Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch)

by Nadia Nichols

  “Damn you, Guthrie! You were doing good! You were getting better and now you’ve gone and undone it all!” She knelt in his face and glared, angry and scared and hating the feeling of helplessness that engulfed her.

  “Where’s Billy!”

  “You’re not riding a horse! You’re staying put. Lying still. Waiting for help. You hear me? No more of this. I can’t take any more of this! I can’t take you being hurt. Guthrie, please, please listen to me. I have my rifle. That bear won’t bother us if we keep a fire burning. Joe Nash will come looking for the senator, and if he doesn’t, someone else will. He was a senator, after all. Sooner or later someone’s bound to miss him. You’re going to get down off this mountain, but you aren’t going to crawl and you aren’t going to ride. You hear me?”

  He let his head tip back against the aspen trunk and his eyes closed. Gradually his breathing slowed. He nodded. “Okay.”

  Jessie slumped. She raised her hand and pressed palm to forehead, blinking hard. What a nightmare. When would it end? “Billy’s fine,” she heard herself say. “I sent him home with a message. I wrote it on a scrap of paper, bound it over the saddle horn and turned him loose. He knows how to get home. The way I figure it, he should be there just shy of suppertime.”

  JOE set the chopper down badly. He hadn’t hit the skids that hard for over a decade. For a moment he sat chewing his gum and wondering what the hell was happening to him. He didn’t have very long to wonder. McCutcheon stumped out toward the chopper on one crutch, a big canvas bag of something slung over one shoulder, a camera over the other. Joe cut the engine and the blades feathered down.

  “I brought lunch,” McCutcheon said over the diminishing noise. “Enough for both of us. And a camera with a lot of film. By God, it’ll take all day for me to use it up. But your boss said you were free and I don’t know of anyone else who gives such a good aerial tour.” He tossed his crutch in the open door, followed it with the canvas bag and handed the camera to Joe. “Easy. She’s fragile.”

  Joe winced and chewed harder. What a friggin’ note, to have to squire this rich dunderhead around, while somewhere out there the senator waited on him. The senator had the power to make his life holy old hell, and Joe was thinking he probably would, too, given that he’d been a little tardy in picking the important politician up.

  “Well, sir, what’s your pleasure?” he said to McCutcheon as the man buckled himself in.

  “I’d kind of like to get a picture of that big grizzly you saw,” came the unexpected answer.

  Joe was glad for the sunglasses that hid his surprise fairly well. He fumbled for a fresh stick of gum.

  “Huh. Well, no promises on that score. Grizzlies aren’t exactly hams in front of a camera. At least, none of the ones I’ve ever seen have exhibited that tendency, though I’m told some of the Yellowstone bears are pretty tolerant. I suppose we could get lucky.”

  “If we do, I’m ready.” McCutcheon patted the camera fondly.

  “Anything else you’d like to see while we’re at it?”

  “Well, actually, I was kind of hoping we’d catch sight of Jessie and Guthrie. Seems they spent the night together up on the mountain. They should be heading down by now, and I’d kind of like to make sure they’re okay. Guthrie’s sister is a chronic worrier. You know the type.”

  Joe drew a deep breath as he fired the engine back up. Good godamighty, he felt on the verge of complete and utter ruination. How could he possibly function competently under such stress? Gum. Chew lots of gum. Try not to think about that big brush pile. Maybe… Maybe the senator had bagged the grizzly and built that brush pile to conceal the great bruin’s body.

  It was a good thought, but Joe had little faith in it.

  “YOU REMEMBER that play we were in?” Jessie said, absentmindedly watching the smoke from the fire curl upward. “How the whole school had to memorize a part? You were Romeo and I was Juliet. I forgot most of my lines and so did you.”

  “No, I didn’t. I remembered them all. We only had to memorize that one scene, and when I got stuck all I had to do was look at your beautiful face and the lines just came to me.” Guthrie’s own words came slow but steady, and stronger than they had been.

  “Yes, and you made every single one of them up. That’s cheating. The crowd came to hear Shakespeare and instead they heard the original poetry of Guthrie Sloane.”

