The first time Corvin Torne saw the woman, she was crawling across the desert with blood on her hands and a silver pendant clutched between her teeth.
It was late September of 1883, and the Arizona Territory had been suffering beneath a merciless drought. The grasslands surrounding Corvin’s ranch had turned the color of old bone, the creek had shrunk to a muddy ribbon, and the cattle wandered through the dust with their ribs showing beneath their hides.
Corvin had learned not to waste water, words, or sympathy on things he could not change.
At thirty-four, he had become the kind of man who measured his days by the condition of his fences and the number of cattle still breathing at sunset. He lived alone on a sprawling piece of land called Blackthorn Ranch, twenty miles from the nearest settlement. His house stood beside a cottonwood tree, its roof weathered by years of wind and its porch littered with the tools of a man who had never expected company.
There had once been three people living beneath that roof.
His mother had died when he was twelve. His father, Elias Torne, had disappeared two years later during a journey through the mountains. The sheriff had declared him dead after finding a bloodstained saddle near an abandoned trail.
Corvin had never found a body.
His uncle, Abram Torne, had raised him afterward, though the arrangement had been more practical than affectionate. Abram owned the neighboring ranch and had helped Corvin maintain Blackthorn until the boy was old enough to manage it himself.
Then, five years earlier, Abram had moved east to Tucson, leaving Corvin with a deed, a collection of unpaid debts, and a warning that the land was worth more than any man could understand.
Corvin had never asked what that meant.
He had been too busy surviving.
On the morning he found the woman, he was riding along the eastern boundary, checking a stretch of fence that had been damaged by a wandering steer. The sun had barely climbed above the mountains when his horse stopped abruptly.