She swung into the saddle and sat a few moments more, waiting. Glancing back up the mountain, she saw a raven wing in a wide loop over some curiosity. Perhaps the raven was over the kill site. Perhaps it had spotted the dead horse, or a hungry grizzly. Jessie watched and pondered, marked the spot, and then decided to follow along after the mares. Guthrie would catch up before dark, she was certain.
Finding her with the mares would be kind of a joke on him.
SENATOR SMITH HAD EASED some of his anxieties with what remained of the excellent brandy, and by the time he heard the chopper approaching he was reasonably certain that he could carry off the deceit. No one would ever suspect anything. When security finally found the man missing, no evidence would remain of any wrongdoing. He would return to Washington and keep his head down for a while, stay away from his Montana lodge until next spring when fishing season opened. If Joe wondered why he gave up on the grizzly, he’d tell him he’d been called back to Washington for a special Senate hearing. Too bad, but those were the breaks when one was an important politician.
He lifted the bottle for a final swallow before tucking it away inside his down vest. The chopper was coming over the ridge now but veering southward, not heading for the landing spot, a clearing near his camp with a diameter barely big enough to set the Bell JetRanger down in without tangling its blades in a forest of trees. George sat up, listening. His gear was packed. He was ready. It was time. The sun was sliding low, hovering over the Gallatin Mountains. In a short while dusk would descend, and after that, darkness, when all the big predators came out to prowl.
But, unbelievably, it sounded as if the chopper was flying away from his location. He stood up, uneasiness building within him. Yes, the sound was definitely fading, blown away by the constant wind until nothing remained of it.
He was alone…and yet he was not alone. Not one quarter of a mile away from him a dead man lay beside his dead horse, and somewhere in his darkening world a large grizzly grew more hungry.
“YOU CAN SEE the spot we put down to pick you up,” Joe said, hovering the chopper and nodding to a clearing below. “I figured we’d catch hell trying to land there, but this thing isn’t as big as it sometimes seems. ’Course, in a big wind you need to give yourself an allowance, about twice the diameter you need. This mountain flying can be real tricky in dirty weather.”
“I can imagine,” McCutcheon said. “So right now we’re not far from where you spotted the dead horse?”
“Nope. We nearly flew right over it a moment ago, same mountain, different gully.”
“Does this mountain have a name?”
“Montana Mountain. That’s where you were. On Montana Mountain.”
“Can you show me where the horse was?”
“Sure. It’s getting dark, you won’t see much, probably. But I’ll try to point it out.”
Joe had no intention of showing McCutcheon the exact place. He pivoted the chopper and climbed up the slope, dipping over a ridge and picking up the faint trace of the game path. He followed it only briefly before peeling to the left and tracing into a dark ravine, but in the few moments he’d watched the trail he’d seen something that had jolted him to the core, something perhaps no one else would ever notice, but it had stood out as plain to him as a streak of lightning searing a night sky.
“Down there. See it?” he said, pointing to an imaginary spot in the thick tangle below.
McCutcheon peered, shook his head. “You’re right. I can’t see a damn thing!”
“We better be heading back. It’s getting late.”
“I was kind of hoping we might catch sight of Jessie’s mares,” McCutcheon said.
“Not today. Maybe some other day if you want to look for them.”
“It’d be a big help to her, just knowing where they were.”
“No doubt.”
Joe’s mind raced. What he had seen troubled him. At the base of that steep rounded ledge where the old trail through the pass came out of the woods he had spotted a pile of dead branches, a big pile. Anyone who spent any time at all in the woods would notice something like that instantly. Something out of place. Unnatural.
Had the grizzly killed again? Was that new pile of brush covering up the senator?
“Hey!” McCutcheon burst out, startling Joe badly. “Look!” He stabbed a finger down below where the main trail snaked. “Isn’t that a bunch of horses?”
