Who had put those ropes on her? Were they still close? Would they come looking for what they had lost? Tala's voice finally broke the silence. Chains.
The word came out low and heavy with pain. She touched one wrist, then lifted her fingers toward the bruises along her shoulder. That single word told Cal more than a full confession ever could. She had been bound. She had been hurt.
And whoever had done it had likely left her in the timber once they decided she would not live long enough to matter. Cal's jaw locked tight. During the war, he had known men capable of ugly things, deeds so rotten they could stain a man's soul long after the smoke cleared. He had sworn long ago he would never become one of them. He reached for a small tin of salve, tore a strip from a clean bandage, and sat carefully on the edge of the bed.
Tala stiffened the moment his hand moved toward her arm. "I'm only cleaning the wounds," Cal said, his voice quiet and steady. Her dark eyes searched his face. For several seconds, she watched him as though weighing every breath, every movement. Then, little by little, the tension eased from her arm.
Cal cleaned the torn skin as gently as he could, spread salve over the raw marks, then wrapped the wrist with fresh cloth. She flinched once, only once, but she did not pull away. He treated the other wrist the same way. When he finished, Tala whispered several words in her own Apache tongue. Cal understood none of them.
Then she looked directly at him again. No. Kill me. Her voice was barely more than a broken whisper, but there was no mistaking what she meant. Cal leaned slightly closer, meeting her eyes with the same calm he carried into bad weather and worse trouble. I'm not here to hurt you.
Her breathing slowly began to settle. At last, she let herself sink back beneath the blanket. And for the first time since Rose Ransom died, Cal felt something inside him shift. He had not ridden into the timber that morning looking for a reason to change his life. Yet somehow, he had carried one home in his arms.
And whatever it cost him now, there was no taking that choice back. The cabin felt quiet in a way Cal had not known for years. It was no longer the same emptiness that used to claw at his chest after sundown. The silence felt different, fragile, watchful, filled with things neither of them knew how to say. Tala lay beneath the blanket with her eyes half closed, though she remained alert.
Even while resting, she watched him the way a hawk watches open ground from high above. Cal returned to the table and slowly worked his knife along the damp whetstone. The rough scrape of steel filled the room in a steady rhythm, almost like the beat of a heart. After a while, his gaze drifted into the fire. He saw Texas again.
Wide grasslands bending under the wind. The old oak where Rose Ransom rested beneath the earth. The little house he had abandoned after grief hollowed him out from the inside. For one brief moment, Rose's smile came back to him, bright as sunlight flashing across water. Then it vanished.
Cal forced the memory aside. Out on the frontier, a man who held too tightly to yesterday could let it drag him straight into the grave. But Tala was not yesterday. She was flesh and blood, scarred, bruised, breathing. And that meant trouble.
Beyond those log walls, the world had not stopped moving. Men who could put chains on a woman would not simply shrug and forget she was gone. They would come back. They would ride hard, and they would come with cold eyes and crueler hands. That was why Cal's rifle stayed propped against the wall within easy reach.