He twitches his face away from her, startlin' away from her touch like a deer someone's flushed up out of a bush, standing still as a statue 'till there's a sound. His eyes won't meet hers, studyin' the feathers of a dead cock-robin fell next to him. They twitch in the wind, like he's still sleepin' and gonna wake up any time now.

"I ain't. Ain't funnin', Mizz Barlow." Called her Kate a minute ago but it's hard to know if he remembers, if he knows, can't rightly tell himself what's real and what's been happenin' in th'dreamworld of his head. "Y'gotta go." His eyes meet hers for just a moment, pleadin' for her t'understand. "Already took what ain't mine, I can't-"

Can't finish the sentence neither but she knows, he thinks, she knows damn well what he means. Can't risk takin' it again, hurtin' her more than he already has. His breath catches in his throat for a moment and he crushes his eyelids shut, hates how he feels like he just got off a three-day bender and don't know nothin', not where his feet is under him, not what's happenin', nothin'.

He starts t'stand, usin' th'tree mostly t'pull himself up, stayin' hunched as much as he can over th'wounds. Ain't for her t'see, not now. She ain't got no cause t'have t'see somethin' like that.

"Go on up t'your room." It's not quite an order, but it's close. He's gotten older, maybe, since he's gone away. "See someone. Y'tell 'em - tell 'em what happened."

He closes his eyes again, white-knuckled on the tree. His voice is low when he speaks again, and th'words scrape painfully deep inside of him. "Figure they might - wanna get a lawman."

He took somethin' weren't his. Coulda killed her. That's business for th'law, right there, and he ain't gonna run from it this time.