Patricia Potter (5 page)

From his study, Alex saw his daughter’s back as she peered out the door.

And he had the terrible feeling he had just caught the wolverine’s tail.

L
OBO STARTED BACK
to his camping site, then looked up at the sky. It was still very early. Perhaps he could catch a glimpse of the Taylor woman on her way to school.

He’d seldom been curious about things that didn’t concern him and he’d halfway decided the woman no longer mattered. Nothing that Alex said had changed his mind about leaving. But something prodded him on, and that something pricked his insides like the porcupine quills used in Apache torture.

Willow Taylor was a teacher, a teacher who tried to run a ranch. A woman who inspired a powerful man like Newton to hire someone like him. A “good” woman who sheltered a whore, and a drunk, and orphaned children. What in the hell kind of woman was that?

Go, something powerful inside told him.

Stay, something equally as compelling said.

Instead, he found himself riding toward the hills that overlooked the road linking the Taylor ranch to town. He would take one look and then travel on. To hell with Newton.

He found the place he was seeking. He doubted whether he could be seen at this distance, especially half hidden as he was in the high grass.

Lobo didn’t have to wait long before he saw a buck-board approaching, the reins held by a slender woman in a blue dress. On the seat with her were two boys.

Much to his surprise, the woman didn’t wear a bonnet to cover her face, and her skin was lightly tanned and framed by wisps of dark auburn hair that was confined by a blue bow. She smiled at the boys next to her and threw back her head in laughter. A hot blast of wind caught the sound of warm amusement and carried it to Lobo. It was like none he’d heard before. Gentle, like spring rain. His hands tightened on the reins of his horse, and his knees drew the horse back until he blended into the high buffalo grass on the hill. He couldn’t see her eyes, and he wondered about their color. Blue probably, with that shade of hair. She managed the team with competence, and her body was straight and proud.

The buckboard disappeared in a cloud of dust and he continued to sit there, the woman’s sweet laughter echoing in his ears, the impression of beauty stamped on his mind. His heart twisted with confusion, with a kind of bewilderment that something had finally seemed to touch him, even as he realized it was something he could never have.

3

L
obo rode to the edge of the mountains.
It was near dusk when he stopped. He was fleeing for his life.

He had never run away from anything before. As the sun started its descent behind the mountains, he stopped to rest his horse alongside a stream. The horizon was a blend of soft colors that night, unlike the burning sky of the prior evening.

Soft and gentle. Like the woman’s voice that morning.

To rid himself of the remembered sound, he focused on bitter memories that reminded him of the folly of wanting, of caring, of protecting. He thought of another evening like this one, soft and quiet, that had exploded into fire and blood, a day so many years past, a day he had buried deep within himself.

The wagon train in which he was riding had stopped at sunset. The sky was golden brown, full of cinnamon, he’d told Timothy. He also remembered telling his brother it meant good weather the next day. He didn’t know whether it did or not, but the prediction made Timothy smile, and he’d been grateful for that. Timothy seldom smiled.

The Apache had chosen that moment to swoop down on the poorly guarded train, and there had been no time to fight back. Lobo and his older brother had watched their mother and father die, along with the other adults on the train. Only five children survived, and they were taken as slaves.

The boy Lobo had felt little else other than terror. He and his brother had been regularly beaten by their religiously fanatic father, and neither boy had ever received a kind touch or word from either of their parents. Lobo had been large and strong for his age, and he’d tried to protect and care for Timothy, even doing some of the older boy’s chores and shielding him from beatings, often taking them himself.

His harsh childhood, he realized later, had been good training for what came later. He had learned to protect himself from blows, from showing emotion, from sinking under the weight of unending labor and cruelty. It was why he survived and other children didn’t. His protection of Timothy, he felt, had also been his brother’s death warrant. Timothy couldn’t survive the pace and deprivation that was part of the Apache’s testing. And so Timothy was left alone in the desert to die.

And Lobo had never again allowed himself to feel or care for anyone again.

He finally gained the freedom he’d always coveted, and that had been enough. There was no laughter, no joy, no peace in him, and he’d never felt need for such elusive feelings. He considered them dangerous at best, for they kept the mind from the most important thing: survival.

Lobo watered his horse slowly, and thought about camping there before pushing on to Denver. He checked the two thousand dollars in his saddlebags and wondered what would Newton do.

Lobo had met men like him before, obsessed men. There had been the tone of madness in his voice, and Lobo had learned to be wary of that particular species. Men like himself, cold professionals, were easier to predict.

Would Newton really hire Canton if Lobo left?

Marsh Canton was very fast with a gun, perhaps even faster than he. Would Canton have the same reservations about children as he did? Never mind the woman. Lobo wouldn’t allow himself to think about her.

Lobo thought briefly about the boy at the Taylor ranch. He’d had the same cowlick his brother had, the same straw-colored hair, the same flash of hero-worship in his eyes, for God’s sake.

It was none of his business.

Unsaddle your horse,
he told himself.
Bed down for the night. Forget today and find another job.

The advice made a hell of a lotta sense.

You’ve never left a job unfinished.

To hell with Newton. And his goddamn job.

And Canton?

Let him do his worst. It’s not your business anymore.

You can still get them off the ranch. Without bloodshed.

Possibly.

And earn ten thousand dollars.

An honest streak kicked him in the gut. He didn’t care about the money. Not now. He hated to think, though, that he cared about anything else.

He sighed. But the decision was made. Tomorrow he would pay another visit, after school hours, on Miss Taylor. He would make it very plain that he, and others like him, were prepared to do whatever was necessary to force her from the land. He hoped like hell she’d believe him.

