Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch) Page 15

  Hell, maybe she shouldn’t have gone away to college. Maybe if she and Guthrie had pitched camp together right out of high school things’d be different today. Maybe none of that bad stuff would’ve happened. Maybe she’d be happy now, countin’ her babies on one hand and her blessings on the other. Or maybe she and Guthrie would have gone their own ways no matter what when the ranch failed. Hard to tell which way the heart is going to turn when it’s being tugged this way and that.

  Take McCutcheon. He was reputedly a married man, but his wife lived in another country most of the time. Where was the sense in that? Maybe that was just how rich people lived. McCutcheon sure had a lot of money. Why, he was so wealthy, rumor had it he gave a lot of it away to charities. Such a concept was beyond Badger’s grasp. If he had enough to keep hunger at bay and pay his daily dues, he counted himself lucky.

  It helped if a man lived simple and had plain tastes. McCutcheon seemed as if he could live as plain as Badger did and be happy enough. Maybe choosing a simple path was different from being forced down it due to circumstance. Some folks would probably keel over in a dead faint if they had to use an outhouse or take a bath standing in a galvanized washtub. They’d forgotten that a short while ago everyone lived that way and thought nothing of it.

  Well, maybe a few thought enough of it to invent such things as flush toilets and hot showers and the like. Not bad inventions at all, come to think of it.

  The truck slowed as it climbed an incline, and Badger downshifted. He always liked the last stretch of ranch road the best. He liked the way the road rounded over this gentle knoll, crested in a grove of tall Engleman spruce and then all of a sudden there it was, stretched out as far as the eye could see—the high climbing valley, the river winding through it, the ranch buildings nestled at the foot of Montana Mountain and the big sky reaching forever.

  Even after all these years the beauty of this mountain valley still tugged at him. That it wasn’t Jessie’s home anymore was hard to imagine. To him, it would always be the Weaver ranch, and he would remain tied to it the way Jessie was, the way Guthrie was, the way anyone who had ever sweated and toiled and struggled and loved the land was bound to it. The land got in a person’s blood the way the spawning stream got into a salmon smolt. Salmon might spend years at sea, but they always knew where home was. They could taste the waters where they’d been born.

  Badger cut the truck’s engine and unfolded his creaky frame cautiously as he climbed out of the cab. Getting old wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was getting around. Things didn’t function quite up to snuff, but by God he could still ride a horse, and pretty good, too.

  Jessie and the dog came out of the house and the kitchen door banged behind her. She smiled at him from the porch. She appeared tired but more at peace then she had in a long while. “Hey, Badger.”

  “Bernie sent me over with some chow. I guess it’s edible.” He wrenched open the passenger-side door and lifted out the box. “Enough here for an army.”

  “Well, we don’t have an army. Guthrie’s gone up into the pass, looking for the mares. If he’s lucky he’ll find them in a week or so.”

  “If I know that boy, he’s found ’em already and he’ll be home for supper, hungrier’n a grizzly in springtime.” He climbed the porch steps slowly and nodded as Jessie opened the kitchen door for him. “Say!” He set the box on the kitchen table and swung around in a complete circle, taking in the room with visible appreciation. “The place feels like home again. You fixin’ to stay?”

  “Yessir. McCutcheon offered me a job.”

  Badger grinned unabashedly. “That’s real fine! I can’t imagine this place without you.”

  Jessie smiled again. “So tell me what’s been going on, Badger. It seems like years since I’ve thought about anything but losing the ranch. Now I just want things to get back to normal.”

  “Well, most of the talk in town is about you. In fact, I should probably get back right away to tell Bernie you’re staying.”

  Jessie laughed. “She sent you on a mission, didn’t she?”

  “She’ll be tickled pink with my report.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, not much. Nothing much ever changes in Katy Junction.”

