Montana Dreaming

by Nadia Nichols

  The grizzly was huge and angry. It rose up on its hind legs and stared in her direction, swinging its massive head as it tasted the air for some scent of her. She felt herself cowering, paralyzed with fear. Mouth dry, heart pounding, she was unable to move when it suddenly dropped back onto all fours and began to charge toward her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. Her legs felt mired in quicksand. The bear lunged and grabbed her arm in its powerful jaws, and pain shot through her—

  “No!” She came awake in midcry, gasping for breath in blind panic, until reality reasserted itself and chased the nightmare away. Blue was tense and whining in her arms. Oh, her arm hurt! It ached unbearably. She shifted her position and sat in the inky darkness until her heartbeat steadied.

  Where was the bear? What time was it? Surely morning was near. It was so dark. And cold… It was so very, very cold….

  STEVEN SET ASIDE the paperwork he’d been reading, or at least pretending to read, and glanced up at the clock. Midnight. He’d called the Longhorn ten minutes ago. Would it be rude to call again so soon? He pushed out of his easy chair, carried his cup of coffee with him to the door and opened it. The windblown snow whirled past. Jessie Weaver was out in the brunt of it tonight. Alone. Perhaps hurt. Maybe dead. And he was here, his back to the warm room, a cup of hot coffee in his hand.

  He slammed the door and stood in the foyer of his little cedar-clad post-and-beam house in Gallatin Gateway, hating the fact that he was safe while she was in trouble. Hating the helplessness that had overwhelmed him since he’d gotten McCutcheon’s message on his answering machine earlier that evening. He’d spoken with Bernie four times since, and each time had brought the same information.

  No news.

  He walked into the kitchen, slatted the remains of his coffee into the sink and rinsed the mug. Without even thinking of what he would do when he got there, he dressed himself for a winter storm, and less than ten minutes later he was in his Jeep Wagoneer, heading for Katy Junction.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GUTHRIE WAS TAKEN ABACK by the stranger who opened the door of the Weaver ranch when he banged on it just past midnight. “Who the hell are you?” he said.

  “Caleb McCutcheon. Are you the warden?”

  “No! I’m here to look for—” He spotted someone else in the lamp-lit room. “Badger! Where’s Jess!” Guthrie pushed past the stranger and into the kitchen, relieved to see the bewhiskered and familiar face.

  “Oh, I expect she’s up on the mountain somewheres, hunkered down and waiting for dawn. Same as we are. Only, I don’t doubt as we’re a whole lot more comfortable. Good to see you, Guthrie. You been gone awhile. Too long. A lot’s happened since you left. This here gent’s bought the whole Weaver ranch, lock, stock and barrel.”

  Guthrie rounded on the stranger as if drawing a sword. “You’re a developer?”

  “No. Like I said, I’m Caleb McCutcheon. And if you have any ideas on how to find Jessica Weaver, I’m listening. We’ve been sitting around doing nothing for way too long.”

  The two men measured each other for a brief moment, and then Guthrie nodded curtly. “I brought snowshoes from my place. You’re welcome to a pair. She’s up on Montana Mountain—like Badger says. Probably went looking for Fox. That mare always heads up there this time of year, trying for North Dakota. Damn mustang thinks they don’t have such things as fences there, though that gray stallion of Jessie’s usually manages to convince Fox to stick around.”

  “Old Gray’s dead,” Badger said bluntly. “Got struck by lightning this summer.”

  Guthrie was taken aback for the second time in as many minutes. “She thought highly of that horse.” He could hardly conceive of what Jessie had been through in the past year, but if he had thought himself to be suffering this past summer, it was nothing compared with the hell that she had endured. “C’mon, let’s go. I have a backpack full of emergency supplies and spare headlamp batteries. I don’t guess I’m waiting for daylight. And by the way,” he said to McCutcheon, thrusting out his hand, “I’m Guthrie Sloane. From what Badger says, we’re neighbors.”

