Patricia Potter Read Free Page B

young…like the small girl…
    When he allowed himself to think about it, he knew those feelings reached back to when he had been only seven and the Apaches raided the wagon train. He remembered the agonized cries of the adults as they were killed, and those of children too young to travel. Imbedded in his mind were the sobs of the survivors, the children taken as slaves, the way they weakened day by day until only he and his brother survived. And then his brother, broken by lack of food, by exhaustion, by fear, gave up too, and had been left in the desert to die. Lobo would never forget his brother’s terrified cries for him.
    Lobo had tried to stay with him, but he had been roughly pulled away by a brave who tied a rope around his waist and dragged him behind a horse until he struggled to his feet. Every step he’d trudged for a mile, he heard his brother crying his name. He still heard that sound sometimes in the night. He’d heard it today when the child fell in the well.
    Damn Alex Newton. He would see the man in the morning and tell him exactly where he could stuff his job. And Lobo would keep the two thousand dollars. For his trouble.
    He settled down on the blankets, his head against his saddle, and watched. Sunsets were one of the few things that gave him pleasure, and more important, a sense of freedom that had been denied him as a boy and young man. Now he roamed where he wished, answering to no one, setting no rules for himself, no limits.
    He stretched, taking satisfaction in feeling each muscle respond. His body was whipcord lean through both conditioning and purpose. No one who lived with the Apaches had excess fat, especially a white slave. By the time he’d left them, he needed little food to survive, and could go days without water. He could run twenty miles without breathing hard, and could ride any horse. He could kill in a dozen ways and do it without regret.
    And while he hadn’t sought the reputation that had inevitably come to him, neither did he do anything to soften it. His reputation kept people away. Sometimes just his eyes, the icy-cold blue-green eyes, made them shiver and keep their distance.
    That was exactly the way he liked it.
    The fire in the sky was being doused now by the softer hues of twilight, and the scene lost its interest for Lobo.
    He turned over, but sleep wouldn’t come. He thought of the boy and his offer of cookies. Christ, wouldn’t the…teacher be horrified!

2
     
     
    “A nd he could make his horse do anything. You should have seen him.”
    “Slow down, Chad,” Willow said with a smile as Sullivan tended Sallie Sue’s scratches in the small bedroom Sallie Sue shared with Estelle.
    It was obvious Chad had a hero.
    Sullivan looked up, pronouncing Sallie Sue fine despite the harrowing experience. Then he turned to Chad. “What did he look like?”
    “Tall…taller than you, Dr. Sullivan,” Chad said. He’d endowed him with all the heroic features of the gods in Willow’s books. He’d also marveled at how the horse walked back and forth at the sound of words. “You think he’d teach me how to do that?”
    “Who is he?” Willow asked with some exasperation.
    Chad shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
    Sullivan tweaked one of Sallie Sue’s braids. “I’ll fix that well covering before I go. Where in the hell was Brady?”
    Chad shrugged again, and Willow was afraid of what that meant. She had hoped—
    Sullivan’s voice broke into her thoughts as he continued to question Chad. “Tell us more about this stranger.”
    Chad tried to remember, but he could recall only the whole, not the parts. The stranger had been too overwhelming in his entirety, but Chad tried. “Sort of sandy hair, sort of blue eyes…and tall,” he repeated.
    Willow raised an eyebrow at Sullivan. The stranger had had to be very tall indeed to make that kind of impression on the usually unimpressionable Chad. The boy had worked in a saloon since he was eight, and he had few illusions about