The stranger was tall, perhaps thirty-five, with sun-darkened skin, a short brown beard, and storm-gray eyes beneath the brim of a battered hat. His buckskin coat looked old enough to have crossed half the continent.
Bellweather people later called him a mountain man because he had spent six winters trapping in Colorado before settling on a Kansas cattle spread.
His name was Caleb Boone.
At that moment Abby knew none of this.
She only knew that a man was approaching while she lay bloody in a torn wedding dress.
“Snake,” she whispered.
“I see it.”
Caleb picked up a stone.
He threw once.
The snake recoiled long enough for him to move between it and Abby.
“Can you stand?”
“I can manage.”
She tried.
Her knees folded.
Caleb caught her.
Abby pushed weakly against him.
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
His eyebrows drew together.
“What?”
“I’m heavy.”
For some reason that made him angry.
Not disgusted.
Angry.
“At the moment,” he said, “you’re bleeding.”
“I can walk.”
“You can’t stand.”
“I’ll slow you down.”
Caleb stared at her for a long second.
Then he slipped one arm behind her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.
Before Abby could protest, he lifted her.
Her breath caught.
Caleb grunted from the effort but did not drop her.
He climbed the slope slowly.
Abby felt tears sting her eyes.
She hated them.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you?”
Caleb kept climbing.
“Because I don’t pass a woman in trouble.”
Caleb Boone’s ranch house sat beneath a cottonwood ridge beside a spring-fed creek.
It was not grand.
Two bedrooms.
A kitchen.
A stone chimney.
A long porch.
But the moment Abby entered, she noticed something astonishing.
No one laughed.
Caleb’s ranch hand, an elderly Black man named Isaiah Freeman, glanced once at the ruined wedding gown and once at Caleb.
“Trouble?”
“Some.”
Isaiah looked at Abby.
“You hungry?”
She nearly cried.
“Yes.”
No questions.
No staring.
No jokes.
Just food.
Caleb heated water while Abby examined the cut in her arm.
It was deep but clean.
“I can stitch it,” she said.
Caleb looked skeptical.
“My mother was a midwife.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m angry.”
“That doesn’t steady hands.”
“It does mine.”
He handed her the needle.
She stitched the wound herself.
Caleb watched without speaking.
When she finished, he poured whiskey into a tin cup.
“For the pain.”
“I don’t drink.”
“You married?”
Abby stared at him.
Caleb glanced at the gown.
“Bad question.”
“I nearly did.”
“What happened?”
She looked at the whiskey.
“Changed my mind.”
Caleb clearly knew there was more.
He did not ask.
That silence was the first gift he gave her.
The second came the next morning.
Abby woke expecting embarrassment.
Instead she found a folded work dress outside her door.
It belonged to Isaiah’s late wife.
The waist was too small, so Abby altered it before breakfast.
