They rode off to the east, taking their time, like men who knew they'd made their point. I watched until they disappeared over the next ridge. Then I ran to the boy. He was unconscious when I reached him, 17, maybe 16, hard to tell.
He had long black hair matted with snow and blood, and his face was the color of ash. The wound in his shoulder was from a rifle round, entry hole in the back, exit through the front. Clean, at least. The bullet had passed through without hitting bone.
I got my arms under him and lifted. He didn't weigh much, lighter than the feed sacks I hauled twice a week. His head lolled against my chest, and I felt his breath, shallow and quick, against my neck. The walk back to the house took 20 minutes.
By the time I kicked open the door, my arms were shaking and my back screamed with every step. I laid him on the kitchen table and started cutting away his shirt. The wound was bad, but I'd seen worse. A lot worse.
My hands moved without thought, following patterns I'd learned 30 years ago in a different life. Boil water. Clean cloth. Whiskey for disinfecting, though I had precious little left, and every drop hurt to pour over torn flesh instead of down my throat.
I packed the wound with strips torn from an old sheet, wrapped it tight, and checked his pulse. Steady enough. His breathing evened out after a few minutes, and the gray color started to fade from his lips. While I worked, I noticed details.
His clothes were good quality, not the rags you'd expect from reservation Indians. Deerskin pants with careful beadwork along the seams. A silver pendant around his neck, shaped like an eagle. His hands had calluses in the places you get from handling reins and rope, not farm tools.
This wasn't some random Apache boy. This was someone's son, someone important. When I finished bandaging him, I carried him to the small bedroom at the back of the house, the room where my daughter used to sleep before the sickness took her. I laid him on the bed and covered him with two blankets.
Then I went back to the kitchen and sat down in the chair by the stove. My hands were shaking. Not from the cold. Not from the work.
From something else. Something I'd kept buried for five years and thought I'd never have to face again. On the wall above the kitchen table hung a single photograph in a cracked frame. A younger version of myself, clean-shaven and smiling, standing next to a woman with kind eyes and dark hair pulled back in a bun.
Two children sat in front of us. A boy, maybe nine years old, serious-faced and proud in his Sunday clothes. A girl, six, with ribbons in her hair and a gap-toothed grin. Emily. Daniel. Ruth.
All dead before their time. All buried in the plot behind the barn under three wooden crosses I'd carved myself because I couldn't afford stone markers. I'd come home from Fort Union to find them cold in their beds, the whole house reeking of sickness and death. The neighbors had done what they could, but influenza doesn't care about kindness or prayer.
It takes who it wants and leaves the survivors to count the cost. I looked at the boy sleeping in Ruth's old room, and I saw Daniel's face. Not in features. The Apache kid didn't look anything like my son.
But in the helplessness, the vulnerability, the simple fact of being young and hurt and alone. I couldn't save my own children. But maybe I could save this one. The rest of that day passed in a gray blur.
I checked on the boy every hour. His fever spiked once around sunset, and I had to strip off the blankets and sponge him down with cool water until it broke. He muttered in his sleep, words I couldn't understand, a language that sounded like water running over stones. Night fell hard and fast, the way it does in winter.
I lit the lamps and fed the stove and tried not to think about the three riders and where they might be. If they came back with more men, I didn't have much of a plan beyond the Winchester and the 12 rounds in my ammunition box. But they didn't come back. Not that night.
The boy woke up just after midnight. I was dozing in the chair by his bed when I heard him stir. His eyes opened, dark and confused, and he tried to sit up. I put a hand on his chest, gentle but firm.
"Easy. You've been shot. You need to rest."
He stared at me for a long moment, breathing hard. Then he said in clear English with only a slight accent, "Why did you help me?"
The question caught me off guard. "You needed help."
"I am Apache. You are white. We are enemies."
"You're a boy who was bleeding in my field. That's all that matters."