“The cowboy was just tending to the giant woman’s wounds…but his hand slipped where it DIDN’T go…” – thuytien

—That was also part of the healing, cowboy.
He withdrew his hand as if it were burning him.
—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…
Tala let out a laugh that made the stones tremble.
—Small men always have clumsy hands when they approach a large woman.
But there was no anger in his voice. There was something older than the desert.
Night fell quickly. They lit a campfire. The Texan shared his last of the dried beef and beans. Tala ate like three men. S
he told him that her tribe had been ambushed near the Dragon Mountains, that her father Nana had died covering their retreat, and that she, wounded, had walked for three days without water until she collapsed there.
“The Apaches are coming for me,” she said. “Mangas Coloradas, the young man, my fiancé, leaves no woman behind. But Colonel Terrazas’s soldiers and Governor Torres’s rural police are coming too. If they find me with you, they’ll kill you.”
The Texan looked at the stars.
“Let them come,” he said. “I’ve been dead since I killed that landowner.”
At that moment, a distant whinny was heard. Then another. Tala leaped to her feet despite her injured leg. Her height was terrifying in the moonlight.
“It’s them,” he whispered, “my brothers.”
From the darkness emerged twelve Apache horsemen painted for war, lances and rifles slung over their shoulders. At the front stood a tall, proud young man with a scar across his chest: Mangas Coloradas.

When the young man saw Tala alive, he shouted with joy and jumped off his horse. He ran to her and hugged her like one hugs a mountain. Then he looked at the Texan with eyes that could kill.
“Who is this Mexican?” he asked in Apache.
—He saved me —Tala replied in the same language—. I owe him my life.
Mangas spat on the ground.
—The Mexicans killed my father, Victorio, and Losen. People die every day from their bullets.
The Texan didn’t understand the words, but he understood the tone. He put his hand on the butt of his revolver.
Tala stood between the two men, gigantic.
“Listen to me, Mangas. This man isn’t like the others. He fights against the rural police just as much as we do.
And besides”—he lowered his voice—”his hand healed more than my leg.”
Mangas frowned. The other warriors murmured.
At that moment, from the other side of the hill, the sound everyone feared was heard: a military bugle. Then distant gunshots.
“The Blues!” shouted an Apache.
The makeshift camp descended into chaos. The Apaches mounted quickly. Mangas grabbed Tala by the arm.
—Come, woman, we will fight together as always.
But Tala looked at the Texan. Something had changed in his eyes.
“No,” he said, “I’m staying. This man and I have a debt to pay.”
Mangas looked at her as if she had been stabbed with a knife.
—Would you choose to stay with a Mexican rather than with your own people?
“My people are where my heart is,” she replied, and her voice trembled for the first time.
The Texan didn’t understand everything, but he understood enough. He took a step forward.
“I’ll ride with you,” he said in Spanish. “If she stays, I’ll go. If she goes, I’ll go. But I won’t leave her alone again.”
Mangas raised his rifle. For a second it seemed he was going to kill him right there.
Then Tala put his enormous hand over the barrel and lowered it.
—Let him live, Mangas, or kill me first.
The silence was louder than any scream. Suddenly, the lights of soldiers’ flashlights appeared from the hill. There were more than fifty Mexican rural police and American soldiers together, allied for once against the Apaches.