Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch)

by Nadia Nichols

  He flushed, took his cap off and whipped it against his pant leg. “No, it’s just that I thought maybe this afternoon I should check on the senator, make sure everything’s okay. That hunting camp of his is pretty remote…”

  “Hey, this guy’s loaded! Get out there. Charm him. He could be a good long term account for us, especially if he hunts. The senator’ll be all right roughing it at his camp for a day or two. It’s good for him. Builds character. If he calls in for anything, I’ll radio you.”

  “Right.”

  Joe pulled his cap on, adjusted it. Squared his shoulders. Turned and began walking toward the Bell JetRanger.

  Wondering to himself how in hell he was going to get out of this one.

  RAVEN, BRING JESSIE…

  Raven.

  Who? An image. A face. Jessie. Her voice soft. Her hair like heavy black silk flowing through his fingers. Yes, it was Jessie… She was here…but where? Gone. Jessie gone…

  The sun was hot. Thirsty. Water. He needed water. Raven, create water.

  The bird was still there, black, big, watching. Waiting, perhaps, for him to die.

  The smell of blood, sweet, coppery, thick and sticky wet beneath him. A hand lying on the ledge, fingers reaching for something. Was that his hand? Move fingers. Fingers moved. That was his hand. It was attached to him. Belonged.

  Awareness seeped into him. How long had he been here? A dullness fogged his mind. Couldn’t think clearly. Couldn’t focus. Could only lie in stillness and contemplate his thirst, his tremendous, agonizing thirst.

  Raven, bring Jessie.

  He watched the large black bird for some response. Some indication that it had heard his thoughts.

  Raven, bring Jess!

  Nothing. No movement. Was the bird real? Was any of this real?

  Raven moved with a suddenness that startled. Spread its wings and sprang from the branch. He heard the strong, rhythmic swish of its feathers as it climbed, climbed…

  Gone.

  And yet he was not alone. A rock bounced down the dome of stone. A scattering of pebbles. A small cascade of gravel. Footsteps, slow, cautious, slipping, skidding.

  Human.

  Descending toward him. To the place where he lay beside the dead mare.

  Instinctively he closed his eyes, overwhelmed with fear, knowing the footsteps weren’t Jessie’s, knowing that a terrible danger approached and that he was helpless to defend himself against it.

  GEORGE SMITH UNDERSTOOD what he had to do in order to save himself. He had spent the past few horrific hours debating different paths to take, and ultimately he had chosen the only path open to him, the only one that gave him any future at all.

  He crept carefully down the steep ledge toward where the horse and the man lay. There wasn’t much time. In a few short hours Joe Nash would be flying to meet him at the camp, and the pilot had very keen eyes. Unless he hid both bodies well, Joe would spot them, and his political career would be finished. But if he could somehow cover them, scavengers would soon destroy all evidence that the horse had been shot. The grizzly alone could do that in one feeding, but there were coyotes, wolves, ravens, a host of hungry others that could do the job.

  There was hardly anything left of that black horse back at the kill site, hardly enough for the bear to bother with. In a very short time there would be nothing left of this horse, either. It would look as though the horse had slipped and fallen, crushing the man and killing itself in the long steep tumble to the bottom of the ledge.

  He intended to cover the horse and the man with trees and brush, stones and gravel, deadwood and blowdowns dragged from as far away as he could manage so as to avoid disturbing the site as much as possible. In a week’s time Mother Nature would take care of everything and he could get on with his life.

  Luck was with him, for when he reached the horse he saw that his bullet had struck the animal between the eyes and had exploded the top of its skull. There was no other mark on the horse. No entry or exit wound to worry about. He turned his attention to the man. A cowboy from the look of him, regrettably young and well built, apparently out elk hunting by himself. He could see the stock of a rifle wedged beneath the horse. Yes, a hunter on a lone journey up into the high country, saddlebags stuffed with provisions, bedroll lashed behind the saddle. Nobody would be missing him for a while.