Joe steadied his pounding heart, chewing hard on the piece of used-up gum. He nodded, sweat springing onto his forehead. “Yup,” he said. “Seven. Followed by a rider.” He felt sick to his stomach. Big brush pile. Damn! Would a bear have dragged that much brush to cover a kill? It seemed unlikely. And who was that rider following after that band of mares? Couldn’t be Jessie. Might be Guthrie, though. How high had he gone? Could he have run afoul of the senator up on the mountain?
“By God! That’s good to see. Those must be Jessie’s mares, and they’re heading in the right direction.” McCutcheon was grinning. Joe looked over at him and forced himself to grin back, wondering if McCutcheon had deliberately withheld telling him that someone had gone up searching for the mares, or if he really hadn’t a clue.
In spite of the chewing gum, Joe’s mouth was powder dry.
THERE WAS NO WAY they would make it down into the valley before dark, but Jessie wasn’t worried. The moon would be full tonight, a hunter’s moon, and it would cast enough light for the horses to navigate the trail in safety. She wouldn’t hurry them. If they wanted to graze their way back home, that was fine with her. Guthrie would catch up all the quicker. It tickled her to think of the expression on his face when he saw it was she who was trailing along behind the mares. “What took you so long?” she’d say, and she knew that he’d just shake his head and grin that faint, wry grin of his.
Maybe they’d camp out together, let the mares keep going on their own. Yes, that’d be a good idea. It would give them time to talk things out. There was nothing like a campfire to coax the words out of a person. They could boil a pot of coffee, share the food in their pockets, gaze into the fire and just talk.
Or maybe… Jessie felt the heat come into her face just thinking about it. Campfire memories, Guthrie use to call them. A long time had gone by since they’d made any. Used to be that any excuse was a good one for kindling a fire. Didn’t have to be coming dark; the moon just needed a circle of stones, a bed of hard pan, a little tinder and match, the flames licking up, the sweet tang of pine smoke, Guthrie’s eyes catching hers above the flickering dance. The little campfires came to symbolize their passion for each other. Guthrie use to joke that it was a wonder there was any deadwood left in the forest.
Maybe they would never find their way back to that special place in their hearts, but Jessie felt a softening, a warming within herself where for a long time there had been only bitterness and anger. It would be good to sit near a fire with Guthrie again, even if all they ever did was talk.
She pulled Billy out of a stumble, hearing a sound down the trail even as she did, a sound very much like a human voice swearing. Billy’s head came up, ears alert. She reined him in and listened.
“Cuss it all, Charlie, don’t spook ’em!” an old voice rasped. “Let ’em drift on by. Just let ’em ease past us. There, there now. Good lady, Fox. On by, girls, on by. The barn ain’t far now, you worthless old hay burners.”
Badger and Charlie! What were they doing up here?
She nudged Billy forward and played catchup with the mares, barely spotting the riders in the thick gloaming. “Badger?” she called out.
“That you, Jessie?”
“Charlie?”
“You betcha. Thought we’d come up and give you a hand.”
She drew abreast of them and reined in, grinning with gladness, weak with relief. “I’m glad you did. Did you see that chopper a while back?”
“That we did. Flew right over us. Figured Joe Nash was taking the senator back to his lodge for the evening. I guess you read things t
he way I did, with that big grizzly bear and all. Where’s Guthrie?” Badger said.
“Behind me. I figure I’ll go back up a ways, find a good camping spot and wait for him. That is, if you don’t mind taking the mares down for me.”
“Glad to oblige.” She caught the flash of Badger’s teeth as he grinned. “You two behave yourselves, hear?” he called after her as she swung Billy back around and headed back up the trail.
NASH WAS in a real pinch. By the time he let McCutcheon off at the Weaver ranch it was too late to go back for the senator. No way could he set the Bell JetRanger down in that clearing in total darkness. It would have to wait until morning. He returned the chopper to the airstrip and drove to town. He needed a beer or two or three, something to take the edge off.
Who had been looking for Jessie’s mares? When asked, McCutcheon had been deliberately obtuse, playing ignorant about the goings-on right under his own nose. Said he didn’t know where Jessie or Guthrie were, over to Guthrie’s place, maybe. Who knows? He wasn’t their keeper.
And so forth.
