Montana Unbranded

by Nadia Nichols

  The pistol went flying but neither man had the strength to lunge for it. Marconi’s hands closed around Joe’s throat. Joe tried to knife his knee into him, throw him off, but he couldn’t. Marconi’s hands squeezed, and Joe hit him hard as he could in the chest, where he was certain his bullet had gone. Marconi’s grip weakened. Joe hit him again but there was no strength behind the blows. He tried to gouge Marconi’s eyes out. Lights began to flash in his own eyes and darkness bled into his world, but then Marconi started coughing. Blood sprayed Joe’s face as Marconi’s grip weakened more. With a convulsive movement and the last of his strength, Joe threw Marconi off him, scrambling on hands and knees toward the pistol as the room filled with choking fumes. As he picked up the pistol, his one thought was to kill Marconi. Shoot him. But he couldn’t even see him. Couldn’t breathe. He made it to his feet as he reached the doorway and stumbled onto the porch, tripping blindly over one of Marconi’s unconscious gunmen and falling off the narrow porch to land facedown in the dirt.

  While Joe struggled to regain his breath, he saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. An old cowboy carrying a revolver that hailed from Gunsmoke days came from around the back of the lean-to, trotted up the cabin steps and ducked through the door. Charlie. He wasn’t inside for long. He came back out, coughing his lungs up, and when he could speak he knelt beside Joe, rested his hand on Joe’s shoulder and said, “It’s over, son. Marconi’s inside, and I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

  * * *

  ROON WAS ALREADY on his feet, crossing the high creek water to join them. He checked immediately on the gunman who was lying on the porch, unmoving. “I used too much tranquilizer,” he said to Badger, who held his rifle on the man lying spread-eagle and facedown on the ground. “I was afraid I might’ve killed him, but he’s still breathing.”

  “Too bad,” Badger said. “The other one is, too.”

  The man at Badger’s feet with the arrow in his rear craned his head to look around as the boys gathered in a group around Roon. “They’re just a bunch of kids!” he said in disbelief.

  “Not all of ’em,” Badger growled, brandishing his rifle, “but those kids were plenty man enough to take you down.” He nodded to Jimmy, who had appeared, still gripping his bow. “Good shot, son.”

  Charlie helped Joe off the ground and got him settled on the wall bench before walking toward Badger.

  “You bring them ties?” Badger prodded him.

  “Yep.” Charlie pulled them from his jacket pocket and had commenced fastening the industrial zip ties around the wrists of Marconi’s three men and cinching them up tight when the staccato drumming of a horse’s hooves coming closer at a rapid pace gave him pause.

  They all looked toward the sound as a bay mustang came into sight, running hard. When the horse spotted the group outside the cabin, he sat back on his haunches and came to an abrupt stop. Head flung up, nostrils flaring and flanks heaving, he blew like a deer, a sound that seemed to activate movement on his back. Even as the black-and-red-striped woolen banner settled regally over the horse’s rump, it rose up over his withers and they realized there was a rider crouched beneath the blanket. Clinging to the saddle, pale of face with eyes as wild and wide-open as the horse she’d ridden in on, Dani Jardine had arrived.

  * * *

  THE LINE CAMP was nearly half a mile from where Dani and Geronimo had started their wild run, and the distance took no time at all to travel. Dani had zero control over the mustang; all she could do was press herself against his neck and hold on with all the strength she had left. Through a fast motion blur she saw the weather-bleached log cabin by the edge of a creek and a group of men and boys gathering outside. She saw Badger holding a rifle on a man lying prostrate on the ground, and then another man, also on the ground, being patted down by Charlie. Roon stood on the porch holding a rifle. When Geronimo hit the brakes, she nearly flew over his shoulder like a human projectile. The only thing that kept her in the saddle was her death grip on the horn.

