Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch) Read online

  So it was enough for him just to know that a woman like her existed. It was enough to be here tonight in this old cabin beside the creek, lying in this bunk and listening to the fire snap in the woodstove, the night wind moan in the eaves, of the creek running past. It was enough for him to be warm and well fed and mildly drunk.

  Lord God Almighty, it was enough. It had to be.

  STEVEN BROWN WAS USED to hypocrisy. He’d been weaned on it. On the one hand, the People craved their independence, the old ways and the time of the buffalo. On the other, they couldn’t live without their color TVs, pickup trucks, snow machines, clothes driers, electric lights and booze. They hated the government for putting them on the reservation and taking away their way of life. They loved the government for the way of life they had been given, and they wanted more and more of it.

  He could have been working in the pencil factory like some of his friends, but instead he was sitting here in his little house in Gallatin Gateway, sleepless in the early-morning hours, thinking about all the paths he’d taken that had led him to this place. Thinking about Jessie Weaver, and how he had tried so hard to get away from the very things she embodied. Blood-and-guts stuff. She was White Buffalo Woman, walking into his life, turning it upside down, making him question all that he had chosen.

  In the morning he and Pete Two Shirts would go to the Weaver ranch to find Jessie’s horses and bring them down out of the high country. He would see her then, and until then he would suffer. And when he saw her, he would suffer, too, because he knew how it would be. He had seen it in her eyes when she’d climbed the steps at the ranch house and spotted Badger, then him, standing there. He had seen it, and the pain of it had been like a knife driven deep and then twisted. She was still in love with Guthrie Sloane. Guthrie had found her up there on the mountain, and she had come to terms with her feelings and wore them plainly, hiding nothing, because she was as honest as the sunrise, and as constant and enduring.

  He had lost her to another man, but it was enough to have known her. And tomorrow he would see her again, and become for that small time the person he had always thought he might become but could never quite find in the maze of modern society.

  It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

  GUTHRIE DIDN’T GET to his cabin on Bear Creek until well after 3:00 a.m. He was more than a little off kilter, stumbling twice as he climbed the steps and skinning his shin on the edge of the porch. He swore softly and fumbled for the door latch. The door swung silently inward and he was surprised by the warmth that met him as he stepped inside, by the fresh, clean smells that reminded him of McCutcheon’s old cabin. His sister had been here, too, to make things tidy. To scrub and sweep and dust and to light a fire in the stove. She’d made the cabin nice for him to welcome him home, just in case Jessie hadn’t.

  If he hadn’t been so tired he might have laughed. He lit the lamp, instead, and visually panned the familiar space. It would always look good to him. It would always remind him of the summer he and Jessie had spent together, working on it. They’d made a good job of it, too. She’d peeled the logs and helped him roll them into place; she’d chinked while he’d notched. They’d built the cabin together. It had been a kind of talisman of their future together, a promise of all that might be.

  At least, it had seemed so to him, but then again, she’d been slated to inherit one of the finest land holdings in the state. Had she ever really dreamed of sharing this little cabin on Bear Creek with him, or had that dream been his alone? Had he imposed his own values and visions of their life together upon her? Had he stood in the way of her future, blocked all the paths she tried to take, smothered her every freedom? Had his insecurities suffocated her? Had he destroyed the very essence of the passionate, idealistic, hopelessly naive young girl he had fallen in love with so many years ago?

  If so, it was too late now to erase those wrongs. All he could do was step back and let her go.

  She was in such terrible torment. Perhaps by helping her achieve what she so desperately seemed to want he could make up for some of his mistakes. Perhaps only by leaving Katy Junction could she hope to find what she was searching for. He wasn’t sure what that was, exactly, but he knew for certain that it wasn’t a hometown cowboy who went by the name of Guthrie Sloane.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JOE MADE UP his mind while drinking his morning coffee. Actually, he’d made it up the night before, but he always liked to sleep on his decisions, especially the ones that could get him into the most trouble. The way he figured it, if he woke up feeling the same way he did when he went to bed, then his conscience had given him the green light. Not that his conscience was all that delicate. There weren’t many things that he wouldn’t do if the stakes were high enough, and the senator always kept the pot interesting. He couldn’t afford to lose the senator as a client, and there were a score of other pilots who would love to step in and take Joe’s place.