  Jessie studied him for a long moment, her eyes narrowing and her head tipping to one side. “Huh,” she said. She turned away, poured two mugs of coffee and set them on the table with a decided thump. She then proceeded to poke through the packages within the cardboard box until she found the one she was looking for. “C’mon, Badger. Let’s you and me eat some bear sign and get us good and fat,” she said, dropping into her chair and opening the bag of doughnuts. She picked one, raised it for a big bite and chased it down with a swallow of strong black coffee. “Okay,” she said, settling back in her chair. “Spill the beans. You’ve got mystery and mayhem written all over that sly old face of yours.”

  Badger removed his hat to cover his unsettled state. He sat down gingerly and drew his mug toward him. “I don’t have a sly old face,” he said, injured.

  “What is it. Is it Comstock? Has he asked you to keep an eye out for Joe Nash and his hunting clients?”

  Badger’s jaw dropped. “How’d you know?”

  Jessie grinned. “The elk have been bugling up in the high country for a while now and the aspen have nearly all dropped their leaves. If Comstock’s got you on patrol, he must smell a rat. Who is it, Badger? Could it be the almighty Senator George Averill Smith himself? He always shows up right around this time of year looking to shoot something big, and he always hires Joe to squire him and his big fancy gun around.”

  Badger was disappointed that she had guessed so easily. He chose a doughnut from the paper sack, contemplated it for a moment, then bit and chewed. “Well,” he said, shaping his words around the yeasty sweetness, “Comstock asked me to keep my eyes peeled, and that’s all I’ll say about it.”

  “He’ll never catch Joe. A fast helicopter is a mighty hard act to follow.”

  “Maybe.” Badger swallowed, gestured with the remainder of the doughnut. “But if we can just pinpoint his whereabouts…”

  “What’s he gunning for this time? Sheep, goats, elk?”

  Badger’s shoulders rose and fell. “Dunno. Just something big.”

  Jessie sighed. “Something big. Some men have to kill something big to feel big themselves, I guess.” She raised her mug, tasted the strong brew. “I’m on your side, Badger—you know that. I’ll tell you if I see anything even remotely suspicious. Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “I was just thinkin’,” Badger said. “Wishin’ that I could’ve told Guthrie before he rode up into the pass. A man up high like that—he can see a long ways. He can see things we can’t, down here in the valley. Why, up high in the pass, he can see the sun set over the Pacific and rise over the Atlantic. Guthrie could spot Joe Nash’s helicopter easy enough, I guess. I’m just wishin’ I could’ve told him to watch for it, that’s all.”

  JESSIE WOKE UP with a start just past midnight. The green luminescent hands of her bedside clock silently mocked her. To think about what Badger had said and put it all together had taken her seven hours. Joe Nash, Senator George Smith—both on the trail of a big animal to shoot. Guthrie, riding up into the pass to fetch her mares down, riding up toward the kill site of a very big grizzly that Joe himself had spotted just two days prior.

  She sat up in the darkness, her heart rate trebling and a cold sweat chilling her skin. Joe had mentioned the bear several times in her presence. Joe had keen eyes. He could measure the size of a creature at a distance of half a mile, and come within an ounce of its weight. If Senator George Smith was paying a lot of money for a chance to knock down a big animal, then that grizzly up in the pass had probably been earmarked for the senator’s big gun about the time Joe Nash first set eyes on it. It didn’t matter that the threatened grizzlies were off limits to hunters.

  Big grizzly for the senator meant big bucks for Joe. That was the bottom
line in their world.

  Jessie swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She could hear her heart beating in the stillness and her mouth was suddenly quite dry. The entire universe stood still to hear the name she breathed into the silence of the night.

  “Guthrie.”

  Guthrie had ridden up to bring her mares down, ridden up into the pass where Blue had been injured. He would find the kill site, determine which of her mares had died there. He would ride right up into the thick of it, with Joe Nash counting on that dead mare to draw the grizzly back in, counting on the fact that Jessie would be out of commission with her arm broken the way it was. Counting on the money Senator George Smith would pay him when he had that grizzly’s head to mount on the wall of his disgustingly opulent hunting lodge. Oh, Lord, it was all so plain.