  “Crowd? Hell, Jess, all the parents in that audience times ten wouldn’t constitute a crowd.”

  Jessie smiled and shifted her position slightly against the trunk of the tree, easing a cramp in the small of her back. She glanced down at Guthrie, who lay beside her, sandwiched between their bedrolls, head and shoulders propped against a fallen log. “Well, it was like a lot of people to me. I hated it. All of it. The stage, the bright lights, the lines I had to learn, Mr. Becker’s constant scowl, all those faces in the audience waiting for some kind of magic to happen, and you looking at me as if you were about to burst out laughing at any moment.”

  “Well, you gotta admit it was funny.”

  “It wasn’t! It was awful! And that dress I had to wear!”

  “It was a gown, and you were beautiful in it.”

  “Drink some more soup,” she said, leaning over him. “Just a little. That’s good.” She lowered the tin cup and tears prickled in her eyes. He was still so weak. He could barely raise his hand to help steady the cup. She’d never seen him as anything but strong and self-reliant. “Oh, Lord, Guthrie, it seems as though we’ve known each other forever. I can scarcely recall a time when you weren’t there.”

  Jessie let her head tip back against the rough bark of the tree trunk, remembering other days. The sun was high; the late-October warmth was light, clean, crisp and pleasant. For the moment Guthrie was resting easily, but he had been slipping in and out of different worlds, here with her one moment, drifting away the next. Most of the morning had been this way. He would become anxious and ask about things that had no basis in reality. Reach for her, try to hold on to her, his fingers grasping her wrist, her parka, but with no real strength. She would soothe him as if he were a child, bending over him, her voice gentle and calm.

  Inside, she was anything but. She was overwhelmed with her own anxieties. Where was the bear? Where was Joe Nash? How long could Guthrie go on in his deteriorating state? And if he died, what would she do? A part of her could not think about such an outcome. Pushed it away. Kept the darkness at bay through sheer denial. Guthrie would be all right. He would always be there for her. Nothing would ever change that. Not a horse falling on him. Not a big grizzly. Not an important senator. Not anything, ever.

  “Did you call your professor, Jess?” he said, startling her. She gazed down at him. Just to look at his face hurt her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I spoke with him right after you left. It’s all set. I’m going back to school.”

  He blinked, trying hard to focus on her face. Drew a shallow breath and let it out slowly. “Liar,” he said.

  Jessie looked away. A gust of wind tossed the treetops and blew smoke from their little fire into her eyes. Where was Joe Nash? Where was the chopper? Flies were probably crawling all over the dead senator by now; the sun’s warmth would have brought them out. “I was too mad,” she said. “When McCutcheon told me you agreed to take the job if I didn’t, I figured that’s why you wanted me to go back to school.”

  “You think pretty highly of me, don’t you?”

  “I was wrong.” Jessie met his eyes and winced at the hurt in them. “I’m sorry. I’ll call the professor, I promise.”

  “And you’ll go back to school. Promise me that, too.”

  “I’ll go back to school if you take the job for McCutcheon and rip out all those damn fences.”

  “Promise me you’ll go back no matter what I end up doing.”

  “No.”

  “Damn you, Jess.”

  “Damn me all you want! I got you into this mess and I’m getting you out of it. Dying isn’t one of the
things you’re going to end up doing, Guthrie. I won’t allow it!”

  JESSIE SPENT most of the morning gathering wood. She was sure they wouldn’t have to spend another night up here; but better to be prepared. If worst came to worst, she wanted to have a big fire burning brightly all night long, and big fires consumed a great deal of wood. So she forayed farther and farther from the campsite, dragged back downed limbs, dead wood, anything she could find, including bundles of fresh evergreen limbs she could throw on the flames to make a smoke signal should a search plane fly over. At noon she stopped to fix something to eat. Guthrie had been dozing off and on, but he waked when she began to rummage through his saddlebags.

  The items she found amazed her. “Green chilis?” she said, holding up a tiny can.

  “They’re real good sliced into eggs.”

  “Yes, but you’d actually pack them for the high country?”

