Winds of Wyoming (A Kate Neilson Novel)

by Lyles, Rebecca Carey

  Dymple placed her hands in the pockets of her denim jumper. “Laura is a dear friend, and her son …” Her eyes sparkled. “Michael is a remarkable young man, my adopted grandson. You’ll like him.”

  “Wow, small world.”

  Dymple shrugged. “This is a typical small community, Kate. Everyone knows everybody in our little corner of the world—and everything they do.”

  Kate stifled a groan. She should have stayed in Pittsburgh, where she was just another face in the crowd.

  Dymple tilted her head. “You’re a long way from home. Why Wyoming?”

  Kate stared into the woman’s transparent eyes. She’d come west to distance herself from her past. But that was a secret nobody, not even a kindly little old lady named Dymple, could ever pry out of her. “Oh, I just wanted a change of scenery when I finished school.”

  “You made a good choice, Kate. Welcome to Wyoming.” She motioned toward the chapel. “Feel free to stop any time. The Sunday service begins in about an hour. I think you’d like Pastor Chuck.”

  A bug crawled toward Kate’s fingers on the railing. She brushed it away. Not that the pastor would like her. She wasn’t ecclesiastical, the first word she’d learned in English 101 after Professor Eldridge challenged her online prison class to learn a new word every day. Over time, she’d become comfortable with multi-syllable words and with attending church services on the inside. But she wasn’t good enough to attend church with regular people, people who hadn’t done all the bad things she’d done. “Thanks, but I’d better not stay. I need to get to the ranch. The internship starts tomorrow morning.”

  “Vaya con Dios, Miss Kate.”

  Kate cocked her head.

  “That’s how my Mexican neighbors in California said goodbye. In English, it means go with God. Isn’t that beautiful?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure God wants to go with me.” Embarrassed by her confession, Kate turned to leave.

  Dymple grasped her arm. “What did you mean by that comment?”

  “Nothing, really.” Kate chafed against Dymple’s grasp, but the older woman held tight. She looked down. “I’ve done a lot of dumb things. I know God supposedly loves me and all that, but …”

  Dymple released Kate’s arm to gently lift her chin. “God not only loves you, sweetie, he delights in you.”

  Kate pulled back. “Delights?”

  “Yes, Zephaniah—he wrote a book in the Bible—said God delights in you and sings about you.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “He’s singing right now. Your ears just aren’t tuned to his frequency.”

  “I’ll have to think about that.” Kate looked at her watch. “I’d better get going. Thanks for the tour.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll keep you in my prunes.”

  “Prunes?”

  “Oh, dear.” Dymple’s crinkled cheeks turned pink. “I’m jumbling all my words today. Prayers. I’ll keep you in my prayers.” She waved her hand toward the cemetery. “Come see me again. I live on the other side, just beyond those trees.”

  “I’ll do that.” Kate started for the parking lot.

  “One more thing,” called her new friend. ”Live your dream, Kate Neilson. Every day.”

  Indefatigable. Kate smiled, pleased to remember another word from English 101. Dymple Forbes appeared to be an indefatigable woman of boundless energy.

  She swiveled and treaded the path back to the chapel. If only half the people she met in Wyoming were as interesting as … She slowed, nearly stopping. What was that strange look on Dymple Forbes’s face when they were talking in the cemetery? Like she recognized me. But that was impossible. Her arrests had caught the local media’s attention more than once, but surely Dymple didn’t get Pittsburgh news out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Chapter Two

  MIKE DUNCAN SLOWED THE truck to maneuver around yet another mud hole. The winding mountain road was still recovering from the snowstorm. He shifted gears and plowed forward. Thanks to studded tires, his dad’s ancient Dodge, a pickup he’d nicknamed Old Blue, could handle almost any weather the skies chose to dump—at least that’s what his father had told the scoffers.

  Both windows were open to the cool morning air. Mike’s dog, Tramp, sat on the passenger seat, his head out the window. The big collie barked at a doe and fawn that peeked from behind white-blossomed chokeberry bushes. The deer vanished, and Tramp returned to scrutinizing his dominion—nostrils quivering, tongue dripping, fur blowing in the breeze.

