Montana Dreaming

by Nadia Nichols

  “Come on, bear,” he whispered. “Come to Big Daddy…”

  The brandy warmed his stomach. His eyelids felt heavy. No sleep last night. Not much the night before. Damn that blond nymphomaniac his aide had set him up with. She’d wrung him out and left him begging for mercy. Still, she’d had her talents. She could do things with her tongue and fingers that he hadn’t thought possible… Remembering brought a surge of sexual awakening and he shifted in his chair to ease the sudden pressure in his groin.

  “Come on, bear! Come to Big Daddy.”

  He cradled the Weatherby in his lap, kept his burning eyes on the kill site. An hour passed. Long yellow streamers of sunlight broke over the rim of mountains and lay across the valley far below. The shadows lightened, grew shorter. No sleep last night. Tired. He settled more deeply in his chair. He’d know when the bear came. He had an instinct for such things. The bear might be silent, but it had a presence. A smell. An aura. An undeniable energy. He’d know… A nap… All he needed was a nap….

  MIDMORNING, and it was Kestrel who alerted him to the place he was looking for. The tracks of Jessie’s mares led down the narrow trace, past the gully that opened to his left, and it was toward this dark ravine that Kestrel looked. Her head came up, her ears pricked, her nostrils flared as she wafted some strange scent, and he felt a wave of tension ripple through her as he drew rein. “Whoa, girl,” he said softly. He reached a hand to his Winchester and drew it from the saddle scabbard to check that it was loaded, and of course it was—he’d checked it first thing that morning, too—but a man riding into potential trouble couldn’t be too careful.

  The Winchester had been his father’s rifle and it was a fine gun, a classic model 70, .270 caliber, big enough to handle anything, but Guthrie hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. There were three reasons for that. Number one, he didn’t want to kill the grizzly. Number two, Jessie didn’t want him to kill the grizzly. Number three, he wasn’t sure that if he had to kill the grizzly, his skills would be up to the task.

  True, grizzlies had been bested by legendary mountain men wielding nothing more than Green River knives, but Guthrie had no such illusions about his prowess. He hunted, but only to supplement what for a long time had been a very meager larder for his father and him. Some of Jessie’s philosophy had definitely rubbed off on him, for he felt as if he, too, was a part of the earth, and that he was the equal of all living things, no better and no worse. When he killed, he killed humbly, and he thanked the animal that had given its life to sustain his own. Beyond that he had never ventured. Sport killing had never been a part of his life. Perhaps if he’d been raised differently he’d have different views, but between the sustenance philosophy of his father and Jessie’s strong spiritual ethics, he had become what he was, for better or for worse.

  Oh, he could shoot well enough if it came to that. He liked to target-practice. Many was the hour he and Jess had spent shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns down at the sandpit south of the ranch, pretending all sorts of scenarios at first, as youngsters, and then pretending nothing at all, just competing fiercely against each other. She was a damn good shot. She had a keen eye and a steady hand, and her reflexes were quick. But he was her match, and he could get her dander up enough to best her at least half the time. Oh, yes, the minute Jess started acting pushy, bossy, uppity or mad, it was a sure sign she was off balance and felt threatened. He could read her pretty good after all these years…yet in some ways, and especially of late, he felt he barely knew her.

  Did anyone ever truly know another?

  The young mare stepped out when he heeled her, but she did so reluctantly, muscles bunched, ears flickering, the whites of her fine dark eyes flashing. Guthrie kept the Winchester balanced crosswise in front of him until the game trail narrowed down and then he propped the butt against his thigh and held it pointing skyward, hand wrapped through the trigger guard.

  The trees closed around them, shut them off from the big sky, compressing their view to a narrow, twisting tunnel. At one point the mare had to slide on her haunches down a steep talus slope of loose rock and shale, and at the bottom she nearly jumped out from beneath him with a snort of alarm as the rocks cascaded behind her in a clattering landslide.

