Montana Standoff

by Nadia Nichols

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY NINE MINUTES past nine o’clock the following morning, Molly’s morale had hit an all-time low. StevenYoung Bear wasn’t coming. She’d known all along that he wouldn’t. And why should he? He had no obligation whatsoever to help her out any more than he already had. She’d made a fool of herself yesterday, putting him on the spot, pressuring him that way, and now she was paying the price. Not only was she probably going to lose her job because of her poor performance at the Moose Horn town meeting, but she’d messed up any chance she might have had to further her acquaintance with StevenYoung Bear. She’d asked him to do something he obviously hadn’t wanted to do: chaperone her on a field trip to an open pit mine. If she’d asked him to dinner, he might have said yes. It would have been a far more diplomatic move, since, after all, she owed him one. She could have offered him a good, old-fashioned Irish corned-beef-and-cabbage feast.

  Instead, she’d behaved just like one of those brassy, forward women her mother so disapproved of. Twenty-six-year-old Molly Ferguson, lonely and desperate, had flung herself at a man who had ever so politely tried to brush her off. She had humiliated herself by allowing her impulsive emotions to get in the way of reason and logic.

  She paced the confines of her apartment, thinking about all the awful dates she’d been on since her father had reluctantly allowed her to go out with boys at sixteen. She’d said yes to every invitation to go see a movie, not because she liked the boy but because her father was so overprotective. But the truth was, most of the time she’d secretly wished she were ensconced in her room reading a good book. Then later, when she was all grown up and in college, she’d gladly spent all of her time in the dorm, studying. Studying was a good excuse not to suffer through another boring date. She’d given up on dating until John had pestered her into a routine of having dinner with him on weekends he was free… and even those dates with John sometimes had her thinking about the current book she was reading, or the files she was working on in the office.

  Not John’s fault, really. She’d been totally focused on attaining her law degree ever since she could verbalize what she wanted to do with her life, and after getting her degree she’d been totally focused on becoming as competent a lawyer as she could. But moments after meeting Steven Young Bear, her law degree and her career were suddenly no longer enough to sustain her. She’d known Steven for less than a day and already she wanted more out of life than going to work every day, spending long hours at the office, and coming home to an empty apartment.

  Much more.

  Molly marched to the kitchen, ignoring the packed picnic basket that silently mocked her on the counter. She’d clean the apartment. Lord knows it could use it. She’d start by washing the windows, her most dreaded of all chores. She reached for a roll of paper towels, retrieved the glass cleaner from beneath the kitchen sink, and snapped on a pair of yellow latex gloves. She was halfway through the third window when a firm knock at the door startled her. She paused and smoothed her hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Who is it?”

  “Steven Young Bear.”

  Molly crossed rapidly to the door, snapping the dead bolt back and releasing the security chain. She opened the door wide, still clutching the spray bottle of window cleaner and the crumpled wad of paper towels in her yellow-gloved hands. He was here, standing right in front of her, within arm’s reach. She had to look up to meet his eyes. Handsome and rugged in blue jeans, flannel shirt, sheepskin jacket. She fought to catch her breath and steady her racing heart. Miracle of miracles, Steven Young Bear had actually come.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said in that deep, masculine voice. “I misjudged my driving time.”

  “Oh, you’re not late at all.” Flushed with embarrassment, she stripped off the gloves and motioned him in. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Yes, thanks. We should get on the road right away. It’s a long haul.”

  “Of course. I’ll just grab my jacket….” She snatched the picnic basket off the counter, feeling awkward and shy. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  Minutes later they were heading north toward Havre. Steven was driving, though she’d tried to persuade him to let her take her car. “No, thanks. Government studies have proved that red sports cars are involved in more accidents than any others,” he said, deadpan, thus ending any further conversation about who would drive. She sat meekly in the passenger seat, hands folded in her lap, gazing out the window and reminding herself that she was a grown woman, not a giddy high-school girl with a crush on the captain of the football team. Remember, you’re Molly Ferguson, corporate lawyer at least for another day, and this isn’t exactly a date, she told herself firmly.

