by Linda Howard
“Now, Cicely,” Eli choked as he tried to dodge his hat.
“Folks, let’s have some order in here,” Harlon Keschel pleaded, though he looked as if he were enjoying the spectacle of Cicely bashing Eli with his own hat. Certainly everyone else in the room was. Almost everyone, Mary thought, as she spotted Dottie Lancaster’s cold face. Suddenly she realized that the other teacher would have been glad to see her fired, and she wondered why. She’d always tried to be friendly with Dottie, but the older woman had rebuffed all overtures. Had Dottie seen Joe’s truck at Mary’s house and started the gossip? Would Dottie have been out driving around at night? There were no other houses on Mary’s road, so no one would have been driving past to visit a neighbor.
The uproar had died down, though there was still an occasional chuckle heard around the room. Mrs. Karr continued to glare at Eli Baugh, having for some reason made him the focal point of her embarrassed anger rather than turning it on Francie Beecham, who had started it all.
Even Mr. Is by was still grinning as he raised his voice. “Let’s see if we can get back to business here, folks.”
Francie Beecham piped up again. “I think we’ve handled enough business for the night. Miss Potter is giving the Mackenzie boy private school lessons so he can go to the Air Force Academy, and that’s that. I’d do the same thing if I were still teaching.”
Mr. Hearst said, “It still don’t look right—”
“Then she can use the classroom. Everyone agreed?” Francie looked at the other board members, her wrinkled face triumphant. She winked at Mary.
“It’s okay by me,” Eli Baugh said as he tried to reshape his hat. “The Air Force Academy—well, that’s something. I don’t reckon anyone from this county has ever been to any of the academies.”
Mr. Hearst and Mrs. Karr disagreed, but Mr. Is by and Harlon Keschel sided with Francie and Eli. Mary stared hard at the shadowed hallway, but couldn’t see anything now. Had he left? The deputy turned his head to see what she was looking at, but he didn’t see anything, either, because he gave a slight shrug and looked back at her, then winked. Mary was startled. More people had winked at her that night than in the rest of her life total. What was the proper way to handle a wink? Were they ignored? Should she wink back? Aunt Ardith’s lectures on proper behavior hadn’t covered winking.
The meeting broke up with a good deal of teasing and laughter, and more than a few of the parents took a moment to shake Mary’s hand and tell her she was doing a good job. It was half an hour before she was able to get her coat and make it to the door, and when she did, she found the deputy waiting for her.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said in an easy tone. “I’m Clay Armstrong, the local deputy.”
“How do you do? Mary Potter,” she replied, holding out her hand.
He took it, and her small hand disappeared in his big one. He set his hat on top of dark brown curly hair, but his blue eyes still twinkled, even in the shadow of the brim. She liked him on sight. He was one of those strong, quiet men who were rock steady, but who had a good sense of humor. He’d been delighted by the uproar.
“Everyone in town knows who you are. We don’t often have a stranger move in, especially a young single woman from the South. The first day you were here, the whole county heard about your accent. Haven’t you noticed that all the girls in school are trying to drawl?”
“Are they?” she asked in surprise.
“They sure are.” He slowed his walk to keep pace with her as they walked to her car. The cold air rushed at her, chilling her legs, but the night sky was crystal clear, and a thousand stars winked overhead in compensation.
They reached her car. “Would you tell me something, Mr. Armstrong?”
“Anything. And call me Clay.”
“Why did Mrs. Karr get so angry at Mr. Baugh, instead of at Miss Beecham? It was Miss Beecham who started the whole thing.”
“Cicely and Eli are first cousins. Cicely’s folks died when she was young, and Eli’s parents took her to raise. Well, Cicely and Eli are the same age, so they grew up together and fought like wildcats the whole time. Still do, I guess, but some families are like that. They’re still pretty close.”
That kind of family was strange to Mary, but it sounded warm and secure, too, to be able to fight with someone and know he still loved you.
“So she hit him for laughing at her?”
