Silence.
The fire shifted.
Clara slowly rose.
She should have gone to bed.
Instead she crossed toward Samuel.
His blanket had slipped.
She pulled it higher.
Her hand paused over his.
Large.
Callused.
Scarred along two knuckles.
She hesitated.
Then touched it.
Samuel remained still.
Clara sat on the edge of the nearby stool.
For a few minutes she simply held the stranger’s hand.
Not because he needed it.
Because she did.
“You’d probably run if you knew what nonsense I just said.”
she whispered.
Samuel kept his eyes closed.
Clara gave a watery smile.
“Good thing you’re asleep.”
She released him.
Then went to the adjoining room.
Samuel opened his eyes again.
The cabin ceiling blurred.
He did not know whether from fever or emotion.
He stared toward the doorway where Clara had disappeared.
Nobody had prayed for Samuel Carter in seventeen years.
Not since his mother died.
Nobody had asked God to give him a reason to keep going.
Nobody had assumed loneliness beneath him without knowing anything about his life.
He had spent fifteen years making himself difficult to need.
And impossible to keep.
He worked cattle drives.
Freight routes.
Ranch jobs.
Sometimes hired protection.
Sometimes less respectable work when money ran low.
He owned a horse.
A saddle.
Two guns.
Three shirts.
One bedroll.
Nothing that could hold him.
That had been deliberate.
Attachments could be taken.
Samuel knew.
His older brother had been killed over a land debt.
His mother died the following winter.
His father drank himself into the ground.
Samuel learned young that anything loved deeply eventually became leverage against a man.
So he stopped providing leverage.
Then a woman he had known six hours knelt beside a table and asked God not to let him remain alone.
Samuel lay awake until dawn.
Clara rose before the sun.
She put coffee on.
Fed the stove.
Checked on her father.
Then entered the main room expecting Samuel to be sleeping.
The bed was empty.
Her stomach dropped.
The blanket lay folded.
His torn shirt was gone.
Clara hurried outside.
Samuel stood beside his horse tightening the saddle.
He wore his coat over the bandaged shoulder.
The morning sky was pale gold.
Frost covered the corral.
Clara walked toward him.
“You’re leaving.”
Samuel turned.
Something in his expression was different.
“Yes.”
“You can barely lift that arm.”
“It’ll work.”
“Samuel.”
He smiled faintly.
“You say my name like a warning.”
“It is one.”
He pulled the cinch.
Pain crossed his face.
Clara noticed.
“You should stay another day.”
“I’ve stayed longer than I intended.”
The sentence hurt more than it should have.
Clara looked down.
“Of course.”
Samuel watched her.
She turned toward the cabin.
He said:
“Clara.”
She stopped.
Samuel struggled with what came next.
He had faced armed men with less uncertainty.
“I heard you.”
Clara turned slowly.
“What?”
“Last night.”
The color disappeared from her face.
Samuel continued because stopping would make it worse.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
She stared.
“You…”