  Mike reached over to scratch his aging dog’s back.

  With a wag of his tail, Tramp momentarily acknowledged him.

  Mike laughed. “Too busy for me, huh?”

  He leaned out the driver’s-side window to savor the fresh smell of the cool, damp earth and the hint of early color that seeped across the meadows and hills between banks of snow. His bison were no doubt loving the tender new grass—that is, if they made it through the storm. Self-sufficient animals, buffalo could protect themselves and their newborn calves from storms that killed cattle. But it didn’t hurt to keep tabs on them—and the fence line.

  He straightened, bouncing with the truck as it bumped downhill toward the bison pasture. What a nightmare it would be to round up the huge, unpredictable beasts if they broke loose and wandered into the woods. Each time he moved the herd to a new pasture, he’d proved the old adage true. You can move a bison anywhere he wants to go.

  The pickup bucked and skidded over the rutted trail, rattling like a bucket of bolts.

  Mike shifted to a lower gear. He’d have to draft a couple of the guys to help him fill the worst of the ruts when the two-track road dried. As often happened with spring storms, the moisture greened the emerging grass but destroyed dirt byways. But he didn’t mind the extra work. The Whispering Pines needed every drop of water the heavens could spare, as his dad used to say.

  He felt a stab of pain slice through his heart. Would he ever stop missing his dad? At breakfast, his mom had told him the intern she’d hired to take over his dad’s marketing duties for the summer would be arriving soon. He rubbed his chin. Though his dad had died months ago, he wasn’t sure he was ready to see someone else seated behind his desk.

  His two-way crackled to life. “Hey, Bossman, can you hear me?”

  Mike groaned and lifted the radio from his belt. Why couldn’t Clint just call him by his name? “This is Mike. Go ahead.”

  The ranch manager’s voice sputtered through the airwaves. “Just checked the cattle. They weathered the storm okay, even the calves.”

  “That’s good news—really good news. I’m not far from the Battle Creek pasture. I’ll take a look at the bison, but they should be fine. What about the horses?”

  “Tanner and I are headed over now. Rusty is going to meet us there. We’ll round up the riding stock and drive them to the corral by the barn to get them ready for the guests.”

  “Good plan. I’ll catch you later.”

  He steered around a boulder that had tumbled off the damp hillside onto the road and made a mental note to bring the front-end loader when they worked on the road. Within minutes, he reached his destination, parked across the road from the fenced pasture and turned off the engine.

  Tramp jumped out the window. He trotted toward the enclosure, tail high, nose to the ground.

  Mike followed, sidestepping the boggy patches, until he came across grooves in the grass. “What in the …?” He eyeballed an ATV trail that tore up the hillside.

  Tramp came bounding back as if to say, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  He stroked the dog’s head. “What do you think, pal? Our crew knows better than to ride all-terrains through a wet meadow.”

  But who would cross their land without permission? And what were they doing near his bison pasture?

  Tramp licked his hand and scampered away.

  Mike listened for the sound of an engine but heard only bird calls and muffled snorts from the herd. Probably kids out joyriding. If they
were smart, they would have avoided the buffalo. But few people realized domestication was not the same as tame in a bison’s brain. He’d learned quickly to never turn his back on the capricious beasts, which remained as wild as when they ruled the Plains a hundred-plus years earlier.

  He watched his dog feverishly zigzag up the hill following the fence line, probably hot on the trail of a jackrabbit. Most of the herd grazed some distance from him, spread across a brown-green hillside splotched with snow dollops and outlined by the blue of the Sierra Madres. High above him, a pair of hawks floated on an air current.

  The scent of dung drifted on the breeze. One buffalo cow scratched her back on a low tree branch, grunting with pleasure, while another wallowed in a mud hole. Others chewed their cud in apparent quiet contemplation. In contrast, cinnamon-colored calves cavorted like school kids at recess.

  Tranquility. The perfect word to define the moment. Whatever the ATV driver was up to, he or she hadn’t messed with his animals, thank God.

  Tramp barked.

