“You found him there?”
“He never did show up.” There was a silence. “I stayed in St. Louis with an aunt, thinking Slade was dead. It hasn’t been all that many years since he finally found me.”
“Why did he wait so long?”
“He had a sort of amnesia. He was clear enough on most things but couldn’t remember that we had family in St. Louis or what had happened to me. He didn’t know if I was dead or alive, or where to begin to search for me. And then, too, there was the problem of Sloan—having to stay clear of towns for fear Sloan would see him.”
“What did he do?”
“Lost himself in the wilderness. He shared the mountains with the Apache from here to the border.”
“You’re joking.” She was aghast.
“No. He lived alone in the mountains for eight years. But when he was nineteen, something happened that brought back his memory, and he was able to find me.”
Sharisse was listening intently. “You don’t sound happy about it.”
He smiled sadly. “He wasn’t the same brother I remembered. We had always been exactly alike. Now we’re not. Those years he spent alone had a profound effect on him.” Then he shrugged and grinned. “If we had a large family, which we don’t, he would be what’s called the black sheep.”
“That bad?”
“Some people think so.”
He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press him.
“Whatever happened to your father’s gold mine?”
“It was never found. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“For your father to have been killed for nothing? I should say so! And the man who shot him, was he ever brought to justice?”
“Sloan’s dead.” A harsh note entered his voice. “But the man who hired him is still around.”
“You know who that is?”
“Yes, but there’s no proof. There’s nothing I can do except call the man out. And he’s no good with a gun, so it would be plain murder.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “It must be terribly frustrating for you, to be able to do nothing.”
“You could say that,” he replied bitterly.
She switched to another subject before Lucas got fed up with her prying.
“Why did you come back to Arizona?”
“For one thing, I got tired of city life. But it was more than that. Slade wouldn’t settle in St. Louis, so I decided to move closer to him.”
“He lives in Newcomb?”
“Slade never stays in one place too long, but he passes through Newcomb from time to time. I get to see him occasionally, ’cause he travels near here.”
She thought about that for a moment. “You must love him a lot to make such a sacrifice.”
Lucas laughed delightedly at her reasoning. “Honey, I don’t look at it as a sacrifice. I happen to like it here.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…well, anyway, I’m glad for you that you’ve found your brother and have grown close to him again. It must have been terrible, those years of separation.”
“What makes you think we’ve grown close?”
