Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch)

by Nadia Nichols

  Senior year. Jessie was accepted at the University of Colorado for a course of preveterinary studies. Guthrie took a third job stocking shelves at the Katy Junction General Store five nights a week between midnight and 2:00 a.m. to add a little more money to his kitty. He held no illusions about attending college. There was no way he could afford it.

  The senior prom was held at the Cattleman’s Grange Hall. She wore a cornflower-blue strapless tea-length dress and a beaded necklace that had belonged to her great-grandmother. He told her he would love her forever and that he was going to buy the land on Bear Creek, an entire section, and he was going to build a cabin on it that summer from the cedar that grew there.

  “I’ll help you,” she told him, and she did, too, spending every moment she could spare away from the ranch over at his place, peeling logs. He built the cabin on a high, pretty spot near the creek. One corner of his land butted up to the Weaver ranch, which made it all the more special to them both. By summer’s end, the cabin was complete and Jessie was no longer an innocent virgin lying awake nights, wondering how it might be with Guthrie.

  By summer’s end she knew what it was like to be cradled within his strong arms in the sweet grass that grew along the banks of Bear Creek; to feel the solid earth beneath her and his solid body moving over her; to look up into his dark eyes; to lie next to him afterward and watch the celestial change of guard in a sky so big and so studded with stars that it dwarfed the imagination.

  She went off to college and Guthrie moved his father into the cabin on Bear Creek. Just before Christmas during her junior year, Arthur Sloane was killed when his truck left the road beyond the Katy Junction cutoff and careered into a ravine. He was drunk when it happened, and Guthrie blamed himself for not preventing it. “How could you have stopped him?” she’d asked at the funeral. Guthrie had looked beyond her to some distant place. “By being a better son,” he said.

  In her third year at veterinary college in Colorado, her own father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. This rocked her to her soul. One spring day after classes, she was standing in the noise and bustle of the big campus when a flock of Canada geese flew over, heading north toward Montana. Tears filled her eyes at the poignant sight and sound, and that very same day she was following them. When she reached home she found her father in the pole barn, forking hay to the horses.

  “I’m home, Daddy,” she said, standing flat-footed in the dim light of the barn. He had nodded, leaning on the fork, looking thin and tired.

  “I can see that,” he said. A long silence followed, broken by the grinding sounds of the horses eating hay. “You’re here early. I thought classes didn’t get out for another three weeks.”

  “I’m not going back,” she said. “It’s too crowded there. I can’t abide it. I already know all I need to know to run this ranch. I’m staying here with you.”

  After a bit he nodded again, said “All right,” and went back to his endless chores.

  What little savings her father had were quickly wiped out. He took out a third mortgage on the ranch, sold off most of the grazing leases and let the last of the hired hands go. Guthrie stayed on, pitching in all he could to take up some of the slack and asking for nothing in return. He struggled valiantly with them to keep the venerable old ranch afloat, but debt after debt went unpaid.

  Her father’s illness progressed more rapidly than the doctors had predicted. He tired easily. He had no appetite for the meals Jessie cooked him. Finally, one night after supper he called her into the study. The books lay spread out on the desk before him, the evidence of the ranch’s decline harshly exposed in black and red ink. Weariness and defeat bowed his shoulders.

  “Jessie,” he said, “my life insurance policy won’t make a dent in these debts. Cattle prices keep falling and the horses can’t hold the place afloat. It’s time to face up to it. We’re going under. We’ve got to sell out to the developers or the bank’s going to take it all.”

  Oh, Jessie remembered that awful night…the heated words, the tears. Remembered her rage, her grief, her denial—emotions that remained with her for the time it took the cancer to consume her father, remained potent for weeks after the funeral and came to an ugly head when Guthrie picked up her sore, blistered hands in his after a particularly discouraging day and pleaded, “Jess, please. Sell the damn ranch! Keep the buildings and enough land to run your horses on. You’ll kill yourself otherwise. Your father was right. The bank will end up with the ranch and you’ll be left with nothing!”

  That had been the beginning of the end of her and Guthrie. She’d refused to listen to him and had, instead, redoubled her efforts to find a solution she could live with, a way to keep the land safe. And at the last moment, one step ahead of foreclosure, she had, but at a tremendous cost to her relationship with Guthrie Sloane.

  She had found Steven Brown, who in turn had found a conservation buyer. Steven brought Caleb McCutcheon out to see the ranch, and the three of them spent the better part of a day in the saddle, riding up into the high country, where there were no roads at all, just game trails and old Indian traces. She showed them the cave with the strange petroglyphs, the backwater pool in the creek where the water steamed from a thermal spring, the huge Engleman spruce with her great-grandfather’s initials carved in it.

  McCutcheon possessed a genuine love and appreciation of wild and wide-open spaces. He didn’t talk much except to ask pertinent questions. By the end of that ride she found herself liking the retired baseball player, and feeling better than she had in many months. McCutcheon was dutifully humbled by the grandeur of the land. He admired the weather-beaten but sturdy ranch buildings. He was especially intrigued by the original homestead of logs, built on the bank of the creek, and spent a long time marveling at how well it had been constructed, admiring the low ceilings with their exposed beams, the neatly dovetailed notches, the old rippled glass in the small-paned windows.

