by Nora Roberts
“Okay, Moon, let’s both run it off.” With a jerk of the reins, Will changed directions, then gave the eager mare her head. They streaked away from the lights, the buildings, the sounds of the ranch and into the open land where the river curved.
They followed its banks, riding east into the night where the first stars were already gleaming and the only sounds were the rush of water and the thunder of hooves. Cattle grazed and nighthawks circled. As they topped a rise, Will could see mile after mile of silhouette and shadow, trees spearing up, the waving grass of a meadow, the endless line of fence. And in the distance in the clear night air the faint glint of lights from a neighboring ranch.
McKinnon land.
The mare tossed her head, snorted, when Will reined in. “We didn’t run it out, did we?”
No, the anger was still simmering inside her just as the energy simmered inside her mount. Willa wanted it gone, this tearing, bitter fury and the grief that boiled under it. It wouldn’t help her get through the next year. It wouldn’t help her get through the next hour, she thought, and squeezed her eyes tight.
Tears would not be shed, she promised herself. Not for Jack Mercy, or his youngest daughter.
She breathed deep, drew in the scent of grass and night and horse. It was control she needed now, calculated, unbending control. She would find a way to handle the two sisters who had been pushed on her, to keep them in line and on the ranch. Whatever it took, she would make certain that they saw this through.
She would find a way to deal with the overseers who had been pushed on her. Nate was an irritant but not a particular problem, she decided as she set Moon into an easy walk. He would do no more and no less than what he considered his legal duty. Which meant, in Willa’s opinion, that he would stay out of the day-to-day business of Mercy Ranch and play his part in broad strokes.
She could even find it in her heart to feel sorry for him. She’d known him too long and too well to think even for an instant that he would enjoy the position he’d been put in. Nate was fair, honest, and content to mind his own business.
Ben McKinnon, Will thought, and that bitter anger began to stir again. That was a different matter. She had no doubt that he would enjoy every minute. He’d push his nose in at every opportunity, and she’d have to take it. But, she thought with a grim smile, she wouldn’t have to take it well and she wouldn’t have to make it easy for him.
Oh, she knew what Jack Mercy had been about, and it made her blood boil. She could feel the heat rise to her skin and all but steam off into the cool night air as she looked down at the lights and silhouettes of Three Rocks Ranch.
McKinnon and Mercy land had marched side by side for generations. Some years after the Sioux had dealt with Custer, two men who’d hunted the mountains and taken their stake to Texas bought cattle on the cheap and drove them back north into Montana as partners. But the partnership had severed, and each had claimed his own land, his own cattle, and built his own ranch.
So there had been Mercy Ranch and Three Rocks Ranch, each expanding, prospering, struggling, surviving.
And Jack Mercy had lusted after McKinnon land. Land that couldn’t be bought or stolen or finessed. But it could be merged, Willa thought now. If Mercy and McKinnon lands were joined, the result would be one of the largest, certainly the most important, ranches in the West.
All he had to do was sell his daughter. What else was a female good for? Willa thought now. Trade her, as you would a nice plump heifer. Put her in front of the bull often enough and nature would handle the rest.
So, since he’d had no son, he was doing the next best thing. He was putting his daughter in front of Ben McKinnon. And everyone would know it, Will thought as she forced her hands to relax on the reins. He hadn’t been able to work the deal while he lived, so he was working the angles from the grave.
And if the daughter who had stood beside him her entire life, had worked beside him, had sweated and bled into the land wasn’t lure enough—well, he had two more.
“Goddamn you, Pa.” With unsteady hands, she settled her hat back onto her head. “The ranch is mine, and it’s going to stay mine. Damned if I’ll spread my legs for Ben McKinnon or anyone else.”
She caught the flash of headlights, murmured to her mare to settle her. She couldn’t make out the vehicle, but noted the direction. A thin smile spread as she watched the lights veer toward the main house at Three Rocks.