  “You must hike,” Steven said suddenly, and she glanced over at him, startled. “Those hiking boots of yours look like they’ve traveled up and down some pretty serious mountains,” he said, eyes fixed on the road.

  “Yes, they sure have.” She peered down at them, flexing her ankles back and forth and silently thanking Dani.

  “What’s your favorite climb around here?”

  “Actually, I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “What about you?”

  “I’ve only climbed one mountain around here. Cante Tinza. Brave Heart Mountain. I went there on a vision quest and stayed up there for three days.”

  She shifted in her seat, glad to change the subject. “What’s a vision quest?”

  “It’s a ritual period of solitary fasting in a sacred place that puts you alone before the Great Mystery, ready to make contact with the Higher Power and become one with the universe.”

  “That sounds like pretty serious stuff. Did you make the proper connections?”

  He shook his head. “I got really cold and tired, and on the fourth day it began to rain and sleet, so I walked back down the mountain and went home. I guess the spirits didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Molly studied his expression, searching unsuccessfully for the humor she heard in his voice. She looked out the window again and sighed. “I have a confession to make. These are my ex-roommate’s shoes. Dani hikes and climbs all the time, she’s a regular mountain goat, and when I told her we were going to look at a mountain, she took it upon herself to dress me appropriately for the occasion.”

  “You look very nice.”

  “Dani’s my fashion consultant. She’s descended of old French nobility and knows about such things, but I’m the daughter of an Irish laborer and a Scottish dreamer, neither of whom paid the slightest attention to what was in vogue. They were too busy trying to raise a bunch of wild kids.” She heard his laugh for the very first time. It was a deep, sexy laugh that made her feel more like a giddy high-school girl than a corporate lawyer.

  Molly stretched her legs out, flexed her ankles again in their stiff leather hiking boots. She longed to sit closer to him and trace the powerful curve of his shoulder with her fingers, breathe the intoxicatingly masculine scent of him. She’d never felt this way around John, or any other man, for that matter. It was with great effort that she forced herself to look out the windshield and not at Steven. “I think I’d like to climb a mountain some day,” she said, watching the scenery flash by. “Just to see what the view’s like from the top.”

  THEY REACHED THE MINE east of the Rocky Ridge Reservation at a little after 1:00 p.m. The name of the mine was displayed on a large sign at the base of the gated road. “Soldier Mountain Mine,” Molly said, drawing her knees up on the Wagoneer’s bench seat. “How do you suppose it came by that name?”

  “Supposedly, a cavalry detail on a routine patrol was wiped out near here by the Sioux back in the 1870s. The story goes that a few of them escaped to high ground and made a stand there. Since this was the only high ground around, I guess that explains it.”

  “Did any of the soldiers survive?”

  “Not according to history.”

  “Hmmm. Well, unless the guard opens the gate for us, it looks like we’re in for a long and sneaky walk.”

  “T
here’s no guard at the lower gate,” Steven said, putting the Jeep into park. He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Wait here.”

  Steven picked the lock on the gate in minutes, and he closed it behind them after driving the Jeep through. When he climbed back behind the wheel, Molly studied his impassive features. “So, what other tricks do you have up your sleeve, Young Bear? And how did you know there wouldn’t be anyone in that guard house?”

  “I’ve been here before on a Sunday. The Sioux on Rocky Ridge wanted to shut this mine down, and I was one of the people who tried to help them do it. It’s polluting their drinking water and making them sick.”

  Molly frowned. “But if it’s really doing that, why is it still in operation?”

  Steven shifted into low gear. “Because the people drinking the water and getting sick are Indians.” He drove slowly up the gravel road, not wanting to kick up dust and tell the whole world they were there. When he was almost to the very top, he cut the engine and they sat in silence while the ever-present wind rocked the heavy vehicle. They were hidden from the upper guard house and parked on the very edge of what to Molly appeared to be a huge, funnel-shaped crater with roads carved into the sides, spiraling around and down toward an unseen bottom far below. The magnitude of the drop-off gave her a frightening sense of vertigo, even while sitting within the safe confines of the Jeep.