  “Well, you described it to a tee,” he said to Steven, standing on the porch of that venerable cabin. “I’m hooked.” He looked at Jessie. “I’ll hand over enough earnest money right now to keep the bank from foreclosing and give us the time we need to draft the conservation easements into the deed. How does that sound to you?”

  After McCutcheon had left the ranch, Steven had raised his fist skyward in a primitive and triumphant gesture. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’m feeling pretty good about things. And I’m hungry. Is there anyplace to eat in that two-horse town of yours?”

  “The Longhorn. It’s small, but Bernie’s a great cook. I waitress there five shifts a week.”

  “Join me?”

  His invitation surprised her. Her response surprised her even more. “Okay,” she said.

  He had a bottle of red wine stashed in his Wagoneer and Bernie served it to them, trying her diplomatic best to be friendly to Steven. Over the meal, observed both discreetly and indiscreetly by all the locals and no doubt the hottest topic of gossip in a long while, they discussed the different conservation easements that could be written into the deed. “You know,” Steven concluded, “not many people would do what you’ve just done—give up all that money just to save a piece of land. You’re some kind of woman.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help,” she replied. They were raising their glasses to toast the triumph of the day when Guthrie entered the café. She saw him walk through the door, looking for his sister behind the counter and removing his hat. He came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room when he spotted her and Brown sitting in the corner, changed direction and approached their table. Steven rose to his feet as Jessie introduced the two of them. They shook hands. It was all very awkward.

  “So,” Guthrie said, eyeing the bottle of wine, the glasses. “Looks like some kind of celebration.”

  “It is,” Jessie said, feeling guilty and ill at ease and resenting Guthrie for making her feel that way. “Steven helped me find a buyer for the ranch, someone who will protect it from being
developed. The purchase and sales agreements were signed today. Sit down and join us.”

  Guthrie worked his hat around in his fingers. He gave Steven a keen, appraising stare, then turned his eyes on Jessie. “So it’s done, then. You’ve signed it all away. The ranch buildings. The burial ground. Everything.”

  Jessie met his cool, disapproving gaze and felt anger warm her blood. “Everything. The ranch buildings, the burial ground, everything.”

  Guthrie nodded. “It was yours to give, I guess,” he said, his voice maddeningly mild, but his eyes steely. He nodded curtly to Steven and then he spun on his heel and left the Longhorn.

  Jessie sank back in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said to Steven.

  “Is he a friend?”

  Jessie picked up her wineglass, mortified to notice that her hand was trembling. She set the glass back down. “Guthrie and I have known each other for a very long time.”

  “I see. He obviously disagrees with your decision.”

  “He thought I should keep part of the ranch. He couldn’t understand that if I did that, I wouldn’t want to live there anymore. I couldn’t bear watching the land get hacked up, bulldozed, paved over, manicured and developed. He didn’t understand. He loved the ranch, too. Still does. He lived in that old cabin on the creek from the time he was thirteen. He and his father worked there.”

  Steven nodded. “I hope the two of you can resolve your differences.”

  Jessie lowered her eyes to hide the anguish in them and could not respond. They shared the rest of their meal with quiet conversation, and he drove her back to the ranch afterward. “How long will all this take?” she asked as he walked her to the door, the way she knew he would.

  “I’ll get in touch with your lawyer tomorrow. Arden, isn’t it? We’ll start working on the project. Be patient. These things don’t happen overnight. The closing might not be until September, but I’ll keep you posted.”

  “That’s fine with me. It gives me time to get my act together,” Jessie said. “Thanks for everything, Steven.”

  He smiled at her with those grave, gentle eyes. “It was my pleasure. I wouldn’t mind going riding again sometime, but it’ll probably be a while. I just hope I can make it up the courthouse steps tomorrow.”

  They said good-night and he drove off in his Wagoneer. Jessie stood on the porch for a long while, Blue beside her, and watched the sun set. She stood there until the sky turned a deep violet and the first stars appeared. She was still standing there when another vehicle drove up, a truck whose rattles and squeaks she recognized long before she could see it.

  Guthrie climbed out and stood in the twilight, one hand resting on the hood of his truck.

  “Did you come by just to make sure he’d gone home?” Jessie said.

  He pushed off the truck and climbed the porch steps. “I came by to apologize for the way I behaved.” He stopped before her, reached as if to touch her, but then let his hand drop when he read her body language. “I’m sorry. It was poor behavior.”

  Jessie crossed her arms and gazed down to where the creek drew a broad dark band between the pole barn and the spruce forest. She could barely make out the roofline of the old homestead, see the blocky shadow that was the big stone chimney. In a short while it would be too dark to see anything at all.

  “Look, Jess, I know it’s none of my business. I just didn’t want to see you get taken advantage of, that’s all. I only wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing, what you were signing away.”