  George had dealt with plenty of dead animals but never before had he confronted a human body. With a certain amount of distaste he bent to grab the man’s booted ankles. He backed down the slope, dragging the limp, bloodied body until it was lying beside that of the horse. He dropped the legs and wiped his hands on his pants over and over, as if by doing so he could erase his terrible deed. He couldn’t let himself go to pieces over this. Too much was at stake. All that blood… The man was dead. It was too bad, but the senator had no intentions of sacrificing his own life, too.

  He began the arduous task of gathering enough brush to cover both bodies. He would need a lot of brush, and he didn’t have a lot of time.

  SHE HAD HOPED to find Guthrie before dark, but as time passed her hopes dimmed. Billy was tired from the climb and their pace had been slow. For some reason Guthrie had taken a different trail from the one that led directly over the pass. It threaded along the flank of Montana Mountain and then climbed steadily to the northeast before tucking down into a high mountain cirque and a pretty place called Horseshoe Lake. Was he heading there on a hunch? Did he think the mares might be up in that valley?

  It was possible. The graze was usually good, and there were several routes in and out, something wild creatures appreciated, especially when they thought they might be cornered by predators. One of the trails hooked back up with Dead Woman Pass; another led down toward the valley, bypassing an old line camp on Colley Creek. Yet another circled the lake and followed the outlet down a steep ravine that emptied into the east branch of the Silver. Which route had Guthrie taken?

  She contemplated his day-old tracks. There was little else she could do but follow after them.

  Or was there? She reined Billy in and sat for a few moments in deep thought. If her hunch was correct, Guthrie would eventually go to the place Joe Nash had spotted the dead mare. Supposing she went directly there and waited for him? It would be risky, because if Joe had put the senator over the kill site in order to get a shot at the big grizzly, she’d have to be very careful not to be spotted by the senator or run foul of the territorial grizzly. But she would be able to warn Guthrie before he rode right into the thick of things.

  Yes, that’s what she would do. She wasn’t far from there now. In a bit she would need to find a safe place for Billy and tether him securely while she went ahead on foot. The thought chilled her, but she shrugged off the fear, not allowing it to take root. This was all her fault. She had gotten Guthrie into this mess and it was up to her to make sure he came out of it all right.

  She’d never be able to live with herself if anything happened to Guthrie because of her.

  JOE HAD MANAGED to calm his roiling nerves by the time he landed the helicopter at the Weaver ranch, and nodded a curt greeting to the man who stumped out of the ranch house on crutches.

  “How’s old Blue feeling?” Joe asked as he helped McCutcheon into the chopper and handed his crutches to him.

  “Pretty good, considering. I think she enjoys babysitting me.” As he strapped himself in, McCutcheon divulged his interest in an aerial overview. “I’d like to get a feel for the size of the ranch. Where the boundaries are. How much is grazing land, how much is forested, how many cows are wandering over it. Horses. Buffalo. Grizzly bears. You know.”

  Joe nodded. Adjusted his sunglasses. “Yep. I think I have a pretty good idea what to show you. You bring a camera?” McCutcheon shook his head. “Too bad. The light’ll be real pretty in an hour or so. Good for taking pictures.”

  “There’ll be other times. Right now I just want to see it.”

  Joe nodded again and popped a stick of Big Red chewing gum into his
mouth. “Okay,” he said. “Scenic tours are my specialty.”

  Half an hour later McCutcheon had to admit that Joe Nash really knew his stuff. Not only could he fly with a grace that would shame some birds, but he had an intimate knowledge of the land, its geography, history and wildlife, and in spite of McCutcheon’s ulterior motives for staging this flight, he found himself enjoying Joe’s running commentary, his skilled observations, his keen eyes.

  “Down there?” Joe said. “That’s one of those longhorn crosses of Jessie’s. Look at the horns on that cow! They’re really something! Sometimes they curl around just like corkscrews!” McCutcheon hadn’t even spotted the cow yet and Joe was already onto something else.

  “Those trees there? That tall one, the dead snag atop that hogback ridge? Right in that spot back in 1878 the Crow killed three whites. Killed ’em hard, too. Stirred up all kinds of bad feelings. I guess they thought the whites needed to die, and who knows, maybe they did. They were hide hunters after the buffalo. Slaughtered thousands of them and took their hides, left the rest of the animal to rot. The Indians interpreted that as pretty rude behavior. They relied on the buffalo for just about everything. The buffalo was sacred to them.”

