"Did you take it?" And Inola's steps faltered just for a breath. Then she answered. "Because my sister is sick." He stopped.
She nearly walked into him. "She hasn't eaten," Inola continued, words coming faster now. Urgency breaking through her careful restraint. She's been burning with fever for days. "We tried roots, water, rest.
Nothing stayed. I thought—" Her voice caught, and she swallowed hard. "I thought bread might." Ethan studied her face, looking for the familiar signs. Lies.
Manipulation. Desperation sharpened into cunning. He found desperation. Yes, but it was clean, undiluted. "You could have asked," he said.
She shook her head immediately. "They wouldn't listen." A pause, softer. "They never do." That landed harder than he expected.
Ethan looked out toward the open land beyond Dry Hollow, the pale stretch of San Simon Valley, shimmering in the distance. He had built his life out there to avoid conversations like this, to avoid choices. "I can't take you in," he said, though the words felt thin even as he spoke them. "I don't have much, and what I have," he stopped himself. Inola lifted her chin.
"I don't need much." Then after a beat, just help her. She wasn't begging. She was offering him the truth and letting him decide what to do with it. Ethan felt the old weight settle in his chest.
That familiar pull between walking away and standing still long enough for someone else's pain to become his problem. He had told himself for years that kindness was a luxury he couldn't afford. But the Wild West had a way of making liars out of careful men. "Where is she?" he asked. Inola's breath left her in a shaky rush.
Relief and fear tangled together. She pointed toward the low hills, toward a patch of land that promised nothing and delivered less. Ethan nodded once. "Come on," he said, already turning. Before the sun drops, and for the first time since Dry Hollow had learned her name, Inola followed someone, not because she had nowhere else to go, but because someone had chosen not to leave her behind.
San Simon Valley opened around them like a held breath finally released. The land was wide and spare. A shallow bowl of ochre soil and stubborn grass, broken only by low mesas and a thin ribbon of water that appeared in spring and vanished just as easily. To most men it looked like nothing worth keeping. To Ethan Cole, It was distant space enough to stay unseen and quiet enough to keep old thoughts from shouting too loudly.
They reached the ranch near dusk. It was little more than a weathered cabin with a single window, a lean corral, and a shed that leaned into the wind as if it had grown tired of standing straight. Smoke rose faintly from the chimney, carrying the clean, sharp scent of burning juniper. Ethan dismounted first and went still when he saw the shape lying just inside the shade of the shed. Nidita was curled on her side, too thin.