“You've been shot.”
The woman did not answer.
“Someone following you?”
Nothing.
Corvin sighed.
“Right. I guess we're not talking.”
A faint flicker crossed her expression.
Almost a smile.
He took a clean piece of cloth from his saddlebag.
“I can clean it.”
She stiffened.
Corvin immediately raised both hands.
“I won't touch you unless you let me.”
She studied him for several seconds.
Then slowly nodded.
He approached.
The wound was ugly but not fatal.
The bullet had grazed her rather than passing deeply into the shoulder.
Corvin cleaned the blood and wrapped the wound.
The woman endured everything without making a sound.
When he finished, she pushed herself upright.
Corvin stepped back.
She was taller than he expected.
Much taller.
Even weakened, she carried herself with a dignity that made him suddenly conscious of how dirty his own shirt was.
She looked at him.
Then at his left hand.
Corvin noticed her staring at the white scar across his palm.
His fingers closed instinctively.
“Old injury.”
She looked back at his face.
For a strange moment, Corvin felt as though she were searching for something inside his memory.
“You know me?” he asked.
The woman said nothing.
She took the canteen he offered her.
When their hands touched, she froze.
So did he.
Something passed between them.
Not fear.
Not gratitude.
Recognition.
Then she turned toward the northern hills.
“You shouldn't go that way,” Corvin warned.
She continued walking.
“There's nothing out there except rock and dry country.”
She kept walking.
Corvin watched until the desert swallowed her.
He stood there for several minutes.
Then he shook his head.
“That's that.”
It wasn't.
Not even close.
That evening, Corvin opened the old ledger his father had left behind.
The habit was nearly twenty years old.
Every night, his father had written down everything that happened on the ranch.
Rain.
Cattle.
Broken fences.
Visitors.
Strangers.
Corvin had continued the practice after his father's death.
He dipped his pen into the ink.
Apache woman found near western fence. Wounded. Severe dehydration. Gave water and treated shoulder wound.
He stopped.
The pen hovered over the page.
Something bothered him.
He added:
She seemed to recognize me.
Corvin stared at the sentence.
Then scratched it out.
“Ridiculous.”
He closed the book.
Outside, the desert had gone dark.
The horses were unusually restless.
Corvin stepped onto the porch.
The moon hung low over the mountains.
For a moment he saw a rider on the northern ridge.
Then another.
He blinked.
The ridge was empty.
He returned inside.
That night, he dreamed of fire.
He was nineteen again.
He was standing in a canyon.
Smoke filled the air.
Horses screamed.
A man shouted orders.
A child cried somewhere behind him.
Then came the words Corvin had spent nineteen years trying to forget.
“Leave no witnesses.”
He woke before dawn, sweating.
The horses were screaming.
Corvin grabbed his rifle and rushed outside.
Then he stopped.
The desert was full of riders.
They stood along the ridges.
On the eastern slope.
On the northern rise.
Near the dry creek.
More emerged from behind the rocks.
Ten.
Twenty.
Fifty.
Then more.
Corvin's stomach tightened.
By the time the sun began touching the mountains, he realized there were hundreds.
Two hundred.
Perhaps three.
He could not count them all.
Apache warriors surrounded the ranch.
Some carried rifles.