  Mike turned toward the yap, thinking the dog had cornered the rabbit. Instead, his collie stood nose-to-nose with a calf—on the wrong side of the fence. Mike did a double-take before running toward the pair. He stopped when he saw a break in the wire.

  So that’s how, flashed his first assessment of the situation. The second followed immediately. The calf had a momma who would charge to its rescue sooner than later—and faster than a creature her size should be able to move. He yelled, “Tramp. Tramp, come here!”

  Tramp’s attention did not waver from the calf.

  Though his dog’s behavior frustrated him, Mike knew the stray calf activated his herding instinct, one as deep-rooted and powerful as that of salmon swimming upstream to spawn. He studied the cows closest to the calf. Some grazed, their tails twitching away the flies. Others rested. They all appeared passive, but he knew one of them belonged with the calf. The minute the calf bawled, his dog was in trouble—and at least two buffalo would be loose.

  Tramp barked again.

  Mike winced, knowing his dog was attracting the cows’ attention.

  But the calf jumped to the side, ready to romp with its newfound playmate.

  Mike started toward the pair, calling for his dog. But then he stopped, spun on his heels and raced for his truck. He’d create a visual barrier with the pickup to hide the hole in the fence and then signal Tramp to herd the calf back where it belonged. Glad he’d left the key in the ignition, he started the truck, jammed the gears into first, released the clutch and charged across the road onto the prairie. He’d worry about reseeding later.

  The calf halted mid-frolic to stare at the advancing truck before it let out a where’s my momma? bellow.

  Mike gripped the steering wheel tighter. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. He slowed the pickup and scanned the herd. Several bison lifted their heavy heads. A lone buffalo raised her head and her tail. Not a good sign. He pounded the horn.

  The calf scampered through the gap toward the herd.

  From the road, he gunned the truck uphill alongside the fence, maneuvering it as close as he could to the gap before stopping. The passenger side was angled precariously higher on the hillock than the driver’s side, but that was the best he could do. He rammed the gearshift into neutral, stomped the emergency brake to the floor, jumped out and dashed toward the road, yelling for Tramp as he ran.

  Hearing nothing, he turned his head to see if the dog had followed. He promptly lost his footing and landed face-first in a puddle. Sputtering and floundering in the frigid mud, but knowing the buffalo could be right behind him, he scrambled for footing. Before he could stand, a booming metallic crunch fractured the air.

  Mike staggered—and slipped again. Blinking brown water from his eyelashes, he looked up just in time to see the pickup balance for a brief moment on the driver’s side wheels before it clattered onto its side.

  As the sound of the crash echoed between the hills, he braced himself for another blow by the buffalo, one that would knock Old Blue all the way over. He waited, but nothing happened. Finally, the melodic lilt of a meadowlark broke the silence like a church bell on a winter morning.

  He was just beginning to breathe again when a terrifying thought bolted through his head. Maybe the cow would weary of the pickup and charge him instead. He tensed, ready to sprint into the trees—until he saw her saunter toward the herd with the calf at her side. Dropping backward onto his elbows in the icy muck, he watched the wheels of his dad’s favorite pickup spin in the air. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.”

  Tail wagging, Tramp bounded through the mire to lick his master’s wet face.

  Mike shoved the dog aside and crawled out of the puddle spitting dirt.

  Tramp crept away, head down, tail between his legs.

  Once he got to his feet and wiped the grime from his face, Mike retrieved his hat from the water. He hit it against a fence post. Mud sprayed from the brim like the bursts of frustration that shotgunned through his chest. The nearest dry-cleaning facility, which was fifty miles away, charged a fortune to clean hats. He didn’t even want to guess the cost to repair Old Blue.

  He shivered and limped to the truck to look for his jacket, noticing for the first time that his shin hurt. Must have hit it on a rock.

  The engine was silent. He peered through the front window. No way could he reach his coat. He dropped the hat in the open passenger window and turned to examine the barbed wire that drooped from posts adjacent Old Blue’s chassis. The separations were clean, the strands apparently cut one-by-one. Now the ATV trail made sense.