  Of course, George Smith was well aware of that. He was not above flaunting his power and position to get what he wanted. And right now what he wanted was that big grizzly’s head on his hunting-lodge wall.

  Joe added another spoonful of sugar to the cup and stirred it round. Jessie Weaver’s horses were still up in the pass somewheres, but she wouldn’t be riding after them for a while. Not after her latest experience. Any day now a big storm could close the pass right down. The time to schedule the hunt was soon, before that bear denned up for the winter.

  He’d need to provision for the trip first thing this morning. The senator liked the hunt, but he didn’t like going without all the extras that gave pleasure to his days. He—Joe—could set the whole thing up ahead of time, get the tree stand in place near the kill site, hoist all the senator’s favorite treats up in the tree, set up a base camp, then fly him in and put him in place. Easy enough. Come dusk he’d fly him back to his lodge, and in the morning they’d do it all over again.

  They’d keep after it for as long as it took to nail the bear, which could be as quick as a day or as lengthy as a week. It was up to Joe to make sure the hunt was successful, but that shouldn’t prove too difficult. After all, Jessie Weaver’s hapless horse had already as much as ensured the senator’s success.

  MCCUTCHEON WAS SITTING out on the porch, enjoying his first cup of coffee, when the dog came around the corner of the cabin. “Here, Blue,” he said. “You’re looking pretty spry this morning.” The little cow dog climbed the porch steps carefully, in deference to her sore ribs and the bristle of stitches in her side and flank, and sniffed delicately at his outstretched hand, her tail fanning the crisp air. Jessie appeared shortly thereafter, having walked down from the ranch house. She was surprised to see him.

  “’Mornin’,” she said. “How’s your ankle?”

  “Still there. How’s your arm?”

  “Good as can be expected.” She was carrying a covered basket, the kind folks took on picnics. “I brought some breakfast fixin’s. I can see you already made the coffee.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and you’re welcome to a cup. It’s not bad, for instant.”

  “Instant?” Clearly she’d never drunk the stuff and never intended to, either. “I’ll make a pot of the real thing. How do you take your eggs?”

  “You don’t have to cook breakfast for me. In fact, I’m not much of a breakfast eater, if I can just have my coffee.”

  “I brought some doughnuts.”

  “Now, I’d eat a doughnut without too much arm twisting.”

  She smiled and climbed up the steps. “I’ll start the coffee.”

  She disappeared inside and he heard the sounds of domestic industry within. He flexed his good leg, stretched back in his chair and drew a deep breath of sweet clean mountain air. He felt pretty good, considering the late night and the amount of whiskey he’d drunk. And now, for some unfathomable reason, Jessie Weaver had showed up to make him something to eat, downright friendly in demeanor. He was beyond trying to understand what went on in women’s minds. He�
�d given up on that long ago. He just accepted their behavior and enjoyed their company on the sunny days, and this day looked to be a sunny one for Jessie.

  When she returned carrying the pot of coffee, the doughnuts and a cup for herself, he slatted the remainder of his cold instant brew over the porch rail and allowed her to fill his mug with the real thing. “I thank you,” he said. He took a plain doughnut from the offering and bit into it with relish. “Actually, I’m glad you came down this morning because it saved me a long uphill hobble. I was kind of hoping to talk to you a bit about the ranch. I wanted to run something by you. An idea I had.”

  She leaned up against a porch post, resting her cup on the top rail. “Mr. McCutcheon, I’d like to apologize for the way I behaved yesterday,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about how poorly I acted. It shames me. I had no call to treat you that way.”

