging. She marched right up to the porch steps, near enough to make out the amorphous figure standing in the shadow of one of the posts. She could also make out the flared muzzle pointed straight at her chest. But it was too late to do anything but pray that there was no such thing as a triple-barreled shotgun.

She jerked her head toward Billy. “Is William Darling your son?”

No answer. A curl of pipe smoke drifted into the night.

Esmerelda swung her arm up, aiming the pistol, and repeated her question.

The figure held its silence. Esmerelda’s arm began to cramp. Then came the voice—unmistakably female, unmistakably sullen. “I ain’t got no sons. They all died durin‘ the war.”

“I believe you’re mistaken, ma’am. Every single one of the Darling boys survived the war.”

Esmerelda sensed rather than saw the apathetic shrug. “What difference does it make? They’re dead to me.”

Esmerelda pointed at Billy, her voice rising in frustration. “That man is going to be dead to everyone if he doesn’t get a clean bed and some fresh bandages. Can you provide those, or would you rather help me dig his grave so I can bury him on your land?”

She sensed the woman’s attention shirting to Billy. Although he still knelt in the grass, there wasn’t an ounce of supplication in his posture. His hands were clenched into fists. His eyes glittered with a fierce pride that was nearly as dangerous as his fever. Moonlight made the bloodstains on his white shirt stand out in stark relief.

The woman shifted the pipe to the other side of her mouth. “Looks to me like he already dug his own grave.”

Esmerelda sighed. “It has been a very long, very trying day, and you, madam, have just succeeded in exhausting my patience. Now are you going to step aside and let me bring him in the house or am I going to have to shoot you?”

A tense pause was followed by a gravelly chuckle. “Why, I almost believe you would.”

In reply, Esmerelda drew back the hammer of the pistol.

Billy’s mother waited a long time, long enough for Esmerelda’s finger to tense on the trigger. But she finally lowered the shotgun, propping it up against one of the posts. When the woman stepped out of the shadows, Esmerelda stumbled backward.

Esmerelda had assumed the Darling boys had gotten their height from their father. She had been wrong. Billy’s mother was a giantess, standing at least six feet tall in her bare feet. The massive arms she folded over her chest were roped with muscle, giving Esmerelda the impression that she was no less sturdy or immovable than the trunk of the dead oak in the yard. She half expected to see roots twining from the woman’s scalp instead of an uncombed tangle of hair. Both her hair and the shapeless burlap dress she wore were faded to the same butternut hue as her sunbaked skin. Her face was nearly as broad as the rest of her, its blunt features carved by some clumsy whittler with a dull blade. It was impossible to imagine them having ever been wreathed in a smile or crumpled by grief.