“Back from Bozeman, is he?” Instinctively she straightened in the saddle, brought her chin up. The air was clear enough that she heard the muffled slam of the truck’s door, the yapping greeting of dogs. She wondered if he would look over and up on the rise. He would see the dark shadow of horse and rider. And she thought he would know who was watching from the border of his land.
“We’ll see what happens next, McKinnon,” she murmured. “We’ll see who runs Mercy when it’s done.”
A coyote sang out, howling at the three-quarter moon that rode the sky. And she smiled again. There were all kinds of coyotes, she thought. No matter how pretty they sang, they were still scavengers.
She wasn’t going to let any scavengers on her land.
Turning her mount, she rode home in the half-light.
THREE
“T HE SON OF A BITCH.” BEN LEANED ON HIS SADDLE horn, shaking his head at Nate. His eyes, shielded by the wide brim of a dark gray hat, glittered cold green. “I’m sorry I missed his funeral. My folks said it was quite the social event.”
“It was that.” Nate slapped a hand absently against the black gelding’s flanks. He’d caught Ben minutes before his friend was taking off for the high country.
In Nate’s opinion, Three Rocks was one of the prettiest spreads in Montana. The main house itself was a fine example of both efficiency and aesthetics. It wasn’t a palace like Mercy, but an attractive timber-framed dwelling with a sandstone foundation and varying rooflines that added interest, with plenty of porches and decks for sitting and contemplating the hills.
The McKinnons ran a tidy place, busy but without clutter.
He could hear the bovine protests from a corral. Calves being separated from their mamas for weaning didn’t go happily. The males’ll be unhappier yet, Nate mused, when they’re castrated and dehorned.
It was one of the reasons he preferred working horses.
“I know you’ve got work to see to,” Nate continued. “I don’t want to hold you up, but I figured I should come by and let you know where we stand.”
“Yeah.” Ben did have work on his mind. October bumped into November, and that shaky border before winter didn’t last long. Right now the sun was shining over Three Rocks like an angel. Horses were cropping in the near pasture, and the men were going about their duties in shirtsleeves. But drift fences needed to be checked, small grains harvested. The cattle that weren’t to be wintered over had to be culled out and shipped.
But his gaze skimmed over paddocks and pastures to the rise, toward Mercy land. He imagined Willa Mercy had more than work on her mind this morning. “Nothing against your lawyering skills, Nate, but that legal bullshit isn’t going to hold up, is it?”
“The terms of the will are clear, and very precise.”
“It’s still lawyer crap.”
They’d known each other too long for Nate to take offense. “She can fight it, but it’ll be uphill and rough all the way.”
Ben looked southwest again, pictured Willa Mercy, shook his head. He sat as comfortably in the saddle as another man would in an easy chair. After thirty years of ranch life, it was more his natural milieu. He didn’t have Nate’s height, but stood a level six feet, his wiry build ropey with muscle. His hair was a golden brown, gilded by hours in the sun and left long enough to tease the collar of his chambray shirt. His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s and often just as cold in a face that had the weathered, craggy good looks of a man comfortable in the out-of-doors. A horizontal scar marred his chin, a souvenir of his youth and a slip of the hand when he’d been playing m
umblety-peg with his brother.
Ben ran his hand over the scar now, an absentminded, habitual gesture. He’d been amused when Nate had first informed him of the will. Now that it was coming into effect, it didn’t seem quite so funny.
“How’s she taking it?”
“Hard.”
“Shit. I’m sorry for that. She loved that old bastard, Christ knows why.” He took off his hat, raked his fingers through his hair, adjusted it again. “And it’s got to stick in her craw that it’s me.”
Nate grinned. “Well, yeah, but I think it’d sit about the same with anybody.”
No, Ben mused, not quite. He wondered if Willa knew that her father had once offered him ten thousand acres of prime bottomland to marry his daughter. Like some sort of fucking king, Ben thought now, trying to merge kingdoms.
Mercy would give it away, he thought, squinting into the sun. He’d give it away rather than ease his hold on the reins.