  “Whoa, Kestrel. Whoa, now, lady.” He reined her in a tight circle. She was explosive, ready to blow at the slightest provocation. He lowered his own energy level as best he could in an effort to soothe her and murmured calming words into her flattened ears. She steadied and her whirling dance slowed, but her haunches were still bunched beneath her and her breath came in snorts. “Whoa, now. Easy, easy…”

  A lift of the rein and she sprang forward, chin tucked against her chest. Sweat lathered her dark shoulders. She never once lost her footing in the loose shale as the trail climbed again. She sprang over a blowdown as nimbly as a deer, never missing a beat. Lord, what a horse! Had the situation been any different he would be enjoying the hell out of this ride, but his nerves were drawn as taut as hers as he scanned the dark woods for some sign of a dead horse or a big, territorial grizzly.

  Abruptly the forest receded and the trail humped over a great dome of bare rock, tracing a narrow fracture that angled steeply upward. The mare lunged, head down, and scrambled for a foothold. He bent over her withers and gave her a free rein, but halfway up the steep incline he stepped out of the saddle to help her, one hand gripping the pommel while the other sheathed the Winchester. He took the reins and led her up the narrow ledge, wishing she were barefoot, for her iron shoes offered poor purchase. Wishing, halfway up, that he’d had the good sense to tie her off down below and come ahead on foot. Wishing, suddenly, with a dark, uneasy feeling of impending disaster, that he’d left her back at the ranch with Jess.

  He would have stopped then and there if he could have, but the mare couldn’t turn around in this treacherous place. He had no choice but to continue upward.

  As they crested the dome he slipped and went down on one knee, and at that very moment a single rifle shot rent his world apart. The sound exploded over him, slammed through him, scared the hell out of him. Kestrel screamed and knocked into him even as he struggled to gain his feet. Her body crashed sideways and eight hundred pounds of horseflesh rolled over him. Together they tumbled back down the rocky dome, tangling in each other as they descended, one of them already dead, and the other reasonably sure he was well on his way.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SENATOR SMITH SCRAMBLED from the tree stand with the Weatherby slung over his shoulder. He descended triumphantly, hand over hand down the ladder, heart pounding with excitement. He’d come awake at the very moment the bear had crested the ledge of rock above the kill site. The dark bulk of it had surprised him, caught him off guard for a split second until the adrenaline had kicked in and he’d raised the rifle to his shoulder. It had been a difficult shot, but a good one—damn good! He’d hit the bear square as it lunged over the rock a good hundred yards distant. He’d gotten his grizzly, all right! Nothing could survive the wallop the Weatherby packed. Not even the biggest horse-killing grizzly on the roof of the continent!

  He was on the ground now, running in a half crouch toward the ledge, past the dead and mostly eaten horse, creeping now, carefully, carefully… There was always the possibility that the bear was only wounded and was lying in wait for him just over that crest of rock…

  Rifle held at the ready, he advanced. Stopped and listened. There was a faint rattle of loose stones far below, but other than that, nothing except the wind. Three more cautious steps and he was on top of the ledge, looking over the rounded curve to where the trail came up out of the forest.

  For a moment it didn’t register. His eyes widened and a strange blankness came over him, and for what seemed like a very long time he just stood there on the rim of the great rock, looking down.

  Shock.

  It struck him like a blow, knocking him back a step. His breath left him in a rush and nausea boiled up and brought the bitter taste of bile to his m
outh. He nearly dropped the rifle as he went down on one knee, hard.

  “No!” he said, gasping for air. “No!”

  A dark horse was lying at the very base of the rock ledge, facing downhill, motionless and dead. There was something else, too. Something other than a horse. Something that looked human lying apart from it in a sprawl. Quite motionless, quite dead.

