Elias Crow had spent so many years losing things that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to gain something.
He had lost his parents beneath the hard red earth of the frontier. He had lost his younger brother to a fever that arrived in the middle of winter and refused to leave. He had lost the family ranch when three years of drought turned the soil to dust and a banker's signature became more powerful than a lifetime of work.
By thirty-eight, Elias had learned not to become attached.
Not to places.
Not to people.
Not even to horses.
The last rule was the hardest to follow.
Ash was the exception.
She was a tall gray mare with a white mark running down the center of her forehead, one dark ear, and an attitude that had more than once saved Elias from making a foolish decision. He had bought her from a traveling trader five years earlier after discovering that the animal was considered too stubborn for most riders.
Elias had understood her immediately.
They were both stubborn.
They were both tired.
And neither of them trusted the world enough to surrender easily.
On the evening everything changed, Elias was riding west through a stretch of desert where even the coyotes had learned to conserve their voices.
The sun was dropping behind distant mesas, turning the sky copper and crimson. Wind dragged thin ribbons of dust across the trail. Elias had been riding since dawn, and his water supply was low.
He was thinking about finding shelter before dark when Ash suddenly slowed.
"Keep moving," Elias muttered.
The mare stopped.
"Ash."
She lowered her head.
Elias sighed.
"You always did have terrible timing."
Ash took two steps toward a cluster of rocks beside a dry wash.
That was when Elias saw the blood.
He immediately reached for his rifle.
The frontier had taught him that blood was rarely an invitation.
Sometimes it meant a wounded animal.
Sometimes a dead man.
And sometimes it meant someone was waiting for another person to come close enough to become the second body.
Elias dismounted.
He kept one hand near his rifle as he approached.
Then he saw her.
A young Apache woman lay partly hidden beneath a broken ledge of stone.
She was conscious, but barely.
An arrow wound cut deep into her side. Blood had soaked through the cloth around her waist and dried dark against her skin. Her black hair was tangled with dust. One hand was pressed against the wound.
Her eyes opened.
Elias expected fear.
Instead, he saw anger.
Not the anger of someone who hated him.
The anger of someone who refused to die.
Elias looked toward the horizon.