Joe had just gotten out of the truck, and now he stood beside the door, his ice-blue eyes moving from his father to Mary and back, taking in Wolfs stone face and open shirt, and Mary's tousled hair. "Damn it!" he swore and slammed the door shut. "If it had just taken me fifteen minutes longer—"
"My feelings exactly," Wolf concurred.
"Hey, I'll leave—"
Wolf sighed. "No. She came to see you anyway."
"That's what you said the first time." Joe grinned hugely.
"And I just said it again." He turned to Mary, and some of the enjoyment of her stunning news returned to his eyes. "Tell him."
She couldn't think. "Tell him?"
"Yeah. Tell him."
Slowly her dazed mind registered what he was saying. She looked in bewilderment at her empty hands. What had happened to the letters? Had they lost them in the hay? How mortifying it would be to have to search through the hay for them! Not knowing what else to do, she spread her hands and said simply, "You're in. I got the letter today."
Blood drained from Joe's face as he stared at her, and he reached out blindly to rest his hand on the truck as if to steady himself. "I got in? The Academy? I got into the Academy?" he asked hoarsely.
"You got the recommendation. It's up to you to pass the exams."
He threw back his head and screamed, an exultant, spine-chilling sound like that of a hunting panther, then leaped at Wolf. The two of them pounded each other's backs, laughing and yelling, then finally just hugging each other in a way two weaker men couldn't have done. Mary folded her hands and watched them, smiling, so happy her heart swelled to the point of pain. Then suddenly an arm reached out and snagged her, and she found herself sandwiched between the two Mackenzies, almost smashed flat by their celebration.
"You're smothering me!" she protested in a gasping voice, wedging her hands against two broad chests and pushing. One of those chests was bare, exposed by an unbuttoned shirt, and the touch of his warm skin made her go weak in the knees. Both of them laughed at her protest, but both of them immediately gentled their embrace.
Mary patted her hair down and smoothed her dress. "The letters are here somewhere. I must have dropped them."
Wolf gave her a wicked look. "You must have."
His teasing made her happy deep inside, and she smiled at him. It was a quietly intimate smile, the sort that a woman gives the man she loves after she has been in his arms, and it warmed him. To cover his reaction, he turned to look for the dropped letters and spotted one on the drive, while the other had fallen close to the barn door. He retrieved both of them, and gave Joe the one addressed to him.
The boy's hands shook as he read the letter, even though he already knew the contents. He couldn't believe it. It had happened so fast. A dream come true should have been harder to attain; he should have had to sweat blood to get it. Oh, he wasn't driving one of those twenty-million dollar babies yet, but he would. He had to, because he would be only half alive without wings.
Mary was watching him with proud indulgence when she felt Wolf stiffen beside her. She looked at him inquiringly. His head was lifted as if he scented danger, and his face was suddenly as impassive as stone. Then she heard the sound of an engine and turned as a deputy sheriffs car rolled to a stop behind Joe's truck.
Joe turned, and his face took on the same stony look as Wolfs as Clay Armstrong got out of the county car.
"Ma'am." Clay spoke to her first, tipping his hat.
"Deputy Armstrong." Two hundred years of strict training on social behaviour were in her voice. Aunt Ardith would have been proud. But she sensed some threat to Wolf, and it was all she could do not to put herself between him and the deputy. Only the knowledge that he wouldn't appreciate the action kept her standing at his side.
Clay's friendly blue eyes weren't friendly at all now. "Why are you up here, Miss Potter?"
"Why are you asking?" she shot back, putting her hands on her hips.
"Just skip to the good part, Armstrong," Wolf snapped.
"Fine," Clay snapped back. "You're wanted for questioning. You can come with me now, the easy way, or I can get a warrant for your arrest."
Joe stood frozen, fury and hell in his eyes. This had happened before, and he'd lost his father for two nightmarish years. It seemed even more terrible this time, because just moments before they had been celebrating, and he'd been on top of the world.
Wolf began buttoning his shirt. In a voice like gravel he asked, "What happened this time?"
"We'll talk about that at the sheriffs office."
"We'll talk about it now."