  “What better place to enjoy scrambled eggs and green chilis?”

  She dug deeper. Found a paper canister of oatmeal. Inside, nestled among the whole oats, were his eggs. Unbroken. That they had survived the fall intact was unbelievable. She also found a slab of bacon, two cans of beans, a pound of coffee, several packets of dried soup, a plastic jar of peanut butter and one very squashed loaf of oatmeal bread. “You eat pretty good,” she said. “A lot better than me.”

  “Anyone eats a lot better than you. Half the time I don’t think you even eat.”

  “I eat plenty. What’s your pleasure for lunch?”

  “Soup.”

  “Okay.” Soup was easy. Soup was hydrating, and Guthrie needed fluids more than anything. She put the billy can over the coals and poured water into it. Both water bottles were almost empty. If the senator had camped close by, he must have had a supply of water. All she had to do was find it. Still, that meant walking right past the dead body and climbing up the rock ledge toward the first kill site.

  Where the bear might be…

  She fixed the soup for Guthrie and helped him drink it. He was beginning to look as though he might live after all. But she knew he was still far from being out of the woods, both literally and figuratively. If Joe Nash had been coming to pick up the senator, wouldn’t he already have done so? Might she be wrong about when the senator had died? Had the senator been killed by the bear while covering up the dead horse? Had Joe seen his body yesterday on his later-afternoon flyby, spooked and run for home? For all anyone knew he was out of the country by now.

  Funny she hadn’t thought of that possibility before. Now it seemed the only plausible explanation, which meant that no one would be searching for them until Billy made it back to the ranch. And if Billy grazed his way lazily back home, it might not be until tomorrow that anyone began to worry. What if he ducked through a lot of brush and scraped off the note she’d tied to the saddle horn? What if he busted a leg and never made it back at all?

  “That man,” Guthrie said suddenly. “The Indian.”

  “Steven Brown,” Jessie said. “The lawyer.”

  “Do you see him much?”

  “He acted as McCutcheon’s attorney and my friend and adviser. He was at the property closing.”

  “But other than that, did you see each other?”

  Jessie glanced at him and felt the heat coming into her cheeks. “Is jealousy rearing its ugly head?”

  “Just curious. The last time I saw him he was acting mighty interested in you and the two of you were sharing a bottle of wine.”

  “We invited you to join us, if you recall. How does your head feel?”

  He reached his hand to touch his fingers to the sutures. “It feels fine. I guess that means you’re not going to answer my question,” he said. “And you’re right, I suppose. It’s none of my business.”

  “A couple of times,” Jessie said, dropping her eyes. “We saw each other a couple of times over the summer.

  He came by to keep me up-to-date on things, to show me the latest draft of the deed and the different conservation restrictions we were working into it. I relied on him a lot through the whole process. He knew what future I wanted for the land and he made sure it all happened the right way. I owe him a huge debt.”

  “I sure hope he’s not asking for any kind of payment.”

  Jessie shot him a dark glance. “Steven never asked me for anything.” She paused a moment, reconsidering. “I take that back,” she said. “He did ask for one thing.”

  “A kiss,” Guthrie predicted gloomily.

  Jessie hesitated, noting the despair that clouded Guthrie’s eyes, and then shook her head and smiled. “Not exactly,” she said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MID AUGUST.

  A day so hot, heat waves rippled off the ground, the wind scorched and the shade gave no relief. As the sun swung westerly toward the Gallatin Mountains a green Jeep Wagoneer rolled along the shaded dirt track bordering the creek. She could see the plume of dust rising from a long ways away. Steven had said he’d arrive by noon with the final draft of the deed, and here it was, nearly five o’clock. He parked, climbed out of the Jeep and walked to the foot of the porch steps, looking thoroughly exhausted and for all the world like a motherless calf.

  “Bad day?” she said, leaning over the porch railing.

