He hacked through the thickest branches with a hand axe from his saddle roll until his palm split and bled inside his gloves. He packed loose stone under the trunk, inch by inch, building himself leverage the same patient way he'd once seen his own father coax a stuck wagon wheel free of a Texas mud hole. He braced his boots wide, set his whole back and shoulders against a dead weight of cottonwood that did not want to move, and heaved until his vision swam at the edges, and still the log held. He rested only long enough to catch his breath, then went at it again, and the third time, the trunk finally groaned sideways far enough that she could drag her legs clear of it. She didn't cry out when she moved them.
She only lay still a long moment, breath ragged and shaking, testing whether anything underneath had broken before she let him help her sit up against the rock. Levi uncorked his canteen and held it out at arm's length, palm turned up, an offer rather than a demand. She drank slow and careful, watching him over the rim of it the whole time. The wary drinking of someone who had learned young not to trust easy comfort. When she finally lowered the canteen, a small, exhausted smile changed her whole face.
"Deian," she managed, her voice rough with dust and screaming. My name is Diani. Levi barely had time to answer before the drum of hooves rolled down off the canyon rim above. Six riders, then eight bows already half-drawn, closing off the ravines. One easy way out.
31 years of hard frontier lessons pressed Levi to reach for the pistol riding his hip. He didn't. The stillness in which Diani held herself was plainer than any words could have managed. proof enough that drawing a weapon here would be the worst mistake of his life. So instead, he came to his feet slow, both hands open and empty at his sides, and let whatever was coming. Diani moved first, fast and low.
A stream of words in a language. Levi couldn't follow a syllable of one hand raised toward the riders, and the other still braced against the rock where he just pulled her free. The lead rider's bow came down, then anothers, and anothers. Word passing horse to horse in a tongue. Levi didn't understand at all.