Apache Fire. Elizabeth Lane

black eyes flashed with sudden wariness. “Who’s in the house?”

      “Nobody who could do you any harm. Give me the gun.”

      He hesitated, then shook his head groggily. “Can’t trust you,” he mumbled. “Can’t trust anybody till your husband gives his word. Let’s go inside, Mrs. Colby.”

      Rose thought of her son, asleep in his cradle upstairs. Anxiety made her bold. “No,” she said.

      “No?” He glared at her, as if questioning her sanity.

      “Not until you give me the gun.”

      “From here, lady, I’d say you were in no position to argue.”

      “That’s where you’re wrong,” Rose retorted, masking her fear with ice. “You’re badly wounded, and I’m the only one who can help you. Shoot me, and you won’t last till morning.”

      He blinked, as if trying to clear some unseen darkness from his vision. His gun hand quivered. “Your husband—”

      “John died four months ago.” Rose thrust the truth hard into him like the point of a lance. She saw him slump, saw the resistance ebbing out of him. “Give me the pistol,” she said more gently. “Believe me, I’m all you’ve got.”

      His eyelids drooped, then, with effort, jerked upward again. The stranger had lost a great deal of blood, Rose surmised. It was all he could do to stay conscious. He did not even resist as she reached out, grasped the Peacemaker by its long barrel, lifted it from his hand and carefully released the hammer.

      “Come on,” she said, shoving the weapon into the knotted sash of her robe. “Let’s get you up those steps before you pass out.”

      Crouching close, she managed to work her shoulder under his right arm. His body was rank with sweat and blood, his clothes saturated with wood smoke. The blending odors ignited memories of death and terror in Rose’s mind, but she forced them aside. This man was too weak to fear, she reassured herself, even though every instinct whispered that she was wrong.

      “Help me,” she ordered, gathering her strength. “Now!”

      A grunt of agony exploded through his teeth as they lurched upward together. Rose staggered under his weight, fighting for balance as he struggled to get his footing. His body was as hard as ironwood, all bone and sinew through his clothes.

      “Can you make it up the steps?” She strained against him, her flesh hurting where his hand gripped her shoulder.

      “I’ll make it.” He gained the first step, then the second, biting back curses. She could feel his trembling heat along her side; she could feel the labored pounding of his heart.

      Something flashed through Rose’s memory—the image of a wounded coyote whelp she had once found in the brush, half-dead, its eyes still glinting with a desperate defiance. Hungering for something to nurture, Rose had begged John to let her take the wretched creature home and care for it, but he had drawn his pistol and shot it before her horrified eyes. “You’ve got no sense at all, woman,” he’d said. “A coyote’s a wild animal. First chance a varmint like that gets, it’ll turn on you for sure.”

       A wild animal

      The man at her side had that same hunted air about him, and no matter how he might be suffering or what he might tell her, Rose knew she could not afford to trust him.

      They had gained the porch. The stranger was reeling like a drunkard. It was all Rose could do to keep him upright. All the same, she forced herself to stop short of the door.

      “I’m not taking you under my roof until I know,” she declared, bracing her weight against his ribs. “Who are you? What did you want with my husband?”

      “Latigo.” He spoke with excruciating effort. “I knew your husband from the Apache wars. He said if I ever needed help…”

      The words trailed off as his knees buckled, then his body collapsed in Rose’s arms. She tried to hold him, but his weight was too much for her. His blood left a streak of crimson down the skirt of her dark blue wrapper as he slid to the porch, shuddered and lay still.

      Panic shrilled alarms in Rose’s head as she groped for his pulse. Reason argued that she and the baby would be safer if he died, but when her fingertips, searching along his jugular, found a weak but steady flutter, she broke into a sweat of relief. He was alive, but his life was trickling away with every heartbeat. There was no time to lose.

      Urgency, now, drove her to fling open the door and seize the stranger’s feet, one booted, one covered only in a half-disintegrated dark woolen sock. As she dragged him along the tiles toward the kitchen, Rose prayed silently that she would know what to do. She had nursed the cuts and sprains of the vaqueros and cared for John during those last terrible months when he lay barely aware of her, but she was no doctor.

      He groaned as she turned his body to slide it across the threshold into the kitchen where she kept water and medical supplies. “I know it hurts,” she muttered, “but I have to get you in here where I can work on you.” Rose shoved back the table to clear more space, then maneuvered him into position. She would have to dress his wound on the floor. Unless he could get up by himself, there was no way for her to lift him onto anything higher.

      Water. Yes, he would need all the fluids she could force down him. Rose darted to the counter and filled a pottery cup from the tall pewter pitcher. Moonlight etched ghostly windowpane squares across the tile as she crossed the kitchen and dropped to her knees beside him.

      The stranger—Latigo—moaned as she lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. His face was in shadow, so obscuring his features that she had to grope for his mouth. His skin was as smooth as new leather beneath her fingertips. An unexpected tenderness surged through her as she tipped the cup and pressed it to his cracked lips. “Drink,” she murmured. “Please—you’ve lost so much blood.”

      At first he did not respond. The water filled his mouth until Rose feared she would drown him. It trickled out of one corner to run down her sleeve as she tilted his head to keep him from choking. Please, she begged silently. Please.

      He sputtered weakly. Then she felt the ripple of his throat as he began to swallow. “Yes,” she whispered, tipping the cup higher to give him the last drops. “Yes, that’s it, drink it all.”

      She withdrew the cup, then hesitated, wondering whether she should get him more water. No, she swiftly concluded, too much at one time might make him sick, and she could wait no longer to stop the bleeding.

      “Latigo, can you hear me?”

      He made no sound.

      “Latigo!” Sick with dread, she seized his shoulder and shook it. Relief swept through her as he moaned incoherently.

      “I’ve got to clean out your wound. It’s going to hurt Do you want some whiskey?”

      Again he did not answer, and Rose realized she was wasting precious time. Leaving him where he lay, she scrambled to her feet and strode to the cupboard, where she rummaged for matches to light the lamp that Esperanza kept on the counter. By its flaring yellow light she filled a basin with water, then retrieved her medical kit, some clean rags and a bottle of John’s rye whiskey from the pantry. These she placed on the shadowed floor next to Latigo’s unconscious body. Then she rushed back to fetch the lamp from the counter.

      Light danced eerily off the open-beamed ceiling as she picked up the lamp. It glistened on hanging copper pots and flickered on strings of garlic and dark red chilies as she hurried across the kitchen. The tiles were smooth and cold beneath her bare feet.

      Latigo had not moved. He lay where she had left him, the agonized hiss of his breathing his only sign of life. Light pooled around his lanky frame as Rose bent down to set the lamp on the floor. It flooded his face, casting his features into stark relief—the tawny skin, the straight nose and sharp, high cheekbones, the long, square jaw, the broad forehead, crowned by hair as black as the wing of a