“She doesn’t need either one of us to run Mercy,” Ben said. “But I’ll do what it says to do. And hell . . .” His grin spread slow, arrogant, and shifted the planes on his face. “It’ll be entertaining to have her butting heads with me every five minutes. What are the other two like?”
“Different.” Thoughtful, Nate leaned back on the fender of his Range Rover. “The middle one—that’s Lily—she spooks easy. Looks like she’d jump out of her skin if you made a quick move. Her face was all bruised up.”
“She have an accident?”
“Looked like she’d accidentally run into somebody’s fists. She’s got an ex-husband. And she’s got a restraining order on him. He’s been yanked in a few times for wife battering.”
“Fucker.” If there was one thing worse than a man who abused his horse, it was a man who abused a woman.
“She jumped on staying,” Nate continued, and in his quiet, methodical way began to roll a cigarette. “I have to figure she’s looking at it as a good place to hide out. The older one, she’s slicker. Hails out of LA, Italian suit, gold watch.” He slipped the pouch of Drum back in his pocket, struck a match. “She writes movies and is royally pissed at the idea of being stuck out in the wilderness for a year. But she wants the money it’ll bring her. She’s on her way back to California to pack up.”
“She and Will ought to get along like a couple of she-cats.”
“They’ve already been at each other.” Nate blew out smoke contemplatively. “Have to admit, it was entertaining to watch. Adam simmered them down.”
“He’s about the only one who can simmer Willa down.” With a creak of leather, Ben shifted in the saddle. Spook was growing restless under him, signaling his wishes to be off with quick head tosses. “I’ll be talking to her. I’ve got to check on a crew we sent up to the high country. We’re getting some storms. Mom’s got coffee on at the main house.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got to get back. I’ve got work of my own. See you in a day or two.”
“Yeah.” Ben called to his dog, watching as Nate climbed into his Range Rover. “Nate—we’re not going to let her lose that ranch.”
Nate adjusted his hat, reached for his keys. “No, Ben. We’re not going to let her lose it.”
I T WAS A GOOD RIDE ACROSS THE VALLEY AND UP INTO the foothills. Ben took it at an easy pace, scanning the land as he went. The cattle were fat; they’d be cutting out some of the Angus for finishing in feedlots before winter. Others they would rotate from pasture to pasture, hold over for another year.
The choices, and the selling, had been his province for nearly five years, as his parents were gradually turning over the operation of Three Rocks to their sons.
The grass was high and still green, glowing against the paintbrush backdrop of trees. He heard the drone overhead and looked up with a grin. His brother, Zack, was doing a flyover. Ben lifted the hat off his head, waved it. Charlie, the long-haired Border collie, raced in barking circles. The little plane tilted its wings in a salute.
It was still hard for him to think of his baby brother as a husband and a father. But there you were. Zack had taken one look at Shelly Peterson and had fallen spurs over Stetson. Less than two years later, they’d made him an uncle. And, Ben thought, made him feel incredibly old. It was beginning to feel as though there were thirty rather than three years separating him and Zack.
He adjusted his hat and guided his horse uphill through a stand of yellow pine. The air freshened and cooled. He saw signs of deer, and another time might have given in to the urge to follow the tracks, to bring fresh venison home to his mother. Charlie was sniffing hopefully at the ground, glancing back now and then for permission to flush game. But Ben wasn’t in the mood for a hunt.
He could smell snow. He was still far below the snow line, but he could smell it teasing the air. Already he’d seen flocks of Canadian geese heading south. Winter was coming early, and he thought it would come hard. Even the rush of water from the creek spurting downhill sounded cold.
As the trees thickened, the ground roughened, he followed the water. The forest was as familiar to him as his own barnyard. There, the dead larch where he and Zack had once dug for buried treasure. And there, in that little clearing, he had brought down his first buck, with his father standing beside him. They’d fished here, plucking trout from the water as easily as plucking berries from a bush.
On those rocks he’d once written the name of his love in flint. The words had faded and washed away with the years. And pretty Susie Boline had run off to Helena with a guitar player, breaking Ben’s eighteen-year-old heart.
