The Great Montana Cowboy Auction

by Anne McAllister

  Polly found Gus in front of the town hall, which was about to rock off its foundations. "Jenny said you wanted to see me?"

  "Thank God. I thought you were in there somewhere." He dug in his pocket, pulled out a small piece of folded paper and stuffed it into her hand.

  "What's this?" She started to unfold it, but Gus reached over, pressed it flat again and stuffed it into Polly's pocket.

  "Not for public consumption," he said. "It's a blank check. From Sloan."

  "From Sloan? Why?"

  Gus took her arm and hauled her around the side of the building where there were fewer people, then bent his head so it was just inches from her ear. "He wants you to bid on him."

  "What! I can't bid on him!"

  "Shhh! You have to."

  "I don't have to! I'm not rigging the auction!"

  "Come on, Polly. It's not rigging. It's fair. You'd just be bidding on him with his money. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing illegal about it."

  "It would look bad. And why should I?"

  "Because he doesn't want to go to a bimbo or a ditz—or some woman in the pay of a tabloid. And because," Gus said flatly, "he wants to take you."

  "What!"

  Gus shrugged. "He wants you. He said he owed you. Something to do with something he did a long time ago—he said you'd know what."

  Gus clearly didn't. Thank God.

  "That's ridiculous," she protested. "He doesn't owe me anything!"

  "Well, he thinks he does. And you have to do it."

  "No—"

  "You do," Gus insisted. "I've got to make you agree to do it or … or he'll tell the world my name."

  Polly's eyes widened. "He knows your name?"

  She didn't think Gus had ever told anyone—except perhaps his wife, Mary—what his first name was. He was D.A. "Gus" Holt. And that was that.

  "Sloan knows," Gus said grimly. "He was there when I hit a baseball through our living room window. My mother came to the door and yelled at me. She said the whole thing. Out loud." Gus winced at the memory. "C'mon, Pol'. Please. He means it. I'll die."

  "I don't—"

  "Say you'll bid on him," Gus promised, "and I'll direct next year's Christmas pageant."

  It was true what they said—every woman did have her price. "You're on," Polly said.

  The place was jammed. There was hardly room in the town hall to move, let alone raise your hand to bid. Just as well since Jace had no intention of bidding at all.

  He probably should have given up his spot against the wall to someone whose presence would mean money in the coffers of Maddie's loan fund. But he didn't move. He was looking for Celie.

  He wanted to watch her face, wanted to see her come to terms with Sloan Gallagher in the flesh. Right now, though, he couldn't see her at all.

  There were literally several hundred people of all ages—from the four young Jennings kids in the front row to Maddie herself flanked by Cloris and Alice on one side and a young woman with a wriggling baby on the other—sitting shoulder to shoulder in rows. Lining all the walls were a bunch of standing-room-only hangers-on like himself.

  Most of the attendees were young women, many of whom had, like Serena and Kelsey, been hanging around for days. But he could tell that not all the potential bidders were Sloan Gallagher groupies.

  In fact, today had brought out a fair number of well-heeled patrons of the arts, interested in Brenna McCall's pen-and-ink-and-watercolor paintings of working cowhands as well as Charlie Seeks Elk's photos, some charcoal rodeo sketches done by Brenna and Jed McCall's nephew, Tuck, and a new display entitled Cowgirl in Paris, which Taggart Jones had hung last night.

  These were a series of wonderful photos taken by his sister, Erin Jones, who was now a Paris-based photographer. Jace didn't know about Erin's reputation as a photographer, but some of the art patrons seemed to recognize her name and got excited seeing the photos.

  People were excited, period. Serena and Kelsey were bouncing in their chairs. He could see them now about five rows from the front. They were saving a seat for Tamara, who waggled her fingers at him as she parted the throng on the other side of the room and came to join them.

  Then the curtain moved at the front of the room and there was a sudden heightened buzz of excitement followed by an expectant hush. Once more Jace looked around trying to spot Celie and didn't find her.

  Polly was sitting near the back with her mother, who looked avid and excited and thrilled. Polly looked exhausted and on edge. Probably worried that something would go wrong, Jace thought. He caught her eye and gave her a thumb's-up, hoping it would make her relax a little. But she only smiled fleetingly in reply.

