Wade Harland pulled on his hat, took his rifle from the wall, and saddled his horse. He had no clear idea what waited for him beyond the ranch. He knew only one thing. He could not leave a beaten, wounded woman alone in that merciless stretch of desert. Long ago, Wade had stopped believing he could save anyone.
But the trail left behind by that young woman, and the stubborn courage he had seen in her eyes, had stirred something buried deep inside him. He swung into the saddle and urged his horse toward the dangerous canyon known as Devil's Backbone. For years, the silence inside Wade Harland's cabin had been his shelter, an invisible wall between him and the rest of the world. That night, the wall shattered. A quick, fevered breath filled the room as though the desert itself had followed him home.
The sound was faint, but to Wade, it carried more weight than artillery thunder. Every uneven breath dragged old memories from places he had spent 15 years trying to seal shut. For all those years, he had taught himself how to live alone. Now a stranger lay in the only bed he owned, burning with fever, and solitude was no longer entirely his choice. He had found Cella in Devil's Backbone after the last light had vanished from the canyon.
She was unconscious between two massive rocks, half hidden beneath shadow. Her torn blouse was stre with dust and blood. The wound on her shoulder, the same place where Dee Vance had driven his boot into her, had swollen badly. The skin around it was angry and hot. Infection had already begun to set in.
Wade had lifted her carefully from the ground. The heat pouring from her body frightened him more than he cared to admit. She was lighter than he expected, almost frighteningly so, yet even unconscious, she seemed to cling to life with a stubbornness that refused to surrender. His hands had once bound the wounds of hundreds of soldiers. Those same rough, scarred hands now carried a woman he barely knew, as gently as if one careless movement might break something sacred.
When he reached the ranch, Wade laid Cella carefully across the bed. Fire light moved across her face. It warmed the brown tone of her Apache skin, caught the strong line of her cheekbones and softened the long dark lashes resting against her cheeks. Even wounded, she carried a fierce kind of beauty, not fragile, not polished. She reminded Wade of a cactus blossom pushing through stone and sunscorched earth, something alive where nothing should have survived.
He gathered what herbs he still kept in the cabin and prepared a pus using a remedy Clara Boon had taught him during the war years. With warm water and a clean cloth, he began washing the wound. Each time the cloth touched Cella's shoulder, her breathing changed. Sharp, uneven pain moved across her face, even though she remained unconscious. The bitter smell of the medicine mixed with sage, smoke, and the dry earth caught in her dark hair.
It was an odd combination, but somehow it made the small cabin feel safer than it had in years. When Cella finally opened her eyes, she reacted instantly. Her dark gaze swept across the room with the speed of someone who had learned never to wake without first finding an escape. The door, the window, the fireplace. Wade.
Every corner was measured. Even the way she drew her injured arm closer to herself told him she was prepared to fight if she had to. She said nothing. She did not cry. She did not beg.