“What happened?”
Mara looked down at the two babies nursing against her.
“My husband found out I was leaving.”
Harlan’s hand stilled.
“Did he shoot you?”
“No.” Her mouth twisted. “He told another man to do it. Men like Dorian Voss prefer clean gloves.”
The name changed the air in the room.
Dorian Voss.
Harlan knew that name. Every rancher in western Wyoming knew it. Voss owned cattle, judges, sheriffs, banks, and enough men with guns to make all of those things look legal. People called him a gentleman because he wore polished boots and spoke softly before ruining lives.
Harlan had another name for him.
Coward.
Mara saw recognition in his face.
“You know him.”
“I know of him.”
“Then you know he’ll come.”
Harlan poured whiskey into a tin cup. “For you?”
“For the wound. I need my head clear.”
“You should be in bed.”
“I should be in a house where my daughter is safe. We don’t always get what we should.”
The little girl against her chest made a tiny sound.
Mara bent her head and kissed the baby’s dark hair.
“This is Anna.”
Harlan looked at his son, finally quiet.
“Thomas.”
“Good strong name.”
“It was his grandfather’s.”
“Then his grandfather owes me a thank-you.”
This time, Harlan did smile.
It disappeared when he cut away the torn sleeve.
The bullet had passed shallow but ugly, grazing flesh, leaving a wound that would fever if not cleaned. Mara watched his face.
“Don’t soften it for me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
He poured whiskey over the wound.
Mara’s body went rigid. Her fingers curled around the edge of the chair, but she did not cry out. Both babies startled. She hummed low in her throat until they settled again.
Harlan cleaned the wound. Packed it. Stitched it.
Mara stared at the fire the whole time.
Only when he tied the final knot did her breath break.
“If I don’t wake,” she said, “there’s a letter sewn into Anna’s blanket. Take her east to Sister Agnes in Cheyenne. Tell her Mara Blackwood kept her promise as long as she could.”
“You’ll wake.”
“If I don’t.”
“You’ll wake.”
Her eyes moved to his.
“You sound like a man who thinks orders work on death.”
Harlan looked toward Clara’s shawl on the chair.
“No,” he said. “I sound like a man who learned they don’t.”
Something in Mara’s face softened.
Then sleep took her.
The babies slept too, both full for the first time in what felt like forever.
Harlan did not sleep.
He sat through the night with the rifle across his knees and watched the firelight move over the stranger’s face. Mara Blackwood was not beautiful in the polished way men praised in parlors. She was windburned, large, bruised, strong-boned, and exhausted. Her hair had come loose from its pins. Her dress was torn. Her boots were cracked from walking through frozen country.
But in Harlan’s cabin, with his son breathing milk-warm beside her and her own child tucked under her good arm, she looked like a miracle that had dragged itself across the snow and refused to die at the door.
Near dawn, Thomas stirred.
Without waking, Mara shifted him closer and soothed him with a low murmur.
Harlan turned his face away.
He had thought his heart was finished.
Not broken. Finished.
Buried under the cottonwood with Clara.
But something moved inside him, painful and unwanted, like blood returning to a numb hand.
At sunrise, Mara opened her eyes.
“Am I dead?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“You’re already arguing.”
A faint smile touched her mouth.
Then she saw Thomas asleep against her and Anna curled beside him.
“Your boy eats like he’s mad at the world.”
“He has reason.”
“So do we all.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“How far is the road to Laramie?”
“Too far in this storm.”
“Good.”
“That won’t stop Voss forever.”
“No,” she said. “It will only make him angrier.”
Harlan handed her coffee.
She took it with her good hand.
“Why did you run now?”
Mara stared into the cup.
For a while, he thought she would not answer.
Then she said, “Because three nights ago Dorian held my daughter up in front of his friends and said a child from a woman my size would grow into a broodmare, not a lady.”
Harlan’s jaw tightened.
“He said he could raise her better if I wasn’t around to teach her shame.” Mara’s voice went flat. “Then he looked at me and laughed. ‘Too heavy to run, Mara. Too slow to hide. Too plain to be missed.’”
The cup trembled once in her hand.
“After he slept, I took Anna and left.”
“Alone?”
“My sister helped me.”
“Where is she?”
Mara looked toward the window.
The storm had begun to lift, leaving white silence beyond the glass.
“I don’t know.”
Harlan understood the shape of that answer and did not press.
By midmorning, Mara insisted on standing.
She lasted three seconds.
Harlan caught her before she hit the floor.
“I can work,” she snapped.
“You can sit.”