Mackenzie's Mountain (21 page)

It went against Wolf's grain to hide from anyone, and that was in the look he gave Clay. Wolf had been trained to hunt; more than that, it was in his nature, in the genes passed down from Comanche and Highland warriors that had mingled in his body, in the formation of his character.

"We'll keep Mary safe," was all he said, and Clay knew he'd failed to convince Wolf to stay out of it.

Joe was leaning against the cabinets, listening. "The people in town are going to raise hell if they find out Mary's staying with us," he put in.

"Yeah, they will." Clay stood up and positioned his hat on his head.

"Let them." Wolf's voice was flat. He'd given Mary the chance to play it safe, but she hadn't taken it. She was his now, by God. Let them squawk.

Clay sauntered to the door. "If anyone asks me, I've arranged for her to live in a safer place until this is over. Don't reckon it's anyone's business where that place is, do you? Though of course, knowing Mary, she'll probably tell everyone right out, just like she did Saturday in Hearst's store."

Wolf groaned. "Hell! What did she do? I haven't heard about it."

"Didn't reckon you would have, what with all that happened that afternoon. Seems she got into it with both Dottie Lancaster and Mrs. Karr, and all but told both of them she was yours for the taking." A slow grin shaped Clay's mouth. "From what I heard, she laced into them good."

When Clay had left, Wolf and Joe looked at each other. "It could get interesting around here."

"It could," Joe agreed.

"Keep an eye out, son. If Mary and Armstrong are right, we're the ones this bastard is really after. Don't go anywhere without your rifle, and stay alert."

Joe nodded. Wolf wasn't worried about hand-to-hand fighting, not even if the other guy was armed with a knife, because he'd taught Joe how to fight the way he'd learned in the military. Not karate, kung fu, tae kwon do, or even judo, but a mixture of many, including good old street fighting. The object of a fight wasn't fairness, but winning, in any way possible, with any weapon handy. It was what had kept him alive and relatively unscathed
in
prison. A rifle was something else, though. They would have to be doubly alert.

Mary returned and plunked two suitcases on the floor. "I have to have my books, too," she announced. "And someone has to get Woodrow and her kittens."

Mary tried to tell herself that she couldn't sleep because she was in a strange bed, because she was too excited, because she was too worried, because—she ran out of excuses and couldn't think of anything else. Though she was pleasantly tired from Wolfs lovemaking, she felt too uneasy to sleep and finally knew why. She turned in his arms and put her hand on his jaw, loving the feel of his facial structure and the slight rasp of his beard beneath her fingers. "Are you awake?" she whispered.

"I wasn't," he said in a low rumble. "But I am now."

She apologized and lay very still. After a moment he squeezed her and pushed her hair away from her face. "Can't you sleep?"

"No. I just feel—strange, I think."

"In what way?"

"Your wife—Joe's mother. I was thinking of her in this bed."

His arms tightened. "She was never in this bed."

"I know. But Joe's in the other room, and I thought this was how it must have been when he was little, before she died."

"Not usually. We were apart a lot, and she died when Joe was two. That was when I got out of the military."

"Tell me about it," she invited, still in a whisper. She needed to know more about this man she loved. "You must have been very young."

"I was seventeen when I enlisted. Even though I knew I'd probably have to do a tour in Vietnam, it was my only way out. My folks were dead, and my grandfather, Mother's father, never really accepted me because I was half Anglo. All I knew was that I had to get off the reservation. It was almost as bad as prison. It
is
prison, in a different way. There was nothing to do, nothing to hope for.

"I met Billie when I was eighteen. She was a Crow half-breed, and I guess she married me because she knew I'd never go back to the reservation. She wanted more. She wanted bright lights and city life. Maybe she thought a soldier had it good, transferring from base to base, partying when he was off duty. But she didn't look down on me because I was a half-breed, and we decided to get married. A month later I was in Nam. I got her a ticket to Hawaii when I had R and R, and she went back pregnant Joe was born when I was nineteen, but I was home from my first tour and got to see him being born. God, I was so excited. He was screaming his head off. Then they put him in my hands, and it was like taking a heart punch. I loved him so much I would have died for him."