  “Bad day. Sorry I’m late. Everything’s okay as far as you’re concerned. I brought the papers with me. I can leave them here for you to read, but there’s no rush. McCutcheon’s in Paris right now, visiting his wife. He won’t be back until October. We’ve set up a tentative closing date for the tenth.” He stood there, tie loosened and top buttons undone. “Can I ask you something?” he said. “Is there someplace along this creek I could jump in on my way back to Bozeman?”

  She took him to the swimming hole, where for a long time he floated on his back in the circular current of the deep pool, letting the cool clear mountain water wash all the heat and the stress of the day from him. Afterward she asked him to stay for supper, and was instantly sorry because she had no idea what she would fix for him. But the expression on his face was one of such humble gratitude that she felt small for regretting her impulsive invitation. He insisted on driving into town to pick up a bottle of wine for the occasion, which worked out perfectly, since it gave her nearly an hour to miraculously create a gastronomic delight out of a larder that was nearly always bare.

  She was in luck. There was a frying chicken in the icebox. She would cut it up and fry it in the Dutch oven the way Ramalda used to, though it wouldn’t taste quite the same—Ramalda had been a very good cook. Jessie decided to also fix a salad from the wild greens that grew along the banks of the creek, pick blackberries for a cobbler—all tasks to be completed within the hour so that by the time Steven returned with the bottle of wine she would be decked out in her only bit of feminine finery, a cotton print sundress, with a pair of leather sandals on her feet.

  No jeans and boots for this Montana cowgirl, not tonight! This was her first real date since Guthrie had left back in May. She was still so angry that the very thought of him caused her stomach to churn. She cut the chicken up with a knife that had seen sharper days, dredged the bird in the mix of milk, flour and herbs that Ramalda had used and left it on the sideboard while she went outside to pick the blackberries. In no time she had harvested a quart, though not without also harvesting some deep and painful scratches from the wicked brambles. She left the berries in the shade of the porch steps and carried an old colander down along the creek, picking sorrel and water-cress and Miner’s lettuce, adding the blossoms of edible wildflowers, a few stray berries and some wild onion.

  Should she make biscuits? No, too hot to run the oven. Still and all, they’d go nicely with the supper, and she could use the oven to make a blackberry shortcake instead of a cobbler. They could eat out on the porch at the little table. It would be cooling off then, and the view of the sunset would be romantic.

  Romantic?

  Yes. Romantic! She felt like being romantic. She felt like sipping a glass of
wine sitting on the porch with a man at her side and admiring the sunset. She wasn’t particular about the man, except that it couldn’t be Guthrie. And it just so happened that Steven Brown was very, very nice.

  Whereas Guthrie… Running off like that! She stomped up the porch steps with the colander of greens and the pail of blackberries, entered the kitchen and slammed both down upon the counter, causing some of the blackberries to bounce out of the pail and Blue to bolt out of the room. Guthrie! Slinking out of Katy Junction like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs. And to Alaska of all places. How dramatic! Perhaps by now he’d found some cute little girl who didn’t mind being treated like a brainless idiot.

  She mixed up a batch of biscuits, flour flying like a February blizzard and pea-size chunks of shortening hitting the floor like shrapnel. She was going to have a good time tonight. She was going to put on a pretty dress, fix her hair up nice and have a fine time with an extremely nice man.

  She rolled out the biscuit dough, and then, before cutting the biscuits, she lit the propane oven, or tried to. Nothing happened. Tried a stove-top burner, with the same results. Of all the times to run out of propane! She ran out the back door and tapped the tank with a wrench. The pitch alone told her it was mighty light. Grabbed hold and gave it a vigorous shake. No doubt about it. Empty!

  But there was a cookstove in the kitchen, as well, and where there was wood, there was a way. Thank goodness for the simpler things. She kindled a quick hot fire in the firebox. Beads of sweat prickled on her forehead, stung her eyes. She cut the biscuits, laid them in a rectangular baking pan, fed more wood into the stove. The kitchen heated up. She crushed the blackberries, added sugar to taste, washed the greens in the colander and left them to drain in the sink. That done, she ran down to the creek, stripping off her clothes as she did, and flung herself stark naked into the deliciously cool deep water of the swimming hole. No time to waste. Steven was probably halfway back by now.