  And she had been the cause of it all. If she hadn’t lost her horse, none of this would ever have happened. Joe Nash would never have been asked by Ben Comstock to look for her and he would never have seen the grizzly. That bear might be shot because of her, and Guthrie would somehow be right in the midst of it, the way he usually wound up in the midst of everything.

  All because of her!

  HE KEPT THE TINY CAMPFIRE burning long after he should have rolled into his blankets and drifted off to sleep. He stared at the yellow flames licking up around the chunks of resinous softwood, smelled the sweet tang of wood smoke, cradled his tin cup in his hands and sipped hot coffee. He was thinking about the wild horses and about how they had led him on a wild-goose chase clear over the pass, only to double back and climb into this high alpine valley where they grazed on the wild grasses and drank the clear glacial waters of Horseshoe Lake. He had spotted them at sunset, the tail end of the band disappearing into a dense grove of softwood at a dead run.

  Instead of following them, he had pitched his camp in this pretty place on the shore of the little lake, near the base of a tree big enough to climb should a grizzly pay an unexpected visit. He’d gathered driftwood for his campfire until darkness closed in and the stars spangled the dark arch of sky overhead. He boiled a small pot of coffee and ate a ham sandwich packed that morning, content to sit cross-legged in the small warmth and light of the little campfire and reflect upon his journey.

  He had not looked for the kill site after coming upon the fresh tracks of the band of mares, but instead had focused on locating them before nightfall, and in that respect he had been successful. Whether or not they would be in the valley come morning remained to be seen, but the graze up here was still remarkably good and he hoped they would tolerate his presence and spend the night. He had picketed the bay mare close by and her company was a comfort. The mare had done well today and had showed an enthusiasm for travel that Guthrie admired in a horse. He had fed her a generous bait of sweet feed and rubbed her down well before turning her out to graze. A few days of traveling like this and the mare would settle in and become a real good trail horse.

  Guthrie poured the last of the hot coffee into his cup. The moon was rising over the rim of mountains to the east of the high valley, one day shy of full. It was big and bright and he could clearly see the craters on its surface. He watched it until it had cleared the horizon and lifted into the night sky. Somehow the beauty of it intensified the empty, aching feeling inside him. He wished that Jess were up here with him, camping in this high, wild place, just the two of them, tucked up close beneath the glow of that big Montana moon.

  He wished that she were sitting beside him on this log, that she would listen while he spoke and that she would speak and he would listen, and that they could give and take the words between them that would help make things right again. He wished that they could lie together beneath this bright canopy of the moonlit heavens and move the universe with the power of their love. He wished that she still loved him, and he wished that he knew how to make her love him again, but he realized that such a thing was not possible. She had moved beyond him, outgrown him, evolved to become so much more than anything he could ever hope to be. He could not hope to keep apace of her. He would no longer even try.

  The only thing he could do for her now was be there for her when she needed a friend, help her out all he could and try not to let his heartache show.

  SENATOR SMITH COULDN’T sleep. He was afraid of the darkness, afraid that if the fire died to ashes all the big creatures that ruled the night would creep upon him silently, and so he sat upright, his back braced against the trunk of the big red cedar, and wondered what had possessed him to ask Joe Nash to let him spend the night out here alone. There was the ever-present threat of being caught, of course, and the fewer flights Joe made to this place, the better. Nobody else knew he was up here, not even Joe’s boss, who’d been told by Joe that the senator was just spending a couple days elk hunting out at his remote camp.

  Joe had set up a nice tree stand for him, and brought all the prerequisites to keep him comfortable for a week or better. It made no sense for Joe to return tonight, after setting him up so well. He had told Joe to pick him up at sunset tomorrow, and that would be time enough for him to sit in the stand for an entire day and watch for the grizzly.

  When a grizzly would return to a kill was hard to say. He’d seen no sign of the bear today, but the helicopter would have frightened it away. At dawn he would climb back up into the stand, which was a good safe distance from his campsite, and he would wait for the bear, and the bear would come.