  McCutcheon couldn’t spot the dead tree on the ridge, but he appreciated the history being related to him. “I guess the Indians had a right to dislike us,” he said.

  “Yep,” Joe replied, chewing on his gum.

  “I wonder if they still do.”

  “Why shouldn’t they? We took everything they had.”

  McCutcheon suddenly felt gloomy. Why not, indeed?

  “I could show you places where they camped in the valley. Right on your own land. Tepee circles.”

  “I’d like that,” McCutcheon said.

  “See that trail climbing up the mountain there? Prospectors laid in that trail. There’s a mining camp, or what’s left of it, just over that pass to the left of that rock slide. Just a bunch of rotten timbers now, but back in the late 1800s a lot of men lived there, thinking they were going to strike it rich and be on easy street the rest of their lives. Some of them are buried up there. No grave markers, just piles of stones. Kind of lonely. Some folks say that place is haunted, but I don’t hold with that.”

  “No?”

  “Nossir.” Joe shook his head emphatically. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Well, I haven’t made my mind up either way, but I’d kind of like to see where we looked for Jessie that day,” McCutcheon said. “It felt like we’d walked a hundred miles on snowshoes, Guthrie and I. I’d like to view it from the air. Put it into perspective.”

  “Ah.” Joe nodded, the late-afternoon sunlight glinting off his sunglasses. “Okay,” he said, banking the chopper. He chewed harder on his gum to quell the ripples of unease in his stomach. The senator wouldn’t show himself unless Joe landed. That was the code. He needn’t fear discovery from McCutcheon, a man whose eyes were so untrained that he hadn’t seen a single thing Joe had pointed out. No, there was no reason to be nervous about this. No reason at all.

  He lowered the nose of the chopper and throttled her up.

  PAIN. He’d felt it plenty of times before, but never like this. It was everywhere, it was excruciating and with every passing moment it worsened. Nothing he did, no small movements he made to ease his position, lessened it. He had forgotten the mindless torment of thirst and wished only for some release from the pain.

  Fleeting thoughts splintered through the pain. He had heard a rifle shot. Footsteps. Human footsteps. Someone had shot at him. Killed Kestrel. Who? Why? A man’s face. A glimpse, just a glimpse… Familiar.

  Dark. He was covered beneath layers of something. He smelled the resiny tang of pitch. Moved his hands. Felt branches. Why was he beneath a pile of branches? Was it night? Was he dead? Could there possibly be so much pain in death?

  He was curled on his side in the fetal position, but he couldn’t remember anything of how he came to be here, in this dark place, and in so much pain. All he remembered was the report of a rifle, and the sound of human footsteps… And that face. That familiar face. Just a glimpse he’d had, but it haunted him…

  Raven. There had been a raven. He remembered wishing for Jess. For water to slake his terrible thirst.

  Jessie. He had killed her prize mare. Ridden her up a slope too steep and she had fallen…was dead. Or had she been shot? Rifle shot. Yes, he remembered the rifle shot. Jessie would never forgive him for losing Kestrel. She would hate him forever. She had coveted that mare, that beautiful horse. Kestrel…dead now, all that blood… Blood everywhere… Death.

  He clenched up against the pain, gritted his teeth against it. A sound escaped him, a small sound that squeezed out of his throat.

  Mustn’t make any noise.

  Those footsteps… Who? That man’s face… So familiar… Dangerous… Might come back…

  Quiet! Mustn’t make any noise…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BADGER’S BONES ACHED, but damned if he was going to let on. He leaned over the shoulder of his horse, spat a wad of tobacco juice, straightened, wiped his whiskery chin on his jacket sleeve and glanced behind at Charlie. “Charlie, for cripes’ sake,” he said, “do I have to send to Bozeman for an oxygen tank, or are you gonna make it?”

  Charlie racked himself up in his saddle, pretended outrage on his face, and kicked his horse into a rough jog that must’ve felt as though it was herniating the last of his spinal discs and dislodging all them fancy fillings in his teeth. It looked mighty painful from where Badger was sitting, and he was sure enough familiar with what painful looked and felt like.