Black eyes met blue, and abruptly Clay realized this man wouldn't move a foot unless he had some answers. "A girl was raped this morning."
Sulphuric rage burned in those night-dark eyes. "So naturally you thought of the Indian." He spat the words like bullets from between clenched teeth. God, this couldn't be happening again. Not twice in one lifetime. The first time had almost killed him, and he knew he'd never go back to that hellhole, no matter what he had to do.
"We're just questioning some people. If you have an alibi, there's no problem. You'll be free to go."
"I suppose you picked up every rancher in this area? Do you have Eli Baugh at the sheriff's office answering questions?"
Clay's face darkened with anger. "No."
"Just the Indian, huh?"
"You have priors." But Clay looked uncomfortable.
"I don't have… one… single… prior conviction," Wolf snarled. "I was
cleared."
"Damn it, man, I know that!" Clay suddenly yelled. "I was told to pick you up, and I'm going to do my job."
"Well, why didn't you just say so? I wouldn't want to stop a man from doing his job." After that sarcastic jab, Wolf strode to his truck. "I'll follow you."
"You can ride in the car. I'll bring you back."
"No, thanks. I'd rather have my own wheels, just in case the sheriff decides a walk would do me good."
Swearing under his breath, Clay went to the car and got in. Dust and gravel flew from his tires as he headed back down the mountain, with Wolf behind him slinging even more dust and gravel.
Mary began shaking. At first it was just a tremor, but it swiftly escalated into shudders that rattled her entire body. Joe was standing as if turned to stone, his fists clenched. Suddenly he whirled and slammed his fist into the hood of his truck. "By God, they won't do it to him again," he whispered.
"Not again."
"No, they certainly won't." She was still shaking, but she squared her shoulders. "If I have to get every judge and court in this country involved, I will. I'll call newspapers, I'll call television networks, I'll call—oh, they don't have any idea of who all I can call." The network of Old Family contacts she had left behind in Savannah was still there, and more favours would be called in than the sheriff of this county could count. She'd hang him out to dry!
"Why don't you go home?" Joe suggested in a flat tone.
"I want to stay."
He'd expected her to quietly walk to her car, but at her words he looked at her for the first time. Deep inside, part of him had thought she wouldn't be able to leave fast enough, that he and Wolf would be alone again, as they had always been. They were used to being alone. But Mary stood her ground as if she had no intention of budging off this mountain, her slate-blue eyes full of fire and her fragile chin lifted in the way that he'd learned meant others could just get out of her path.
The boy, forced by circumstance to grow up hard and fast, put his strong arms around the woman and held her, desperately absorbing some of her strength, because he was deathly afraid he'd need it. And Mary held him. He was Wolf's son, and she'd protect him with every ounce of fight she had.
It was after nine when they heard Wolf's truck, and both of them froze with mingled tension and relief: tension because they dreaded to hear what had happened, and relief because he was home instead of locked in jail. Mary couldn't imagine Wolf in jail, even though he'd spent two years in prison. He was too wild, like a lobo that could never be tamed. Imprisoning him had been an act so cruel as to be obscene.
He came in the back door and stood there staring at her, his dark face expressionless. She and Joe sat at the kitchen table, nursing cups of coffee. "Why are you still here? Go home."
She ignored the flatness of his tone. He was so angry she could almost feel the heat from across the room, but she knew it wasn't directed against her. Getting up, she dumped her lukewarm coffee into the sink and got another cup from the cabinet, then poured fresh coffee into both cups. "Sit down, drink your coffee and tell us what happened," she said in her best schoolteacher voice.
He did reach for the coffee, but he didn't sit down. He was too angry to sit. The rage boiled in him, robbing his movements of their usual fluidity. It was starting all over again, and he'd be damned if he'd go to prison again for something he hadn't done. He'd fight any way he could and with any weapon he could, but he'd die before he'd go back to prison.
"They let you go," Joe said.
"They had to. The girl was raped around noon. At noon I was delivering two horses to the Bar W R. Wally Rasco verified it, and the sheriff couldn't figure out a way I could have been in two different places, sixty miles apart, at the same time, so he had to let me go."
