Montana Dreaming

by Nadia Nichols

  In her bedroom she shook out the cotton dress, found dainty cotton underthings in her bureau drawer. She dressed with haste and then unbraided her damp hair and brushed it out before, pinning it into a French twist atop her head. She regarded herself critically in the mirror over the bureau and carefully pulled a few tendrils of hair loose to frame her face. Better. More feminine. She was so thin. Her face, her body. This past year had been so hard…

  Quick! She heard a vehicle drawing near. Heard Blue bark. Heard a car door slam. She slipped her bare feet into sandals and walked out to meet him, and the expression that lit his face at the sight of her made the five minutes of dandifying worthwhile.

  “Wow,” he said, halting at the bottom of the porch steps. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” she said, suddenly feeling very tongue-tied and awkward. “Did you get the wine?”

  He held up the bag. “Not a great selection at that store, but I hope you like it.”

  “I’m sure I will.” She clasped her hands in front of her and then switched them behind, fingers twining nervously. “Well, I thought we could eat out here on the porch.”

  “That’s a fine idea.” He climbed the porch steps and set the bag atop the little table. He removed the bottle. It was a white wine, chilled and covered with beads of moisture. “I figured cool was better. If you have a corkscrew…”

  “Follow me, but I warn you, the kitchen’s a mess….”

  The kitchen was worse than a mess. It had to be at least two hundred degrees inside—Jessie stopped when she entered the room and raised a hand to her mouth, shocked. “Oh, no!” she said.

  “What?” Steven stepped around her, eyebrows raised and wine bottle in hand.

  “The chicken. It was on the sideboard. Right there.” She pointed to the flour-covered surface. “A whole chicken, cut up for frying.”

  “Gone,” he confirmed with great solemnity.

  “Blue!” She called the guilty cow dog’s name, not really expecting her to put in an appearance after committing such a heinous crime, and she didn’t. “I’ll get you for this!” she threatened, then turned to Steven with a helpless gesture. “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing else.”

  He shrugged, smiled a calm smile. “We still have the wine.”

  “And biscuits. I’ll make us a nice blackberry shortcake.” She popped the pan of biscuits into the hot oven and then rummaged through one of the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew. “I know I have one somewhere.”

  But it was not to be found. “No problem,” Steven said. “I’ll use my knife. Do you have any wineglasses?”

  “I think so.” She went through all the cupboards with an increasing sense of doom. Where could they be? She turned. He had pushed the cork down into the bottle with the tip of his knife. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to use water glasses.”

  “They’ll work just fine.” He took them from her and she followed him out onto the porch. Even though the heat outside was still oppressive, it felt wonderfully cool after the raging inferno of the kitchen. He half filled two water glasses with white wine and little pieces of cork and handed one to her. “To the sunset,” he said, lifting his glass toward the magnificent spectacle of an enormous molten August sun sinking slowly behind the wall of mountains.

  They drank a toast to the beauty of the hour and sat in the gathering twilight, sipping wine and talking. He told her about his day, about a court case he had lost—an injunction to stop a road from being built into a proposed wilderness area by a logging company notorious for its large clear-cuts. She listened sympathetically, thinking what a good man he was to become so emotionally involved in what he did.

  “No wonder you looked so beat up today,” she said. “Sometimes you must feel you’re fighting a losing battle.”

  He sighed. “Sometimes we are,” he said. “You have to pick your fights, and it hurts to lose a single one because they’re all important. But we win some, too. Those are the sweetest moments of all—standing up to the big corporate giants and triumphing…a bunch of grassroots activists and a two-bit lawyer.”

  “Don’t call yourself that!” Jessie leaned toward him, laying her hand lightly on his forearm. “You’re wonderful to do what you do, and you’re very good at it How did you get involved in environmental law?”

  “I grew up on the Crow Reservation near Fort Smith. Four brothers, two sisters. My eldest brother died when he was thirteen from sniffing gas fumes. My baby sister was killed when the truck she was riding in rolled over one night. The driver was drunk. I couldn’t wait to get off the reservation. I had no ambition for college whatsoever, so I traveled around and tried all sorts of jobs but didn’t stick long with any of them.

