She had been mixed blood. Comanche and Irish, a woman who understood both the prairie and the parlor. He had loved her with a force that terrified him. He had lost her in that cabin, lost her and the child she was birthing, their daughter, who had taken one breath and then fallen silent. The Apache girl in the dirt had eyes.
Not the color, but the same look of a soul caught between two worlds belonging to neither. He was not a hero. He was not a good man. Not anymore. He was just a man haunted.
He could not save, but he could not ride away from her ghost. "Come on," he said, his voice softer. He held out his hand. She watched him for another full minute, then with halting painful steps, her bare feet bleeding on the stones. She walked to him.
She did not take his hand. She just stood beside the horse, waiting. Daniel leaned down, hooked an arm around her waist, and lifted her. She weighed almost nothing. He settled her in front of him on the saddle.
Her back pressed against his chest. She was rigid, a block of ice, trembling so hard he could feel it in his own bones. He wrapped the old blanket around her, tucked it tight, and turned Sully's head toward the mountains. "You're safe," he whispered to the wind, or perhaps to himself. "It's all right."
She did not make a sound the entire ride home. His homestead was high up, nestled in a small valley where the piñon pines gave way to aspen and spruce. It was isolated, a full day's ride from Santa Fe, and that was how he liked it. The cabin was sturdy, built of timber he had cut and hewn himself, with a stone chimney and a deep porch. A small barn and a fenced-in corral stood nearby.
It was a lonely place, a place to forget the world. He slid off the horse and reached up for her. She let him take her, her body pliant and cold. He carried her inside and set her down on the single chair by the cold hearth. The cabin was one room, a cot, a table, two chairs, a dry sink, and shelves of tins and books.
The air was stale, smelling of old smoke and male solitude. The girl's eyes darted everywhere. She looked at the locked rifle rack, the empty cot, the way the door bolted from the inside. She was a captive animal, measuring the dimensions of a new cage. "My name is Daniel," he said, striking a match and lighting the kindling in the fireplace.
"Daniel Reed." She said nothing. She watched the flames catch. "I need to clean that cut," he said. He went to the sink, poured water from the basin into a small pot, and set it on the hook over the fire to warm.