"Where did it happen?"
Wolf rubbed his forehead, then pinched his nose between his eyes as if he had a headache, or maybe he was just tired. "She was grabbed from behind when she got in her car, parked in her own driveway. He made her drive almost an hour before telling her to pull off on the side of the road. She never saw his face. He wore a ski mask. But she could tell he was tall, and that was enough of a description for the sheriff."
"The side of the road?" Mary blurted. "That's… weird. It doesn't make sense. I know there's not much traffic, but still, someone could have come by at any time."
"Yeah. Not to mention that he was waiting for her in her driveway. The whole thing is strange."
Joe drummed his fingers on the table. "It could have been someone passing through."
"How many people 'pass through' Ruth?" Wolf asked dryly. "Would a drifter have known whose car it was, or when she was likely to come out of the house? What if the car belonged to a man? That's a big chance to take, especially when rape seems to have been the only thing on his mind, because he didn't rob her, even though she had money."
"Are they keeping her identity secret?" Mary asked.
He looked at her. "It won't stay a secret, because her father was in the sheriff's office waving a rifle and threatening to blow my guts out. He attracted a lot of attention, and people talk."
His face was still expressionless, but Mary sensed the bitter rage that filled him. His fierce pride had been dragged in the dust—again. How had he endured being forced to sit there and listen to insults and threats? Because she knew he'd been insulted, by vile words describing his mixed heritage as well as by the very fact he'd been picked up for questioning. He was holding it all in, controlling it, but the rage was there.
"What happened?"
"Armstrong stopped it. Then Wally Rasco got there and cleared me, and the sheriff let me go with a friendly warning."
"A
warning?"
Mary jumped to her feet, her eyes flashing. "For what?"
He pinched her chin and gave her a coldly ferocious smile. "He warned me to stay away from white women, sweetcake. And that's just what I'm going to do. So you go on home now, and stay there. I don't want you on my mountain again."
"You didn't feel that way in the barn," she shot back, then darted a look at Joe and blushed. Joe just quirked an eyebrow and looked strangely self-satisfied. She decided to ignore him and turned back to Wolf. "I can't believe you're letting that mush-brain sheriff tell you who you can see."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Maybe it hasn't dawned on you yet, but it's all starting again. It doesn't matter that Wally Rasco cleared me. Everyone is going to remember what happened ten years ago, and the way they felt."
"You were cleared of that, too, or doesn't that count?"
"With some people," he finally admitted. "Not with most. They're already afraid of me, already distrust and dislike me. Until this bastard is caught, I probably won't be able to buy anything in that town, not groceries, gas or feed. And any white woman who has anything to do with me could be in real danger of being tarred and feathered."
So that was it. He was still trying to protect her. She stared at him in exasperation. "Wolf, I refuse to live my life according to someone else's prejudices. I appreciate that you're trying to protect me—"
She could hear an audible click as his teeth snapped together. "Do you?" he asked with heavy sarcasm. "Then go home. Stay home, and I'll stay here."
"For how long?"
Instead of answering her question, he made an oblique statement. "I'll always be a half-breed."
"And I'll always be what
I
am, too. I haven't asked you to change," she pointed out, pain creeping into her voice. She looked at him with longing plain in her eyes, as no woman had ever looked at him before, and the rage in him intensified because he couldn't simply reach out and take her in his arms, proclaim to the world that she was his woman. The sheriff's warning had been clear enough, and Wolf knew well that the hostility toward him would rapidly swell to explosive proportions. It could easily spill over onto Mary, and now he wasn't just worried that she would lose her job. A job was nothing compared to the physical danger she could suffer. She could be terrorized in her own home, her property vandalized; she could be cursed and spat upon; she could be physically attacked. For all her sheer determination, she was still just a rather slight woman, and she would be helpless against anyone who wanted to hurt her.
"I know," he finally said, and despite himself, he reached out to touch her hair. "Go home, Mary. When this is over—" He stopped, because he didn't want to make promises he might not be able to keep, but what he'd said was enough to put a glowing light in her eyes.