  “I ended up in a little town north of Seattle, pumping gas at a big gas station. All the logging trucks gassed up there. I saw all these redwood logs chained down on the backs of these trucks. Sometimes only one log would fit they were so enormous. I began thinking about how many of them I saw come through there, and then one day I decided to go see the trees while there were still a few left.

  “Have you ever stood at the base of one of those giants?” he asked. Jessie shook her head. He sat back and his dark eyes grew thoughtful. “Standing among those ancient trees changed the way I felt about this planet. I saw firsthand what the logging companies were doing and I didn’t like it. I joined a local activist group and right away got arrested for handcuffing myself in a human chain around one of the trees to keep it from being cut. Spent a night in jail, and while I was sitting on that bunk in the cell I decided to go back to school and study environmental science. From there I worked my way through law school, and here I am. Still fighting, but with better ammunition than a pair of handcuffs.” He paused and sniffed the air. “Do you smell something burning?”

  “Ohmigosh! The biscuits!” Jessie leaped to her feet and raced back into the scorchingly hot kitchen. Smoke was pouring from the oven. She jerked open the oven door, grabbed a pair of pot holders, whipped out the pan of biscuits and hurled it out the back door. She stood there for a moment, wavering between laughing and crying, and then reached for the colander of salad greens. She lifted it from the slate sink and stared. In the heat of the kitchen the greens had wilted into a dark soggy mass. Certainly not the stuff of a romantic gourmet meal.

  When she returned to the porch she carried the bowl of sweetened blackberries, a big spoon, two little bowls and two smaller spoons. She set this down on the table and dropped into her chair in a gesture of defeat. “About dinner,” she said, “how do you feel about blackberries as appetizer, entrée, and dessert?”

  “I love blackberries,” Steven said. “One of my favorite foods. Shall I dish them out?”

  As the cool air poured down from the mountains they sat and ate August blackberries and sipped white wine that was no longer chilled. In spite of the disastrous supper, the evening was really quite enjoyable until the moment he said, “Tell me. Did you ever smooth things out with your friend?”

  Jessie felt her stomach twist up. She took another sip of wine. “No,” she said. “He’s in Alaska right now.”

  Long silence. Then, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Guthrie… He could be very controlling. Overprotective. And we were never going to see eye to eye about the fate of the ranch. Things between us just got uglier and uglier. As far as he was concerned I couldn’t do anything right.” She thought about what she had just said and felt a twinge of guilt. “Actually, he isn’t nearly as black as I paint him. I’m just angry with him.”

  “Really?” Steven said mildly, causing her to laugh.

  “I guess what I really needed was the chance to yell at him one more time. To kick him in the shins and get the final word in. Instead he ran off to Alaska!” She laughed again, ruefully.

  Steven gazed at her in quiet contemplation for a long moment. “What would your final word have been?”

  Jessie sat in silence for an equally long moment and then she met his eyes. S
he shook her head. “I can’t imagine a final word.” She drew a deep, even breath and shifted her gaze to the distant mountain peaks. “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?”

  He departed before it was fully dark, kissing her gently and with genuine affection on the cheek. “I had a good time tonight. Thanks for asking me to dinner.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled. “But next time, if you really want something to eat, better bring it with you.”

  “Can I stop at your swimming hole on my way out?”

  “You better. It’s a long hot drive to Bozeman.”

  “SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. He asked if he could use the swimming hole,” Jessie said. “Twice. I figured that was a cheap price to pay for all the help he gave me. He should have lifetime rights to that swimming hole. I should’ve had it written into the deed.”

  Guthrie shifted his upper body, inching it upward into more of a sitting position. “He kissed you?” he said.

  “On the cheek. It was very sweet.”

  “Sweet. Is that how you would describe my kisses?”

  She glanced down at him with a slow smile. “You must be startin’ to feel a whole lot better.”

