Then John noticed her wound. A bullet had grazed her left ribs, tearing through muscle and buckskin, while a deep knife slash marred her forearm. The wounds were infected, inflamed with a dark, angry purple hue that betrayed a fever burning wildly within her frame.
She was Apache. A Chiricahua woman.
John stood up, staring down at her as a cold wave of panic washed over him. The rules of the frontier were unwritten, cruel, and absolute. White settlers had no love for the Apache, and the Apache bore deep, bloody grudges against white men who trespassed on their ancestral lands. To touch her, to bring her into his home, was to invite total ruin. If the army found her at his ranch, they would hang him as a traitor or a renegade sympathizer. If her tribe found her with him, they might assume he had harmed her and skin him alive.
Leave her,a voice inside his head whispered. Step back on your horse, ride away, and pretend you never saw her. It’s not your fight.
John looked down at her small, trembling hand, which clutched a silver-and-turquoise amulet wrapped around her neck. Her chest rose in a shallow, agonizing gasp for air. She was someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister.
John closed his eyes and let out a long, heavy sigh. "Sarah wouldn't have let me leave a dog to die like this," he whispered to the empty desert.
Setting his Winchester aside, John knelt, slipped his arms under her small frame, and lifted her into his arms. She was shockingly light, her feverish heat radiating right through his denim shirt. He carried her to Rusty, managed to hoist her gently onto the saddle, and climbed up behind her, holding her limp body tightly against his chest as he turned his horse toward home.
The ride back to the Two Pinesranch felt agonizingly long. The afternoon heat pressed down like a heavy iron weight, and every step of Rusty’s trot elicited a faint, painful groan from the unconscious woman in John’s arms. He kept her head cradled against his shoulder, shading her face with his wide-brimmed Stetson as best he could.
When they finally reached the cabin, John dismounted carefully, carrying her inside and kicking the heavy oak door shut behind them. The interior of the cabin was cool and dim, smelling of cedar pine, old leather, and dried tobacco.
He laid her down on his own wooden bed—the only bed in the house—and immediately began to work.
First, he built a fire in the hearth to boil water. He fetched clean cotton cloths, a bottle of cheap whiskey he kept for medical emergencies, a tin of carbolic salve, and a small wooden box containing needle and thread.
Sitting beside the bed, John took his hunting knife and carefully cut away the ruined buckskin around her wounds. His hands, usually so suited for heavy farm work and pulling ropes, were remarkably gentle as he washed away the blood and desert grit.
When he poured a splash of whiskey over her open bullet wound to sanitize it, her body spasmed violently. Her eyes flew open.
John gasped, freezing in place.
Her eyes were not dark brown as he had expected, but a deep, mesmerizing obsidian, gleaming with intense fever and pure terror. She lunged upward, her slender fingers locking onto John’s throat with surprising strength born of wild survival instinct.
"Easy! Easy, girl!" John grunted, pulling her hands away from his neck without hurting her. "I ain't gonna hurt you! Buenos... no, wait...I'm helping you!"
She thritted against his grip, gasping in her native tongue—a language of sharp guttural clicks and soft vocal turns that John could not understand. Her gaze darted around the room, taking in the stone fireplace, the rifle hanging on the wall, the strange white man holding her arms.
"Look," John said softly, keeping his voice low and steady, the way he spoke to frightened horses. He picked up a clean wet cloth and slowly dabbed her burning forehead. "Look here. No gun. No knife. Just water."
She stared at him, her chest heaving as she fought the delirium sweeping through her brain. She looked into his grey eyes, searching for malice, deceit, or cruelty. Finding none, the tension slowly left her trembling muscles. Her eyelids grew heavy once more, and she collapsed back against the pillow, unconscious once again.