  She sat up slowly in the momentary stillness following the mustang’s abrupt stop, breathless and dazed, registering the scene she’d just ridden into the middle of. Whatever had happened, had happened not long before she’d arrived, but it was over, and she didn’t see Joe among the standing. She’d tried to prepare herself for this eventuality, but couldn’t accept it. She flung herself out of the saddle, shrugging the blanket off her shoulders as her feet hit the ground. “Joe!” she cried out as she ran toward the cabin, toward the very end of everything that might have been.

  At that moment, Badger gestured with his rifle and she saw Joe sitting on the wall bench. She read the ordeal he’d been through in the cuts and bruises and blood on his face, in the dark blood saturating his jacket and the burning look in his dark eyes.

  But he was alive! Joe was alive!

  Dani didn’t remember crossing the distance between them but somehow she was beside him, packing the big folded-up bandanna that Badger handed her against his wound to staunch the bleeding. “He’ll be all right—he’s tougher’n a range-bred mustang,” she heard Badger say. “Just keep the pressure on that wound till the bleeding stops.” Her fingers were wet and sticky with Joe’s blood. He appeared to be in shock. Dani felt the terrible dry-mouthed fear building inside of her again. One of the boys silently handed her Luther’s red-and-black-striped wool blanket and she wrapped it around Joe’s shoulders, then he reached his good arm out and pulled her down next to him on the bench. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. He just pulled her close.

  Dani kept pressure on the wound for a long time while the group by the cabin averted their eyes and went on quietly with all the things that needed doing to secure Marconi’s men. She didn’t realize she was crying until Badger handed her another bandanna. “Help’s on its way,” he said gruffly.

  She pulled herself together, for Joe’s sake. It felt like a lifetime had passed since she’d first laid eyes on Molly’s brother, yet it had been only days. So much had happened in so short a time. First the mustangs, then Marconi taking Molly and now this. She leaned against Joe and wasn’t ashamed of the tears that ran down her cheeks.

  * * *

  THE RISING SUN turned the sky to the east a bright, polished gold. Roon pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and called Pony, who’d been trying to reach him repeatedly for the past hour. He listened for a moment to her rush of frantic words, and then reassured her. “We’re all right. We’re up at the line camp,” he said. “Everyone’s okay. Joe’s okay. The boys are okay. Badger and Charlie are okay. Dani’s here, too, and she’s fine. Marconi’s dead, and all three of his men are tied up. The Yellowstone Helotours chopper was here, too, but Nash got away and flew it out of here.” He listened to her rapid-fire talk awhile longer before she ended the call. Roon slipped the phone back into his pocket and passed his somber gaze around the group.

  “That was Pony,” he said. “She says the feds, the sheriff, the deputy sheriffs, the Billings and Bozeman police, the warden, the state police, two ambulances, four EMTs and a twelve-member SWAT team traveling in an armored troop carrier have arrived at the ranch over the past hour. She said the Yellowstone helicopter just landed in the yard and Nash told them what was going on up here. She says they’re sending Nash back with a team to secure the prisoners and he’ll fly Joe directly to the hospital. Oh, and she says that we’re all in real big trouble.”

  * * *

  JOE OPENED HIS eyes and stared up at a familiar pattern of acoustic ceiling tiles and thought for one awful moment that he was back in the Providence hospital.

  Then he heard his sister’s voice.

  “Joseph? Joseph, can you hear me?” He turned his head and Molly bent near. Her face was so pale he could count every freckle over the bridge of her nose. “You’re in the hospital in Bozeman. The surgeons just fixed up your arm,” she told him. “Everything went okay. No bon
es were broken. You lost a lot of blood, but you’re going to be just fine. Mom and Dad are flying out as soon as they can, and they’re bringing Fergie with them.”

  “Ferg?”

  Molly nodded. “Yes. He really wanted to come. He misses you, Joseph, and now that Alison’s gone, he needs to be with his father.” Molly touched his hand. “I’m sorry about Alison.”

  Joe remembered Marconi’s taunting words back at the line camp, those last few horrible moments of blind fury before he’d tackled Marconi and knocked him to the floor. He’d wanted to tear that evil man apart with his bare hands, and would have, except he’d run out of strength. How could he ever erase Marconi’s hateful words from his mind, along with the certain knowledge that Alison had betrayed him, and the sickening suspicion that Ferg might be Marconi’s son?