The recollection still brought him a tug, though he’d have suffered torments of hell before admitting he was a sentimental man. He rode past the rocks, and the memories, and climbed, keeping to the beaten path through trees as lively with color as women at a Saturday night dance.
As the air thinned and chilled and the scent of snow grew stronger, he whistled between his teeth. His time in Bozeman had been productive, but it had made him yearn for this. The space, the solitude, the land. Though he’d told himself he’d brought a bedroll only as a precaution, he was already planning on camping for a night. Maybe two.
He could shoot himself a rabbit, fry up some fish, maybe hang with the crew for the night. Or camp apart. They’d drive the cattle down to the low country. This much snow in the air could mean an early blizzard, and disaster for a herd grazing in the high mountain meadows. But Ben thought they had time yet.
He paused a moment, just to look out over a pretty ridge-top meadow dotted with cows, bordered by a tumbling river, to enjoy the wave of autumn wildflowers, the call of birds. He wondered how anyone could prefer the choked streets of a city, the buildings crowded with people and problems, to this.
The crack of gunfire made his horse shy and cleared his own mind of dreamy thoughts. Though it was a country where the snap of a bullet usually meant game coming down, his eyes narrowed. At the next shot, he automatically turned his horse in the direction of the sound and kicked him into a trot.
He saw the horse first. Will’s Appaloosa was still quivering, her reins looped over a branch. Blood had a high, sweet smell, and scenting it, Ben felt his stomach clutch. Then he saw her, holding the shotgun in her hands not ten feet away from a downed grizzly. A growl in his throat, the dog streaked ahead, coming to a quivering halt at Ben’s sharp order.
Ben waited until she’d glanced over her shoulder at him before he slid out of the saddle. Her face was pale, he noted, her eyes dark. “Is he all the way dead?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. She hated to kill, hated to see blood spilled. Even seeing a hen plucked for dinner could cause her gorge to rise. “I didn’t have any choice. He charged.”
Ben merely nodded and, taking his rifle out of its sheath, approached. “Big bastard.” He didn’t want to think what would have happened if her aim had been off, what a bear that size could have done to a horse and rider. “She-bear,” he said, keeping his voice mild. “Probably has cubs around here.”
Willa
slapped her shotgun back in its holder. “I figured that out for myself.”
“Want me to dress her out?”
“I know how to dress game.”
Ben merely nodded and went back for his knife. “I’ll give you a hand anyway. It’s a big bear. Sorry about your father, Willa.”
She took out her own knife, the keen-edged Bowie a near mate to Ben’s. “You hated him.”
“You didn’t, so I’m sorry.” He went to work on the bear, avoiding the blood and gore when he could, accepting it when he couldn’t. “Nate stopped by this morning.”
“I bet he did.”
Blood steamed in the chilly air. Charlie snacked delicately on entrails and thumped his tail. Ben looked over the carcass of the bear and into her eyes. “You want to be pissed at me, go ahead. I didn’t write the damn will, but I’ll do what has to be done. First thing is I’m going to ask you what you’re doing riding up here alone.”
“Same thing as you, I imagine. I’ve got men up in the high country and cattle that need to come down. I can run my business as well as you can run yours, Ben.”
He waited a moment, hoping she’d say more. He’d always been fascinated by her voice. It was rusty, always sounding as though it needed the sleep cleared out of it. More than once Ben had thought it a damn shame that such a contrary woman had that straight sex voice in her.
“Well, we’ve got a year to find that out, don’t we?” When that didn’t jiggle a response out of her, he ran his tongue over his teeth. “You going to mount this head?”
“No. Men need trophies they can point to and brag on. I don’t.”
He grinned then. “We sure do like them. You might make a nice trophy yourself. You’re a pretty thing, Willa. I believe that’s the first time I’ve said that to a woman over bear guts.”
She recognized his warped way of being charming and refused to be drawn in. Over the last couple of years, refusing to be drawn to Ben McKinnon had taken on the proportions of a second career. “I don’t need your help with the bear or the ranch.”
