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twisted away. “I’ll get some more wood for the fire.”
    She nodded and sat back down next to her patient, studying his face once more. The lines appeared even deeper now, his face pasty. His breathing was shallow.
    Dear Lord, let him live, she pleaded silently.
    Thunder roared, lightning flashed just outside the window. She shivered, thinking how close he had come to lying out there in this weather. He would have been dead by morning, for sure.
    She rose, lit another kerosene lamp, and sat down next to him.
    She had done all she could do.
    She could only wait now. Wait and pray.

2
    The pain was so overpowering Wade wanted to sink back into oblivion.
    He wasn’t dead, he knew, unless hell was even worse than he’d imagined. But surely if he were burning in that place, as the preacher men always predicted, the agony wouldn’t be centered in his arm.
    He heard his own groan, then chanced opening his eyes. Closed them again. Then opened them. How in the hell had he gotten into a bed? He doubted whether such luxuries were standard in the netherworld.
    He tried to move, to see more of the dim room, but the pain was too great and he sank back, closing his eyes as he did so.
    Had he cheated death again, dammit? Why wouldn’t he let go?
    Something wet and rough, yet not unpleasant, nudged at him. He opened his eyes, and the earnest gaze of an animal that seemed part dog, part wolf met his directly. A great tongue hung out of one side of the mouth.
    Christ. A dream? A nightmare? A hound of hell?
    The tongue washed his cheek. He blinked, looking the animal over more carefully. Eager, inquisitive eyes stared back at him.
    Memories darted in and out of his mind. Pavel. His dog when he was fifteen …
    Pavel was the first thing he saw when he returned from town that hot day in July 1858. The body lay at the side of the road, still and bloody. Pavel always waited for him there at the crossroads, ever so patient, wanting only a word of welcome .
    Wade had not been Wade then. He had been a reckless boy named Brad Allen. His rebelliousness had delayed him that day; he’d sneaked a bottle of rotgut from the saloon on a dare from other boys, and they’d spent the afternoon drinking and telling unlikely tales. It had been nearly sunset before he arrived home with seed, knowing that he would be facing harsh words and digging fence holes the next day .
    But still, he was eager to reach home. The table would be laden with food, including an apple pie. It was his older brother’s birthday. Drew would be eighteen today .
    Perhaps that was why he’d lingered. He hated to admit it, but he was jealous of his brother, of his competence and the way his father trusted him so. He seemed satisfied with the small farm, not afflicted with Brad’s restlessness to see more of the world .
    Brad loved his family, his father who sometimes played the violin at night, his mother who was so quick with a hug , his sister, Maggie, who was thirteen and would soon be a woman herself. Already she was catching the eyes of the young men in their little corner of northwest Missouri. And he loved Drew, though he didn’t understand his brother’s reverence for the land .
    When he’d seen Pavel at the side of the rutted trail, Brad stopped and dismounted. He knelt at Pavel’s side, feeling for some sign of life, but there was none. The animal was cold, already stiffening. There were bullet wounds, many of them, and he let his hand linger for a moment on the large shaggy head before suddenly being seized with panic .
    He mounted his horse again and rode toward the small farmhouse, spurring his horse into a gallop. But there was no plain farmhouse awaiting him, no smoke curling wistfully from the chimney into the sky .
    The smoke instead was coming from blackened ruins of the house and barn. The fences had been torn down, and the horses were gone from the small corral. His eyes searched the trees that had