Disclaimer: CSI is not mine, just borrowing the characters...

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One

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Somewhere outside Vegas

Summer 1886

XX

Her body was on fire, complete and total fire as if someone had struck a match inside her body filled with gasoline. She struggled to catch her breath; leaning heavily against her horse as they walked. Standing as tall as she could, she peered around the rough terrain trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything. The only thing she was able to see was more and more desert. Wiping her hand across her brow, she heaved a breath which turned into a hacking cough against the dry, hot, stale air. Her dress clung to her uncomfortably as she mounted her horse once again.

What seemed like hours without water felt like days with the sun beaming down heavily upon her body. Her arms were red and peeling from three days of running, running from what she'd saw. Above her head, buzzards still circled waiting…only waiting.

Tripping over a rock, she stumbled as her legs fell from under her; face first in the sand she laid there. Images still playing in her head, images that she wished to banish; images that were starting to turn black. The last thing her vision caught before it blurred was the setting of the sun and maybe, just maybe, means to and end.

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The hollow knocks of hooves sounded as he trotted around the edge of the town, his nightly watch as always. Many a outlaw would camp out during the day and sneak into his town during the night. After his best deputy got killed, he learned to keep a clear eye on the outlining desert that was between his town and the nearest one. Kicking up his horse he continued his rounds until the moonlight caught something off in the distance, a flash of green and pale flesh. If there wasn't a full moon to guide him, he surely would have missed it.

Dismounting, he drew his gun just incase, then slowly made his way over to what his vision caught sight of…on the ground below was a woman, no more than at least thirty, passed out face first in the dirt. He moved her dark hair, replacing the gun in its holster, and felt for a pulse…it was there and extremely week, he was about to move his hand before he found it. Picking her up bridal style, he used his fingers to grab the reins from his horse and head back towards town. He hoped that he made it there in time to see Doc Robins.

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His eyes stung, his head hurt, and he felt like shit. He blinked to get his eyes to focus and had very little luck as real blurry shapes turned into fuzzy shapes. A hand went through his unruly hair to come back wet with remnants of blood. It would make sense seeing that there was a broken glass vase no more than three feet away, blood on the floor with it.

Slowly he rose from his lying position on the bed to a sitting one; memory coming back in bits and pieces, he remembered the burning of documents, a struggle, and then nothing but the ringing in his ears as all went black. She'd hit him, left him for dead, and got away.

Clambering around the messy room he found a piece of broken mirror and started slowly separating the sections of his dirty blond hair with his left hand, the gash was small, but deep. He'd live. Looking at the ashes on the floor, marriage license's all three of them, destroyed. It didn't matter; his stormy eyes connected with the ones in the mirror as he finished wiping the blood from his face, Sara Sidle had to die. She was his property and she'd either be with him or die.

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"You're lucky you found this poor woman when you did, Grissom. I suspect if you didn't, she'd be lost to the desert by now." Doc Robin's said to his long time friend. "She's still not out of the woods, however."

"How bad?"

"Well besides being out in the desert for an extended period of time, it looks to me like she was involved in quite a scuffle. Several contusions, a black eye, possible fractured ribs. I'd say it'd be a couple of weeks at the most; that and the scabbed over gunshot wound."

"Gunshot wound?"

"It was dark when you brought her in to me; I didn't notice myself until I turned her over." He moved her over to show Grissom her bandaged shoulder. "That was lucky too, it was close to getting infected."

"Blood loss?"

"The bullet stopped most of it, strangest thing I'd ever seen really."

"Mmm…"

"Watch her, you've got nothing pressing at the moment, Catherine's daughter has the flu." With those words, Doc walked out and made his way down the dirt street.