“Something that will help.”
“That's reassuring.”
“You can refuse.”
He drank.
It tasted terrible.
He coughed.
She looked almost pleased.
“Good,” she said. “You can still make noise.”
That was Nathaniel's first conversation with Ayana.
Over the next several days, she changed his bandages, brought him food, and ignored his increasingly elaborate complaints about the medicinal drinks she insisted he swallow.
He quickly discovered that she possessed a sharp intelligence and an even sharper tongue.
She did not flatter him.
She did not ask about his adventures.
And she showed absolutely no interest in the stories he offered about distant towns, cattle drives, or gamblers who had lost entire fortunes over a single hand of cards.
When he told her he had once ridden through a blizzard in Wyoming, she asked why he had been foolish enough to leave shelter.
When he described breaking a wild stallion, she asked whether the stallion had wanted to be broken.
When he boasted that he could identify any horse by the sound of its footsteps, she challenged him to distinguish two animals walking beyond the shelter.
He failed.
She smiled for the rest of the afternoon.
Nathaniel found himself looking forward to those smiles.
But there were things she would not discuss.
He learned that her mother had died.
That she had studied healing practices with her grandmother.
That the children trusted her.
And that she preferred the hills to the settlement.
Whenever he asked about her personal life, she found something else to do.
One afternoon, while she examined his healing wound, Nathaniel noticed the scar on her cheek.
He had noticed it before, of course.
But he had never asked.
“How'd you get that?”
Her fingers stopped moving.
“An accident.”
“Must've been a bad one.”
“It was.”
“Does it still hurt?”
She looked up sharply.
He realized she had expected a different question.
“No,” she said after a moment. “Not anymore.”
Nathaniel nodded.
“Good.”
She stared at him.
“That's all?”
“What else?”
“Most people want to know what happened.”
“Then they can ask.”
“You don't?”
He considered her question.
“Would knowing make you any different from the woman who keeps forcing bitter medicine down my throat?”
Ayana looked at him for several seconds.
Then she laughed.
It was a brief, surprised sound.
But Nathaniel thought it might have been the loveliest thing he had heard in years.
He did not tell her that.
Some truths were better allowed to grow quietly.
On the sixth evening, Tavish summoned him to the council fire.
And by the following morning, the entire settlement knew that the stranger had refused an arranged marriage while somehow managing not to reject the woman herself.
Ayana found Nathaniel repairing a broken fence beside the horse enclosure.
His shirt was open at the collar, and a fresh bandage showed beneath the fabric.
“You shouldn't be lifting that,” she said.
He looked up.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You'll tear the stitches.”
“Then I suppose you'll have to sew me back together.”
“I might use a dull needle.”
He grinned.
She did not.
“Why did you say those things last night?”
Nathaniel placed the fence rail against a post.
“Which things?”
“You know which.”
He wiped sweat from his forehead.
“I said quite a few things. Your father didn't seem especially fond of any of them.”
“You embarrassed him.”
“I know.”
“You embarrassed me.”
His smile disappeared.
“That wasn't my intention.”
“Everyone is talking.”
“People generally do.”
“They say you pitied me.”
Nathaniel leaned against the fence.
“Do you believe them?”
“I don't know what to believe.”
He studied her.
The morning sun caught the scar along her cheek, turning it faintly silver.
“Then believe this,” he said. “I don't know you well enough to pity you.”
She stiffened.
He continued before she could respond.
“I know you're stubborn. I know you're smarter than most men I've met. I know you're a better healer than the army surgeons who once tried to kill me with their treatment. And I know you have a habit of pretending you don't care what people think.”
Ayana crossed her arms.
“Anything else?”
“You make the worst tea in Arizona.”
“That tea saved your life.”
“Then my gratitude is complicated.”
Despite herself, she almost smiled.
Nathaniel's expression became serious.
“I also know that whatever happened before I arrived here, you don't owe me an explanation.”
She looked away.
“My father thinks I need a husband.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I need people to stop deciding what I need.”
“Seems reasonable.”
She turned back.
“You truly would leave if I asked?”
“Yes.”
“Even after everything my father said?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you owe us?”
Nathaniel straightened.
“A debt can be repaid with work. It shouldn't be repaid with someone's life.”
Ayana looked toward the mountains.
For years, marriage had become something discussed around her as though it were a bargain involving livestock or land.
Yet this stranger spoke of it as a choice.
She did not know what to do with that.
Finally, she said, “The eastern fence needs repairing too.”
Nathaniel glanced at the endless stretch of damaged wood.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
He sighed.
“Your people have a strange way of thanking guests.”
“You offered to work.”
“I did.”
She turned to leave.
After a few steps, she stopped.
“Nathaniel?”
“Yes?”
“Don't tear your stitches.”
Then she walked away.
He watched her go.
He was still smiling when he picked up the hammer.
The next three weeks changed the rhythm of the settlement.
Nathaniel repaired fences, mended saddles, strengthened the roof of the grain shed, and helped move cattle away from a dry wash before a storm.
He had spent most of his adult life working ranches across the West.
Hard labor was familiar.
What unsettled him was the feeling of being noticed.
People began greeting him by name.
Children followed him around with questions about horses.
An elderly man named Solan taught him how to repair a particular kind of woven pack saddle, then criticized his first attempt so thoroughly that Nathaniel nearly threw the thing into the fire.
Ayana laughed when she heard about it.
“You thought you knew everything about horses.”
“I know plenty about horses.”
“Apparently not their saddles.”
“Apparently not.”
Their conversations became longer.
Sometimes she brought lunch while he worked.
Sometimes he carried firewood to her shelter.
On quiet evenings, they sat near the river without speaking.
Nathaniel gradually learned that Ayana loved the smell of wet earth, disliked unnecessary noise, and could recognize more than sixty plants by touch.
She learned that he hated sleeping indoors during warm weather, disliked being thanked, and always checked the horizon when he heard an unfamiliar horse approaching.
That last habit troubled her.
One evening, she asked him about it.
“Who are you expecting?”
He looked toward the western ridge.
“No one.”
“You looked frightened.”
“I was careful.”
“Those are not always different things.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
Ayana placed a bundle of herbs beside her.
“You arrived here with a bullet wound. Someone shot you.”
“That's true.”
“Was it an accident?”
“No.”
“Were you being hunted?”
Nathaniel watched the river moving between the stones.
For a long time, he did not answer.
Finally, he said, “I worked for a man named Gideon Hargrove.”
Ayana knew the name.
Everyone in the valley did.
Hargrove owned one of the largest cattle operations in the territory. His ranches stretched across thousands of acres, and his influence reached judges, merchants, and territorial officials.
He wanted the land surrounding Red Willow Valley.
He had wanted it for years.
“What kind of work?” she asked.
“Ranch foreman.”