"No need to know," she said, her voice soft like desert wind. "You only need to remember where the water came from."
Then Nihoni vanished into the morning mist, her tall figure blending into the red bronze earth. A few hours later, from a hilltop, Corbin saw a plume of smoke rising from where the Apache camp once stood. He understood: she had pulled him out of death and walked right back into it.
When Corbin opened his eyes, the morning light poured through the old wooden porch. He was lying beside the well where everything had begun. His wound had been bandaged with rough Apache cloth, dry and clean, like it had been cared for by someone's hands. There were no footprints around the well, only a single large handprint in dried blood on the stone by the water's edge, like a signature left by the wind.
Corbin looked around; the ranch was still and quiet. Only the old horse was grazing out in the yard. He tried to stand. Pain surged from his broken leg, sweat breaking across his brow, but deep in his chest was a different feeling: an emptiness, like he had lost something greater than life itself. He whispered her name, but the wind only gave back the sigh of the desert.
By noon, the sound of hoofbeats returned. The Federal Army rode in, blue flags fluttering, a cloud of dust rising with them. A gray-bearded captain rode at the front, his eyes cold as steel.
"Corbin Hail!" he barked. "Did you see an Apache camp around here?"
Corbin slowly shook his head. "Only sand and wind."
"They killed people up in the northern valley. If you know something and hide it, you will hang like a traitor."
Corbin said nothing. His eyes drifted to the bloodied handprint on the stone just for a second, but the captain caught it.
"What is that?"
"A mark from a wounded cow," Corbin answered, his voice strangely calm.