  Chapter Three

  THE BRANCHES OF THE evergreens that fringed the Battle Mountain Highway danced in the wind and scented the air. The same fresh breezes swirled through Kate’s car windows, lifting her hair. Each time she saw a break in the trees along the highway, she slowed to gaze at mountains as far as she could see. But it was when she approached a clearing with wildflowers sprinkled across a sunny hillside like confetti flung from a rainbow that she stopped for pictures. She’d taken several at the overlook, but this was an opportunity for wildflower close-ups.

  When she returned to her car, she noticed a brown pickup parked some distance behind her car. Was it the same one she’d seen in the church’s parking lot? Probably not. She hadn’t paid much attention to it. Maybe she was losing her street smarts after all, which might be a good thing. Time to stop acting like a criminal, always watching her back.

  Kate started the engine and pulled onto the highway. The tangy smell of sagebrush drifted through the windows. Though the pickup didn’t immediately follow, as soon as it appeared in the rearview mirror, she steered to the right and waved it ahead, something she’d seen other slow western drivers do. But this driver didn’t take the hint.

  Fine. It was just too pretty a day to hurry. She turned her attention to the herd of antelope that stopped grazing long enough to watch her pass by. Behind them, a loop of cottonwood trees followed the river’s meander through the valley. A long-legged, long-eared rabbit hopped across the highway into a clump of sagebrush, one of the thousands of gray-green bushes she’d seen dotting the prairies on her westward drive.

  Just before Copperville, she crossed a bridge sporting a Little Snake River sign—an appropriate name for the serpentine curves she’d viewed from the terrace behind the chapel. She slowed. The breeze that had buffeted her car all the way from the overlook spluttered to a standstill between the crags that sheltered the small town.

  She downshifted, feeling lighter than she had in years, as if the wind had swept her sordid past onto the maternal slopes of the Sierra Madres, the Rocky Mountain “mothers” that straddled the Wyoming-Colorado border. Maybe she’d finally found a place to call home.

  Kate’s stomach growled. She looked at her watch. Ten-thirty. Not quite lunch time, but she’d missed breakfast. No wonder her belly complained. She surveyed the few buildings she could see scattered across Coppervi
lle’s rugged slopes. She’d be lucky to find a restaurant open on a Sunday morning in such small, isolated place.

  She drove at a snail’s pace past a Texaco station and Bogie’s Bar, which flashed a neon OPEN sign. She took a second look. That was different. Pennsylvania bars didn’t open until eleven on Sundays. Thank God she no longer craved alcohol or meth the moment she awoke.

  Next came Copperville Community Bank and the Cut, Curl & Comb beauty shop. Glancing at the rearview mirror, she saw the brown pickup park in front of the bar. On the other side of the beauty shop, a fire truck, ambulance and police car flanked a single-story structure labeled COPPERVILLE TOWN HALL.

  Kate cringed at the sight of the police car, instantly despising her gut reaction. Oh, how she longed to be a better person. Someone who stayed out of jail. Someone who didn’t have a criminal mentality. Someone who had no reason to fear cops.

  Across the street from the Town Hall stood the Copper Fever Gift Shop. Main Street also hosted a small post office and a hardware-grocery store. At the far end of town, across from the Sleepy Time Motel, she saw Grandma’s Café, which appeared to be open. Several cars were parked beside it and red shutters framed a bright WELCOME sign in the door. Kate flipped on the right turn-signal, wondering if it was necessary when she didn’t see any other cars on the road. But she had to mind her Ps and Qs and stay on the good side of the local authorities.

  The sound of rocks crunching beneath her tires in the graveled parking lot made her think of eating Ritz crackers while reading in bed, something she hadn’t been able to do for years. Maybe she’d stop at the store before she left town to buy crackers and paperback books. Freedom, she was learning, was as much about the small pleasures of life as it was about new opportunities.

  Kate locked the car and hurried toward the restaurant, anticipating home-cooking and the smell of Grandma’s fresh-baked bread—or maybe apple pie. Instead, she walked into a cloud of grease-laced cigarette smoke, a smell she knew all too well. Reminded of her hustling days when she worked one sleazy, smoky, Pittsburgh joint after another, she considered leaving. But Grandma’s was apparently the only place in Copperville to eat, and she was hungry.