  IT WAS DARK YET, but nearing the dawn. The snow had stopped. Her muscles were stiff and sore and she was cold and hungry, but both the night and the storm had lost their grip, and with the coming of daylight she would be able to walk down out of this high place. It would be slow going, carrying Blue. She could keep to the trail, or cut off it just below the big lightning-struck pine, climb over the ridge and head down for the main road. That would be quicker, and there was bound to be some traffic—a rancher heading for Katy Junction for his morning coffee, newspaper and goodly dose of gossip at the Longhorn; a plow truck sweeping back the drifts.

  She could catch a ride, and maybe even get hauled over to Doc Cooper so’s she could have Blue seen to. Some of the dog’s wounds needed stitching up. Jessie could have done it herself if she’d had two good hands—and made a better job of it, too. Half the women in the county could lay in a neater row of stitches than Doc Cooper. Still and all, he knew his stuff and had helped the Weavers through many a livestock crisis. Never nagged about payment, either—eventually he always got his due and then some. Folks out here just naturally stood by one another in tough times, and lately it seemed that the times had always been tough.

  In the gloaming Jessie struggled to her feet, stomping them to restore circulation. She had thought to let Blue free for a bit, but as she started to unzip her coat the zipper had stuck and she gave up. When she moved out from beneath the sheltering overhang of the blowdown, the depth of the snow surprised her. She made up her mind without really thinking about it. She would take the shortcut out to the main road. It would shave five miles off her journey, though still leave her with another ten to cover if no traffic happened by. Ten miles in nearly a foot of wet October snow, carrying an injured dog, ought to be a good workout. And to think that some folks paid good money to join a health club to exercise!

  Jessie pointed her feet in the right direction and started walking.

  GUTHRIE SLOANE DIDN’T give much thought to the man struggling along behind him, except to note that he was doing all right for a person his age. Jess was in trouble, and he had no intention of holding back. Nossir. If McCutcheon signed up for the trip, he was in for the long haul, and it was proving up to be a long rough haul. The trail up into the pass was steep, and there were a lot of places that a man could run afoul on a dark and stormy night like this.

  He was going on pure hunch, figuring what route she’d have taken, where the mares might’ve been headed until this unexpected storm had caught them out. Of course he could be wrong. Maybe Jess had started up into the pass while at the same time the mares had angled down out of it, sensing the storm. Maybe she’d caught their sign and trailed after them. Maybe she was already out of the high country, encamped in some sheltered draw, with a cheerful fire keeping the darkness at bay, Blue tucked beside her and a billy can of hot coffee boiling.

  Such thoughts did little to ease his torment. If anything happened to Jessie he’d blame himself for ever leaving her. He should’ve stuck it out and helped her through this awful time. True, she’d told him it was over between them and she’d meant it, but could they erase all those years of friendship just because as lovers they had failed?

  No! She was his best friend and nothing would ever change that. It was suddenly the most important thing on earth to him that she realize he would be there for her, no matter what. Always.

  Guthrie was unaware that the snow had stopped until McCutcheon mentioned it the first time they paused to take a breather. The older man had pulled up beside him and slumped over himself. Hands braced on his knees, he’d drawn deep gasping breaths until his lungs had caught up with the rest of him, at which point he’d raised his head and said, “It’s stopped.”

  “What?”

  “The snow.”

  “Huh.” He only rested for three, four minutes at most, and then started out again. The trail was steep and the sno
w was heavy and wet, sticking to the snowshoes. The next time he halted for a breather McCutcheon bent over himself once more in a prolonged coughing fit and then raised his head and looked around.

  “It’s getting light,” he said.

  Guthrie stared out across the valley. He could see the ranch buildings along the river, a grouping of black rectangular shapes against the brightness of the snow, toylike in the distance. “So you own it now,” he said softly. “The whole of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not a developer?”

  “No,” McCutcheon explained, again struggling to catch his breath. “The land can never be divided up or developed. It’s written right into the deed.”

  “Conservation easements?”

  McCutcheon nodded. “Lots of ’em. But that’s fine with me. I like it just the way it is.”