  “Ugly, isn’t it,” Steven stated. “This is what’s left of a mountain, the highest point in fifty miles. Now it’s a big poisonous hole in the ground.” A dust devil swept across the bleak landscape in front of them and spiraled out over the pit, losing energy and vanishing in an amorphous puff of reddish soil. “This open pit mine is the same kind of operation your client plans for Madison Mountain.”

  Molly had never seen an open pit mine of this magnitude before. She gazed down into the crater. “Perhaps we just have to accept the fact that sometimes what’s necessary to advance civilization isn’t necessarily beautiful,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he mildly agreed. “But the cancer rates on this reservation are thirty times the national average. The drinking water is so bad that mine officials won’t touch it. They buy their water. They have it hauled in by the truckload because they have the money to do that.”

  Steven was staring out the windshield with a calm expression on his face. Molly clasped her hands in her lap and struggled for a logical rebuttal, but she had no idea what to say. She felt the rift between their worlds widen until the wind that rocked the Jeep seemed to blow its lonesome chill through her soul. “This mine employs a lot of people from the reservation,” she pointed out. “They don’t have to work here, they choose to. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Sure,” he nodded. “That tells me that they’re desperate enough to poison their grandchildren in order to feed their children.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong,” she said. “Maybe it’s not the mine that’s polluting the water….”

  He turned his head. His dark eyes were inscrutable. “I could take you to the reservation and introduce you to some families who live there, who drink from the river. We can take samples of the water back and have them analyzed. There are government maps that show the movement of ground and surface water from the mine into the river. I’ll show them to you and you can draw your own conclusions. You can even drink some of the water if you like. It’s free. The tribe doesn’t charge for it.”

  Molly felt an uncomfortable warmth rise in her face. She dropped her eyes. “That would be interesting, but we really don’t have the time to go there today.”

  “No, I didn’t think so,” Steven said.

  “We could plan another visit,” Molly said, her face burning. She sat through an awkward silence, struggling to find a way beyond it. “Look, Steven, I’m fully aware that there’s a lot I don’t know yet, but I’m willing to learn. That’s why I’m here with you today.”

  Steven started the Jeep and let the engine idle for a few moments before putting it into gear. “Let’s find a prettier place than this to eat our lunch,” he said.

  The place they found wasn’t all that pretty, but it was protected from the chill winds that swept out of the northwest, and the Milk River ran past it. The hollow he chose on the riverbank cupped the afternoon sunlight. She carried the basket of food to the place where he had spread his jacket for her to sit. “You’ll be cold,” she protested.

  “Not here. Sit.”

  She sat, opened the basket, and began taking out the lunch she had packed for them.

  “I hope you like deviled ham.” She held out the sandwich and their hands touched as he took it from her. His fingers were warm and hers tingled where her hand had met his. “I didn’t have much in the cupboard. Chips, pickles, two cans of cola.” She glanced up, unnerved by his closeness and by the steadiness of his gaze. She adjusted her sunglasses. “You’re staring.”

  “Sorry.” He sat cross-legged on the dry grass and looked out across the river while he unwrapped his sandwich. Unseen on the highway above them, vehicles hurtled past with high-pitched whines. “We’re sitting in the middle of the Lewis and Clark Trail,” he said.

  “Really? Wow.” She looked around, seeing nothing extraordinary. “So how did you happen to get involved in environmental litigation? Did you always want to be an attorney?”

  “The only burning ambition I had while growing up was to get off the reservation. As soon as I graduated high school, that’s what I did. I headed west, worked odd jobs when I ran out of money, and ended up pumping gas in a little town north of Seattle. Lots of logging trucks gassed up there. Big trucks carrying big trees, so big that sometimes only one log would fit on the truck. One day after work I caught a ride on a logging truck heading back into the woods. I wanted to see what those trees looked like before they were cut down.”

