The woman was already falling from the saddle when Caleb Ward saw her.
He had been standing beside the corral with a hammer in one hand and a mouthful of nails when the exhausted black mare appeared between two stands of mesquite. For several seconds Caleb thought the rider was simply leaning low against the animal’s neck to escape the afternoon wind.
Then one of her arms dropped.
The horse took three more uneven steps.
The woman slid sideways.
Caleb threw the hammer down and ran.
He reached her before she struck the hard ground completely, catching enough of her weight to turn the fall into something slower and less violent. She was lighter than he expected beneath the dusty buckskin clothing, though that might have been because half her strength had already left her.
Blood had soaked the cloth near her right shoulder.
Her long black hair hung loose across her face.
Caleb lowered her carefully.
“Can you hear me?”
Her eyes opened.
Dark.
Sharp.
Far more aware than he expected from someone barely conscious.
She looked at him.
Then at the revolver on his belt.
Her left hand moved beneath her clothing.
Caleb caught her wrist.
“No.”
She tried again.
Even half-dead she was fast.
Caleb found a small knife beneath the fold of her buckskin sleeve.
He removed it and set it several feet away.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
The woman stared at him.
Caleb realized immediately how useless that sentence was.
Men usually said it immediately before proving themselves liars.
He released her wrist.
“You can have the knife back when you can sit up without falling over.”
Her eyes remained on him.
“Horse.”
Her voice was weak.
Caleb looked toward the mare.
The animal stood with its head low, foam dried around the bit.
“I’ll water her.”
The woman grabbed his sleeve.
“Slow.”
He looked back.
She swallowed painfully.
“Not too much.”
Caleb nodded.
“You know horses.”
Her hand slipped away.
He carried her first.
That decision seemed to offend her even while unconscious.
She tried to resist when he lifted her.
“Easy.”
Her eyes opened again.
“No house.”
“You want to die beside my fence?”
She glared weakly.
“Maybe.”
“That can be arranged tomorrow.”
Caleb carried her toward the cabin.
His ranch sat alone on a wide stretch of southern Arizona Territory where the desert rolled into low mountains and every building looked temporary beneath the size of the sky. The house was timber rather than adobe, built fifteen years earlier by a mining company that abandoned the property when the nearest claim proved worthless.
Caleb bought the place for almost nothing.
The seller had called it isolated.
Caleb had considered that a feature.
His nearest neighbor was eight miles west.
The road to Wilcox lay eleven miles north.
Fort Grant was considerably farther.
Most days, Caleb heard more coyotes than human voices.
He had preferred it that way for six years.
Until a dying stranger arrived on his horse trail.
He laid the woman on the narrow bed in his spare room.
She woke when he cut the blood-stiffened cloth around the wound.
Her left hand shot toward his throat.
Caleb leaned away.
“I’m trying to see where the bullet went.”
Her eyes widened.
“You cut dress.”
“I can sew badly or apologize sincerely. Your choice.”
She looked down at the knife in his hand.
Caleb realized how the scene appeared.
He immediately set it on the table.
“Fair point.”
He stepped backward.
“You do it.”
She tried to sit.
Failed.
Her face went gray.
Caleb waited.
The woman looked at him.
Then away.
“Help.”
He nodded.
No victory.
No comment.
He moved carefully.
The bullet had struck high in the right shoulder and passed through. That was the first good thing he saw.
The wound looked ugly but not immediately fatal.
The blood loss concerned him more.
So did the heat in her skin.
Caleb had treated gunshot wounds before.
Too many.
He had spent three years hauling freight for army posts when he was younger, and freight wagons attracted accidents, thieves, frightened mules, drunken guards, and every other frontier method of making holes in people.
He cleaned the wound as best he could.
The woman clenched her jaw.
She did not cry out.
Caleb almost told her she was doing well.
He stopped himself.
She did not need praise from him for surviving pain.
He wrapped the shoulder.