The summer of 1887 had turned the country around Dry Creek into a place where even the wind seemed tired.

For three months, the sky had refused to give the earth so much as a decent storm. The grass had faded from green to yellow, then from yellow to a brittle brown that cracked beneath a horse’s hoof. The creek that had once run beside Eli Carter’s ranch had become a crooked scar of dry mud and pale stones.

Eli had stopped expecting rain.

A man learned, after enough disappointments, that hope could become a kind of cruelty.

He had learned that lesson three years earlier.

Since then, he had lived alone on a small ranch nearly twenty miles from the nearest settlement. His cattle were few. His fences leaned. His barn needed repairs. The roof of his house had developed a permanent sag over the kitchen, and his vegetable garden had died twice in two summers.

Still, Eli kept working.

Every morning before sunrise, he saddled his old bay horse, checked the cattle, inspected the well, and walked the fence line. Every evening, he returned to the house, cooked enough food for one man, and sat on the porch until darkness swallowed the hills.

He rarely spoke to anyone.

There was no reason to.

The people in Dry Creek knew him as a quiet cowboy who had come from somewhere farther east and preferred being left alone. Some said he had once been married. Others claimed he had been a soldier. A few insisted he had killed a man and disappeared west to escape the law.

None of them knew the truth.

Eli had been married.

Her name had been Martha.

She had died during a harsh winter after a fever swept through the valley. Their little daughter, Rose, had survived only two days longer.

After burying them both beneath a cottonwood tree, Eli had sold almost everything he owned and ridden west.

He had not come to the frontier looking for adventure.

He had come because he needed somewhere his memories would have fewer places to follow him.

The land had been cheap because nobody wanted it.

The well was deep.

The soil was stubborn.

The nearest neighbors were miles away.

Perfect.

Or so he had thought.

On the afternoon when everything changed, Eli was repairing a section of fence near the northern edge of his property.

The sun hung low enough to cast long shadows across the dirt, but the heat remained brutal. He had already gone through two canteens and had started rationing the third.

He was driving a fence post into the ground when his horse suddenly lifted its head.

Eli stopped.

The horse stared toward the ridge.

Eli slowly reached for the rifle leaning against the fence.