  Twenty minutes later the two men had snowshoed into the dawn, and by the time the sun had lifted over the jagged shoulders of the Beartooth Range they had intersected Jessie’s trail in the snow where it left Dead Woman Pass and headed down toward the road.

  “Dammit!” Guthrie said, at once wildly relieved that she was okay and bitterly disappointed that she had chosen to take the shortcut and had missed them. “She can’t be too far ahead. She’s aiming for the road. It’s closer than the ranch, and she might be able to flag down a vehicle…if one should happen to pass her by.”

  McCutcheon nodded in response, too winded to speak. The rising sun was rapidly warming the air and softening the snow. By the time they reached the valley floor they would be slogging through a foot of slush and stripping off their heavy parkas.

  Hopefully by then they would have caught up with Jessie Weaver, because McCutcheon wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep pace with the younger man.

  JOE NASH HAD FLOWN for Yellowstone HeloTours for nearly ten years, but he still felt that peculiar churn of excitement in his stomach when he got a call from the state police or the warden service to ask if he’d volunteer for a search-and-rescue flight. If the chopper wasn’t carrying clients he always agreed, and sometimes he did even with clients on board. Let his boss fire him if he wanted; seat-of-the-pants search-and-rescue missions sure beat hauling around a bunch of rich tourists or egotistical chest-beating hunters, pointing out Old Faithful or a herd of elk from one thousand feet up.

  This time it was Ben Comstock who radioed him with the request. Joe liked the warden, though they had their differences of opinion regarding certain game laws. From what Comstock had told him, this mission would be particularly challenging, for it involved mountain flying, and mountain flying was always tricky. Sudden updrafts and downdrafts could toss the chopper around like a toy. Comstock climbed into the passenger seat and strapped himself in, then studied the map he’d laid out on his lap.

  “We’ll head straight to Katy Junction and then up into Dead Woman Pass from this direction here, and fly a routine grid over Montana Mountain,” he said over the noise of the rotor chop, tracing his forefinger along the proposed route. “It’s rough country. The last person who got himself lost in that wilderness was never found.”

  “Yeah, well, you should’ve called me,” Joe said laconically.

  “She’s been missing since yesterday afternoon, but she’s probably okay. She didn’t come by that reputation of hers by lying down and quitting.”

  “She? Who’d you say we’re looking for?”

  “Didn’t. It’s Jessie Weaver.”

  “No foolin’? Jessie Weaver. I’ll be damned. I read about her latest scrap in the papers last summer, how that ornery longhorn bull just up and charged out of the brush, shouldered into her horse and put him down. How she jumped clear but her rifle was pinned under the horse, so she took off her hat and whipped the bull in the face with it to drive him away. One hundred pounds of Montana cowgirl facing down a pissed-off longhorn bull, and her with a broken collarbone to boot. By damn, but that took nerve! Met her once or twice, but it’s been awhile. Hope it won’t be too much longer till we see her again.”

  Joe fed a stick of gum into his mouth and tried not to look too eager. Weaver, huh? As he recalled, she was kind of a good-looking girl. Must be some kind of rich, too. Maybe there’d be a big reward!

  He’d find her, all right. He had no doubts about that. None at all. Joe Nash always found who he was looking for. He had the keenest eyes in the sky. That was why Comstock consistantly tried to engage his help when anyone needed finding. That was why big-game hunters paid him big bucks to fly them to some remote camp in the fall. He not only took them where they wanted to go, but he pointed out all the enticing possibilities along the way. Hell, he could spot a porcupine in a spruce tree from five thousand feet up and count the quills in its tail. Finding lost persons was a lark compared with that.

  Which was why Comstock never raised an eyebrow when, less than an hour later, Joe spotted the bear. He was making a low-level run up into the pass, and as he delicately maneuvered the big chopper at an altitude that would have spooked most pilots and caused the FAA to ground him for life, he spied the grizzly, a good half mile beyond where the snowshoe tracks intercepted, then over-laid, the deeper track left by Jessica Weaver. He nosed the chopper toward the spot where the bear had disappeared into the heavily timbered draw.