  “Me? You’re worried about me, old man?” Charlie said as he closed the gap between them. “You should see yourself. Why, I’ve seen dead men who looked better’n you do right now!”

  Badger snorted and faced front again. No doubt Charlie was telling the truth, but he wasn’t about to let on anything of the sort. “We’re makin’ mighty poor time, for a pair of top hands.”

  “Been a few years, Badger, since anyone could’a called us rounders.”

  Badger braced his shoulders and squared up. He didn’t feel old. Oh, sometimes he did, but mostly he just felt the way he’d always felt. Like he could still sweep a little girl name of Lizzy Kinney off her feet, and work the day hard from sunup to sundown. He wondered what had ever become of Lizzy Kinney. Lord, she had surely smote him back when he was a young buck. But the war had come along and swept him away, and when he returned to Katy Junction sweet little Lizzy Kinney was two years gone, spirited away by some traveling salesman with a smooth tongue and a cowlick that even Charlie remembered.

  Charlie had been the only constant in Badger’s life. Charlie had been his anchor. His sounding board. His best friend. All these long years they’d worked together, drunk together, played cards together, argued together, and they still called themselves friends. That was something, in this day and age. Men had walked on the moon, but that miracle had nothing on their friendship. If the world went to hell in a handbasket, the one thing that Badger could always count on was Charlie.

  Two old men in the twilight of their lives. Could anything be more pathetic? Could anything be more profound? Lizzy Kinney was just a sweet memory, but Charlie was a solid presence right behind him, ready to back him up any which way. He was all twisted up with arthritis, absentminded and forgetful and had one foot in the grave, but by God, he was there.

  Badger spat again over his horse’s shoulder and counted himself damn lucky to have such a friend in his life.

  JESSIE WAS NEARLY to the place where she had found Blue. Nearly to the spot where that faint game trail led off the well-traveled one, when she heard a noise. It was the sound of a horse approaching, coming down the main trail toward them. She reined Billy in and sat for a moment, listening. Guthrie? She was downwind from whatever, and it played to her advantage. She reined Billy hard to the right and drove him into the brush and woods to one side of the trail.

  Waite
d there quietly.

  Heard more noises, more sounds. More than one horse. A group of horses coming downslope, down the trail toward them.

  Unshod horses.

  She swung out of the saddle and laced Billy’s rein to a spruce. Stepped quietly forward, close enough so that she could see the trail, could watch the approach of the horses. Hope quickened her heartbeat. Might they be her own little band of mares? Could Guthrie have found them and be herding them back down into the valley?

  She felt an electrical jolt when the first horse came into view.

  “Fox!” The name passed her lips unbeknownst to her, a whisper of disbelief, of joy, unheard by the red mare that descended toward her. She felt a surge of gladness and relief and feasted her eyes on the beautiful Spanish mustang she had feared never to see again. Fox, followed by the others, all carefully picking their way among the loose stones as the trail dropped steeply. They passed one by one and might have kept right on going except for Billy. He let out a plaintive whinny that stopped them all in their tracks. Fox swung about on the narrow trail, head thrown up, ears pricked. Jessie stepped out into plain view of the mares. “Hey, old ladies,” she said. “Hey, Fox, you beautiful wild thing you. Decided to come home, did you?”

  There was a good bit of head tossing and eye rolling, a stomp of alarm and a snort from one of the mares, and then Fox pivoted on her haunches and continued down the trail, the rest following on her heels. Jessie watched them go and shook her head, giddy with relief. Coaly was missing. A black mare, one of the oldest of the little band and barren for the past four years.

  Well, all of life was a risk. Letting the mares run free exposed them to certain dangers and hazards, no doubt about that.

  “I’d rather be killed by a grizzly in the mountains of Montana than hit by a bus in New York City,” she said softly, watching the mares out of sight. She returned to where Billy was tethered and slapped his shoulder with affection. “Good-looking bunch, huh?” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be socializing with them soon enough.” She led him back out onto the trail and stood for a moment, wondering where Guthrie was. Surely he was trailing them down. He couldn’t be far.