Chapter 3 - The Price of Bread
The standoff in the middle of Red Creek didn't end with gunfire. Men don't shoot in broad daylight over an Apache woman unless they've got nothing to lose, and Morrison had too much land, too many cattle, and too many local judges in his pocket to risk a street fight over a drifter.
Dutch held his position for three long heartbeats, his eyes darting to my hand, calculating the draw. But Morrison raised two fingers, checking his foreman with a flick of his wrist.
"Let him be, Dutch," Morrison said, though his eyes were cold as winter ice. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and contempt. "You want to play nursemaid to a stray? Be my guest. But when she steals your horse or robs your camp tonight, don't come crying to the land office for help. This valley doesn't feed people who don't belong."
With that, Morrison turned on his heel, his spurs jingling in a steady, rhythmic march back toward the shade of his porch. Dutch glared at me one last time before following his boss, spitting a brown stream of tobacco juice into the dust.
When the boardwalk boards stopped creaking under their boots, I exhaled slowly, realizing my hand had been clenched so tight my knuckles were white.
I turned back to the woman. She was watching me with those amber-flecked eyes, the canteen still clutched tightly in her hands.
"Can you stand?" I asked in Spanish.
She didn't answer with words. She pressed her palms against the hot adobe wall, drew a sharp breath through her nose, and pushed herself upward. Her legs wobbled like a newborn colt’s, but she locked her knees and managed to stay upright. She was proud—fiercely, quietly proud—in a way that made Morrison's petty tyranny look small.
"My name is Adam," I said, tapping my chest.
She stared at me for a moment, her chin lifting just an inch. "Zora," she said. Her voice was raspy, like dry leaves scraping across stone, but the Spanish was clear.
I didn't have a cabin in town; I had a canvas lean-to pitched three miles out near the creek, where I traded fence-mending for flour and bacon. Taking an Apache woman out there wouldn't sit well with the ranchers, and it certainly wouldn't sit well with Hooper or the blacksmith. But leaving her here on the main street after drawing a line against Morrison was a death sentence by neglect.
"Come on," I said, grabbing my gelding’s reins. "There's shade by the creek, and some salt pork if you can keep it down."
We didn't walk fast. Every step Zora took looked like an act of pure defiance against her own failing strength. People watched us from behind screen doors and dirty saloon windows—silhouettes of a town that preferred its tragedies kept out of sight. No one offered help. No one spoke.
By the time we reached the outskirts of town, the white glare of the sun had softened into a bruised, orange dusk that painted the dry hills of Red Creek in shades of copper and rust. I hoisted Zora up into the saddle, letting her take the gelding while I walked alongside the stirrup, holding the leather.
May you like
She didn't thank me. Survival on the frontier didn't leave much room for empty pleasantries. But as we reached the shelter of the cottonwoods by the creek, she looked down at me from the saddle, her gaze steady and appraising, as if she were trying to figure out what kind of fool would paint a target on his own back for a stranger.
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