  He wanted to mouth, "Where's Celie?" But he didn't. She wasn't her sister's keeper. And he didn't want to admit that it mattered.

  Maybe Celie just plain old wasn't going to come.

  He brightened at the thought just as the curtain opened and Calvin stepped out.

  Calvin Hodges had been an auctioneer for a good fifty years. He'd sold horses and cattle, houses and land, beer bottles, blankets and buttonhooks. He'd seen it all. But he'd never seen anything like this. Still, being Calvin, he was never at a loss for words. He beamed out at the crowd.

  "Reckon we'll just get started then," he said. "I was thinking how to do this, seeing as how you ain't gonna bid on none of my other cowboys until we get started on what's his name, that Hollywood feller."

  All the girls squealed.

  Was one of them Celie? Jace couldn't see her anywhere. He wondered if she'd gone to the Dew Drop or the Busy Bee instead.

  "So I figured," Calvin was saying, "that we'd start out with Mr. Sloan Gallagher. Just to whet your appetite a bit. We'll go a ways an' then we'll call a halt, and if he gets a little too rich for your blood, could be you'll find another one of these fellers to your liking. How 'bout that?"

  More squealing. Shrieking. Clapping. Whistling.

  And then Sloan walked out.

  If Jace had thought things were crazy before, now the place went wild. If that many women had been screaming and clamoring for him, Jace would have turned tail and made tracks as fast as he could run. It was downright scary.

  But then Sloan raised his hand for silence and, by God, they shut up. Just like that. Several hundred women stopped mid-shriek and just sat there, leaning toward him, jaws hanging, all of them with their eyes fastened on Sloan.

  Jace thought he could hear his own heartbeat.

  "Hey, there. I'm Sloan Gallagher," the man himself said with a self-deprecating grin. "And if you find out what all the shouting's about, I wish you'd tell me." There were a few shrieks.

  But he quieted them. "I thought, before we got started, I'd tell you a little about why I'm here—about what Maddie and Ward Fletcher meant to me."

  Polly was startled when Sloan began to speak.

  There had been no stipulation that he would, nothing that indicated he might. He gained nothing personally by recounting the story of how he had happened to be their foster child and what they had meant to him. In fact, Polly thought, it could only bring back memories of the worst time of his life.

  And yet he did it. He talked briefly about losing his mother, about his father's pain—memories that had to hurt even now.

  "My world had shattered," he said. "Then Maddie and Ward helped me begin to put it back together again. I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for them. In fact—" he grimaced a little "—I hate to think about where I might actually be if it hadn't been for them. They taught me that the world goes on in spite of pain. They taught me not to forget, but to put the past in perspective. To go on. To look to the future, to hope, to dream…" And here he paused and looked out across the crowd as if he was searching for something. And then his eyes found her. "To dream," he repeated with a hint of a smile, making Polly squirm in her chair.

  "I owe them—and the folks in Elmer—a lot. More than I can ever repay," Sloan said solemnly. Then he winked. "Which is why I'm asking you folks to help."

>   The bidding was over a hundred dollars in less than a minute.

  It got to four hundred in barely more than that.

  When it hit seven hundred Calvin called a halt. "We're going to move on and come back to this feller," he said. "Give him a breather while we sell a few more items—and maybe a cowboy or two. Right now we've got some photographs by native daughter Erin Jones sent all the way from Paris…"

  Backstage, Sloan stayed out of sight while the interim auctions were taking place. But while he tried to stay out of the way, he also tried to stay where he could keep an eye on Polly.

  She was sitting a long way back. Irritated, he thought she could have moved up a little. Surely they would have made room for her. But she apparently didn't try. She seemed to be determined to fade into the background.

  How the hell was she going to bid if she wasn't close enough for someone to see her wave her arm?

  Jace could see Serena. He could see Kelsey. He could see Tamara Lynd. But not Celie. Not anywhere.

  "Where's your aunt?" he asked Jack as the boy slipped past.

  "Haven't seen her."

