Montana Dreaming

by Judy Duarte

  “You never know.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Mark directed Brad to take a gravel lane. “It’s an old logging road,” he said.

  The SUV rumbled and jumped over dips and ruts and potholes until finally they came to a stop and could go no farther. “We walk from here,” Mark explained.

  After they hiked through pines, up inclines and over a flat area for about a mile, Mark pointed to smoke billowing toward the sky. “There he is. He has a fire going this morning.”

  “It got pretty cold last night. He stays out in the weather?”

  “Weather doesn’t seem to bother him.”

  “How old is he?”

  “My guess is around seventy, maybe seventy-five. He looks about a hundred and twenty, though. Yo, Mickey,” Mark called, announcing his presence. “I don’t want to sneak up on him. If he’s paranoid, I won’t appreciate looking down the barrel of a shotgun.”

  In the clearing, a blue tent was a bright color of contrast against the landscape. A campfire was going about ten feet from it, and a man was hunched down at it.

  “Do you mind if we talk to you?” Mark asked as he came closer to the man.

  Brad could see that Mickey Latimer might have been a tall man at one time, but now he was stooped as he gazed into the fire. Dressed in jeans and a down parka that had seen better days, he also wore a leather hat pulled down over his eyes. The wide brim shaded his face and almost hid it. Ignoring Mark, Mickey poured coffee from a tin pan into a foam cup.

  “Sometimes I think he’s hard of hearing. Other times I believe the gossip and think he’s just senile,” Mark explained to Brad.

  Approaching Mickey, he hunkered down beside him. “I brought someone along who wants to talk to you, too. Do you mind?”

  The old prospector gave Mark a look from under the brim of his hat. “Don’t mind nothin’. I’m too old to mind anything.”

  Brad crouched down on the other side of the man. “Nice tent you have there.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think about stealing it.” As quick as lightning, he brought a pistol out that had been tucked in his back waistband.

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Brad assured him, giving Mark a look that asked if he really was dangerous. To make sure Mickey knew he was no threat, he sat on the ground beside him. “I’m not interested in your tent. I’m interested in what you know.”

  Mickey’s focus went to Mark again. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Remember I asked you questions about the Queen of Hearts mine?” Mark asked.

  “The mine. I have a mine.”

  Brad played along. “Where’s your mine?”

  Mickey motioned behind the tent. “Back there. Staked it out and everything. Do you want to dig with me?” There was a conspiratorial air about him.

  “Maybe another time,” Brad answered seriously. “I came to Thunder Canyon to find out if the Douglases really own the Queen of Hearts.”

  The prospector put a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  Brad cast a look around him, then he caught on. “You know a secret?”

  With a shrug, Mickey answered, “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Maybe I remember things, maybe I don’t.”

  “How old are you?” Brad asked.

  The elderly man’s face screwed up and he pushed back the brim of his hat. Brad could see his weathered countenance clearly now. It was long and lean and his eyes were blue and cloudy. His leather gloves were scraped and torn, and now he put a finger to his chin. “I don’t rightly know. I can’t remember. Maybe I have a birthday today.”

  Beginning to think they wouldn’t get anywhere, Brad agreed, “Maybe you do.”

  “Don’t want no birthday cake, though. It will rot my teeth. Did you come to give me a donation?”

  “Do you take donations?” Brad asked, amused.

  “Sure do. That’s how I got my tent. That’s how I feed my mule.”

  Brad hadn’t seen any evidence of an animal around. “You have a mule?”

  “Sure do.” He pointed farther up the mountain. “A man up there keeps him for me. Keeps him warm when it’s cold. Let’s me sleep there, too, in one of the stalls.”

  Mark just shrugged as if he didn’t know anything about all that.

  “So tell me about the Queen of Hearts,” Brad prompted, trying to get them back on the subject.

  “You play poker?” the prospector asked.

  “I have now and then. How about you?”

  “Nah. I save what money I have. Rumor has it Amos won that mine in a poker game.”

  “And did he?”

  “That depends on who you talk to. My granddaddy said he was an ornery old cuss.”

  “Amos was?”

  “Yep. Didn’t treat his wife none too good.”

  Caleb had mentioned Catherine Douglas in passing but hadn’t seemed to know much about her. “What do you mean he didn’t treat her well? Was he mean to her?”

  “No one knows for sure. Back then women stayed because they had to.” He looked Brad in the eye. “Now they don’t have to.”

  The old man was right about that. He couldn’t imagine Emily staying in any situation she didn’t want to be in. “So what about the mine?”

  “The mine. The Queen of Hearts.” Mickey shook his head as he leaned close to Brad and whispered, “Women have the power.”

  “Maybe now they do,” Brad said.

  “Women have the power,” Mickey insisted, looking agitated.

  “A woman owned the mine?” Brad asked.

  The man resumed his seat with his legs crossed in front of the fire, then he stared into it as if their whole conversation hadn’t happened, mumbling, “Don’t know for sure. Don’t know nothin’ for sure.”

  After another twenty minutes or so of talking to Mickey, or trying to talk to Mickey, of attempting to make sense out of his ramblings and their pieced-to-gether conversation, Brad knew he wasn’t going to get anything else.