O
NCE MORE
L
OBO
surveyed the run-down ranch. It was late—suppertime he judged—and the woman should be home. As if to reassure him, a wisp of smoke curled upward from the chimney of the house.

He had spent the night in the mountains, half hoping the fresh air would brush away the idiotic decision he’d made the prior evening. But it hadn’t. Something drove him back to this same hill, the hill he’d watched from before. He had tried to plan what he would say. But he discarded one set of words after another. He had never been easy with them in any event. Chrissakes, he’d never had need of words. A look, a movement were usually enough.

Not that he had that many words to call upon. During his years with the Apache, he had never heard English spoken, and he hardly spoke with members of the tribe, even after he was reluctantly made a warrior. He’d had even less to say to those who had reviled him once he’d reentered the white world, the edges of it, anyway. He had started speaking with his gun and knife, and that had been sufficient.

But now words were needed, convincing words as well as threatening ones. Although he didn’t quite understand his newly discovered concern for someone other than himself, he did not want the woman with the soft laughter hurt, nor the boy with the straw-colored hair like his brother’s, or the small, chubby kid named Sallie Sue. And he had few doubts that Alex Newton would do whatever was necessary to drive them away.

So it was up to him to frighten them out. That was the best solution for everyone. The woman would have money, Alex would have the land, and he, Lobo, would have ten thousand dollars and could get the hell out of there.

He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering what it was about the scrubby ranch house or dying vegetable field that made the woman reluctant to sell. Most women would take the money and run.

Not that her reasons mattered.

Determined to end the matter, Lobo spurred his horse and trotted down the road toward the ranch.

He heard the roar of the bull, then the terrified yell of a boy. Christ, what now?

His knees pressed the pinto’s sides and the horse stretched into a gallop as another screech of pure terror came from the corral. His hand tightened on the reins when he saw that the bull had somehow escaped from the corral and, head lowered and horns aimed, it made directly toward the boy.

The boy darted away, and the animal barely missed him. It turned and began another attack. Lobo could use his pistol, but anger might spur the animal to continue charging after it was shot, if indeed he could even hit the small vital spot from atop a speeding horse.

Discarding that course of action, Lobo urged his pinto to run beside the bull and kicked his feet loose from the stirrups. He leapt from the horse onto the bull’s back, grabbing the animal’s horns and swinging his weight to force the bull off balance and down to the ground. Lobo twisted around a split second before the bull landed, escaping the animal’s weight but managing to hold the beast down. He had a matter of seconds, no more, before the bull recovered and struggled back up.

“Get to the fence,” Lobo yelled to the boy, moving once more to keep the bull off balance. He felt the great muscles under him strain to rise, to throw him aside as he saw the boy reach the fence and climb up.

Lobo whistled, and the pinto came within several feet of him. With a speed that bewildered both the bull and Chad, Lobo was up, his hand grabbing the saddle horn and his feet running alongside the horse. Then he swung up and the pinto stretched into a full gallop, quickly outrunning the mad bull.

When Lobo saw the bull head for open range, he turned his horse and trotted back to the corral.

The boy was shaking, and his face was full of awe.

“I ain’t never seen anyone do anything like that before,” he whispered in awe.

“You all right, boy?”

Chad looked down at himself. “I…I think so.”

There was so much doubt in the boy’s eyes despite the evidence of his wholeness that Lobo’s mouth twitched.

Chad visibly tried to control his shaking. “Old Ju-Ju-Jupiter misses Brady, I guess,” he said as Lobo studied him with frosty eyes.

Brady. Brady Thomas, Lobo recalled. The ex-sheriff.

Lobo took his eyes from the boy and looked over the rest of the ranch. A woman—Estelle—was halfway to the corral when she stopped, her shoulders slightly stooped, her glance on the boy, apparently reassuring herself he wasn’t hurt before she turned away. Lobo glowered at the boy with disapproval. “You and she here alone?”

The boy raised his chin. “I can take care of th-things….”

Lobo raised one eyebrow. “I see,” he said dryly.

The boy’s face flushed and he glanced down. “I’m…beholden to you…again,” he finally said. “But Willow’s gonna be mighty distressed about Jupiter.”

“Jupiter?”

“The bull.”

“What kind of name is that for a bull?”

The boy flushed again at the criticism.

“Don’t answer, boy,” Lobo said. It made about as much sense as Sallie Sue and Brunhilde and everything else on this place.

“Can you…I mean, will you help me fetch Jupiter?”

Lobo’s brows rose in disbelief. But the boy meant it. “No,” Lobo said flatly. “He’s dangerous. Let him go.”

“But he’s old, sort of a pet, and Willow—”

“A pet?” Lobo said in a very soft voice. If he had one ounce of the sense he attributed to himself, he would ride off and never come back. He looked out on the dry range beyond the fence, and saw the bull had stopped and was looking around as if bewildered.

He looked back at the boy, who was starting to climb down from the fence, a determined look on his face, as if he would go after the animal himself if Lobo didn’t help.

Lobo knew what he ought to do. He ought to ride out there and kill the damn animal, and tell the boy that’s what would happen to all of them if they didn’t get the hell off the ranch.

Yet he couldn’t. Something about the boy reminded him of the kid he’d once been. This one, too, had seen trouble. Lobo recognized it, like a brand, the first time he’d seen him.

Lobo reluctantly rode out to the bull and roped it. The bull obediently, even gratefully, followed him back and went into the corral.