  COMSTOCK LISTENED to the recorded phone messages in the kitchen while Ellie, humming softly, went into the bedroom to unpack their overnight bag. One night in Bozeman and she glowed like a newlywed. He should take her out more often. She deserved so much better than to be married to an old worn-out game warden.

  He played the messages again, wondering. First it was Badger, yesterday morning, sounding on the edge of all-out full-blown importance. Bad things afoot, the senator and the grizzly up on the mountain, Guthrie gone looking for Jessie’s mares, Jessie going after Guthrie on a hunch that something was wrong. Dark happenings afoot, yessiree!

  A second message hard on its heels from Bernie. Tentative, worried, wondering about both Jessie and her brother’s possible whereabouts. Finally, a third message from Bernie at 5:00 p.m. last night, in a much more cheerful voice, saying that all was well, not to worry, that she had just talked to McCutcheon, who’d been flying with Joe Nash, and he’d seen them from the air; Jessie and Guthrie had found the mares and were bringing them back down into the valley.

  He sat at the kitchen counter and pondered for a few silent moments, then picked up the phone and dialed Joe Nash’s number. No answer. Phoned the senator at his hunting lodge. His aide answered but would give no satisfying information except to say that the senator could not come to the phone and could Comstock please leave a message? He dialed up the airstrip and got Joe’s boss. Got the scoop about McCutcheon—how good a pitcher he’d been for the White Sox, how rich he was, how good an account this could turn out to be, etcetera, etcetera. Hung up and leaned his elbows on the counter and pondered.

  He stood, reached his gun belt from its peg by the door and strapped it on. Took his wool Filson jacket from the peg beside it and walked into the bedroom to kiss his wife goodbye. “Ellie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to go to work.”

  YOUNG BEAR.

  Steven wrote the name above the scratched-out name Brown on his business card. He sat at his desk, staring at the card but remembering a dream he’d had the night before. A powerful dream. He tapped his pen on the desktop, pushed back in his chair and glanced out the office window. Traffic, people, noise. Had he expected anything else?

  He sighed.

  Remembered.

  A grizzly had walked through his dreams. The grizzly was being hunted, driven from its wilderness haunts by white men with guns. There was danger all around, and death was near. Bulldozers pushed down the big trees and the grizzly ran. The white men fired shots after it, and the grizzly ran. He was running, too, not sure at first if he was running after the grizzly or with it. When the grizzly was brought to bay by the end of the wild spaces on Jessie’s mountain, it spun around and faced him.

  He felt no fear. He turned to face the white men behind him, lifting his arms in a gesture to protect the bear, and in that one motion he became the bear. As they raised their rifles to shoot him he stared them down and waited calmly to die.

  He had woken in the darkness and lain in silence, his heart beating a rapid cadence in the early-morning quiet, as he thought about the power and meaning of that dream.

  He thought about it now, sitting at his desk. “I am like the bear.” He spoke the words from a forgotten time and heard in his voice the voice of his grandfather’s father. “I hold up my hands, waiting for the sun to rise.”

  Young Bear.

  Jessie had given him back his name, and the bear had come to him in his dream and given him back his inner self, reconnected him to his wild side. Steven loosened his tie, pushed out of his chair and walked to the window. He remembered the dream and thought about Jessie’s mountain. There had been death all around him, and terrible danger.

  It had only been a dream, and yet he heard a voice inside himself telling him to listen, listen…. He gazed out the window, listening. It was a fine day for late October. It would be beautiful in Jessie’s valley, in the shadow of Jessie’s mountains. He could drive over with the insurance papers McCutcheon had inquired about.

  Maybe Jessie would be there.

  It would be good to see her.

  COMSTOCK STOPPED by the Longhorn first, hoping to run into Badger there, but Bernie hadn’t seen him since the day before, when he had departed with Charlie to ride up into the mountains. “My guess is both of them stayed out at the ranch,” she said. “They didn’t get the mares back until fairly late. McCutcheon said they were still quite a ways out when he spotted them, and it was close to midnight when they finally trailed in.”