  Pulling out his wallet, he took out two twenty-dollar bills and tucked them into Mickey Latimer’s pocket. “There’s a donation for you. Do you mind if we come back to see you again?”

  “Might be here. Might not be here.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind.”

  As Brad and Mark hiked back the way they’d come, neither of them spoke. Finally, in the SUV once more, Brad looked over at the reporter. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s rambling, just like when I talked to him. I couldn’t make much sense out of any of it.”

  “What do you think he meant—‘Women have the power’?”

  “It could be just something he picked up somewhere.”

  “He seemed to know a little history on Amos.”

  “Maybe. But maybe his memory is cloudy. Maybe he was confusing Catherine Douglas with someone else.”

  Brad repeated the phrase. “Women have the power.”

  Fastening his seat belt, Mark laughed. “That’s true in my house. My life revolves around Juliet and the baby.”

  Thinking about acquaintances and colleagues, Brad wasn’t sure he’d seen any successful marriages. However, he might not have looked very hard, either. His parents had colored the way he thought of men and women and marriage. His experience with Robin had colored it, too. But spending time with Mark and Juliet, he’d realized they seemed genuinely happy.

  He’d never asked his mother why she’d had an affair or what it had meant to her. He’d never asked her why she hadn’t married the man who’d come between her and his father. Brad had always believed everything his father had told him about his mom—that he and Brad hadn’t been enough for her and she’d found something outside of the marriage, that she’d been selfish, only considering what she wanted. But as Brad grew older, he’d realized everything wasn’t black or white. He’d also learned his father could be controlling and cold. Is that what had forced his mother into an affair?

  He didn’t like rethinking his entire life, but he understood that one of the r
easons he was doing it wasn’t just this trip to Thunder Canyon—he was rethinking it because of Emily.

  As Mark checked his watch, he asked, “What are you doing for lunch?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I was going to go back to the ranch and check on Emily.”

  “Why don’t we stop in at the Hitching Post and get something. You might find a little taste of history there, especially when you look over the bar at the Shady Lady.”

  “The Shady Lady?”

  “It’s a painting of a woman who was rumored to own a brothel—Lily Divine. I was thinking you might run into some old-timers there who hang around and play checkers because they have nothing better to do.”

  “Let me give Emily a call. I’ll tell her what we’re up to.”

  When he took out his cell phone, he realized he couldn’t wait to hear Emily’s voice.

  When Emily had found Brad’s note, her heart had raced faster and she’d smiled. It’s only a courtesy note, she’d told herself. Still, it was nice Brad had let her know what he’d be doing and that he was with Mark.

  After she’d dressed, poured a cup of tea and gone to the sitting room with it, her wrist ached so she’d decided to delve into some of Adele’s home-decorating magazines for a distraction. But then Brad had called and seemed to just want to talk. His concern for her had made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. After he’d described Mickey and shared some of their conversation, he’d told her he was going to have lunch with Mark and bone up on some more of Thunder Canyon’s history.

  Now, still paging through magazines, the sound of Brad’s deep baritone echoing inside her, she decided to return to her room and look at the notes she’d taken thus far. She could try to type one-handed.

  However, when she neared the dining room, she heard male voices and stopped.

  “I’m going to keep that mine one way or another,” she heard Caleb say.

  “You know I’ll do anything I can to help you, Dad.”

  She recognized Riley’s voice.

  “No one is going to cheat me out of what is rightfully mine. I’ve paid taxes on that land for years. No assessor ever said anything about a title not being listed.”

  “It’s not so odd considering how records used to be kept,” Riley assured him. “Every descendent after Amos Douglas just kept paying taxes as his predecessor had.”

  “I wonder if Amos ever had the actual deed. A lot of deals were made by word of mouth back then.”

  “But you do have the promissory note,” Riley reminded him.

  “Yes, I do. The question is, did Amos foreclose? Apparently the rumor about the poker game was a myth.”

  “Thunder Canyon is full of legends, and that was just one of them.”

  Instead of making her presence known, Emily quietly slipped past the dining room and went into the kitchen for an ice pack. She and Brad would have to have a conference when he returned.

  When he returned.

  Her heart raced faster at the thought.

  Typing with her right hand, her left helping now and then, was slow going. Emily was engrossed in correcting her mistakes on the laptop screen when there was a knock at her bedroom door.

  “Come in,” she called absently, making another correction.

  After Brad stepped into the bedroom, her heart seemed to actually sing. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt today, with the cuffs rolled back. The shirt was open at the throat and black hair swirled there. When she’d played her fingers through that hair, it had been so soft—

  “You’re back,” she said lightly, trying to keep the pictures from playing through her mind.

  “You shouldn’t be typing,” he scolded her.

  “You brought me along to type up notes. I can’t earn my bonus if I don’t do that.”

  “Give your wrist a couple of days to heal.”

  “I needed something to do.”

  After he crossed the room, he sat on the bed, facing her. When his jean-clad knee brushed hers, she could smell his aftershave and also the scents of the outdoors.

  So she wouldn’t concentrate on how much she liked the shadow of his beard line and the way his eyes darkened when he looked at her, she asked, “Did you find out anything else?”