  Calvin was auctioning off Cy Williams from Trey Phillips's spread up near Murray. Cy—young, blond and brash—was the first of the bachelor cowboys to come up for bid. And while some of the ones Jace could see in the wings looked ill at ease, Cy laughed and preened and strutted his stuff. A number of young women, Serena included, were bidding furiously.

  After Serena won Cy, an art patron from Santa Fe was high bidder for Charlie Seeks Elk's photos, a cowboy wannabe from Denver won Taggart's full weekend at bull-riding school and several local ranchers bought back their own working men who had offered hours of riding fence or haying or moving cattle.

  Then Gallagher was back and the bidding went mad until Calvin called a halt at one thousand, five hundred twenty dollars.

  "We don't wanta get ahead of ourselves here," he said jovially. "We'll just come back to this ol' broken down cowpoke in a little while."

  When the bids on him went over three thousand dollars, Sloan got another break while Calvin moved on to Brenna Jamison McCall's cowboy hero watercolor painting.

  Sloan had given Gus a blank check to bid on that. He'd always admired her work, had one original, in fact, in his ranch house near Sand Gap, and while he could afford to buy one anytime he chose, now seemed as good a time as any to bid on another.

  He wanted to make sure Maddie's coffers were full.

  Gus had apparently deputized Mary to do the bidding. From behind the curtain Sloan watched as she bid against several art connoisseurs. He guessed the painting might have gone for $5,000 in a gallery. It went for over $7,500 by the time Mary beat out the last competing bidder.

  "Sold," Calvin proclaimed bringing down the gavel. "You gonna replace the cowboy hero at your house?" he asked Mary.

  She smiled and shook her head. "Not a chance." And there was a look of such love on her face that Sloan felt a prick of envy just seeing it. Not for the first time, he wished for that for himself.

  He'd begun to despair of finding it, though. Fame gave you almost unlimited access to women who wanted to go to bed with you, but it was no guarantee that you'd find love. Sloan didn't just want to go to bed anymore. He wanted a woman who would value him for more than his fame and his looks and his bank balance.

  He wanted a woman like Mary. A strong woman. An independent woman. A woman who would come to him on her own terms and would be willing to put up with the mess that was often his life. That would take an incredibly mature woman.

  He wanted Polly.

  Of course he'd been fantasizing about Polly for more than half his life. He'd taken her to bed in his dreams for years. But he'd never dreamed about marrying her. At least not until he'd come back to Elmer.

  A Cowboy's Homecoming, one newspaper article had called the story of his return, and Sloan had thought the headline inappropriate—after all, Elmer wasn't really his home!—until he'd got here early Saturday morning.

  But when Polly had opened the door, even though she'd looked poleaxed at the sight of him, he'd felt the warmth of welcome. He'd felt as if he were home.

  The feeling was so new and unexpected that he'd been stunned. He'd put it down to being dead on his feet. Anywhere with a bed would have felt like home, he'd told himself.

  But it wasn't true.

  The feeling had persisted. Still did.

  He looked out through the crack in the curtains and spotted Polly. She was watching intently as Calvin auctioned off yet another of the cowboys.

  "Bid on me," Sloan willed her. "Bid on me."

  When Polly realized she was crumpling Sloan's check beyond recognition, she desperately smoothed it flat against the knee of her jeans, then folded it and tucked it into her pocket. Her hands were damp. She was hot. Her face felt flushed. Even with ceiling fans going like mad and the heat turned down, it was hot in here.

  She wanted to leave, to get a breath of cool fresh air. But Calvin was getting close to the end. He'd finished the photographs and the sketches. They'd gone for high prices, as had the scholarships to Taggart and Noah's bull- and bronc-riding school. There were a surprising number of bidders for the weekend cattle drive to the summer range that Walt Blasingame had donated. And when he saw how high the price went, he'd passed the word to Calvin that he'd be willing to take another "hand" or two, and they'd auctioned the drive again.

  Maddie had shaken her head in amazement. Once or twice she'd actually teared up. But she'd managed so far to keep a stiff upper lip, though she blinked a lot and said, "Gracious me," every time Calvin announced the total the auction had brought in so far.