  “Did McCutcheon mention seeing Jessie or Guthrie?”

  “He couldn’t make out who the rider was from the chopper, but when he called me late last night he said Badger and Charlie had taken the mares from Jessie, and she’d gone back up on the mountain to wait for Guthrie.”

  “Maybe I’ll head out to the ranch and check on them,” Comstock said, finishing his coffee.

  “Do you think anything’s wrong?” Bernie’s voice was suddenly terse.

  “No. I just think Badger and Charlie are a little old to be trailing a bunch of mares up in the mountains. And I’d kind of like to know where Jessie and your brother are. When I find them this time, I might just lock the two of ’em up in a jail cell, so’s to give myself a little vacation.”

  At the ranch he greeted the bleary-eyed pair of old cowboys sunning themselves on the porch and working on cups of coffee liberally laced with some of McCutcheon’s brandy. “Good stuff.” Badger nodded, holding up the bottle of brandy and his mug of coffee, offering the same to Comstock, who politely declined. “Good for whatever ails you, especially lameness after a long ride.”

  “I believe it’s called old age and arthritis,” Charlie said.

  Comstock verified that it was Jessie who had brought the mares down to Badger and Charlie. “She said Guthrie was behind her?”

  Badger nodded again. “Said she was going to wait for him. I think they just wanted to camp somewheres together, just the two of ’em. Kind of romantic, if you ask me.”

  “So she had seen him?”

  “Hell, I guess! Why else would she be waiting for him? I knew that boy’d find the mares. That Guthrie could track a whisper in a big wind.”

  Comstock tugged at an earlobe and canted his head to one side questioningly. “You figure the senator’s still up there?”

  “Yessir, I do,” Badger nodded. “Maybe we called it wrong, but we all of us had the same hunch. Startin’ with Jessie. She was so sure Guthrie was in trouble that you couldn’t ’a stopped her with a forty-foot rope and a snubbin’ post.”

  “Where’s McCutcheon? Down at the old cabin?”

  Badger exchanged a sly glance with old Charlie. “Well, now, here’s what’s shakin’,” he said, and told the warden about McCutcheon’s early-morning flight with Joe Nash. “So you see,” he concluded, “we was thinkin’ tha
t if we could somehow keep Joe Nash tied up, you’d have time to catch the senator red-handed tryin’ to shoot Jessie’s bear.”

  “Huh.” Comstock turned and gazed out toward the mountains. He stood like that, squinting out thoughtfully across the distance, until Badger and Charlie rose laboriously to their feet.

  “I can’t guarantee the fare, but you’re welcome to join us for lunch,” Badger said.

  “Thanks. You boys go on in. I have to make a call.”

  While Charlie and Badger hobbled inside, Comstock radioed the airstrip from his vehicle and asked Joe’s boss to tell him that he had another lost-person emergency and needed him to rendezvous at the Weaver ranch as soon as he could. Boss was not pleased, because Joe Nash was squiring around a very important client, but he agreed to pass the information on as soon as he could reach him.

  After that, it was just a matter of waiting, and Comstock was not a very patient man.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “WHAT’RE YOU DOING?” Guthrie watched while Jessie unraveled the spool of twine and cut off several long lengths.

  “I’m going to make us a shelter. Something to turn the weather if it should get bad.”

  Guthrie hitched himself a little higher. “Why bother? I thought you said Joe Nash was on his way.”

  “Well, the thing is,” Jessie said as she wielded her knife on the twine, “Joe should’ve been here a long time ago. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s even coming.”

  “Good thing I brought that can of green chilis,” he said.

  “Good thing.” She glanced up at him and flashed a grudging smile. “And the beans and the eggs and the oatmeal and the bacon and the coffee and the salt and honestly, Guthrie, a pepper grinder?”

  “I like the taste of fresh ground pepper.”

  “Well, the way I figure it, it might be a day or so before reinforcements get here. I’m going to make sure we’re comfortable, that’s all.”