Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch) Page 13

  “What about the bear?”

  “What about the bear!” he retorted, startling both her and the mare. “What do you want me to do, Jess? You want me to shoot it? You want me to let it be? Just tell me. I’ll do anything you want me to!”

  He paused to glare at her and she glared back, but then something inside her gave and she dropped her eyes, feeling confused. “I just want you to be careful, that’s all,” she said in a low voice.

  Guthrie straightened up and draped an arm over the saddle, clearly amazed. “You mind repeating that?”

  “Those things I said last night—they’re not true. Not all of them, anyway,” she said, jabbing at the dirt with the toe of her boot. “I’ve been really angry about a lot of things for a long time, but I had no right to lash out at you that way and I’m…” She drew a quick breath, as though knifed by pain. “And I’m sorry!”

  Guthrie shook his head slowly. “Kick me in the shin,” he said in a wondering voice. “I must be dreamin’.”

  She flushed. “I’m not leaving here, Guthrie. I’ve decided to take the job McCutcheon offered me.”

  She had thought this news would gladden him and was caught off guard by his complete lack of reaction. He turned his back on her and began bridling the mare, using a hackamore because he knew she was still green. The mare danced a bit but then held firm while he slipped the leather crown behind her ears. When he had gotten the hackamore in place he reached for his saddlebags. He tied them on behind the cantle, did the same with his bedroll, then reached up for his rifle—his father’s old Winchester—and slid it effortlessly into the scabbard.

  From the truck he retrieved his gloves and warm parka, which he shrugged into as he returned to the mare, still not looking at or speaking to Jessie. He untied the horse from the fence post, coiled his rope and secured it to the lariat strap. Then he took up the trailing rein and pulled the mare’s head around as he stepped into the saddle. She danced again, a quick, startled sidestep that Guthrie sat quietly through. He gathered the reins in one hand and ran his his other soothingly up the mare’s neck.

  “Did you hear what I said!” Jessie snapped. “I said I’m taking the job!”

  Guthrie stood in his stirrups to check their length and, satisfied, sank back into the saddle. He snugged his hat brim down and then reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a sheaf of folded-up papers and leaned over the mare’s withers to hand them down to her. “I called the college this morning and talked to the head of the veterinary studies department. You remember him. He taught your anatomy class the first year. He said he could get you back into vet school. You’d have to scramble to catch up, but he thought you could do it. Call the number on that paper and talk to him this morning, Jess.”

  Jessie stared up at him…speechless, but not for long. “Damn you!” she said. “Are you playing games with me?”

  “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t dare play games with you.” He bent a little closer, his eyes keen. “Remember that dream you had of being a veterinarian? You were almost there, and you can still make it happen. Call that number, Jess. Before you decide to take McCutcheon up on his job offer, talk to Professor Payler. That job ripping down fences might last two years at best. Being a veterinarian is a lifelong career, and your father was right. You’d make a damn fine one.”

  Before she could respond, he reined the mare around, touched his heels to her flanks and jumped her into a smooth lope. “You’re an idiot, Guthrie Sloane!” she shouted after him. “An imbecile! I hope that grizzly eats you!”

  He never turned his head. He sat easy in the saddle, his broad shoulders mocking her as he rode away. For some irrational reason it made her even angrier that he could ride so well. Nobody in the whole wide West could set a horse the way Guthrie Sloane could.

  Not even Clint Eastwood.

  JESSIE’S BEHAVIOR totally floored Guthrie. For one thing, he’d been sure she’d never take that job. For another, he never thought she’d ever apologize for anything she ever said to anyone, no matter how awful or wrong it was. And then that part about the bear, and about him being careful. Had she really said those things? How much could a person change in just a few short hours? The entire encounter might have completely unsettled him, except that her send-off had been fairly normal. That, and her protests over him taking the bay mare.

  Who, as a matter of fact, was an absolute joy to ride. Her ancestry was written all over her in the beautiful dish of her face, the width between her large, intelligent eyes, the short-coupled strength of her back and her tough yet slender legs. It came through in her gait, as well, for she had the smooth, tireless lope of a Spanish Barb. No wonder Jess had been so protective of her. He’d been riding her a scant two hours and already he figured she was worth a great deal of money, that value not just solely based on her bloodlines.

  Jess had trained her well. She had a way with all animals, but with horses she could make a kind of magic. This little mare might be green yet, but soon she’d be dazzling some fortunate high bidder who might live anywhere in the world.

  “She needs to go back to school,” he explained to the mare. “I don’t know why it took me so long to see that, but it’s the only way. She needs to get beyond this place. Beyond you and beyond me. She needs to get past the anger she feels about everything right now. She needs to finish up her education. She’s too damn smart to stick around here just to pull down some barbed-wire fences.”

  He listened to his own words and laughed. Hell, for years he’d dreaded her going away to school, and now he was telling one of her horses that it was the only thing for her to do. To leave here for at least one year, maybe forever. “But if she comes back when she’s finished because she chooses to be here with us, that’ll really mean something,” he said softly into the mare’s flickering ears.

