I can carry you or you can stay where you are." He paused, then glanced toward the northern timber. But if you stay, whoever set that trap is going to come back and check it." Ran stared through the pines where several days earlier he had found the abandoned fire ring and the tracks of unfamiliar horses. Those men might return before nightfall. He watched the young woman consider her choices. Her eyes moved toward the northern woods, then back to him.
She spoke a short sentence in Apache, hard and clipped, sharp enough in tone that Ran needed no translation to understand that she did not like any part of what was happening. Then she held out her arm. Ran took it. Together, slowly they began working their way down the mountain. His cabin was plain but solid.
Two rooms, a stone fireplace, a rope bed with a straw mattress, a rough plank table, and two chairs. That was nearly everything inside. Ran helped Aina through the doorway and settled her into the chair nearest the fire. Then he stepped outside to unsaddle the horse and put it away in the barn. By the time he returned, Aina had already removed the injured moccasin herself.
She was examining the ankle with both hands, pressing carefully along the bone with the practiced touch of someone who knew exactly what signs to look for. She glanced up at Ran and said something in Apache. The tone made one thing perfectly clear. Whatever she had said, she was not asking for his opinion. Ran set a pot of water over the fire and went to fetch his supply of clean cloth.
Among his few medicines was a small tin of comfrey salve he had gotten the previous winter from an Apache woman named Vea near Tucson. It was the real thing made properly from the plant itself, not the watered down patent medicine sold from cheap frontier remedy boxes. Ran placed the tin on the table within Aina's reach. Then he sat across from her. He looked at her.
She looked at him. Neither spoke. Aina cleaned the wound and wrapped the ankle herself. She worked carefully, methodically, never rushing, with the confidence of a woman who had treated injuries many times before. When she picked up the comfrey tin and smelled it, something almost invisible changed in her expression.
Not approval exactly, recognition. She knew what it was. She knew what it was for. After finishing the bandage, she leaned back in the chair and studied Ran. There was no gratitude in her expression, but there was no hostility either.
It was something more cautious than either of those things. She seemed to be measuring him again, quietly deciding what kind of man he was, and how much trust, if any, he had earned. Then she said a single word. Ran did not understand it. He touched his chest.
Ran. She watched the gesture. Then she placed a hand against her own chest. Aina. Ran repeated the name quietly.