“And because he was convenient. No one is going to get too angry with Miss Beecham. She taught all the adults in this county, and we all still think a lot of that old lady.”
“That sounds so nice,” Mary said, smiling. “I hope I’m still here when I’m that old.”
“Are you planning to raise cain at school board meetings, too?”
“I hope so,” she repeated.
He leaned down to open the car door for her. “I hope so, too. Be careful driving home.” After she got in, he closed the door and touched his fingers to his hat brim, then strode away.
He was a nice man. Most of the people in Ruth were nice. They were blind where Wolf Mackenzie was concerned, but basically they weren’t vicious people.
Wolf. Where had he gone?
She hoped Joe wouldn’t decide to stop his lessons because of this. Though she knew it was foolish to count her chickens prematurely, she felt a growing certainty that he would be accepted into the Academy and was inordinately proud that she could be part of getting him there. Aunt Ardith would have said that pride goeth before a fall, but Mary had often thought that a person would never fall if he didn’t first try to stand. On more than one occasion she had countered Aunt Ardith’s cliché of choice with her own “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” It had always made Aunt Ardith huffy when her favorite weapon was turned against her. Mary sighed. She missed her acerbic aunt so much. Her supply of clichés might wither from lack of use without Aunt Ardith to sharpen her wits against.
When she turned into her driveway, she was tired, hungry and anxious, afraid that Joe would try to be noble and stop his lessons so she wouldn’t have any more trouble because of him. “I’ll teach him,” she muttered aloud as she stepped out of the car, “if I have to follow him around on horseback.”
“Who are you following around?” Wolf demanded irritably, and she jumped so violently that she banged her knee against the car door.
“Where did you come from?” she demanded just as irritably. “Darn it, you scared me!”
“Probably not enough. I parked in the barn, out of sight.”
She stared up at him, drinking in the sight of his proud, chiseled face and closed expression. The starlight was colorless, revealing his features in stark angles and shadows, but it was enough for her. She hadn’t realized how starved she had been for the sight of him, the heart-pounding nearness of him. She couldn’t even feel the cold now, the way blood was racing through her veins. This was probably what “being in heat” meant. It was breathtaking and a little scary, but she decided she liked it.
“Let’s go in,” he said when she made no effort to move, and Mary silently led the way to the back door. She’d left it unlocked so she wouldn’t have to fumble with a key in the dark, and Wolf’s black brows drew together when she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
They entered, and Mary closed the door behind them, then turned on the light. Wolf stared down at her, at the silky brown hair escaping from its knot, and he had to clench his fists to keep from grabbing her. “Don’t leave your door unlocked again,” he ordered.
“I don’t think I’ll be burgled,” she countered, then admitted honestly, “I don’t have anything a self-respecting burglar would want.”
He’d sworn he wouldn’t touch her, but even though he’d known it would be difficult to keep his hands to himself, he hadn’t realized quite how difficult. He wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, but he knew if he touched her in any way at all, he wouldn’t want to stop. Her female scent teased his nostrils, beckoning him closer; she smelled warm and delicate
ly fragrant, so feminine it made his entire body ache with longing. He moved away from her, knowing it was safer for them both if he put some distance between them.
“I wasn’t thinking about a burglar.”
“No?” She considered that, then realized what he’d meant and what she’d said in response. She cleared her throat and marched to the stove, hoping he wouldn’t see her red face. “If I make a pot of coffee, will you drink a cup this time or storm out like you did before as soon as it’s made?”
The tart reproach in her voice amused him, and he wondered how he had ever thought her mousy. Her clothes were dowdy, but her personality was anything but timid. She said exactly what she thought and didn’t hesitate to take someone to task. Less than an hour before she had taken on the entire county on his behalf. The memory of it sobered him.
“I’ll drink the coffee if you insist on making it, but I’d rather you just sat down and listened to me.”
Turning, Mary slid into a chair and primly folded her hands on the table. “I’m listening.”
