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Sam.
A grizzly got her.”
    The front screen slammed shut. Libby wiped her hands
on her apron as she hurried down the porch steps.
    “Where did she come from?” Samuel asked.
    I looked down at the thin girl in my arms. “You
wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
    “Well, she’s liable to bleed to death while you two
have your conversation,” Libby said. “Hand her down to your
brother, Cade, and let’s get her into the house.”
    Her long hair cascaded over my arm as her head
dropped back over my forearm. She stirred weakly as I reluctantly
handed her off to Samuel. “Be careful with her.”
    Samuel sneered back at me. “I’m not gonna drop her,
you idiot.” He strode back to the house with my fallen angel in his
arms, and I watched to make sure she was safely inside.
    Aunt Libby stared up at me with her customary raised
eyebrow. “Deputy Carson came up to the house.”
    “Yeah.”
    Jackson laughed. “Told you he’d come out here.”
    “Yeah, yeah. Now take your horse in and check his
feet. He looked lame on the ride home.”
    Libby and I watched Jackson ride to the barn.
    “Don’t always be so hard on him, Cade. We’re the only
family he’s got and he looks up to you.” She glanced back toward
the barn and chuckled. “No idea why— but he does.”
    “Libby, only you can hand out a compliment and follow
it with an insult without taking a breath.”
    “Not true. I took a breath and even had time to
laugh.” Her expression darkened. “Carson was madder than a wolf
without supper. I gather it was that ninny, Candy, who had him in a
lather. I told him he should find some real criminals to chase and
leave you alone. But you need to watch yourself, Cade.”
    “I always do.” I looked toward the house hoping she
would get the message and hurry in to her patient.
    The frown that appeared whenever she sensed trouble
pulled at her mouth. She put her hand on River’s shoulder. “Cade,
you better ride to town and get Doc Walker. The girl looks real
bad. Far worse than anything I can tend to. Besides, Doc might know
who she is so we can tell her family.”
    They were not the words I wanted to hear. “I’ll head
into town right now.”
    ***
    Samuel’s wife Charlotte was boiling some white linen
strips in a soup kettle when I walked in with Doc Walker. She
glanced up from her task.
    “You’d better hurry. Libby says if she doesn’t get
stitched up soon she won’t have any more blood to lose. And a
little thing like her can’t have too much of it.”
    “Are you gonna keep talking or are you going to tell
us where she is,” I said.
    She sneered back at me but that was usual for her.
Even in a good mood. “She’s in the spare room.”
    I led the doctor to the back room and pushed open the
door. The heavy black skirt, blood-soaked blouse, and corset she’d
worn were draped over a chair. Thin bare white shoulders poked out
from the sheet. Libby had wrapped her wounds with linen strips but
a pink stain was already showing through the cotton sheet.
    Libby looked up from the girl. “She’s going to need
stitching. She was wearing a rather primitive looking corset and I
think it may have saved her life. But that grizzly got her good.
I’ve already washed the wound with boiling water.”
    Doc Walker barely glanced at the girl before placing
his bag on a chair to dig for his implements. “I’ll need some of
the boiling water for my needle,” he said hastily. He glanced back
at me. “We’ll need you to hold her down, Cade. She looks
unconscious now but that could change, and I’d hate to have her
wake in the middle of me stitching her up.”
    I sat on the bed and looked down at her. She looked
small and lost and helpless lying so quietly in the big brass bed.
I could not stop myself from reaching up and touching the silken
skin of her shoulder. As bad off as she was, I was relieved to feel
warmth radiating from her bare skin.
    Libby got the linens ready and Doc Walker boiled
several needles. He