The Survival of Juan Oro
by Max Brand

He would never know who his parents were or from where he had come. The name he bore was Spanish, but he was unquestionably an American. He had been raised by Yaqui Indians, and as a youth he was captured in a battle by the men of Don José Fontana, a wealthy Spanish grandee in northern Mexico. The don is advised to apprentice him to the notorious outlaw, Matiás Bordi, who had a long-standing truce with the Fontana estate. Who better to turn Juan Oro into the surest shot,, the deadliest hand with a knife, and the greatest lover of battle? But Don José, whom Juan has come to admire greatly, asks one promise from the boy before he is released to Bordi's tutelage: that when he has become a true master of weapons and battle, and before he returns to the Hacienda Fontana, he will slay the outlaw leader who was his mentor. This Juan Oro promises the don he will do . . . until the time comes, and he finds that it is not so simple.