He pulled the chair next to her away from the table and turned it to the side, facing her, before he sat down. She turned an unsmiling gaze on him. “I saw you in the hall tonight.”
He looked grim. “Damn. Did anyone else notice me?” He wondered how she had seen him, because he’d been very careful, and he was good at not being seen when he didn’t want to be.
“I don’t think so.” She paused. “I’m sorry they said those things.”
“I’m not worried about what the good people of Ruth think about me,” he said in a hard tone. “I can handle them, and so can Joe. We don’t depend on them for our living, but you do. Don’t go to bat for us again, unless you don’t like your job very much and you’re trying to lose it, because that’s damn sure what will happen if you keep on.”
“I won’t lose my job for teaching Joe.”
“Maybe not. Maybe they’ll have some tolerance for Joe, especially since you threw the Academy at them, but I’m another story.”
“Nor will I lose my job for being friendly with you. I have a contract,” she explained serenely. “An ironclad contract. It isn’t easy to get a teacher in a place as small and isolated as Ruth, especially in the middle of winter. I can lose my job only if I’m judged incompetent, or break the law, and I defy anyone to prove me incompetent.”
He wondered if that meant she didn’t rule out breaking the law, but didn’t ask her. The kitchen light was shining directly down on her head, turning her hair to a silvery halo and distracting him with its glitter. He knew her hair was brown, but it was such a pale, ash brown that it had no red tones, and when light struck it the strands actually looked silver. She looked like an angel, with her soft blue eyes and translucent skin, and her silky hair slipping from its confining knot to curl around her face. His insides knotted painfully. He wanted to touch her. He wanted her naked beneath him. He wanted to be inside her, to gently ride her until she was all soft and wet, and her nails were clawing at his back—
Mary reached out and put her slim hand on his much larger one, and just that small touch burned him. “Tell me what happened,” she invited softly. “Why were you sent to prison? I know you didn’t do it.”
Wolf was a hard man, by nature as well as necessity, but her simple, unquestioning faith in him shook him to the bone. He had always stood alone, isolated by his Indian blood from Anglos and by his Anglo blood from Indians. Not even his parents had been close to him, though they had loved him and he had loved them in return. They had simply never truly known him, never been admitted into his private thoughts. Nor had he been close to his wife, Joe’s mother. They had slept together, he’d been fond of her, but she, too, had been kept at a distance. Only with Joe had his reserve been breached, and Joe knew him as no other person on earth did. They were part of each other, and he fiercely loved the boy. Only the thought of Joe had gotten him through the years in prison alive.
It was more than alarming that this slight Anglo woman had a knack for touching nerves he’d thought completely insulated; he didn’t want her close to him, not in any emotional way. He wanted to have sex with her, but he didn’t want her to matter to him. Angrily he realized that she already mattered to him, and he didn’t like it at all.
He stared at her fragile hand on his, her touch light and soft. She didn’t shrink from touching him, as if he were dirty; nor was she grasping at him as some women did, rapaciously, wanting to use him, to see if the savage could satisfy their shallow, greedy appetites. She had simply reached out to touch him because she cared.
Ever so slowly he watched his hand turn and engulf hers, enfolding the pale, slim fingers within his callused palm as if to protect them.
“It was nine years ago.” His voice was low, harsh; she had to lean forward to hear him. “No—almost ten years. Ten years this June. Joe and I had just moved here. I was working for the Half Moon Ranch. A girl from the next county was raped and killed, and her body dumped just within the far boundary of Half Moon. I was picked up and questioned, but hell, I’d been expecting it from the minute I heard about the girl. I was new to the area, and Indian. But there was no evidence against me, so they had to let me go.
