"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.