He was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he gave a low laugh. "So there I was, with a newborn son and a wife who didn't think she'd gotten such a good deal, and my enlistment was almost up. I had no prospects of a job, no way of supporting my baby. So I re-upped, and things got so bad between Billie and me that I volunteered for another tour. She died right before my third tour ended. I got out and came home to take care of Joe."

"What did you do?"

"Worked ranches. Rodeoed. It was all I knew. Except for the time I spent in service, I can't remember not working with horses. I was horse crazy when I was a kid, and I guess I still am. Joe and I drifted around until it was time for him to start school, and we landed in Ruth. You know the rest of it."

She lay quietly in his arms, thinking of his life. He hadn't had it easy. But the life he'd led had shaped him into the man he was, a man of strength and iron determination. He had endured war and hell and come out even stronger than before. The thought that someone would want to harm him made her so angry she could barely contain it. Somehow she had to find some way to protect him.

He escorted her to school the next morning, and again Mary was aware of how everyone stared at him. But it wasn't fear or hatred she saw in the kids' eyes; rather, they watched him with intense curiosity, and even awe. After years of tales, he was a larger-than-life figure to them, someone glimpsed only briefly. Their fathers had dealt with him, the boys had watched him at work, and his expertise with horses only added to tales about him. It was said that he could "whisper" a horse, that even the wildest one would respond to a special crooning tone in his voice.

Now he was hunting the rapist. The story was all over the county.

Dottie wouldn't even talk to Mary that day; she walked away whenever she approached and even ate lunch by herself. Sharon sighed and shrugged. "Don't pay any attention to her. She's always had a burr under her blanket about the Mackenzies."

Mary shrugged, too. There didn't seem to be any way she could reach Dottie.

Joe drove into town that afternoon to follow her home. As they walked out to their respective vehicles, she told him, "I need to stop at Hearst's for a few things."

"I'll be right behind you."

He was on her heels when she entered the store, and everyone turned to look at them. Joe gave them a smile that could have come straight from his father, and several people hastily looked away. Sighing, Mary led her six-foot watchdog down the aisle.

Joe paused fractionally when his gaze met that of Pam Hearst. She was standing as if rooted, staring at him. He tipped his hat and followed Mary.

A moment later he felt a light touch on his arm and turned to see Pam standing behind him. "Could I talk to you?" she asked in a low voice. "I—it's important. Please?"

Mary had moved on. Joe shifted his position so he could keep her in sight and said, "Well?"

Pam drew a deep breath. "I thought… maybe… would you go with me to the town dance this Saturday night?" she finished in a rush.

Joe's head jerked. "What?"

"I said—will you go with me to the dance?"

He thumbed his hat back and gave a low whistle under his breath. "You know you're asking for trouble, don't you? Your dad just might lock you in the cellar for a year."

"We don't have a cellar." She gave him a small smile, one that had an immediate reaction on his sixteen-year-old hormones. "And I don't care, anyway. He's wrong, wrong about you and your dad. I've felt horrible about how I acted before. I—I like you, Joe, and I want to go out with you."

He was cynical enough to say, "Yeah. A lot of people started liking me when they found out I had a shot at the Academy. Sure funny how that worked out, isn't it?"

Hot spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. "That's not why I'm asking you out!"

"Are you sure? It seems I wasn't good enough to be seen in public with you before. You didn't want people to say Pam Hearst was going out with a 'breed. It's different when they can say you're going out with a candidate for the Air Force Academy."

"That's not true!" Pam was truly angry now, and her voice rose. Several people glanced their way.

"It looks that way to me."

"Well, you're wrong! You're just as wrong as my dad is!"

As if he'd been cued, Mr. Hearst, alerted by Pam's raised voice, started down the aisle toward them. "What's going on back here? Pam, is this br—boy bothering you?"

Joe noticed how quickly "breed" had been changed to "boy" and lifted his eyebrows at Pam. She flushed even redder and whirled to face her father.

