Corvin understood that look.
He had worn it himself.
“Water?” he asked.
The woman’s expression did not change.
Corvin returned to the well.
He filled a metal ladle.
Then, instead of walking closer, he crouched and placed it on a fence post between them.
He backed away.
“Water.”
The woman waited.
Long enough that Corvin wondered whether she understood him.
Then she reached for the ladle.
She drank once.
Stopped.
Breathed.
Drank again.
She did not gulp.
Did not spill.
Did not surrender to panic.
Even dying of thirst, she drank with discipline.
Corvin found himself impressed.
When she finished, she placed the ladle carefully back on the post.
“You need more.”
She shook her head.
Her first response.
Corvin nodded.
“Suit yourself.”
He started toward the barn.
Behind him came the sound of boots scraping dirt.
He turned.
The woman was standing.
Corvin’s eyebrows rose.
He was six feet tall.
She nearly met his eyes.
“You’re in no condition to walk.”
She ignored him.
Instead she studied his face.
Not gratefully.
Not suspiciously.
Carefully.
As though memorizing it.
Then her gaze moved beyond Corvin.
To his cabin.
Something changed in her expression.
Corvin noticed.
“What?”
The woman stared toward the porch.
More specifically, toward the weathered wooden beam above it.
A strange symbol had been carved into that beam many years before Corvin bought the ranch.
A circle split by three vertical lines.
He had never known what it meant.
The woman’s face drained of color.
She whispered something in Apache.
Corvin frowned.
“What did you say?”
She looked at him again.
This time there was something almost frightening in her eyes.
Recognition.
Then she turned north.
Corvin took one step after her.
“Wait.”
She kept walking.
“There are at least twenty miles of nothing that way.”
Still nothing.
“Lady, you collapse again and the buzzards are going to settle the argument.”
At that, she stopped.
Slowly, she looked back.
For the first time, something that might have been amusement touched the corner of her mouth.
Then she continued walking.
Corvin watched until the heat swallowed her.
He scratched his jaw.
“Well,” he muttered, “I suppose that’s the end of that.”
It wasn’t.
That night, as he always did, Corvin opened the leather ledger beside his bed.
He recorded cattle numbers.
Weather.
Fence damage.
Supplies.
Then he wrote:
Apache woman.
Injured.
Gave her water.
Walked north.
He stared at the sentence.
For reasons he could not explain, he added:
She recognized the mark above the porch.
Then he closed the ledger.
By sunrise, three hundred riders were waiting for him.
Corvin stepped down from the porch.
His Winchester remained inside.
If three hundred men intended to kill him, carrying one rifle would only insult their arithmetic.
He walked into the yard with his hands visible.
One rider descended from the eastern ridge.
An older man.
Gray streaked his long hair.
His back remained straight despite his age.
He wore no theatrical war paint, no dramatic headdress.
Only a dark shirt, worn leggings, a rifle scabbard, and the expression of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
He stopped fifty feet from Corvin.