  Molly held her sandwich in her lap. “Were they redwoods?”

  Steven nodded. “I stood at the base of one and listened to the roar of the wind blowing through the crown some two hundred feet above me and all of a sudden I saw things differently. I saw the stumps, what was left of the old-growth forest. Trees, forests thousands of years old, wiped out just like that. A little later I ran into a bunch of tree huggers staging a demonstration and volunteered to handcuff myself in a human chain around one of those trees to keep it from being cut. Needless to say, we were all thrown in jail, and while there I decided maybe it was time for me to do something more meaningful with my life than pump gas into logging trucks. So I went back to school, majored in environmental science, went to law school, and here I am.”

  “Here you are,” Molly agreed. “Still fighting for the trees and the mountains.” She studied him for a moment. “Tell me about your family.”

  “I have three younger brothers who live with their families on the res. Until this past spring, Pony was teaching at a reservation school just outside Fort Smith. Then she took a summer job working for Caleb McCutcheon at his ranch outside of Katy Junction, managing his buffalo herd. It sounds storybook, but the long and short of it is, they fell in love. They’re getting married in another month and starting a special school right on the ranch for troubled kids.”

  “I think that’s wonderful. Your sister seems like a very special person. Those kids are lucky to have her. What about your parents?”

  “Both dead. My father was a steelworker. He fell off a scaffolding while on a job in New York City. We were still pretty young when it happened. My mother never recovered from his death. She died two years later and we kids were parceled out to relatives. My old aunt Nana took all us boys, and Pony was raised by our grandmother, who taught her the old ways.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” Molly said. “I can’t imagine not growing up with mine. In fact, I can’t imagine ever being without them, even when I’m in my nineties.” She paused in the act of peeling the plastic wrap from her sandwich. “Tell me about Ken Manning. Obviously the two of you are acquainted.”

  Steven
took a bite of his sandwich and watched a flock of birds skim across the surface of the river. He popped the top of his soda can and chased the sandwich down with a big swallow. “I’ve known him for several years now. We’ve crossed swords on more than a few occasions. He’s wealthy and high powered, and has strong connections with the Mountain Militia.”

  Molly raised her eyebrows. “Oh? What’s that?”

  “An organized citizen’s group that holds regular meetings to discuss things like local politics, government at the federal level, and semiautomatic assault weapons. They have close ties with the National Federal Lands Conference and the Wise Use Movement, both borderline right-wing antienvironmental lobbies funded by oil and mining interests.”

  “Well, the odds are I’ll never sit next to him again at any public hearings after my last performance, and anyway, my client’s lifestyle is none of my business. I’m merely representing his company’s interests.” She narrowed her eyes. “Semiautomatic assault weapons? Dare I ask what connection they have to local and federal government?”

  He glanced at her long enough for her heart rate to accelerate, then took a bite of the sandwich, chewed with a contemplative expression. “Good sandwich.” Took another bite and washed it down with soda, then set down his soda can and leaned toward her. His strong fingers swept a curl of her hair back behind her left ear. He was so close that she could smell the scent of his skin, and the brush of his fingers against her ear made her catch her breath around a fluttering drum of heartbeats. She suddenly hoped beyond hope that he would kiss her, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat back and regarded her with those calm dark eyes. “I’ve been wanting to do that ever since that very beautiful curl escaped from your very beautiful braid,” he said.

  She laughed shakily, her heart hammering. “Thanks. I need all the help I can get when it comes to controlling my hair.”

  “As far as the militia is concerned, guns and politics sort of go together out here. Some folks still regard this as the Wild West. I was threatened once after speaking at a public hearing against the proposed logging of a wilderness area that had been burned in a forest fire. The proposal hinged on an upcoming house vote for managing public lands, so naturally everyone in the environmental camp was fighting to swing the house in favor of protecting the wilderness. I happened to be spearheading the environmentalists. This big guy with buzz-cut hair got right in my face and told me if they couldn’t beat me at the ballot box, they’d beat me with a bullet.”