Chapter 2

Thomas stood over Tina for several seconds without moving. The darkness seemed suddenly much larger than it had before, stretching in every direction beyond the small circle of ground where they had fallen, and the distant sounds of the wilderness made their situation feel even more desperate. The horse was gone, the trail was empty, and the last traces of hoofbeats were already fading into the night as though the animal had carried away with it the last possibility of an easy escape. Tina lay on her back with her face turned toward the stars, breathing through clenched teeth, while her left leg rested at an angle that no healthy leg should ever have assumed.

“Help me,” she repeated, and although the words were quiet, Thomas heard something in them that frightened him more than Tina’s pistol ever had. Until now she had always spoken to him as the person in control, the woman who had taken him from the stagecoach and decided where they would go, but there was something different in her voice now, something painfully close to helplessness. For the first time, she was asking rather than ordering, and Thomas suddenly understood that the woman who had seemed so dangerous only an hour earlier was now depending upon a ten-year-old boy.

Thomas swallowed hard and glanced toward the trail, as though the answer to their problem might somehow be waiting there. There was nothing except darkness, scattered rocks, sagebrush moving in the wind, and the faint tracks of the horse that had carried away their supplies. He looked back at Tina and forced himself to concentrate on the problem immediately in front of him.

“What do I do?”

Tina turned her head toward him. Her face was pale, and sweat had gathered along her forehead despite the cool night, but the expression in her eyes had already begun to change from helpless pain to the cold concentration that had made her dangerous. She had spent years learning how to remain calm when other people panicked, and now she was using that discipline to keep herself from thinking too deeply about the possibility that her leg might never be the same again.

“My boot.”

Thomas crouched beside her and looked at the leather boot covering the injured foot. He knew almost nothing about broken bones, but even he understood that the boot would have to come off before anything could be done. The trouble was that it looked as though removing it might be almost as painful as the fall itself.

“Take it off?”

“Yes.”

He reached for it and immediately discovered that the task was far more difficult than he had imagined. The leather had tightened around her swollen foot, and every attempt to move it sent another wave of pain through her leg, making the muscles in her thigh contract involuntarily. Tina gripped the ground with both hands, her fingers digging into the dirt, while Thomas tried to pull the boot free a little at a time.

“Slowly,” she whispered.

Thomas stopped for an instant and looked at her face. He could see that she was fighting not to cry out, and the sight made him even more frightened of making a mistake. He had seen her shoot a man without hesitation, yet now the simple act of removing a boot had reduced her to a woman trembling beneath his hands.

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

There was no anger in her voice now, only exhaustion and pain. Thomas loosened the laces as much as he could and worked his fingers beneath the leather, carefully easing the boot downward while trying not to disturb the injured foot. Tina’s breathing became faster, and for one moment she squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that tears escaped from the corners.

“Wait.”

Thomas froze. He did not move even a fraction, afraid that the slightest mistake would cause her more suffering. Somewhere in the distance a coyote called, and the sound drifted across the desert with an eerie loneliness that seemed to emphasize how completely abandoned they were.

Tina swallowed and took several slow breaths before finally opening her eyes.

“All right.”

Thomas pulled again. The boot came free with a sudden movement, and Tina cried out sharply before turning her face away from him. Thomas immediately dropped the boot beside him and stared at her, his own heart beating hard.

“I’m sorry.”

She did not answer at first. She lay with her eyes closed, breathing hard, while the muscles in her jaw slowly relaxed, and for a fleeting moment she remembered George complaining about his boots only hours earlier, laughing as he had pulled one off beside the campfire and tossed it toward her because he claimed she had packed the wrong size. The memory came without warning and was so vivid that for a moment she almost expected to hear his voice again, but there was only the wind and the sound of Thomas breathing beside her.

“Get the sock off.”

Thomas hesitated before reaching for it. He could see that the foot was already badly swollen, and the thought of pulling anything over it made him nervous. Tina saw his hesitation and gave him a tired look that contained both impatience and reassurance.

“Will it hurt?”

Tina looked at him for several seconds. She seemed almost amused by the question, though there was no real humor in her face.

“Everything hurts.”

He carefully pulled the sock from her foot. When it finally came free, Thomas stared at the leg and forgot for a moment how to breathe.

The lower part of Tina’s leg was no longer straight. The shin formed a disturbing curve beneath the skin, bending where the bone had broken so that the natural line from knee to ankle had become visibly distorted, and beneath the stretched skin a hard prominence could be seen dangerously close to the surface. The fragment seemed to push outward with every slight movement, and Thomas could not stop imagining what would happen if it broke through.

Thomas’s face went white. He looked from the crooked shin to Tina and then back again, as though hoping he had somehow misunderstood what he was seeing.

“Is that your bone?”

Tina followed his gaze and studied the injury with an expression that was strangely calm. She had already understood the seriousness of it, perhaps from the instant she had struck the ground, but saying it aloud made the reality more frightening.

“Yes.”

Thomas swallowed.

“It looks like it’s going to come through.”

“It might.”

She said it matter-of-factly, but the calmness was an act. Somewhere beneath that hard exterior was a woman who knew exactly how serious the injury was, and for the first time since she had been thrown from the horse, the thought of being helpless truly frightened her. She had always trusted her body to carry her through danger, and now that same body had suddenly become something she could not command.

Thomas looked lower.

Her heel was even worse. It had swollen dramatically and appeared almost flattened beneath the force of the fall, with dark bruising spreading around the back and sides. The ankle was tilted outward, while the heel itself seemed displaced beneath it. Her toes moved slightly, but the entire foot trembled with small involuntary movements that Tina could not control, each tiny tremor causing a fresh flicker of pain across her face.