Free Butch Cassidy the Lost Years by William W. Johnstone

because it sure as hell wasn’t one of my guns. As he pointed it at me his hand shook so much the barrel must have traveled a good six inches back and forth. That made me sort of nervous, because the hammer was cocked and all it would take to fire the blasted thing was a little pressure on the trigger.
    â€œYou don’t want to shoot me, son,” I told him. “I’m tryin’ to help you. Why don’t you put the gun down?”
    â€œWh . . . where . . . ?”
    â€œThis is the Fishhook Ranch. You stopped by here a while back, remember? You watered your horse and I gave you a cup of coffee and some biscuits. My name’s Jim Strickland.”
    He was in too much pain to remember much of anything, I realized. He kept wobbling that gun at me and said, “Stay . . . stay back . . . I’ll shoot . . .”
    I was getting a little disgusted. You try to help somebody and they point a gun at you. That’s just not civilized behavior.
    I held out both hands and approached him slowly, saying, “Now just take it easy, take it easy, I’m a friend, I won’t hurt you, son—”
    I saw his eyes roll up in his head and knew he was about to pass out again. The gun sagged toward the floor. But as it did his finger tightened on the trigger and I had to make a wild jump to keep from getting a toe shot off as the revolver barked. I must have been a pretty funny sight, hopping around in boots, hat, and long underwear like that.
    The slug smacked into the floorboards. A second later the gun slipped from his fingers and thudded to the floor. I kicked it and sent it sliding well out of reach.
    Then I took hold of his arm and rolled him onto his back again. I wanted to get a look at that wound.
    He had lost quite a bit of blood, but as soon as I peeled his shirt back I saw that the injury wasn’t serious, even though it probably hurt like blazes. A bullet had plowed an inch-deep furrow along his rib cage. I worried that he might have a cracked or broken rib in there, but if that was the case it hadn’t punctured a lung. He didn’t have any bloody froth on his lips, and when I put my ear next to his mouth I could tell that his breathing was normal. I didn’t hear any wheezing or whistling as I would have if he’d had a hole in one of his lungs.
    I cut the blood-soaked shirt off him, then used a whiskey-soaked rag to swab the blood away from the wound. The kid groaned when the liquor bit into raw flesh but didn’t wake up. The gash was still oozing crimson when I bandaged it, but I could tell it was going to stop soon.
    With that done, I straightened up and thumbed my hat to the back of my head as I looked down at him. His cheeks were gaunt, and his dark hair was matted with sweat. I could tell that he’d been on the run for a while. I knew the look well. I had seen it gazing back at me from the mirror often enough.
    â€œKid,” I said, “what in the hell am I gonna do with you?”
    I couldn’t stop thinking about what Clyde Farnum had told me about that attempted train robbery. It was thought that one of the outlaws had been wounded in the shootout with the Wells Fargo men, and now here was this youngster showing up with a bullet crease in his side. The two things didn’t have to be connected, of course, but it made sense that they might be.
    If that was true, the law was after him, and that was trouble I didn’t need. Sheriff Emil Lester was already suspicious of me. If he found me harboring a wanted fugitive, he might decide I’d been part of the gang that tried to hold up the train. He might dig around enough in my background to discover that Jim Strickland wasn’t my real name. He might even figure out the name I was best known by, and I sure didn’t want that. I was doing my damnedest to put those days behind me.
    So if I wanted to look out for my own best interests, helping this kid was a damned fool thing to do. I knew that . .