  For the longest time he knelt on the cold hard stone. The sun rose high enough to spill into the clearing and the chill air instantly warmed. He became aware of a loud rattling. He’d been hearing it for a long time. He raised his head and realized that the noise came from him. Came from his teeth chattering. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. He stood and his knees barely braced enough to hold him upright.

  Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe if he looked again he would see the great dark grizzly.

  But he knew, even as he took those few fateful steps, even as he peered with horror once again over the edge, that he would once again see the horse and the man. That he would see the newspaper headlines, the live newscasts, the federal courtroom, the prison walls and the bitter, bitter end of his political career.

  The end of his life.

  He knew that when he looked over the edge again he would be staring into the abyss, and the abyss would be staring back at him.

  JESSIE STOPPED for lunch in a fine, high spot with a far view of the valley below and the Gallatin Mountains to the west. Billy was grateful for the break and was grazing on the sparse browse. A snake had decided to join her, slithering out of a crack in the rocks to sun itself nearby. It wasn’t a rattler, but nonetheless she increased the distance between them. Guthrie use to tease her about her fear of snakes.

  “I don’t know why you get so worked up about ’em,” he’d say. “Look how big you are compared with that little thing.”

  “That little thing packs enough venom in its fangs to kill both of us!” she’d retort.

  “Venom? Why, I doubt that serpent even knows the meaning of the word. I bet you could teach it a thing or two, were you to be inclined to talk to a snake.”

  They seemed to have spent the last year of their relationship sparring, trying to best each other, to have the last word, to win. Win what? What kind of foolishness was that? The verbal parrying had been enjoyable at first, but it had transformed into a kind of war. Why?

  The wind had picked up and was roaring through the stunted trees, keening over the jagged peaks. Montana’s wind had a soul. It had a spirit. It could blow the thoughts from a person’s mind and fill it with a kind of music that was wild and powerful and primitive and incredibly beautiful. She used to think that if one could gather the world’s population in this high place and let the wind blow over it, through it and around it the way it had in this valley for a millennium and more, all evils would be swept forever from the human mind.

  Today the wind stampeded like a herd of buffalo over the land. She snugged her hat down and leaned against Billy’s shoulder and let it cleanse her soul, her spirit, as she ate her meager lunch. She chewed on a strip of tough beef jerky, which she’d dried herself, sipped coffee strong enough to float a spoon, and never heard the rifle shot that was only a half a mile from where she rested. Never heard it because the Montana wind picked it up and carried it away on the thundering hooves of the sacred bi’shee.

  WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES he could see two things, one living, the other dead. He saw the mare Kestrel, and she was quite dead, and he saw a raven, perched near the top of an Engleman spruce, watching him from forty feet up. It was a large bird, with the unmistakable beak and beard of its kind. When he looked at Kestrel he felt a huge sense of loss, of guilt. When his eyes shifted to the raven he felt an irrational kinship.

  Jessie liked ravens. She said they were smart. Called them the Creators. Listened to them and admired them, but always from a distance, because they were such shy birds, wary of humans the way most intelligent creatures were.

  For a time the dead mare and the raven became the focus of his world, and the reason for him to wonder why he was where he was…and who had shot Jessie’s beautiful mare.

  LUNCH-HOUR RUSH was nearly over at the Longhorn and Bernie was closing out the shift, trying to concentrate on the figures scrawled across the guest checks, but worrying too much about Jessie and Guthrie to keep her mind on her work. McCutcheon had left hours ago to keep vigil at the ranch, and she ferverently hoped that the warden would stop by soon or at least call in response to the message Badger had left on his answering machine. She struggled to tally the figures while listening with one ear to Badger and Charlie haranguing each other. When she caught the gist of their conversation, she gave up on her figures.

  “You? You’re thinkin’ to ride up into them mountains after the two of them?” Charlie was clearly incredulous.

  “I may be in my seventies,” Badger admitted, levering his old bones off the bar stool and smoothing his mustache with his forefinger, first one side, then the other, “but I can still ride a horse.”

