The high desert wind carried the scent of blood and burnt powder long before Daniel Reed saw the wagon. It was a dry, scouring wind, the kind that came down from the Sangre de Cristo mountains in late October, promising a hard winter. He rode his horse, a solid buckskin geling named Sully, with the easy posture of a man who spent more time in the saddle than on his own two feet. He was not looking for trouble. He was checking his trap lines, but trouble was the primary crop of New Mexico territory.
He found the wreck in a shallow arroyo, 10 miles shy of the Santa Fe Trail. It was a missionary wagon, or had been. One wheel was splintered, the canvas cover was scorched and flapping, and the mules were dead in their traces, throats cut. Two men lay nearby, black, frocked, and pale, their eyes wide with the surprise of meeting their maker so violently. Bandits.
Apaches would have taken the mules. Daniel dismounted, rifle in hand, his gaze sweeping the rocks. Nothing moved. The raid was over. Hours old.
The bandits had been thorough, splitting open sacks of flour and beans, taking whatever ammunition and whiskey they could find. He nudged a body with his boot. The preacher, he'd seen him in town once, shouting about damnation and the heathen soul. A sound small and thin cut through the wind. A scraping like iron on stone.
He moved toward the back of the wagon, his steps quiet, and he saw her. She was chained to the rear axle. The chain was heavy, meant for livestock, and the iron cuff around her ankle was raw and bloody. She was Apache, young, maybe 18 or 19 years old. She wore the ragged remnants of a calico dress, but it was stiff with dried blood from a gash on her forehead.
She was barely conscious, her black hair matted with dirt, her lips cracked in white. When she saw his shadow fall over her, she flinched, a low sound of pure terror rattling in her chest. She tried to scramble backward, but the chain snapped her short, digging into her flesh. Daniel stopped. He lowered the rifle.
He saw the marks on her, the old bruises on her arms, the fresh terror in her eyes. The preacher had not been saving her soul. He had been using her or selling her. The bandits had either missed her or simply left her to die. He holstered the rifle and moved slowly, holding his hands up, palms out.
"Easy," he said. His voice was rough from disuse. "I'm not I won't hurt you." She stared at him, her eyes bottomless, taking in his worn union coat, the beard shadowing his jaw, the sadness he carried like a second skin. He went to his saddlebag and pulled out his canteen in a heavy file.
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.
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.