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THE COWBOY FOUND A FROZEN APACHE WOMAN IN THE BLIZZARD—THEN SHE SAW THE PHOTOGRAPH ON HIS WALL

Chapter 7

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She reached beneath her buckskin shirt, her fingers pulling a small leather thong out into the sunlight.Hanging from the thong was an almost identical silver pendant.Daniel noticed the movement. His gray eyes dropped to her neck, and his whole face went completely still.Slowly, with trembling fingers, Ayana held her silver pendant up beside the one in the old photograph.They were not merely similar. They were two halves of a single, ancient piece of craft—carved from the exact same silver coin, inlaid with the exact same blue turquoise stone from the southern hills.One crescent faced to the left. The other faced to the right.Made by a silversmith to fit together like two key teeth in a lock.Daniel looked from the silver pendant to Ayana’s pale, trembling face. His breath hitched in his throat, his eyes going wide with an absolute, breathtaking shock.Ayana’s fingers trembled so hard the silver clinked against her fingernails. She pointed a shaking finger at the woman in the faded photograph.Her voice was barely a whisper, thick with sudden tears:"That was my mother."

Daniel stopped breathing.The quiet cabin seemed to tilt on its foundation. He stared at the girl standing before him, then at the faded photograph in his hand, and then at the silver crescent moon resting against her palm."What did you say?" Daniel whispered, his voice raspy and shaking.Ayana touched the glass right over the woman's face. "That was my mother. Her name was Leona."Daniel sank slowly onto the nearest wooden stool, his knees suddenly weak, his eyes locked onto her face as if seeing a ghost emerge from the shadows of twenty years.For two decades, that faded oak frame had sat on his mantle—the only proof he had that the people who had saved him from the snow had ever existed at all. He had looked at those faces every winter night of his life, praying for them, wondering where they were, wishing he could thank the man who had carried a freezing white boy six miles through a blizzard."I never knew her name," Daniel said softly, his voice thick with an emotion he had buried twenty years ago."Leona," Ayana repeated, tears spilling over her long eyelashes, tracing clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "She died four winters ago during the great fever on the river. But she wore that silver moon until the day she passed."She pointed to the broad-shouldered man in the picture. "That was my uncle, Keme. He passed two years after her."Daniel closed his eyes for three long seconds.In his mind, the dark, broken memories of his thirteen-year-old self came rushing back with blinding clarity—the roaring heat of a small fire beneath a granite ledge; dark, calloused hands wrapping his frozen feet in warm deer hides; a deep, steady voice speaking soft words in a language he didn't understand, telling him to stay awake, telling him to live."You were there too?" Daniel asked, opening his eyes, looking up at her.Ayana shook her head gently. "Not yet. This photograph was taken two years before I was born."Her dark eyes moved to the tiny girl in the picture, wrapped in the wool blanket. "That is my older sister, Nita. She lives with our father now at the southern winter grounds."Daniel stared at the photograph, then at Ayana standing before his hearth."They saved my life," Daniel whispered.
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THE COWBOY FOUND A FROZEN APACHE WOMAN IN THE BLIZZARD—THEN SHE SAW THE PHOTOGRAPH ON HIS WALL

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