Slade’s expression darkened. A pain shot through his head as it always did when he thought of his brother. He rubbed hard at his temples. The cougar realized something was wrong. His ears pricked up, and he stopped purring.
Billy knew about the headaches Slade suffered because he couldn’t remember much that had happened after he and his brother ran away from Tucson when their father was killed by a gunslinger, Feral Sloan, eight years ago. Slade witnessed the gunfight, saw Sloan intentionally pick a fight with Jake Holt, Slade’s father.
Jake, one of a thousand prospectors, came west looking to strike it rich. He and a friend, Tom Wynhoff, were two of the lucky ones. They found gold twenty miles west of Tucson, a rich find. But their luck didn’t last, because others wanted that gold. Slade knew very little about it. His father had told him only that a man had approached him, wanting to buy the mine. Slade’s father had said no.
Soon after that, Tom Wynhoff was found dead in an alley, a lead ball in his chest. That same day, for no reason, Feral Sloan picked a fight with Jake and shot him dead in the street. Slade was standing ten feet away. Moments later, Sloan passed Slade and bragged to a friend on the street,easiest hundred dollars I ever earned.
Slade’s ten-year-old mind grasped that the gunfighter had been paid to shoot his father. The danger to him was made clear when an old man standing near Slade grabbed his arm and warned, “First old Tom, then Jake. You and your brother own that cursed mine now, Slade Holt, but you can bet you won’t live to see the profits. I seen it happen a hundred times, the no-good, lazy bastards who want what a man breaks his back finding, and kill to get it. You younguns are next. Get your brother quick and get the hell out of the county. Greedy men don’t stop at killing babies.”
Slade found his brother, and the two of them hightailed it northeast, away from the mine, away from Tucson, making for the mountains that stretched to the north. They were followed. Slade got a glimpse of Feral Sloan riding fast behind them before a bullet grazed his temple and he fell from his horse down a rocky incline. He remembered screaming before he passed out, but he remembered nothing else.
The rain woke him. He was alone, with no sign of his brother or his horse, and no tracks to follow. He later realized he should have stayed where he was in case his brother had gone for help after leading Sloan away from him. But he wasn’t thinking clearly, and he set off to look for his twin. Months later, he finally gave up. It had been a useless search, anyway, because he was afraid to go near towns in case the hired gunslinger found him or that nameless man who wanted him dead heard he was alive.
He learned to survive alone, to reach for manhood, when he would no longer be defenseless. He survived through desperation, learning by trial and error, roaming the regions from the Gila River as far south as an Apache mountain stronghold.
Strangely enough, the Indians never frightened him. They respected him for that and left him to share their domain. Slade feared and avoided all signs of white men. After two years without speaking to a single human, Slade was open to friendship when young Billy Wolf approached, six years ago.
They couldn’t speak to each other at first but gradually learned each other’s languages. Billy lived with his mother’s tribe then, and as they were nomads, long periods would pass between the times Billy and Slade saw each other.
Billy was the only one Slade ever let close to him besides Cactus Reed. Slade had found Reed in the Galiuro Mountains a little over two years ago. The man was half-dead, two bullets in him, claiming he and the fellow he rode with had had a slight disagreement and he’d lost the argument in a big way. Slade patched Cactus up. In return, Cactus taught Slade all he knew. He knew a great deal. The man was an ex-bountyhunter, a breed who lived by their guns and their courage, challenging killers.
Cactus turned out also to be a bit of a thief, for he took off one day while Slade was hunting, taking a dozen of the wild horses from Slade’s herd with him. Either he wasn’t a man who felt beholden to anyone, even someone who’d saved his life, or he felt he and Slade were even because of all he’d taught the young man.
Slade didn’t go after him. Wild mustangs were easy to come by, and he used them only to trade for what he needed, letting Billy take the rest out of the mountains to sell for cash. Over the years he had accumulated quite a stash of money from those horses, but it was money he’d had no use for—until now.
Billy Wolf was feeling sorry for himself. He knew that once Slade began his search he would probably never see him again. He had always known this day would come. He’d expected it last year, in fact, when Slade reached his full height, an intimidating six feet three. His vigorous life made him lean and muscular, and the hot Arizona sun made him as dark as an Indian. When Slade entered civilization again, Billy knew damn well the suspicious townsfolk would mistake him for a half-breed like himself. Slade had one thing on his side, though, and that was his sense of self-possession. Even his quiet manner was intimidating, despite his being only eighteen. And those brightly piercing eyes and finely chiseled features guaranteed him attention from women.
Billy grinned. “What will you do first, get your hair cut or have your first woman?”
Slade glanced up, but his expression gave nothing away. “I suppose the hair will have to come off first if I hope to find a woman who won’t run away screaming.”
“If you cut the hair and they don’t mistake you for a half-breed, you’ll have women fighting over you. Maybe you’d better leave your hair long to avoid that. You’ll have enough trouble. You do know what to do with a woman, don’t you?”
“I reckon it won’t be too difficult to manage,” Slade drawled, “being as how you showed me how it’s done when you and Little—”
“You didn’t!” Billy shouted, heat rushing up his neck. “Our camp was miles away when I…you mean you followed me back?”
“I was right behind you,” Slade said smoothly. “Walked right into your wickiup, and you didn’t even sense my presence. She did, though. She looked right at me and grinned. She never told you?”
“No, damn it!”
Slade frowned. “Are you really so embarrassed? Have I made you angry with me?”
“It was a private matter.”
“You’re right,” Slade conceded. “Yet I can’t regret it, my friend. It taught me more than I’d expected to learn.” He was thoughtfully silent. “It showed me that the man loses nearly all his natural instincts when he takes a woman. He becomes weak. But she doesn’t involve herself so fully, so she becomes the stronger.”
“Ha!” Billy was glad to be able to recover a little. “That’s not always the way it is, Slade. You saw me with my first woman, and I was clumsy and overeager. I have since learned how to make a woman mindless with passion. It is she who now loses control over herself, not I. But that takes a special technique, and time to learn.”
Slade weighed Billy’s words, debating whether he was lying to save face or telling the truth. He decided it was a little of both, but gave his friend the benefit of the doubt.
“You’ve mastered this technique? Every woman you have now falls under your power?”
“I’ve mastered it,” Billy bragged with extreme confidence, then pointed out quickly, “But hell, there are lots of women who don’t like it no matter what you do.” Billy didn’t reveal that in his short experience, those few women were the white whores he’d tried out in towns.
“It might be different for you though,” Billy continued. “White women take to half-breeds same as they do to full-blooded Apaches—which is not at all.”
“But how do I learn your technique?”