  That was the thing about all creatures. They had to eat. If their behavior wasn’t motivated by mating rituals, it most surely was by their stomachs. If only all things were as predictable as that, life would be a lark.

  A twig snapped and the sharp sound jolted him to his very foundations. Adrenaline surged. He reached for his rifle, eyes wide. Could it be the bear? Might it have smelled the supper he’d eaten?

  He rose to his feet, gripping the Weatherby. After a while he realized that his entire body was clenched with fear, that his hands were gripping the gun so hard they were shaking. He forced himself to relax. The fire would keep the wild things at bay. He knew this. He was, after all, a big-game hunter. And yet a small noise in the wilderness had made him act like a fearful woman.

  Contempt coursed through him. He returned to his seat by the fire and threw more wood on it. The flames licked up and brightened the surrounding woods. He saw no eyes glowing at him through the darkness, but his imagination kept him awake for the rest of the night and he had used up every last piece of firewood by morning.

  DAWN, and she had been up for hours, had drunk an entire pot of black coffee, had laboriously stuffed her saddlebags with gear, had checked her rifle, stuffed her parka pockets with extra cartridges, carried her saddle down to the corral and told Blue that she would have to stay home. Dawn, and she was saddling Billy—hard slow work with only one good arm. Billy was rested up and rarin’ to go, as ready as a horse could be, but he stood pat for the saddle and lowered his head to take the bit. It was as though he was trying to help her, to hurry the process along. The bay gelding seemed as eager as she to be back on the trail again.

  Dawn, and she rode Billy down to the old cabin by the river and called McCutcheon out of his bed. He thumped out on the porch in his long johns, braced himself on his crutches, looked at her setting there upon the horse and nodded. “You’re going up there after him, aren’t you.”

  “It’s a feeling I have,” she told him, “and I’ve always trusted my feelings. I’d thank you to look after Blue while I’m gone. She’ll stay right here with you. Badger’ll be coming by with food, I expect. If he doesn’t, there’s plenty up to the main house, and you could call Bernie if you have to. I shouldn’t be gone long.”

  “You shouldn’t be going at all, but I guess that won’t stop you. You think he’s in some kind of trouble?”

  “I think he might need my help. He most always helped me when I needed it, so I guess maybe it’s my turn now.”

  McCutcheon nodded again. “I’ll watch Blue for you,” he said. “You
be careful.”

  “I will.” She reined Billy around and lifted him into a lope. The day was just taking shape, the dim light defining the high mountain peaks, giving substance and shape to the land. It was cold, and Billy’s breath gusted from his nostrils like twin frost plumes as he ran off his initial burst of exuberance at being on the trail again. She reined him in before they reached the faint trace that began the ascent into the pass. It wouldn’t do to tire him out now, when the whole day and that high pass stretched ahead of them, to climb and conquer.

  HE SPENT a good night by the shore of Horseshoe Lake, and when he awoke, the mare, Kestrel, was watching him. She stood at the end of her picket line, ears pricked, nostrils delicately taking in his scent. He sat up and she lowered her head cautiously. “Easy, girl. Easy, Kestrel.” At his softly spoken words the tautness in her vanished. She raised her head again, her ears flickered, and she shook her head and neck like a big dog before continuing to graze.

  There were live coals buried in the ashes of his night fire, and with a few handfuls of tinder he brought the fire back into service and put the coffeepot on to boil. Luck was with him, for the sky promised fair weather for the day ahead. With a little more luck he would find the band of mares and by nightfall would be returning them to the valley below, to Jess. Perhaps by doing so he would gain some small favor in her eyes.

  Perhaps not.

  Either way, he was determined to bring those wily mares back down. They were too good to risk losing to the brutal winter that would savage this high valley, and the graze was still good enough now that they might wait too long themselves to head back down. It wouldn’t be the first time good livestock was lost to poor judgment and rapidly changing mountain weather. It was up to him to make sure that didn’t happen.