“I wish I knew your name, little fellow.” Emma Jane stroked his head as she laid him down and changed him. Mack had given her some old shirts to cut up and use for diapers. For an outlaw, Mack seemed like a pretty decent guy.
Satisfied the baby was comfortable, Emma Jane set him back in the crate, then moved it closer to where Jasper lay.
After untying him and removing the handkerchief from his mouth, she moistened one of the clean cloths. She wiped the dried blood on the side of his head. Fortunately, the wound itself seemed small, and as Emma Jane pressed the cloth to it, no fresh blood came out.
Jasper moaned. Emma Jane’s heart jumped and her breath caught. Was he waking up?
“Jasper?”
His eyelids fluttered open. “What happened?”
He struggled to get up, but Emma Jane stopped him. “Slowly. You took a nasty hit to the head, so you might be dizzy standing up.”
When they’d been trapped in the mine, some of it had caved in and knocked Emma Jane unconscious. From what she remembered of her recuperation, she’d been dizzy off and on for days afterward. Jasper would need to take it slowly, but from the gleam in his eyes, Emma Jane figured he wanted to do anything but.
“Where are we?” He looked around the cabin, almost frantic in his motions.
“Shh...calm down. We’re in the bandits’ cabin. You’re safe.”
“Safe?” Jasper’s head jerked up, then he pulled himself into a sitting position. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Just as quickly as he’d gotten up, he put his hand to his head. “Everything’s spinning.”
“You need to lie down and rest. There’s a pallet by the fire. Let me help you over there.”
He stumbled as he tried to stand, and from the way he grunted, Jasper seemed to realize the futility of not following Emma Jane’s instructions. She helped him balance, then led him to the pallet.
“I made some soup. We’ll see how you do with the broth, but your stomach might be upset.”
One more thing she remembered from her own head injury. As much as she’d wanted to eat, she’d struggled to keep things down for the first day or so.
“You made soup?” Jasper looked up at her as he sat on the pallet.
“It was all they had ingredients for.”
He continued to look at her with incredulity.
“Oh. You didn’t realize I could cook, did you?” Emma Jane smiled as she sat down beside him. “I suppose there isn’t much use for my cooking skills with all your help at the house, but when Father was in a bad place and we had to let the servants go, I ended up doing all the cooking.”
The infant began to fuss. “Let me get the baby, and we can finish talking.”
“Baby?”
“Oh.” Emma Jane continued toward the little boy. “I have much to catch you up on.”
She picked up the infant and held him up for Jasper to see before making her way to the rocker. “When I got here, the woman who’d been taking care of things was quite ill. No one was taking care of her poor little baby. The bandits were quite put out by the situation, so I pitched in to help.”
“You did what?” Jasper ran a hand over his face. “Emma Jane, these are bandits.”
“Bandits who are in a foul mood because they haven’t had a hot meal since their woman took sick. They said they were going to let me go as soon as they finished their last job. They’re going to Mexico when this is all over. They just need me out of the way for a while so I don’t go to the sheriff before they get the last job done.”
It sounded so much simpler when she explained it. Some of it, Emma Jane took a lot of pride in having figured out for herself.
“They told you that?”
Leave it to Jasper to sound annoyed with her when she’d done quite a good job, if she did say so herself. She’d been taking care of a sick woman, a baby, gotten supper ready and had done a little tidying in the cabin. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. And, while doing all that, she’d figured out what the bandits were up to.
“Of course not. But you’d be amazed at what people will say in front of you when they think you’re stupid. And me being a woman, in their minds, I’m a complete idiot.”
Jasper let out a long sigh. “Emma Jane, they are not going to let us live. You know their plan, and I know where their hideout is.”
“No, you don’t.” Emma Jane stared at him. “They knocked you out. You were unconscious the whole way here.”
“But I’m sure, from our surroundings, I can figure it out pretty quickly. Once we find our way back to town, it will be easy enough for me to gather a posse and return.”
Now who was the simple one? Emma Jane shook her head. “And how do you propose we get back to town?”
She pointed out the window. “Do you know how many men are out there? You’ve seen three. I’ve counted at least a dozen, and all of them are armed. They told me that if I cooperate, they’ll let me live. But if I try to escape, I’m dead. Even with you here, what chance do the two of us have with a sick woman and a baby against that many men?”
“What do the sick woman and baby have to do with us getting out of here?”
The infant fussed slightly, bringing Emma Jane’s attention to him rather than the incorrigible man sitting on the pallet. Otherwise, she might have lost her temper. But this gave her the opportunity to collect her thoughts, take a deep breath and look him in the eye.
“We can’t leave them here.”
Jasper let out an exasperated sigh. “I know you like to help others, but this woman and her baby are with the bandits. They...”
“You
