Patricia Potter (11 page)

His eyes clouded. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Yes, I am, but I’m also right. Good night,” she added in a hurry, and quickly stepped down from the buggy. She didn’t want to hear any more, not now. She wanted to think. Alone.

“Willow…”

But his protest didn’t stop her. She got to the door and looked back, waving her hand, and disappeared inside the door, standing against it until she heard the buggy drive away.

The house was still, although an oil lamp sat on the kitchen table. Everyone was apparently asleep. She wondered if Brady had returned; she’d not looked at the corral to see whether Jupiter was there.

She opened the door again and went out to the corral. Jupiter was still missing.

“Oh, Brady,” she whispered. “Be safe.”

She walked back to the house, some of the lightness gone from her step. Her hand shook briefly on the doorknob. Was she right to stay? Or was she endangering everyone dear to her?

She thought of the dead man in the hotel, the gunfighter named Canton and the unseen yet menacing Lobo. And then that shadow was replaced by another, a man against the sun, a man with eyes like jewels.

Willow stiffened her back and went inside. She’d never given up before. She wouldn’t now.

T
HE OLD
A
PACHE
woman’s eyes were full of hate, her mouth twisted into a cruel smile as she tied the rope around the boy’s neck. It was a rope Lobo wore for the next six years.

Jess Martin. That had once been his name. Funny how he’d almost forgotten it.

During the days after his capture, army officers had asked him his name but he’d never told them. He’d allowed his questioners to believe he had forgotten. Jesse, as his brother called him, had died years ago. Lobo had no wish to recreate him.

He was Lobo, Apache warrior, white outcast. A wolf with all the characteristics of a wolf, except one. He had no desire to mate for life. He didn’t need anyone.

He had been grateful that day, years earlier, when Apache raiders had arrived at their village. His feet were torn and blistered, his legs aching, his throat parched, his stomach empty and cramping from lack of food.

He had been grateful until he was pushed into the old woman’s wickiup and made to understand that he now belonged to her, grateful until she had fastened the rope around his neck and pulled, showing him how she could so easily choke him if he showed any signs of disobedience.

That night, still without food, he was bound and leashed like a dog to a stake outside her wickiup. And that was the name given him by his new masters: Dog Boy.

He was less than that. The woman’s husband and son had been killed by white soldiers and she hated whites with all the tenacious strength in her old body.

The collar was cleverly fastened. It was a slipknot that could be tightened but not loosened. It was attached to a six-foot piece of rope, which was often in the old woman’s hand during the day and tied to the stake at night. He toiled in the fields with the women and did other women’s work cleaning game, tanning hides, and any demeaning task the woman could find. He was fed only enough to keep him alive, never enough to stop the ache in his belly.

The most degrading thing, though, was the rope. After months they stopped tying his hands and feet at night, merely attaching the rope to the stake. They knew he could take it off and escape, but part of the humiliation was their knowing he would not. He had seen what had happened to another slave, a Mexican woman who did try to escape. It was the kind of death he’d witnessed several times over the following years, enough times that he learned not to get sick. He’d been only eight the first time, and he had not had the courage to try the impossible. It didn’t take him long to discover it sometimes took more courage to stay alive.

The dreams wouldn’t go away. Lobo finally gave up any attempt at sleep. His hands and arm hurt like hell. Perhaps the pain in them, pain he had once known so well, brought back memories he didn’t want, images he’d thought he’d banished years before.

Lobo rose and walked to the river. He’d hated the Apache, yet he had become one of them. He’d become as fierce as any of them, and he’d almost died with them. He would have if a young army lieutenant hadn’t seen his blond hair and light-colored eyes the morning the soldiers burned their village.

He had been lying on the ground, two bullets in him, his right shoulder useless, when three soldiers approached him and he heard the cock of a pistol. He stared helplessly but defiantly at his would-be executioner as he heard the screams and wails from women and children, the last guttural cries of defiance from warriors.

“Christ, he’s white,” one of the soldiers said.

“So what?” Those words came from the man aiming very carefully at Lobo’s heart. “He’s a savage now.”

“You know orders. We’re to rescue any captives.”

“He don’t look like no captive to me.”

He’d understood the English words only with great concentration. In the past sixteen years he’d heard English spoken only by captives, and none of them lasted long. Still, enmity had a common language. He could feel hate radiating in the air.

“What’s going on?” It had been a new voice, one of authority, and Lobo’s gaze had moved to the newcomer. Behind the blue-clad officer, dawn was just reaching its first tentative rays of light over the Arizona mountains. Lobo could smell death everyplace, yet he saw life too, and he suddenly did not want to lose it. Still, he kept his eyes blank, his face impassive. He would not beg. He never had. He never would.

“A white man, sir,” said the soldier who had stopped the other man from shooting.

“He was fighting with ’em, Lieutenant,” argued the man with the cocked gun.

The officer looked down at Lobo. “Do you speak English?”

Lobo’s gaze rose again to the sunrise. The part of him that was Apache didn’t want to answer. Another part wanted to live.

He compromised. He nodded his head once, a barely perceptible movement.

The officer hesitated. Lobo knew what he was thinking. Wounded Indians had killed white soldiers before. And he, dressed in Apache clothes and with a face made hard and impassive by his life, must have seemed no different from other Apaches. Lobo was surprised when the officer spoke.

“Tie him securely and put him in one of the wagons.”

And so Lobo came into a hostile white world just as years earlier he’d gone into a hostile red one. And he belonged to neither.

He’d never cared before. He didn’t now, he told himself. Yet he couldn’t forget those gentle hands on his burns, and for the first time he knew regret for the life he had chosen, for the life that had chosen him.