  “See it?” he said, sunglasses reflecting the rugged gandeur of the mountain slopes. Comstock shook his head, and Joe angled the nose a bit more. “There. To the left of that dead snag, near the base of the slope. That’s a horse. I’ll eat my hat if it isn’t. That bear killed a horse yesterday. We spooked it just now as it was feeding. See how the bear dragged all those branches over the horse? Snow’s melting pretty good now. That’s how I spotted the legs.”

  Comstock shook his head again. He saw the dead snag at the base of the slope but still couldn’t find the horse, let alone the branches or the horse’s legs. Truth was, he hadn’t even seen the bear.

  “Yessir,” Joe Nash said as he pivoted the chopper to follow the human tracks back down the mountain. “That big old grizzly killed himself a horse! I bet Jessie Weaver had a run-in with the bear, too. From where she spent the night to where that dead horse lay is less than half a mile. Oh, yes, I bet she’s got a scary tale or two to tell.” He got on the radio to let his boss know that he might be a little late bringing the big metal bucket home to roost.

  SHE RESTED FREQUENTLY on the long hike out to the road. Walking downhill was hard on her knees, and the wet snow was slippery. It was warm out, too, though the warmth was more than welcome after the frigid night. Blue was getting heavier by the moment, though in truth she was a small dog, the runt of her litter, and weighed scarcely more than thirty-five pounds. When Jessie stopped she sank onto her knees and took the weight of the dog on her upper thighs to give her arm a rest. Her pace was much slower than she had estimated. By the time she made it to the road the morning traffic—what little there was of it—would already have come and gone; but there might yet be a plow truck, and there was always the mail carrier. Even if no one happened along, the hard, even surface of the road would make for an easier trek.

  She walked for ten minutes, rested for five. Thought about all the things left to do before leaving the ranch. Wondered how she’d ever get Fox and those mares back. Wanted not to have to think about any of that. Wished there were nothing left to do but eat a hot meal, drink a gallon of coffee and sleep until all her mental and physical aches and pains had disappeared.

  Yet so much was unresolved within her. She still had no idea where she was going to go, what she was going to do. Sure, she could bring the mares down, load them into the big stock trailer, throw her personal gear into the truck. But then what? Sit there with the engine idling until inspiration struck? She had some money now, and the bulk of it would go toward finding a new home for herself. But just where would that be? She couldn’t stay in Katy Junction. She couldn’t bear the thought of living near the ranch, knowing it was no longer her home. It would be better just to p
ull up stakes completely and find someplace far away.

  Canada, maybe. British Columbia. Big tracts of land were for sale up there, some of them pretty reasonable. She’d looked at real estate ads the past few months, but a part of her hadn’t accepted that she would have to leave home. A part of her had clung to the foolish hope that some miracle would save the ranch and save her. And a miracle had saved the ranch.

  But not her, because the ranch wasn’t her home anymore.

  Guthrie’s sister, Bernie, had begged her to stay in Katy Junction. “Dan Robb’s place is for sale,” she’d said. “It doesn’t have any creek frontage, but it has good deep wells and a great big ark of a barn. It’s been on the market forever and you could probably pick it up for a song.”

  Jessie liked Bernie a lot. She missed working for her at the Longhorn. She missed the friendly faces, the banter, the feeling of community she had found there. Once her father had died, she discovered that living out on the edge of nowhere was at times lonely and daunting. Mostly, she was too busy to dwell on it much; nevertheless, the hours she spent working at the café had been as much for social as for financial reasons.

  Still, as much as she liked the folks of Katy Junction, staying would be too painful, especially once Guthrie got back. Because as sure as the Canada geese left Alaska in the fall, Guthrie Sloane would be hard on their heels, and she really didn’t feel up to facing him. The pain was still there; the raw wounds their failed relationship left had hardly even begun to heal. No, it was time to move on.

  Jessie heard a sound and knelt to listen and to rest. The wind was blowing through the pines, but she heard it again. A voice. Way out in the middle of nowhere, a human voice. Familiar.