  Jessie tightened her arms around herself. She drew a breath to keep from saying something she might regret, and when she spoke her voice was remarkably calm. “I’m a big girl, Guthrie. In fact, I’m a legal adult, and have been for several years. Some people even think I’m fairly smart. I know what I’m doing. You may not approve and you may not understand, but there’s nothing I can do about that. We see things differently. We don’t share the same dreams anymore. Lately all we do is fight, and I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.”

  He was near enough to her that she could feel the tension in him. He turned and placed his hands on the porch rail, leaning his upper body over his braced arms and gazing down toward the barn. For a long time he was quiet, and then he said, “Is that the way you really want it?”

  “Yes.”

  Another long silence, and then she heard him inhale, then let the breath out in a sigh. “Jesus, Jess,” he said in a voice tight with pain.

  Without another word, without even glancing toward her, he straightened and walked back down the porch steps. Moments later he was driving his old truck off, and the following morning he had done just what she’d asked him to do. He’d gone away and left her alone for five endless months. Yet his absence hadn’t made her feel better about anything. In fact, it had made her feel worse.

  When had she become so critical, so cynical? When had she forsaken spontaneous laughter? When had the joy of life left her? When had she forgotten how good the simple things could be—the smell of sweet grass, the blue dome of a big, star-studded sky, the sound of the creek running past, the feel of Guthrie’s strong arms closing around her, drawing her near…

  Oh, Lord, she had lost it all. Not just her father and the land, but the girl who had exulted in the wild, joyous freedoms of youth. The girl who had awakened each morning with a love of life, and the energy and enthusiasm to match the length and breadth and whirlwind pace of the day. The girl who had discovered the breathtaking magic of falling in love with her very best friend.

  She paced the floor back and forth, back and forth. Her arm still ached in spite of the wine, in spite of the aspirin. But it was not just the ache in her arm that kept her awake.

  It was the unbearable ache in her heart.

  MCCUTCHEON GLANCED at the traveling alarm clock that he’d set beside the bunk: 3:00 a.m. He sighed and laced his fingers together beneath his head. Thought about Guthrie Sloane and sighed again. Maybe he shouldn’t have broken out that bottle of whiskey, but it had seemed the right thing to do at the time. The bottle of wine had long since been drunk, and their conversations had traveled down many a winding path. He liked Guthrie Sloane. There was a quiet strength about him that inspired confidence. In spite of his agony over Jessie Weaver, Guthrie was a man of substance, and he belonged to this place nearly as much as she did.

  Which is why, when Guthrie was taking his leave, McCutcheon had asked him once again about the job. “If she just absolutely insists on leaving, I want you to stay on. I’d like it if you could look after the place.”

  Guthrie had thought about it for a while, standing there by the door with his hat in his hand and the world upon his broad shoulders. “All right,” he said. “If Jessie goes, I’ll stay.” He’d nodded as if his words made a kind of solemn sense to him. “But if she stays, I’ll go.”

  “Where’ll you go?” McCutcheon asked, his own sensibilities befuddled by the quantity of good scotch whiskey they’d shared.

  “Home.” Guthrie looked at him and grinned. It was a brave grin, but a sad one, too. “I’ll go home. I guess maybe if she ever wants to see me, she can ride over. It ain’t all that far and she knows the way.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. Your idea is a good one. I think she’ll stay.”

  “I hope you’re right. I surely do.” He’d left then, his shoulders bent with fatigue and discouragement.

  McCutcheon sighed again. Baseball. To think that his entire life had once revolved around that game. It was ludicrous to him now to even remember those times and the ridiculous amount of money he’d been paid for throwing a small white ball toward a man holding a bat.

  Oh, he’d loved the game. He’d lived it long enough to believe the whole world ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But one week on this ranch had changed his entire perspective. The universe had settled into its proper place, and at the core of it was this land and a young woman named Jessie Weaver. All these years he’d wondered if a woman like that c
ould exist on this jaded planet, and now he’d found her.

  A woman so centered that she rose in the morning and the sun rose with her. A woman who didn’t care one whit about the way her nails were manicured or the way her hair was brushed or the way she moved when a man was watching, yet who moved through life with a natural grace and beauty that would easily shame the highest-paid models in the world. A woman who knew exactly what she was about. A woman possessing the strength and courage to play the cards life dealt her, a woman with enough conviction in her heart to move mountains.

  What might his life have been like had he met such a woman in the height of his glory? Would he have recognized her for what she was, or would his youthful arrogance have blinded him?

  Back then he’d been looking for a woman sophisticated enough to elevate him above his blue-collar upbringing, and he’d found that in his wife. But when advancing years and an injury had ended his career and his fame had faded, she had drifted off in search of more interesting companionship. While she was conversing with the prime minister of France, he was dreaming about a life far removed from the glitter of Paris. He was riding a big horse across a bold landscape, heading toward the mountains and into the setting sun. Their paths had amicably diverged, and in the end all that he and his wife still shared was his money.

  It had taken years to discover this place and a compelling woman like of Jessie Weaver. Now that he had found them both, what next? Not only was he already married, but he was old enough to be Jessie’s father. And not only was he old enough to be her father, but he happened to like Guthrie Sloane a great deal, and Guthrie Sloane was deeply in love with Jessie Weaver.