But someone had gone up to look for those mares and had found them, and was bringing them back down. Had that rider also stumbled across the senator?
And then there was the brush pile. That big damn brush pile out in the open where a pile of brush would never be unless a man stacked it there. Men built brush piles when they were clearing land. They wouldn’t go into the woods, haul a bunch of dead stuff out and make a huge pile way out in the middle of the wilderness at the base of a barren rock ledge, unless it was going to be a signal fire of some sort.
Signaling who? And why? It was so close to where the senator’s tree stand was. So close! Big brush pile! Damn!
Joe drank four beers sitting on the bar stool and each beer had the opposite effect of what he was hoping for. By the time he left the bar he was wound up tighter than a violin string and he knew for certain that there would be no sleep for him this night.
HE WANTED to build a fire, but it was too dark now to gather the wood for it. There was no way he could stay on the ground so near the kill site without a fire to keep that huge grizzly at bay, so Senator George Smith went back to the tree stand and climbed the ladder with the Weatherby slung over his shoulder. He would sleep cold and in the dark, but he would sleep safe, because grizzlies couldn’t climb trees.
For whatever reason Joe had stranded him here—and there had to be a pretty good reason—he was certain that in the morning the chopper would return for him. If it didn’t, he would walk out by himself. He’d brought a cell phone in case of emergency, but he wouldn’t use it unless he had to. Cell phone calls could be monitored.
No, he’d hike out. He could stash the Weatherby when he made it out to the road and bum a ride from some rancher who wouldn’t recognize him, not with two days of stubble on his jaw and dressed head to toe in hunter’s camo. He’d just be another hard-luck elk hunter who had abandoned the camp to assuage his thirst for a beer in town. Once he reached the road he could walk to his hunting lodge if worst came to worst. To hell with Joe Nash. He’d make sure the bastard never flew again if he didn’t come for him in the morning. He’d make sure that worthless pilot burned in hell.
He sat in the dark with his back against the tree trunk and his knees drawn up against his chest. It was cold. He felt a twist of revulsion when he thought about that man lying beneath the pile of brush at the base of that ledge. Even if his inclination had been to help, there was nothing he could have done. Head busted open, all broken up, blood everywhere. That long fall all tangled up with a horse. The poor bastard had been doomed from the moment he’d rolled out of bed that morning.
It had been his day to die.
JESSIE MADE CAMP on a bench just off the main trail. In the near darkness she gathered an armload of dry wood and kindled a tiny, tiny fire, just big enough so that Guthrie would see it when he rode by. With water from her bottle she put a little pot of coffee on to boil, and then set about making Billy comfortable, stripping the gear off him, rubbing him down with a twist of dry grass, giving him a bait of the sweet feed she carried in her saddlebag. There was enough browse to hold him overnight, but he’d have to work for it. In the morning she’d feed him the rest of the grain, and she and Guthrie would ride back down out of the mountains together.
Odd that he hadn’t shown up yet. She leaned back against her saddle and ate the last hard-boiled egg, pondering what might be holding him up. She sat up straight as a dark thought flashed through her mind. Suppose… Just supposing he had found the mares and started them back down the trail toward the valley, and then decided to check out the kill site? And suppose when he got there, something bad had happened?
She swallowed. Leaned forward and tucked another piece of wood into the tiny fire. No, that was a foolish thought. The chopper had already come and gone, so the senator had undoubtedly been whisked away to his private hunting lodge for the night. She shifted the billy can over the flames and the water began to boil. But…supposing Guthrie had shown up before Joe Nash? What might the senator have done if he was up there trying to shoot a trophy grizzly and Guthrie stumbled onto the scene? Might he have shot Guthrie?
Hardly likely. Committing murder didn’t seem like the stuff of senators. No, he’d cower and hide and hope Guthrie didn’t see him.
And if Guthrie did? The senator would be in trouble, but it was the kind of trouble he could bribe and buy his way out of. He wouldn’t be the first senator to be caught doing something naughty and have it all swept neatly under the rug. Besides, he could always say he was hunting black bear or elk. Unless he was caught red-handed with a dead grizzly, the senator wouldn’t get into any trouble at all for hunting up on the mountain.