  It was the kind of day that swept across Montana in a vivid panorama of strong winds, deep blue sky, tawny grasslands and looming snowcapped mountains. The sun strengthened and softened the chilly air, melted the frost from the grass, rose higher and coaxed a mist off the surface of the tumbling creek he followed. He heard a flock of Canada geese overhead, heading south just as fast as they could go, leaving their wild northern haunts and winging stalwartly toward the barrage of hunters’ guns that would dog them all the way home and keep more than a few from making it. “Good luck,” he said, because that was what Jess always said when the geese flew over, heading south in the fall. Good luck!

  He felt good, better than he had since he’d gone to Alaska this past spring. He felt as if he could eat food again and taste it, sleep again and not be tormented by hopelessly dark and lonely dreams of loss. He reined the bay mare to a rapid walk as she began to ascend Dead Woman Pass.

  Running the legs off her wouldn’t do. Jess would never forgive him.

  THE RIFLE WAS a Weatherby .357 Magnum, packing a big enough wallop to knock down an elephant, let alone a thousand-pound grizzly. The senator took good care of his guns, and he was especially fond of the Weatherby. His only regret was that the elephant he’d shot with it several months prior had to be forfeited to a pride of lions patrolling that area of the game preserve. The African government frowned on the killing of its elephants. There was no way he could have returned home with the great beast’s head to mount on his wall.

  Still, the kill itself had been satisfying. Whenever he picked up the Weatherby he felt an almost sexual thrill. The anticipation of the hunt always did that to him. Now he looked forward to pitting his wits against the big bear. Looked forward to the moment the bear moved into range and he could target the kill. Looked forward to the moment his finger would squeeze the trigger and the bear would take the full charge of the massive bullet. Looked forward to mounting the bear’s head on his wall. He’d already made a place for it, next to the lion and the tiger. What location could be more appropriate than that?

  All that remained was for Joe to pick him up. He was ready and waiting and had been since before dawn. He’d fully expected that Jo
e would call and tell him to get his gear together. Joe Nash had never let him down.

  If he knew what was good for him, he never would.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE WERE LOTS of things a person could do with just one good arm, and Jessie had discovered many of them since she’d broken one of hers. One thing she couldn’t do, however, was braid her hair. The metal pins in her forearm kept getting snagged in her dark tresses every time she tried. At length she gave up and drew her hair back into a loose, if somewhat lopsided, ponytail. Long, flowing hair might befit other women, but for a working cowgirl it just wouldn’t do. Not that she was going to be much of a cowgirl for a while.

  She stood on the porch looking out toward the mountains while the morning slipped away from her, the sheaf of papers that Guthrie had handed her before riding off held firmly in her hand. She had read them over and over, her convictions swinging erratically between staying here and accepting the job that Caleb McCutcheon had offered, and going back to school, then pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. She’d spent the morning cursing Guthrie’s apparent duplicity on the one hand and blessing his selflessness on the other. Had he been toying with her? Trying to get her goat?

  No. Guthrie was many things, but deceitful wasn’t among them. He must have had a change of heart, a change of attitude. All these years he’d rebelled against her leaving here, and suddenly he was encouraging her to go.

  The strange thing was, now that he was urging her to leave she no longer wanted to. She wanted to unpack all the boxes stacked in the shed, return her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her great-grandmother’s things to their proper and time-honored places in the old ranch house and settle back into the comfortable routine of living here. Only, this time it would be different. There would be no constant gnawing anxiety about how she was going to make ends meet. That would be McCutcheon’s worry now. She could buy what she needed, hire whom she pleased and see that the ranch was run the way it should be, no expenses spared.

  Instead of spending her money on veterinary school, she could invest it in land. She could buy Dan Robb’s place, the one Bernie had told her about. It didn’t amount to much, but it did abut the Weaver ranch and one corner of it connected with the Gallatin National Forest. It would be another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that would ultimately tie together Yellowstone, Gallatin National Forest and the Weaver land, and create one of the largest contiguous unfenced pieces of open space in the West.

  Compared with that dream, what chance did veterinary school have? No, she wouldn’t make that phone call. Her mind was made up.

  And yet… Could she deny her lifelong ambition to become a veterinarian? Her two summers in Arizona working for Lorraine Carey had shown her just how satisfying such a career could be. Dr. Carey specialized in equine sports medicine and worked out of her truck, traveling from ranch to ranch and practicing the kind of medicine that old-school vets like Dr. Cooper hadn’t even heard of. She also had access to one of the most advanced surgical clinics in the United States. She’d let Jessie observe two of her operations on racehorses. The experience had dazzled her.

  Could she give up any chance of ever having such a career and not live to regret it later?

  Jessie narrowed her eyes on the mountain peaks and tried to visualize herself in ten years, in twenty. What would she be doing when her hair was starting to gray and her childbearing years were past? What would she be doing when she was sixty? Would she be standing here on this porch, looking out at these solid, unchanging mountains? Would she still be all by herself, fighting the endless battles that life threw at her and growing more embittered and cynical with each one?