  “Sure you can,” Charlie said. “But how far?”

  “Farther’n you, you old fart. Always could, too.”

  “The hell you say! As I recall, the only time you’n me ever rodeo’d, I was the one who brought home the winnings. All you got was a bunch of busted ribs and a sore head.”

  “I drew a rougher bronc. If you strained your brain a whisker, you might recall that, as well.”

  “Well, we was a pair, all right, when we rode for them outfits. We neither of us shirked.”

  “Nossir, we didn’t, you’re right about that, but you’re still an old fart.”

  “So you say, but that only makes you an older one.”

  “Mebbe so. You comin’ or not?” Badger hooked his thumbs in his back pockets and scowled at his friend.

  Charlie reached up for his hat. “You kidding?” he said, pushing off his bar stool. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  Bernie was ready with provisions. She’d quickly filled two flour sacks with the stuff and sustenance of a long journey, and handed one to each of them. Her eyes were grave. “I’ll keep trying to contact Comstock,” she said. “I’ll tell him where you’ve gone and why.” She watched the two old men leave the café, both of them bent with the years, arthritic and bowlegged. She shook her head. It seemed foolish to her, the two of them setting out on such a questionable mission, but once they made up their minds to something there was no stopping them. At any rate, Comstock was sure to be home soon, and he’d call the Longhorn when he got his messages.

  Bernie settled in to wait.

  CALEB MCCUTCHEON was not a horseman. He’d had visions aplenty of himself sitting tall on a horse, but in actuality he hadn’t the vaguest idea how to even go about saddling one. He leaned against the top pole of the corral and pondered the horses within while Badger and Charlie threw their ropes over two likely prospects. As they led the submissive beasts up to the fence McCutcheon made his proposal.

  “Say, why don’t you rope one for me while you’re at it. I’d like to come along with you boys.”

  “Nope,” Badger said, shifting a wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other and smoothing the saddle blanket over his horse’s back.

  “I know my ankle’s busted, but the horse has four legs. I won’t need to do much limping around.”

  “Nope,” Badger repeated, settling the saddle with a shake, flipping the stirrup up over the seat, then bending to reach beneath the horse’s belly for the cinch.

  “I’ll go crazy hanging out here.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for that, but there’s nothin’ else for it.” It didn’t take any time at all for those two codgers to pack up their gear and haul aboard. McCutcheon felt his spirits sink as he watched them ride out. He waited until the distance had shrunk them to toys, and then he heaved a great sigh.

  “Well, Blue,” he said. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

  But as he was stomping back down to the cabin, swinging along pretty good now on his crutches,
an idea came to him. A clever idea. He might have patted himself on the back if he could have, but instead he made for his Mercedes and the very handy cell phone that lurked within.

  “HEY, JOE!”

  Joe jerked awake with a rude start. He’d been napping in the warmth of the sun, shoulders slumped against the corrugated metal of the hangar, long-billed baseball cap pulled over his eyes. Dreaming about a girl who lived outside of Jackson Hole in a house trailer shaded by a big gnarly cottonwood. A girl who was always glad to see him. A girl he hadn’t visited in a while. Her name was Carlotta, and she could—

  “Joe!”

  He straightened, pushed his hat back, yawned. His boss was coming out of the hangar, wiping his hands on a greasy rag and appearing inordinately pleased about something.

  “Got a call just now,” he said. “That guy you flew to the hospital. Caleb McCutcheon. The rich-and-famous baseball player. He wants an aerial tour of his new property.”

  “Yeah?” Joe stood, brushed the crumbs of his sandwich from his lap. “When?”

  “Now. Today. Soon as you can get out there.”

  “Huh?”

  His boss frowned. “You gettin’ hard of hearing?”

  Joe’s stomach tightened. “Kind of short notice, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the matter? You got nothin’ on the books that I can see. You too busy taking a nap to get out there and earn your keep?”