“Three weeks later, another girl was raped. This one was from the Rocking L Ranch, just to the west of town. She was stabbed, like the other girl, but she lived. She’d seen the rapist.” He paused for a minute, the expression in his black eyes shuttered as he looked back at those long-ago years. “She said he looked like an Indian. He was dark, with black hair, and he was tall. Not many tall Indians around. I was picked up again before I even knew another girl had been raped. They put me in a line up with six dark-haired Anglos. The girl identified me, and I was charged. Joe and I lived on Half Moon, but somehow no one remembered seeing me at home the night that girl was raped, except Joe, and a six-year-old Indian kid’s word didn’t carry much weight.”
Her chest hurt when she thought of how it had been for him, and for Joe, who had been only a small child. How much worse had it been for Wolf because of Joe, worrying what would happen to his son? She didn’t know of anything she could say now to lessen that ten-year-old outrage, so she didn’t try; she just tightened her fingers around his, letting him know he wasn’t alone.
“I was put on trial and found guilty. I’m lucky they weren’t able to tie me to the first rape, the girl who’d been murdered, or I’d have been lynched. As it was, everyone thought I’d done it.”
“You went to prison.” It was so hard to believe, even though she knew it was true. “What happened to Joe?”
“He was made a ward of the state. I survived prison. It wasn’t easy. A rapist is considered fair game. I had to be the roughest son of a bitch in there just to live from one night to the next.”
She had heard tales about what happened to men in prison, and her pain increased. He had been locked up, away from the sun and the mountains, the clear fresh air, and she knew it had been like caging a wild animal. He was innocent, but his freedom and his son had been taken from him, and he’d been thrown in with the dregs of humanity. Had he slept soundly even once the entire time he’d been in prison, or had he merely dozed, his senses attuned to attack?
Her throat was tight and dry. All she could manage was a whisper. “How long were you in?”
“Two years.” His face was hard, his eyes full of menace as he stared at her, but she knew the menace was directed inward, at his bitter memories. “Then a series of rapes and murders from Casper to Cheyenne were tied together and the guy was caught. He confessed, seemed proud of his accomplishments, but a little put out that they hadn’t given him complete credit. He admitted to the two rapes in this area, and gave them details no one but the rapist could have known.”
“Was he Indian?”
His smile was flinty. “Italian. Olive-skinned, curly haired.”
“So you were released?”
“Yeah. My name was cleared, and they said ‘Sorry about that,’ and turned me loose. I’d
lost my son, my job, everything I’d owned. I found out where they’d put Joe and hitched there to get him. Then I rodeoed for a while to get some money and lucked out. I did pretty well. I won enough to come back here with something in my pocket. The old guy who had owned Half Moon had died with no heirs, and the land was about to be sold for taxes. It wiped me out, but I bought the land. Joe and I settled here, and I began training horses and building up the ranch.”
“Why did you come back?” She couldn’t understand it. Why return to the place where he’d been so mistreated?
“Because I was tired of always moving on, never having a place of my own. Damn tired of being looked down on as a trashy, shiftless Indian. Tired of my son not having a home. And because there was no way in hell I was going to let the bastards get the best of me.”
The aching in her intensified. She wished she could ease the anger and bitterness in him, wished she dared take him in her arms and soothe him, wished he could become a part of the community instead of a thorn in its side.
“They’re not all illegitimate,” she said, and wondered why his mouth suddenly twitched as if he might smile. “Any more than all Indians are trashy or shiftless. People are just people, good and bad.”
“You need a keeper,” he replied. “That Pollyanna attitude is going to get you in trouble. Teach Joe, do what you can for him, but stay the hell away from me, for your own sake. These people didn’t change their minds about me just because I was released.”
“You haven’t tried to change their minds. You’ve just kept rubbing their noses in their guilt,” she pointed out, her tone acerbic.
“Am I supposed to forget what they did?” he asked just as sharply. “Forget that their ‘justice’ consisted of putting me in a lineup with six Anglos and telling that girl to ‘pick out the Indian’? I spent two years in hell. Is till don’t know what happened to Joe, but it was almost three months after I got him back before he spoke a word. Forget that? Like hell.”
“So, they won’t change their minds, you won’t change your mind, and I won’t change mine. I believe we have a stalemate.”