Summary:  A stranger finds Joe near death and decides to help him but things are complicated by Joe’s inability to remember who he is and by the man’s own dark past.

Rated:  T (18,985 words)

Honor Among Thieves

The young man was small, built lightly but powerfully for all that, like a sleek cat. Not one ounce of his body was wasted on excess fat; instead every inch of him was toned. He was a man used to hard work. He wasn’t that bad looking either with still wet brown curls plastered to his face. His clothes were well made, or at least they had been before he’d fallen into the river, tan pants, finely stitched boots and a soft green jacket. At his side there was an empty holster, twisted sideways slightly from the force of the water and with its string still tied his thigh: the mark of a man who knew one end of a gun from the other. And he couldn’t have been older than eighteen.

It was that that had stopped me from riding past and just treating the young man lying on the bank like an old log pushed up on shore after the river had finished battering it. After all, it wasn’t like I didn’t have my own problems, and they were probably hot on my trail. I certainly didn’t have time to take care of stray wanderers too stupid to stay away from a river whose waters were swollen past its banks and ready to flood from too much rain. It had been a miracle he’d been washed up at all instead of simply being sucked to the bottom. He was probably dead anyway. In which case there would be no harm in me riding right past him.

Then again, if he was dead it wouldn’t take too much time for me to pull him farther away from the water. Just in case it rained more. Someone might be looking for him, I reasoned. At least this way there would be a body for them to find. So I dismounted, crouched down in the mud, and reached under his sopping green jacket to drag him backward. As I did his head lolled back, and his eyes fluttered. I paused, thinking that I’d imagined it. But then his lips parted, and something between a mumble and a moan slipped out.

Damn.

Again I thought about leaving. I didn’t know him; he didn’t know me. He wasn’t my problem. But his eyes fluttered again, and the bumps on his face made him look even younger than he probably was, which was still undoubtedly young.

A kid.

I wasn’t to the point where I would leave a kid to die alone by the riverside while a coyote waited nearby. Not yet anyway. I lifted him and swung him over my saddle. My horse turned to glance at me, and I couldn’t blame her. We’d been riding long and hard, and I was sure the added weight wasn’t welcome. I swung aboard behind the kid and nudged the horse forward. I would take him to the next house I found and dump him on the doorstep. Then both my horse and I could happily forget we’d ever seen him.

We rode until nightfall and didn’t see a soul. Normally I preferred places where you could ride and not see anyone for days. At the moment though, I wished I was in a more populated area. Riding with another person draped over the saddle in front of you isn’t exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. As the day dragged on and the land grew more desolate I found myself envying his unconsciousness. At least he didn’t know how uncomfortable he was.

Or maybe he did. He was mumbling and groaning to himself, and every little jolt made him give a weak mutter. The jolts were growing more and more frequent now. Tip was as surefooted a horse as they came, but even she couldn’t ride smoothly over the broken ground that we were covering.

Then there were the times when he would go absolutely quiet, and automatically I would reach down with my right hand to feel for a pulse. Once or twice I halted just to be sure. Each time he was alive though – barely. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. But as the sun finally set I gave up. We weren’t going to reach a house and it was no good blundering about in the dark waiting for Tip to stumble and break her leg. I dumped the kid on the ground and set to work untacking and making a fire. My horse came first, then me, then the useless piece of luggage I’d picked up.

When I finally got around to him it was nearly dark, but his face was so pale it seemed to almost glow in the firelight. His forehead was creased, and he was muttering again. Delirious. I managed to get some water down him and used his neckerchief as a wet rag on his forehead. He was lucky there was a creek nearby or I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble.

There wasn’t a lot I could do for him. His shoulder had been dislocated, but I fixed that easily enough, and otherwise he only had bumps and bruises. I didn’t know how it was possible that he’d come out of that river with so little harm.

“Must have a good guardian angel.” I muttered. Hopefully for his sake it was still around. Either he would come out of this fever or he wouldn’t. In the meantime all I could do was huddle by the fire and wish that I hadn’t given him my blanket and my coat. Chances were he wouldn’t make it. I had no way of knowing how long he’d been laying by the river in the mid autumn chill, but judging by his fever it had probably been hours, maybe even overnight. And if he did die, it meant that I would have spent a night shivering for nothing.

“Zeke.”

I looked around. It was the first intelligible word he’d muttered so far. Which meant he was getting stronger. I still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

But I was curious.

“Zeke who?” I asked. I didn’t move from my spot. If he couldn’t hear me across the campfire that was his problem.

“Sullivan.” He jerked a little and nearly rolled into the fire. I sighed and got up to push him back over. Then I flipped him around so that the other side of his body could be close to the warmth too.

“Was it this Zeke Sullivan that pushed you into the river?” I asked. But whatever coherence he had had was gone, and he went on muttering to himself in words that I couldn’t understand. I sat back down and crossed my arms.