  Finally Calvin was down to one last cowboy before Sloan. All the earlier bachelor cowboys had gone for good prices. The girls who had bid on Sloan, but who had dropped out when the bidding became too high for them, did exactly what Calvin had hoped they would—they'd set their sights on the other cowboys.

  With the women's enthusiasm, Sloan's example and Jenny's firm hand, the panic-stricken bunch of cowpokes who had been milling around backstage with gray faces and weak bladders two hours before, had managed to transform themselves into reasonable facsimiles of cowboy heroes.

  Polly was vastly relieved—until Calvin called the last.

  "Logan Reese just came back to Elmer," he boomed as a lean, scowling cowboy took about three steps out onto the stage. He exhibited none of the charm that the others had managed. Instead he stared defiantly at the crowd, which grew quiet and stared back.

  Calvin glared at the cowboy. "Give us a smile," he said, then turned to the crowd. "And what do you say, folks? Let's give Logan Reese a real Elmer welcome back!"

  There was one clap. Maybe a second. Oh, God, Polly thought.

  "Right, then. Let's get to it. Who'll start the bidding?"

  No one bid.

  There was some whispering. Some muttering. Word was obviously being passed. Girls from out of town who should have been clamoring to bid on such a good-looking cowboy, sat silent, just watching, waiting. The word ex-con seemed to float in the air.

  Oh, Maddie, this was a mistake, Polly thought. She knew Maddie trusted Logan Reese. But apparently Maddie was the only one. Please God, let someone bid, Polly prayed.

  "Cat got your tongue?" Calvin asked the crowd. Polly knew Calvin wasn't surprised. She just hoped he didn't make it worse. "Come on, now. You can't all be broke yet. And you can't all go to Hollywood with Mr. Gallagher. Somebody's gotta stick around. So what'm I bid for this handsome feller?"

  Logan stood stoically, as if he didn't give a damn what they did.

  "Do I hear twenty dollars?" Calvin prompted.

  Silence.

  "Ten?"

  Polly knew it was going to be up to her. And then from right up front a young boy's voice said firmly, "Twenty-seven dollars and thirty-two cents." There was a collective gasp. Everyone leaned and craned their necks. Logan, too, looked startled. He narrowed his gaze on someone in the front row.

  "Who is
that?" Polly, who couldn't see beyond the horde of surging people in front of her, demanded.

  Joyce shook her head.

  "Who'll give me thirty? I've got twenty-seven thirty-two! Who'll give me thirty?" Calvin looked around, then, good businessman that he was, took what he had. "Going once. Twice. Sold to…"

  A boy about twelve stood up. Three younger children followed him. "Elijah Jennings," he said firmly. "And Emily, Samantha and Stephen."

  Polly sat down with a thud. "The Jennings kids bought Logan Reese?"

  "Oh, my!" Joyce fanned herself and blinked her astonishment. "What'll Addie say?"

  Addie, their half sister and guardian, was all that stood between the kids and foster homes. She was also the last hope for keeping the hundred-year-old Jennings ranch in the family. Their great grandfather, Elmer Jennings, a wealthy rancher, saloon keeper and owner of the first local bank, had been the town's founding father.

  But that was then.

  Now, a hundred years later, all the town property was gone. The ranch was mortgaged. The herd was small. And last year Addie's father and stepmother had been killed in an accident coming home from Livingston. Addie was left with the ranch, the kids, a mound of debt.

  And now, apparently, with Logan Reese.

  "Addie is going to kill those kids," Joyce predicted.

  "She won't have to honor it. Lije isn't of age."

  But Joyce shook her head. "Addie will honor it. God help her, that's the kind of girl she is."

  Polly thought it might be interesting to be a fly on the wall of the Jennings's ranch house tonight. But she didn't think about it for long because Calvin had begun the final bidding session on Sloan.

  "Five thousand two hundred dollars," Calvin began. "Not much for a weekend with your heart's desire. Let's show him what he's really worth, ladies. Let's hear fifty-five hundred. Do I hear fifty-five hundred?" Tamara Lynd lifted her hand.

  Calvin beamed. He looked around for higher bidders. He got them. Three other women were bidding against Tamara. Then a bid came in from the Dew Drop.