  Where would Guthrie be? What would he look like when he was sixty? Damn the man, he’d be just as handsome as he was today. More so, even, with his hair streaked with silver at the temples, his long body just as lithe as ever. Guthrie would age the way all true cowboys did, and the years would give him a depth of pragmatic wisdom and wry humor that would make others seek him as they did shade and a cool drink on a hot afternoon.

  Would they be together, she and Guthrie, when they were old and gray?

  As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see into the future.

  But she could see something else. A man walking toward the ranch house, limping along with the aid of a pair of crutches, Blue dogging his heels. Caleb McCutcheon must have grown tired of sitting on his porch, watching the river run by. He thumped and swung along at a brisk pace until he reached the bottom of the steps, where he paused and grinned up at her. “I’m getting pretty good at this,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d made up your mind about the job.”

  Jessie’s fingers tightened on the sheaf of papers. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “I never told you what the salary would be.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, it ought to. People should feel they’re getting paid what they’re worth.”

  “Is that how you felt when you signed all those baseball contracts?” Jessie said.

  McCutcheon threw back his head and laughed appreciatively. “I felt like the most ridiculously overpaid person on earth!” he admitted. “But I signed my name all the same. And I kept the money, too.”

  “All right, then. How much are you willing to pay?”

  “Well, I’ve thought about it for a long time. It’ll be hard work, but nothing you aren’t already used to doing. There’ll be weeks when you put in eighty hours, and times in the dark of winter when you’ll barely pull forty.”

  “It’s seven days a week, on call twenty-four hours a day, summer and winter.”

  “True enough. Animals like to be fed in winter and watered, too, and I haven’t been here very long, but it seems they’re always getting into some kind of trouble. Seven hundred.”

  Jessie gripped the papers so hard they scrunched up. “Seven hundred dollars a week?” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Seven hundred?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could hire two full-timers for that amount of money!”

  “I figure you’re worth four full-timers any day, and I’d be lucky to get you for that price.”

  Jessie turned and stared out at the mountains. A hawk wheeled high against the hard blue sky, scanning the tawny land for some promise of its next meal. “Guthrie came by here this morning.”

  “He told me last night he was going to try to bring your mares in.”

  “Did he also tell you that he wanted me to go back to school?”

  The expression on McCutcheon’s face said plainly that Guthrie hadn’t. McCutcheon pondered her words. He leaned against his crutches and stared at the ground for a moment before squaring up to her. “Let me get this straight. He doesn’t want you to take this job?”

  “He thought I should go back and finish up vet school. He knows that’s what I wanted back before my father got sick.” McCutcheon shook his head, apparently too bewildered to speak. Blue stood beside him, peering questioningly up into his face, her tail flagging gently. “I guess it’s something he thought about all night long, after he left your place,” Jessie continued. “He even called the vet school this morning to talk to one of my professors about it.” She held up the sheaf of papers. “I honestly don’t know what to do. One minute I want to stay here and rip out fences, the next minute I think maybe he’s right. Maybe I should go back to school.”

  McCutcheon drew a deep breath. “Then I’d suggest you finish your education. You can always come back here. I meant what I said about you belonging to this land. This place isn’t going anywhere and neither am I, not for a long time, I hope.”

  “But the job! Pulling the fences! Who would help you with that?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about this crazy old man. I have all the bases covered. Last night Guthrie agreed to take the job if you turned it down.”

  For a moment McCutcheon’s words were too unexpected to digest, but then Jessie’s jaw dropped and she felt heat flush
her face as a surge of hot anger boiled through her blood. “Guthrie!” She crumpled the sheaf of papers into a ball and flung them at her feet, seething. “No wonder he wanted me to go back to school! He wanted that seven hundred dollars a week for himself! Well, he isn’t getting it! Mr. McCutcheon, if your offer still stands, I accept!”

  “Well…” McCutcheon rubbed his jaw. He sensed he had gotten himself into a pickle and he had no idea how to climb out of the brine. “I don’t believe Guthrie wanted to take the job from you. Hell, he didn’t even know what it would pay. He just didn’t want to leave me in a bind if you should go. Anyhow, I’m a man of my word. The job is yours…if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  “It is! I’m going to start unpacking right now. By the time Guthrie gets back with my mares, things’ll be back to normal around here, and if that doesn’t set well with him, then he can just pack up his things and run right back to Alaska!”

  STEVEN LOOKED forward to seeing Jessie, but the idea of spending an unknown quantity of time on horseback, looking for her mares up in the high country, left him feeling a little off balance. He remembered how lame that last horseback ride with McCutcheon and Jessie had left him. He might be a full-blooded Crow Indian, but he’d take his Jeep over a horse any day. In fact, he wished he were sitting in it now, instead of riding in the passenger seat of a very old pickup that Pete Two Shirts drove down the ranch road. The truck’s vinyl seat was cracked and shredded, the tires were bald, the paint was blistered and rust had worked its way into every possible crack and crevice. The vehicle had no suspension to speak of and conversation was possible only in raised voices. The horse trailer hitched behind looked pretty much the same as the old truck, but inside it were two solid horses, if what Pete had told him was true. And there was no reason it shouldn’t be. Pete Two Shirts was renowned for his knowledge of horses.