He offered the water first. She watched the canteen, her gaze fixed on the movement of his throat as he swallowed to show her it was safe. He set it on the ground, just within her reach, and stepped back. Her hand trembled as she reached for it. She drank, spilling half of it, her body shaking with the effort.
When it was empty, she let it fall. Daniel knelt by the chain. "This will make noise," he said, mostly to himself. He set the file to the iron link. Every rasp of the metal made her jump.
It took him near 20 minutes, the sun beating on his back, the file hot in his hands. He worked steadily, his knuckles scraping against the wagon bed until the link finally gave way with a sharp snap. The chain fell away. She did not move. She just stared at the broken link, then at him as if she could not understand the concept of being free from it.
"Can you stand?" he asked. She said nothing. He wasn't even sure if she understood the words. He reached for her and she recoiled, pulling her knees to her chest. "All right," he said. sighing, "All right, I'm not I'm not them."
He stood up and turned his back to her, a deliberate show of non-aggression. He walked to his horse, rummaged in his bedroll, and came back with a strip of jerky in an old wool blanket. He set them down near her, well out of his own reach. He waited. He sat on a rock 20 feet away and watched the sun creep toward the western mesas.
It was a long time before she moved. First, she ate the jerky, tearing at it like a starved wolf. Then, slowly, painfully, she pulled herself to her feet, using the broken wagon wheel for support. She was small, thin as a willow switch, but she stood straight. She looked at him, then at the vast, empty desert around them.
There was nowhere to go. Daniel stood. "You come with me, you'll be safe. You stay here, you'll be dead by morning. Coyotes or the cold."
He mounted Sully. He waited, the buckskin shifting under him. He knew he should ride on. Taking her in was a fool's errand. It was borrowing a fight with every settler, every soldier, and the territory government itself.
He was a man who wanted only to be left alone, to nurse the wound that had never healed. He looked at her again at the high cheekbones and the dark almond shaped eyes. And he was not in the arroyo anymore. He was 5 years gone in a small cabin near TA watching his wife. Elara, her hand gripping his, her face pale with sweat.