“Go Slow… It Hurts,” She Moaned—He Whispered, “I’ll Die Before I Hurt You” | Wild West Stories

Chapter 2

He lifted her onto the horse as if she weighed nothing.

She tensed, waiting for his hands to wander, for his body to press too close, for the inevitable moment when his kindness revealed itself as a mask. She had seen that mask before, on men in town, on her father after he had beaten her and then wept and promised it would never happen again.

But Joseph Running Elk — he gave her his name as they rode, his voice low and careful against the twilight — kept his hands where she could see them. Kept his body at a respectful distance. Kept his eyes on the horizon, scanning for threats, not on her.

“My mother was white,” he said, hours later, when they had stopped to rest the horse and the stars were beginning to pierce the darkening sky. “Taken in a raid when she was young.”

Sarah watched him build a fire, his movements economical and precise. She clutched the blanket around her, its warmth the only thing between her and the prairie cold.

“She chose to stay with my father’s people.”

The word hung in the air. *Chose.*

Sarah thought of all the things she had never chosen. Her dresses. Her future. Her husband. Her life.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

The question came out before she could stop it. She braced for anger, for him to drop the mask and show the face she knew was lurking underneath.

But Joseph Running Elk just looked at her, his expression unchanged. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out something small. The firelight caught it as he held it out to her.

A photograph. Worn at the edges, creased down the middle, but still visible. A woman in a white dress. Standing beside a Lakota man who looked younger, his arm around her shoulders. The woman was smiling. Not the tight, frozen smile Sarah knew from her own mother’s portrait. A real smile. A chosen smile.

“This is my mother,” he said. “Taken when she was sixteen. Rescued by my father’s hunting party when she was seventeen. Married to him when she was nineteen. By choice.”

Sarah stared at the photograph.

“Not all rescues end in cages,” Joseph said quietly. “Not all warriors are wolves.”

He put the photograph away. The fire crackled between them. Sarah noticed, for the first time, that the leather strips binding her feet were cut from a woman’s garment — she could see the faded beadwork along one edge, the careful stitching. Soft. Well-worn. Someone had worn this close to their skin for a long time.

“The bindings,” she whispered. “Whose were they?”

Joseph Running Elk’s hand stilled on the firewood. For a long moment, he said nothing.

The fire popped. An ember floated up into the darkness, and Sarah watched it, her heart beating too fast, her mind suddenly alive with questions she was afraid to ask.

“My wife’s,” he finally said. “She died four winters past. Her dress brings healing now.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. Her dress brings healing now.

Sarah looked down at her bound feet. At the careful, gentle wrapping that had saved her from infection and pain. At the hands of a dead woman, reaching across the divide of death, offering her care from a stranger.

And she wondered, for the first time, if she had stumbled into something far more complicated than rescue.