She was needlessly worrying about things that hadn’t happened. Couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. Guthrie was all right. He was just taking his time. Maybe he was camped up above her somewheres, in a pretty spot with a little creek rushing past. He had no idea she was up on the mountain. Maybe he was eating his supper even as she was eating hers. Maybe he was watching the way the moonlight illuminated the mountain peaks and then slowly poured into the valley basin and filled it with a milky-blue glow.
Maybe he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him, and wondering what the future held for them both.
BADGER AND CHARLIE made it back to the ranch before midnight, and McCutcheon was up to the main house. He had the lamps lit, and when he heard the hoofbeats he came out onto the porch, leaving the door ajar behind him, and stood there while they choused the weary mustangs into the corrals. After they had seen to the horses, forking them hay and making sure the water tank was full, they headed up to the house to wrap their hands around the mugs of hot strong coffee they knew McCutcheon would have waiting.
“There, by damn,” Badger said, dropping into the nearest chair and tossing his hat upon the table. “That’s a good day’s work for a couple of old farts.”
Charlie followed suit, too tired to speak, and they let McCutcheon stomp awkwardly around on one crutch, carrying the coffeepot to the table, then the mugs. There was a pot of soup atop the stove and he carried that over, too, and a couple of bowls and spoons and what was left of a loaf of bread. “Bernie came by early this evening,” he explained as they dug into the soup. “I told her Jessie’s horses were on their way home.”
Badger glanced up, mouth full, eyebrows raised. He swallowed. “Now, how in hell would you know a thing like that?” he protested. “That’s my story to tell!”
McCutcheon’s smile was smug. “Hired myself a chopper. Joe flew me all around the ranch this afternoon and we spotted the horses toward the tail end of the day being pushed by a rider. Saw the two of you not far below there. We figured you’d meet up before too long.”
Badger and Charlie stared at each other. “Well,” Badger said with grudging admiration. “I guess a’horseback ain’t the only way to get around when your ankle is busted. We saw you fly over. Figured it was Joe fetching th
e senator down for the night.”
“Where’s Jessie and Guthrie?” McCutcheon prodded. “Why aren’t they with you?”
“Guthrie was higher up in the pass, so Jessie sent us down with the mares and stayed up on the mountain to wait for him. I expect they’ll camp together tonight.” Badger shoveled the soup in. It was delicious, just like everything Bernie made. He reached for the ladle and dished himself up another bowl. “She sure was glad to get her mares back. Fox is just fine. Looks like the only one missing is an old black mare name of Coaly.”
“Coaly was a top cuttin’ horse in her day,” Charlie said, sopping up the last of the soup in his bowl with a thick slice of bread.
“Bear bait now.” Badger chewed on another slice of bread. “We all gotta die sometimes. I’d rather go that way than tied to a wheelchair in some damn nursing home.”
“You’n me both,” Charlie agreed, barely able to keep his eyes open.
“So, if our hunch was right and the senator was up there trying to bag that big grizzly, and you were monopolizing Joe Nash’s time,” Badger said to McCutcheon, “then the senator could still be up there.”
“I hope so,” McCutcheon said. “I hope he’s shaking in his boots thinking about that huge bear coming out of the dark at him.”
Badger nodded. “It’s a known fact that bears get a whole lot bigger in the night.”
“So do a man’s fears,” Charlie said, yawning hugely.
They all seemed well pleased with the thought.
THE BEAR DID COME in the night, but it came silently, not standing on its hind legs roaring out a challenge, eyes glowing red with rage. It came up the game trail and caught the scent of two things: a man and a horse. The man was to be avoided. The horse was to be eaten. To get to the horse, the bear had to come very close to the man. An animal can tell much with its keen sense of smell, and the bear knew that the horse was dead and the man was alive, but hurt. It approached with caution, quiet for so large a creature, yet the man heard it coming. Heard the roll of gravel beneath its great paws. The snap of a twig. Heard the sound of its lung-deep breaths wafting the cold night air.
Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch) Page 19
