Chapter 1

I drew my gun, pulled back the hammer, and fired, all in one motion. I had been practicing, non-stop, for nearly three hours and my right arm felt like it was about to drop off. Despite the fatigue and pain, I was determined to keep practicing until I was the fastest draw in my part of Texas. I didn't know if I could be the fastest draw in the whole state, but I sure as hell wanted to be able to outdraw anybody in my neighborhood.

My name is John White Wolf and I am half Mescalero Apache. My mother was given to my father in appreciation for all of the things he did for the Mescaleros, and he loved her until the day she died. She died the day I was born, August 14^th, 1877, and it wasn't long after that event that my father died of a broken heart. Thus, I was the indirect cause of both their deaths.

I was an only child, and my father's relatives wanted nothing to do with a "damned Injun." My mother's relatives took me in and raised me as just another Apache boy. I had as happy a childhood as one could ask for, under the circumstances. You may ask how I have an Apache surname if my father was White. Well, my adopted people let me keep my name of John, but they thought that Oglethorpe was hardly appropriate for an Apache, so I was renamed White Wolf, and I was known as White Wolf throughout my childhood.

I am now 13 years old and a man. I am very large for someone my age, especially an Apache. I am 5'-10" tall and weigh 183 pounds, all of it bone and muscle. My hair is black, but my eyes are a fierce blue, and I have been known to frighten people just by staring at them. The girls all think that I am handsome and have already started chasing after me. I have not taken one yet, but it will be soon.

The gun I am using is the S&W .44-40 caliber single action that I inherited from my father. He also had a .44-40 Winchester 73, which I now own. As befits any Mescalero warrior, I hold these weapons in high esteem.

It is now 1890, and that is why I am practicing so diligently to be a quick draw gunfighter. It is no longer possible for an Apache to take private revenge on an enemy; nowadays, to keep from bringing trouble down on all of my people, I must meet my enemy in a proper duel and kill him that way. Therefore, I am working at learning the gunfighter's trade.

I am doing this because of the way my mother died. My parents had been living on a homestead near Perkins Bluff. There had been a lot of bad blood generated between the Whites and the Indians because of the Comanche War of 1876. Some White people, at the instigation of Cyrus Harkins, had vowed to drive all Indians out of the state and into Mexico.

My mother's water had already broken when their homestead was attacked and the house was set on fire. My father was able to drive off the attackers, but he had to bundle my mother into a wagon and try to get her to her former village for help, since the White midwife had run away at the beginning of the attack. I was born in that wagon on the way to the village, and my mother began to hemorrhage. My father did not know what to do, so he did the only thing he could—he drove the wagon as fast as he could to the Mescalero village to try to find help. Unfortunately, my mother died within an hour of reaching the village. My father blamed Cyrus Harkins for her death, and I do, too!

Gray Eagle, my Mescalero father, had taught me everything he knew about hunting and war, so I was a well trained warrior, equal to any man in my village. He supported me in my vendetta against Cyrus Harkins, but he made sure that I understood that Harkins could only be killed in a person-to-person duel if I was not to bring harm to my adopted people. Therefore, he helped me to find the money to buy the ammunition to practice shooting, and got me what instruction that he could in the art of the gunfight.

He had a White friend, Charlie Goodnight, who was a successful gunfighter and was also sympathetic to my vendetta. Goodnight taught me how to shoot both the pistol and the rifle, and my skill reached a high level under his tutelage. He was the one who convinced me to go for wearing my pistol in a crossdraw position. Actually, it was a semi-shoulder holster arrangement that he helped me with. It was the one he used, and he swore by it. If nothing else, it confused the opponent because your gun was not where he expected it to be. This might be the slight edge you needed to win a close battle. It also had the advantage that you could draw while you were sitting down.

One Saturday, I went into town looking for a ribbon for a girl who had attracted my attention. I had no inkling of what was about to happen, but I was wearing my pistol as a matter of course—no self-respecting Apache warrior ever went anywhere out of the camp without some sort of arms. I went into a general store in Perkins Bluff and began looking at the ribbons. I had just settled on a red one and had picked it up to take to the counter to pay for it when a mocking voice said, "Hey, Injun, ya gonna pay fer that or ya gonna steal it?"

I was somewhat surprised by the comment and looked around to see who had made the foolish statement. Like all well trained warriors, I already knew who was nearby: a woman buying some trousers for her husband, a man standing near the tobacco rack, and three boys in the age range of 16-19 standing near the door.

The person who had spoken was the oldest boy in the group of three. He was obviously trying to impress his companions by badgering someone who was not likely to resist. Well, I was prepared to disillusion him. "I am prepared to pay for this ribbon, but that is no business of yours."

"The hell, you say? Ain't no Injun gonna smartmouth me." As he said this, he started to draw his gun. Damned if it wasn't an old Colt Navy, converted to fire cartridges in .38 caliber.

Now, I had no intention of getting into a fight, but I was not about to let somebody draw on me, either, even with a weapon as much of an antique at that one was. I pulled my pistol and put a bullet into the middle of his chest. I'm sure that he was killed on the spot, but I never had the chance to check. He did shoot as he was falling to the floor, but his bullet only put a hole in the wall well to my left. The roar of the two guns going off in the enclosed room was enough to deafen everybody there.

The two fools with him were even more stupid than the first boy, because they both started to draw their weapons even though they could plainly see that I already was holding my gun in my hand and the hammer was cocked. I gave no conscious thought to my actions, but shot both of them. They were less than 15 feet away, so I could hardly miss. However, I was young and inexperienced at the time, so I hit one of them in the leg just above his left knee and the other one in the right forearm between his wrist and his elbow. Both shots shattered the bone, not just breaking it, but reducing it to useless fragments. Gangrene was sure to set in if those limbs were not amputated in the next few days.

The woman had fainted in horror at the sight and the noise, the man near the tobacco display was standing with his hands raised, and the clerk behind the counter was doing the same. Suddenly, I lost my warrior's rage and began thinking again. I carefully laid the ribbon on the counter and reloaded my gun. I looked out the front door and saw a number of men running toward the store, so I decided that a strategic retreat was called for. I ran out and jumped on my horse without bothering to holster my gun, first. I rode back to the village as fast as I could get my horse to run.

I ran to Gray Eagle and explained what had happened in town. He considered the situation and said, "White Wolf, you have to make a choice. You can stand here and fight when the Whites come after you. The men of the village will join you, but we will be outnumbered and eventually you will be killed or captured. Or, you can do the sensible thing and disappear for a while. You will not be thought a coward for running, but, rather, you will be a hero for drawing trouble away from your people. What say you?"