  McCutcheon shook his head impatiently. “There’s no need for apologies—and my name’s Caleb, in case you forgot. Listen to my idea. This might sound crazy, but I’d like to tear down all the barbed-wire fences on this land. I’d like to be able to climb on a horse and ride out over that horizon and not see a single fence cutting up the landscape. What do you think? Is that a crazy idea? Can it be done?”

  Jessie straightened and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What does it matter what I think?”

  “I respect your opinion.”

  “It’s a huge job. There are over sixty miles of barbed wire. Triple strand.”

  “I know. It’d take some time and a fair-size crew. I was figuring we could recycle the wire. Spool it back, load it into pickups and give it to some other fool to fence himself in. Pull out the fence posts, fill in the holes. It’d probably take a couple years.”

  “You’d have to leave the boundary fences.”

  “For now. Some of that property might come up for sale by and by, and it’s not too far a stretch to imagine this land eventually linking up to Yellowstone. Anyhow, pulling the fences is a big job, all right, and not everyone would want to ramrod it. I was hoping it might interest you enough to keep you on, at least until the job was done.”

  Jessie paced the length of the porch and stared out across the river. She still held the coffee cup, though she hadn’t yet tasted the brew. She stood very still for a long time, watching the long golden fingers of sunlight splinter through the craggy peaks of the Beartooth Mountains and lay themselves upon the tawny land. Then, abruptly, she swung around and confronted him. “Guthrie put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  Her words took McCutcheon by surprise. “No,” he said, and then he realized the futility of trying to fool her. “Yes. It was his idea, but I thought it was a good one. I would have come to it myself eventually. And I’m speaking the truth to you.”

  “Mister, in these parts, an idea like that is apt to get you run out of the county.”

  “Let ’em try. So what do you think?”

  “I think you’re crazy. It’ll cost a lot of money.”

  “I have enough. No thanks to me, either. I had a smart mother. When I signed my first contract I gave my mother that money, and most of my salary, too. I didn’t need much to live on. I was just happy to be playing ball.

  “Well, by the time I got married, my mother had invested just about every penny I’d given her. My wife claimed my earnings for the rest of my career, but by then it didn’t matter. My mother’s investments made an unbelievable amount of money that just continues to grow. The way I see it, I might as well put some of it to good use. I have no kids, so it seems to me the best legacy I could leave right now for future generations—humans and wildlife—is as much open land as possible. And if that makes me crazy, then so be it.”

  Jessie regarded him with open amazement. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Could you bring yourself to work for a crazy man?”

  “Maybe,” she said softly. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked away from him, descended the porch steps and disappeared out of sight around the corner of the cabin. Blue sat for a few moments more at his feet and then stood. She flagged her tail and stared up at him with a questioning expression that appeared curiously intelligent. McCutcheon had never owned a dog, but the more he saw of this little one, the more he thought he might like such a companion to share this cabin with.

  “Well, go on,” he said. “She’s getting a pretty big head start on you.”

  Blue gazed up at him for a few moments longer before heeding his words and following after her mistress. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought that blue-eyed cow dog had been inviting him to follow along. He settled back with his coffee and his doughnut and thought that the day was shaping up to be a pretty good one indeed, all things considered.

  JESSIE STOOD in the kitchen and looked around her at the blank walls, the bare cupboards, the empty corners. Her mind raced. Should she take the job and remain on? Could she live here knowing it was no longer her place? Would she feel the same way about it now? Did her feelings really matter in the grand scheme of things?

  If McCutcheon could dream about a day when this land connected to the Yellowstone ecosystem, could she be petty enough to refuse to help him achieve that dream? What a legacy it would be to leave this land the way it had been before the great herds had come up from the south. To pull down all the fences and sell off the cattle. To let the wild horses run free and the wolves howl and the elk and grizzlies and Steven Brown’s buffalo, the sacred bi’shee, roam across it.