  “I don’t know what’s fact and what’s fiction and I don’t know if the prospector is senile or cryptic. But I didn’t find out anything more at the Hitching Post. I told you what Mickey said about women having the power. If a woman did own the mine, none of the old-timers playing checkers there had ever heard about it.

  “Women have the power,” he repeated as if he still wondered what the prospector had meant.

  “What power?” Emily asked, amused.

  But Brad wasn’t smiling. He was studying her in a way that made her blush.

  “You have more power than you can ever know.”

  “Because a man needs a woman to fulfill his needs?” she asked softly, wishing their time in the cabin had been more than a diversion for him.

  “No. Because a man needs a woman to feel like a man.”

  Before they’d made love, Emily might have scoffed at that, but now she knew a woman needed a man to feel like a woman, too. In that cabin, as Brad had kissed and caressed her, she’d felt beautiful and desired and feminine in a way she’d never felt before.

  The hum surrounding her and Brad in its erotic field wasn’t coming from her laptop. She licked lips, which had suddenly gone dry, and couldn’t break eye contact.

  A nerve in Brad’s jaw worked. His voice was husky as he said, “I did learn a few things about Amos Douglas from Mickey that I didn’t tell you about on the phone.”

  Trying to follow the thread of conversation, she made her lips form the word, “What?”

  “It’s not going to help us any, but I learned he might have been a scoundrel. There’s a possibility he mistreated his wife.”

  “That would have been Catherine Douglas.”

  Brad nodded. “I’ll have to take you to the Hitching Post some night. It’s an interesting place—part old-time saloon, part new-time grill.”

  “That’s the place Juliet mentioned last night. She’d waitressed there. That’s where she met Mark. It must have been hard for her, being pregnant, having to work with no family around.”

  “I think that’s why she and Mark connected.” Studying her again, he asked, “Do you often think about the baby you lost?”

  Emily guessed Brad was remembering holding Marissa. Maybe he was thinking about Suzette Brouchard and her child. Maybe he was contemplating the idea of really becoming a dad. He’d already missed two years of that little girl’s life, according to the article in the newspaper. She wished she could put Suzette out of her head. She wished she could put Brad’s lifestyle out of her head and pretend he was just an ordinary guy and they were here together getting to know each other.

  Her thoughts had scrambled to another direction because the miscarriage was still painful for her to remember. “I think about that baby every day. I wonder if it would have been a boy or a girl, if he or she might have had my brown hair or my eyes, been born tiny or big.” Tears came to her eyes as she shook her head.

  Clearing her throat, she quickly changed the subject. “I overheard Caleb and Riley talking.”

  After a moment of studying her, he asked, “About what?”

  “The mine. Caleb is vowing to keep it one way or the other.”

  “I wonder how he intends to accomplish that if I find out someone else owns it.”

  “I don’t know. But Riley’s on his side. I get the feeling he’d do anything to please his father.”

  “Parental approval,” Brad said with a grimace. “It can be a driving force.”

  “Has it been for you?”

  “Wanting my father’s approval has always been in the back of my mind. When I was younger, I purposely took a different road so I didn’t have to deal with earning it.”

  “But you came back to Chicago to work with him.”

  “Yes, I
did. My mother wanted me to. I don’t think she liked me being so far away and she simply pushed the guilt button several times, reminding me my father wouldn’t be around forever.”

  “Are you sorry you came back?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “No, I’m not sorry I came back. I think she was right. I should get to know him before it’s too late. But working with him, trying to fit into the vision of what he wants me to be, that’s something else entirely.”

  After a few beats of silence, without warning Brad took her laptop from her lap and closed it.

  “Brad, I have to—”

  “What you have to do is give that wrist time to heal.” He took her hand in his and lifted the bandage. “Did you rewrap this this morning?”

  His fingers on her skin started a burning heat that didn’t stop at her hand.

  “No,” she somehow managed to say, even though her mouth had gone as dry as cotton.

  “Do you want me to rewrap it? It’s kind of hard to do one-handed.”

  Yes, it was. If she let Brad do it, it would only take a couple of minutes, maybe not even that long.

  Already Brad was slipping the small clasp out of the fabric, laying it on top of the laptop computer. Then he was gently holding her forearm, unwrapping the stretchy bandage.

  Searching for a coherent thought, Emily finally settled on saying, “What are you going to do this afternoon?”

  “I thought I’d go into Old Town to the historical society and poke around.”

  “Want some help?”

  “Sure, if you feel up to coming.”

  “There’s nothing to do here. And if I don’t think about my wrist, it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Mind over matter?” he teased.

  The bandage undone now, Brad put her hand on his thigh. Every nerve inside her rioted because she had touched him intimately there. Mind over matter, she repeated inwardly, as if the mantra could make his touch less volatile.

  As he probed her wrist gently, he said, “It doesn’t look as swollen.”

  “The doctor said I should only keep the bandage on a couple of days.”

  Brad proceeded to tuck the end of the bandage into her palm. When he began wrapping, Emily tried to pretend he was the doctor doing it. That didn’t work at all.