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Joseph,” Molly reassured him.

  He felt like he was drifting through a thick fog that was growing darker by the moment. “Dani?”

  “She’s been here all day. She’s waiting right outside. They won’t let anyone but immediate family into the recovery room. I tried to get her to go back to our place for some sleep but she won’t leave. Just rest, Joseph. You’ll see her soon.”

  Dani was the only person he’d ever told that Ferg wasn’t his real son. But nobody could ever know that Ferg might be Marconi’s son. It was a secret he’d take to his grave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THREE DAYS LATER, Joe was waiting in the hospital lobby when Dani arrived to pick him up. His arm was in a sling and he was pacing impatiently. She swept through the main entrance like a cool Montana breeze and flashed a smile that lit up his world. Her clothing was attorney chic, a classic dark skirt suit with a pale pink blouse and conservative heels that accentuated a pair of very beautiful legs. Her entrance mesmerized everyone in the lobby. She walked right up to him and kissed him on the mouth, and all at once he felt like everything would be okay.

  “Hey, cowboy,” she said. “Your text came as a complete surprise but it was perfect timing. So they’re discharging you early?”

  “It was either that or I was going to leave without their permission.”

  “But you’re okay, really and truly?”

  “Never better, now that you’re here.”

  She smiled again and took his hand. “My car’s out front. Let’s go.”

  “How’d your job interview go this morning?” he asked as she pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

  “It didn’t. I drove all the way down here and then called them and canceled. I explained that I appreciated the opportunity to interview for a position but I had too much on my plate right now, and they understood. Yesterday I gave my notice at the law firm in Helena and told them I’d work out whatever time period they needed me to. They came back with an offer to set me up in a satellite office down here and even mentioned a raise in pay. Something for me to think about, for sure.”

  “I don’t blame them for wanting to keep you. What’s the news on Shep Deakins’s ranch?”

  “The results of the water test were good. By the end of June I’ll be a ranch owner. Then I’ll have to figure out how to go about renewing the leases.”

  “You’ll need all that land for your wild horse refuge,” Joe commented.

  “Nine hundred acres is just about right,” Dani agreed with a smile. “Geronimo’s going to be my very first horse once I adopt him. Roon told me I was the first person to ever actually ride him. He said all they’d done was get him used to the saddle and bridle. I was his first rider and he was my very first horseback ride, straight up that mountainside. Hard to believe, really, and somehow we both survived the experience. Anyhow, he’s one of the BLM mustangs that’s up for adoption. The boys and Pony are planning to round up Custer’s last four mares as soon as the snow melts from the pass and move them to the Bow and Arrow temporarily. Pony’s given me first dibs on them, once the boys have worked with them a little so they’re safe to handle. And she also said that if I wanted her, Custer’s daughter was mine to keep. Roon was the one who insisted on that.”

  “So you’ll have a herd of six mustangs right off the bat. Are wild horses still considered mustangs once they’ve been tamed?”

  “That’s a question for Jessie—she’s the mustang expert.” Dani had stopped for a red light. She looked at Joe pensively. “Molly told me Roon and Jimmy could be in some trouble for shooting Marconi’s men with tranquilizer darts and arrows. Apparently all three have filed suits against the boys for reckless endangerment.”

  Joe uttered a short laugh. “That’s choice, coming from three kidnappers, drug dealers, sex traffickers and hired assassins.”

  “Molly said she’d be their attorney if it ever goes before a jury.”

  “Then they have nothing to fear.” Joe stared out the side window as the light changed and Dani proceeded through the intersection.

  “Molly’s moved her wedding up by two weeks,” Dani said. “She probably already told you. Since it’s such a small wedding, all she had to do was call a handful of people and tell them the date’s been changed because her parents are flying out with your son. When’re they arriving?”

  “Tomorrow. They’re flying into Helena. Molly and I are driving up to meet them.”

  “That’s great. I bet you can’t wait to see Ferg.”