"No, he isn't bothering me! Wait. Yes. Yes, he is! He's bothering me because I asked him to go out with me and he refused!"

Everyone in the store heard her. Joe sighed. The fat was in the fire now.

Ralph Hearst turned purplish red, and he halted in his tracks as abruptly as if he'd hit a wall. "What did you say?" he gasped, evidently not believing his ears.

Pam didn't back down, even though her father looked apoplectic. "I said he refused to go out with me! I asked him to the Saturday night dance."

Mr. Hearst's eyes were bulging out of their sockets. "You get on to the house. We'll talk about this later!"

"I don't want to talk about it later, I want to talk about it right now!"

"I said get on to the house!" Hearst roared. He turned his infuriated gaze on Joe. "And you stay away from my daughter, you—"

"He's
been
staying away from me!" Pam yelled. "It's the other way around! I won't stay away from him! This isn't the first time I've asked him out. You and everyone else in this town are wrong for the way you've treated the Mackenzies, and I'm tired of it. Miss Potter is the only one of us who's had the guts to stand up for what she thinks is right!"

"This is all her fault, that do-gooding—"

"Stop right there." Joe spoke for the first time, but there was something in his cool voice, in his pale blue eyes, that stopped the man. Joe was only sixteen, but he was tall and muscular, and there was a sudden alertness to his stance that made the older man pause.

Pam jumped in. She was bright and cheery-natured, but as headstrong as her father. "Don't start on Miss Potter," she warned. "She's the best teacher we've ever had here in Ruth, and if you do anything to get rid of her, I swear I'll drop out of school."

"You'll do no such thing!"

"I swear I will! I love you, Dad, but you're wrong! All of us talked about it at school today, about how we'd seen the teachers treat Joe over the years, and how wrong it was, because he's obviously the smartest of us all! And we talked about how Wolf Mackenzie was the one who made sure all of us girls got home all right yesterday. No one else thought of it! Or don't you care?"

"Of course he cares," Mary said briskly, having walked up without anyone except Joe noticing. "It's just that Wolf, with his military experience, knew what to do." She'd made that up, but it sounded good. She put her hand on Mr. Hearst's arm. "Why don't you take care of your customers and just let them fight it out? You know how teenagers are."

Somehow Ralph Hearst found himself at the front of the store again before he realized it. He stopped and looked down at Mary. "I don't want my girl dating a half-breed!" he said fiercely.

"She'll be safer with that half-breed than with any other boy around," Mary replied. "For one thing, he's steady as a rock. He won't drink or drive fast, and for another, he has no intention of getting involved with any girl around here. He'll be going away, and he knows it."

"I don't want my daughter dating an Indian!"

"Are you saying that character doesn't mean anything? That you'd rather have Pam go out with a drunk Anglo, who might get her killed in a car accident, than with a sober Indian, who would protect her with his life?"

He looked stricken and rubbed his head in agitation. "No, damn it, that isn't what I mean," he muttered.

Mary sighed. "My Aunt Ardith remembered every old chestnut she ever heard, and one of the ones she brought out most often was 'pretty is as pretty does.' You go by how people act, don't you, Mr. Hearst. You've voted according to how the candidates have stood on issues in the past, haven't you?"

"Of course." He looked uncomfortable. "And?" she prompted.

"All right, all right! It's just—some things are hard to forget, you know? Not things that Joe has done, but just… things. And that father of his is—"

"As proud as you are," she cut in. "All he ever wanted was a place to raise his motherless son." She was laying it on so thick she expected to hear violins in the background any moment now, but it was about time these people realized some things about Wolf. Maybe he was more controlled than civilized, but his control was very good, and they would never know the difference.

Deciding it was time to give him some breathing room, she said, "Why not talk it over with your wife?" He looked relieved at the suggestion. "I'll do that." Joe was walking up the aisle; Pam, who had turned her back, was busily neatening a stack of paint thinner in an obvious effort to act casual. Mary paid for the items she'd gathered, and Joe lifted the sack. Silently they walked out together.

"Well?" she asked as soon as they were outside.

"Well, what?"

"Are you taking her to the dance?"