L
OBO RODE INTO
Newton Monday. He passed by a small white building with a bell, and he knew that must be the school. His jaw clenched as he left it behind and found the general store.

He was wearing a brown shirt and well-worn denim pants. Without knowing exactly why, he had carefully unbuckled his gunbelt and placed it in his saddlebag.

His hands were still sore and bandaged. He had decided to visit the doctor and get some salve, and then purchase a pair of gloves and a new shirt. He needed the gloves if he was going to ride on.

He found the doctor’s office, but no one answered when he knocked, so he went to the general store.

There were several men at a counter, and he quickly discovered through overheard snatches of conversation that they were buying ammunition.

“You should have been there. I ain’t never seen anyone so fast. Yates never even got his gun free.”

“You say his name was Canton?”

“Yep. Old Gar hired him. Never thought I’d see the day Gar hired guns.”

“Well, Newton started it, sending for that renegade Indian.”

“Damn both of them. This used to be a right nice town. Now I won’t ’low Carrie to even come to town.”

One of the men turned and noticed Lobo, and the others saw their friend’s expression. One by one they turned and stared at the newcomer, eyes falling down to the man’s waist. There was a collective sigh of relief when they saw he didn’t wear a gunbelt. Hostile looks turned friendly, or at least neutral.

The storekeeper moved over toward him. “Anything I can do for you, Mister?”

“I was looking for the doctor.”

“He’s out delivering a baby,” the man said. “No telling when he’ll be back.”

Lobo ignored the stares he was getting. “Do you have any salve for burns, then?”

Six pairs of eyes went to his hands.

“Say, you wouldn’t be that fella that helped Willow Taylor, would ya?” one man said. News traveled fast in Newton. They all knew about the fire, all the details, in fact, and Dr. Barkley had been deviling them to help with a barn raising come next Saturday.

Christ, Lobo thought, wishing like hell he’d never come into town. “Burned them on a coffeepot,” he lied. “Now, about that salve. And some gloves and a shirt.”

Interest faded. The stranger, with the exception of the cold eyes, looked like any vagabond cowboy looking for a job. Didn’t even wear a gun.

The transaction was quickly completed. Lobo handed over the coins carefully, just like a man with few of them. He picked up his purchases, took a few steps and stopped, turning back.

“Heard you mention a man named Canton. Marsh Canton?”

One of the men reassessed the stranger. “You know him?” he asked carefully.

“Heard of him. What’s he doing here?”

“Killed a man Saturday night. I hear tell he’s come to go against another gunfighter named Lobo. You know him?”

“Heard tell.”

“Well, he better be good. Ain’t never seen anything like Canton.” The voice was full of awe. “Would be somethin’ to see, awright. Them two.”

“You staying around town, Mister?” another asked.

Lobo shrugged indifferently. “Where’s Canton now?”

“Gar Morrow’s place, I s’pose.”

Lobo nodded and left.

“Don’t say much, does he?” he heard a man behind him sputter.

“Wonder why he was interested in Canton. You don’t think…?”

“Hell, no. Didn’t even wear a gun. B’sides, Lobo’s part Indian, I heard tell. That one sure ain’t got no Indian blood.”

Lobo’s lips twisted into a half-smile as he mounted. There was something to be said for rumors. But what in the hell was Canton doing here?

He had always considered the possibility they might meet someday. The thought had never particularly bothered him.

Until now. For some fool reason, it did now. And he didn’t know why.

E
XCITEMENT SEEMED TO
hum in the classroom. Ethan was almost uncontrollable as he dunked a pigtail in an inkwell and threw spitballs at Robert.

The tension was also evident all over town. Ever since the shooting Saturday night, everyone waited to see what would happen next. Damning eyes, curious eyes, speculative eyes, all focused on Willow, who seemed to be the center of the storm.

After school she walked over to see Sullivan while the twins were cleaning the blackboards, but he was gone. She stood in front of his office, feeling strangely bereft. She badly needed someone to talk to.

She had hoped her stranger would have appeared the previous day. She had waited, but only Sullivan came, bringing a harness for Willow’s buckboard and horses. He had also gone in search of Brady and Jupiter, but both of them were still missing.

Willow had been filled with apprehension since she woke that morning. Her hand had trembled as she’d helped Estelle with breakfast, and she’d watched with unusual concern as Sallie Sue fed her small flock of chickens. Willow did not smile as she usually did when watching the child give special attention to the spoiled and ungrateful Brunhilde.

Everything seemed tranquil on the surface, but something ominous was brewing.

The feeling persisted throughout the school day, as if all hell, as Sullivan put it, was about to blow loose. Or maybe it was her intense disappointment that the stranger did not appear. She almost prayed for a catastrophe since that seemed the only time he materialized.

Some of the town’s apprehension was evident in the fact that nearly one third of her pupils didn’t appear for class. It had grown to nearly forty pupils, up from the fifteen when she’d first arrived. It had not been an easy battle to build that number.

In the first months she had vocally wondered why she had so many more boys than girls. It had been Betty MacIntyre who told her that most ranchers and farmers didn’t think it necessary that girls learn anything then-mothers couldn’t teach them.

Willow had spent the next eight weekends riding a rented horse from ranch to ranch, convincing parents to send their daughters to school.

That was how she had met Jake.

She had ridden by his place on a Saturday morning, and he was watering Jupiter. She was hot and tired, and saddle sore.

When she explained her purpose, he’d eyed her with interest and asked her inside. He didn’t have children, he said, but he wondered…

He’d stopped, but Willow had seen both the shame and longing in his eye, and she knew what it meant. She had seen it before. It wasn’t unusual for many adults to have never learned to read and write. Schools were few and far apart, and many families had just not seen a need for it.