  Wasn’t all that far more important than her own sentiments?

  Damn Guthrie! He’d known how tempting such an offer would be. No doubt he’d spent some time with Caleb McCutcheon after he’d left her last night. She could picture the two of them huddled together, hatching up this latest scheme. It was a clever one, she had to give him that.

  Blue raised her head from her paws and whined softly, and moments later Jessie heard a truck approaching. She stepped out onto the porch to await Guthrie’s arrival. He’d piled a bunch of stuff in the back of his pickup—his saddle and a whole mess of gear. When he climbed out of the cab he brought some of it with him—his old Winchester rifle, his lariat and a pair of saddlebags bulging with supplies.

  “’Mornin’,” he said, slinging the saddlebags over his shoulder. He turned his back on her and started down toward the pole barn.

  “What’re you doing?” she said.

  “I’m borrowing one of your horses,” he replied, not pausing.

  “Oh no you’re not! No way!” she said, charging down the porch steps and trotting after him.

  “That bay mare,” he said, halting beside the barn door to set down his rifle and sling the saddlebags over the top rail of the fence. “As I recall, you’ve used her a bit for roping and such. She’s green broke but willing.”

  “I said you can’t borrow a horse and you most certainly can’t borrow the bay!” Jessie said, rounding on him. “She’s my best horse!”

  “Kestrel. Isn’t that her name? Feisty, smart and tough.” He ducked through the fence rails, shook out a loop and walked toward the group of mares bunched against the far side of the corral. With one flick of his wrist he dabbed the loop neatly over the bay’s head before she could shy away. “Easy, now, girl. Whoa, now.” He reeled her in until she was standing right in front of him, ears pricked cautiously and nostrils taking in his scent. Only when she had responded to his soothing words and relaxed did he reach out a hand to stroke her neck. “She looks good. She’s muscled up a lot since I last saw her.”

  “I told you, you can’t take her.”

  “I’m going up in the pass to find the rest of your mares,” he said, opening the gate and leading the bay mare out. “I’d use my own horse, but I sold him when I left town, and the bastard who bought him won’t sell him back to me at twice the price.” He closed the gate behind him and tied the mare off to one of the fence posts. Only then did he face her squarely. He had bathed and shaved,
but the deep fatigue hadn’t left his eyes.

  “I thought about what you said to me last night, Jess,” he said, “and you’re right. I’ve stood in your way all these years. I guess I never realized I was doing it. I wanted to keep you here—I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted you all for myself. I was suffocating you. You were right to push me away, and you were right to want to leave. So I’m going up to find your horses and bring them back, because you can’t leave until they’re safe, and you sure as hell can’t ride yourself with that metal thing stuck into your arm.

  “I should be back within a few days, a week at most if they’ve gone clear up and over the pass. Don’t worry about your mare. I’ll take good care of her. If you could just keep an eye on McCutcheon until I get back?”

  He walked over to the pickup, grabbed his saddle and another armload of gear, walked back to the mare and commenced to saddle her. He did so with practiced movements and the mare, sensing his expertise, stood quietly for him.

  “Guthrie, I don’t need you to bring the mares down. I can do it myself when the time comes.”

  “It’ll be winter soon. Were you planning to wait till then and use a snowmobile? There isn’t a machine made that can climb that pass.” He smoothed the blanket over the mare’s back, settled the saddle with a gentle shake and reached under the mare’s belly for the cinch.

  Jessie felt hot anger course through her. “I mean it! I don’t want you taking that mare! She’s too valuable!”

  “You probably haven’t ridden her for months. Look how she’s dancin’ around, skittery as a deer. She should be topped off by now, but you’ve been too busy, I don’t doubt. This little trip’ll be good for her. It’ll settle her down some.” He looped the latigo through the cinch ring and tightened it up. “Whoa, now,” he soothed as the mare stepped sideways and threw her head up with a snort of alarm.