  Joe shifted in his seat and stared broodily out the side window. “Yeah.”

  Dani cast him a quick sidelong glance. “He’s probably still grieving his mother. It’ll be good for him to spend time with you.”

  Joe was so twisted up inside he couldn’t respond. The poison Marconi had planted in him was killing him more effectively than any bullet ever could have, but what good would telling Dani do? He had to keep this to himself, learn to live with it.

  Dani was outside the town now, driving toward Gallatin Gateway, toward Molly and Steven’s house. She cast him a questioning glance, put her signal light on as they approached a scenic turnout, pulled off the road, put the Subaru in Park and cut the engine. She turned in her seat and fixed him with a level gaze. “What is it? What’s wrong? Talk to me, Joe.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’ve been carrying the world on your shoulders ever since your showdown with Marconi. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  He looked into her eyes and was instantly trapped. She deserved to know the truth. He looked away from her, out across the distance to the mountain range that walled off the horizon. “Marconi said some things to me before he died. Some heavy things,” he began slowly. “Alison was in love with another man before she met me. I knew that, and right after we were married she told me she was pregnant with that man’s son. And when I saw the photos of her and Marconi in those gossip rags, I knew they were seeing each other. I should have guessed the rest, put two and two together.

  “Marconi meant something to Alison—she saw him just a few days before she died. Apparently she flew to Mexico, to be with him when he was getting patched up from the bullet I put in him. She loved him. And while she was there, she told him where I was. She never loved me. I suspected that on day one of our honeymoon. She married me to save her career and provide her child with a legitimate father. For the next five years she was Marconi’s lover and mole. Which makes me the world’s biggest fool—and I can live with that, I guess. But it never occurred to me that Marconi might be the father of her child, too.”

  Dani’s dark eyes widened as his words struck home. She sat back in her seat, expelling a big breath. “Wow. So that’s why you’ve been so withdrawn.” She looked at him again for a long, somber moment. Joe felt the power of her gaze, and suddenly it felt like a thousand pounds of dead weight was being lifted from his shoulders. He could breathe again and the pain was gone.

  He wasn’t alone anymore.

>   She reached for his hand. “Listen to me. Marconi’s vendetta with you was personal. The things he said to you up on the mountain may or may not have been true. He could have said those things just to hurt you, to twist a knife into you, to destroy you. But either way, his reign is over and his men are all dead or in jail. He can’t hurt you anymore. You have to pick up the pieces of your life and move on.”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Of course you can. You have to. You’ll go to the airport tomorrow, meet your parents, hug your son and get on with your life.” She tightened her grip on his fingers. “Come back with me to Helena, Joe. Spend the night at my place. I’ll go with you to the airport tomorrow, and I’ll stick around for as long as you need me to.”

  Joe nodded. There were a thousand things he wanted to say to her, starting with “thank you,” but he couldn’t manage a single word. Dani just squeezed his hand gently and said, “It’s going to be all right, Joe. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DANI DREW THE needle through the delicate fabric and tightened the thread just enough to draw the seam tight. “I’m not used to sewing by hand,” she said, frowning a little as she concentrated on the task. “I’ve been spoiled by my very sophisticated sewing machine, which is set up in a room specifically for sewing, and yet here I am, the day before your wedding, sitting on a bench outside the kitchen at the Bow and Arrow, surrounded by wild horses, buffalo, dairy goats, cow dogs, kids and ranch hands, slaving away on your wedding gown.”

  “Don’t think that I don’t appreciate your efforts. A few days ago, I didn’t think I’d ever see Joseph alive again, let alone that I’d live long enough myself to get married to Steven.” Molly sighed, gathering the loose folds of her wedding dress over her knees to keep the fabric off the worn porch planks. “And now, look at us, sitting here, just like none of it ever happened. My parents are doing the tourist thing in Bozeman and Fergie’s down at the corrals having the time of his life with Joseph. I’ve never seen a happier kid. That hat Roon gave him is the cutest thing. He looks like a pint-size cowboy.”