Big Sky Ever After: a Montana Romance Duet

by M. L. Buchman

  Julie had to grant that. She’d never seen Clarence act up so around a man. Not even when she lost her virginity right out by Henderson’s waterfalls. He’d just munched away on the high summer grass as if nothing of interest was going on. Regrettably, Clarence’s sense of what was happening had been more accurate than her own.

  With her desk to the side, Chelsea could swivel her chair to face a small couch and a couple of other chairs so the big desk wouldn’t sit between her and the clients. Julie sat on the couch and thumbed through the magazines sprinkled across the coffee table: Western Horseman, American Cowboy, The Trail Rider, Young Rider, and a couple of rodeo and barrel racing titles she hadn’t read in far too long. She had to remember to hang out in Chelsea’s office more often. American Farrier’s Journal and Equine Wellness were lined up on a shelf above her desk—of less interest to a ranch guest but still looking well thumbed, probably by Chelsea, who inhaled knowledge about horses.

  “You’ve really settled in well here.”

  Chelsea shrugged. “What’s not to like? I was always an outdoors kinda gal. Thought I might spend my days out trekking. I loved the Himalayas. Decided I was going to do all the long trails. I was most of the way up the Pacific Crest Trail, my first one, when I stumbled on Mark and Emily’s firefighting outfit in Oregon. Kinda needed a break and they took me on as Tessa’s nanny. Didn’t last long ’cause they brought me here. Met Doug a year ago Christmas and now can’t recall what I was walking so hard and fast to get away from. Pure bonus, I get all of these sweetie pies to take care of,” she waved a hand at the wall of photos.

  Julie wasn’t sure if she meant the horses or the guests. With Chelsea’s big heart, she probably meant both. Julie flipped through the magazines again.

  Chelsea’s laugh stopped her.

  “What?”

  “You know that you’re gonna have to spill at some point.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Duh! Me or Emily. At some point you’re gonna have to talk about it or it’ll just build up in you until you don’t know what to do with it. I guess you could talk to Ama, but she still spooks me what with her see-into-your-soul bit and then pointing out the shit you didn’t want to see with, like, one word or a well-timed shrug.”

  Julie had always rather liked Ama—a woman of few words. Though talking to her about relationships did sound a bit dangerous; Ama would be sure to point out something Julie didn’t want to hear.

  She didn’t exactly like getting advice from a twenty-two year old either—no matter how ideal Chelsea’s and Doug’s relationship appeared to be.

  “Everything’s fine. There’s nothing going on.”

  “Sure,” Chelsea leaned back in her chair and propped her cowboy boots on a copy of Barrel Horse News. “I believe you. Even if neither Clarence nor a blind man would.”

  Julie made a show of lying sideways on the short couch, propping her head on one arm and her calves on the other. “Go ahead, Dr. Chelsea. Try me. I dare you.”

  Chelsea made a show of tugging her long red hair back into a tight ponytail and trying to look severe, then gave it up as a lost cause.

  “Nah! I’m gonna leave you to Emily. She’s way better at this kinda shit. Besides, it’s time for breakfast…if Clarence let Nathan out of the stall alive so he could go cook it.”

  Julie found it easy to laugh with Chelsea as they double-checked that there was no body on the floor of Clarence’s stall before heading up to the house together.

  Nathan didn’t go back to the house.

  Instead he tracked down his car.

  It had become a game and locking it up didn’t help.

  One day it had been put out to pasture along with the horses, along with its own burlap feedbag. The time that he’d finally tracked it down in the hay loft, he’d simply turned away—no idea how they got it up there and no idea how to get it down. Waiting out the jokers seemed to be his best strategy at that point.

  Sure enough, yesterday it had been an element of Stan’s dog training obstacle course. The memory still made Nathan smile.

  “Unarmed explosives,” Stan had explained when Nathan had asked why the dogs were sniffing his car so intently. “Stashed some for them to find in door panels, the trunk, and so on.”

  For over an hour he’d watched Stan working the dogs. It was a small litter, just six animals, but his patience with them was remarkable.

  “They’re really too young for this work,” Stan came over to the fence after telling the dogs to go play.

  He leaned against one side while Nathan leaned against the other. The way the dogs collapsed to the turf convinced Nathan that Stan wasn’t the one who needed the break.

  “This is more about me practicing my training methods. Lackland Air Force Base trains all of your standard military war dogs. But the ones for the Special Operations teams—SEALs, Delta, even Rangers—they’re trained up by contractors to different standards. This litter needs another year of aging and then we can start their real training. Mac has a long-term view, sees what this can be in a couple of years. Gave me a shot to prove it.” It was clear by his tone that he worshipped the old man.

  “If they’re too young,” they looked full grown to him—like black-tinted German Shepherds. They were beautiful dogs. “What about him?”

  Stan looked over to a small pen just inside the fence where a puppy lay napping with his chin resting on a small stuffed animal. “Vizsla. Hunting dogs. Picked him up in Choteau. Shouldn’t have, but have a friend back east thinks they’d be good military war dogs. Promised Mary I’d try one and there he was, so I had to get him. She named him Gibson.”

  “Friend back east…” He was so gruff that it was hard to imagine Stan having a girl.

  “Retired librarian. Funny lady.”

  Okay, so much for that idea. Nathan nodded back toward the resting dogs, “Is there a star of the group?”

  “Bertram there,” he pointed at the pack with his hooks, which told Nathan nothing. “Far and away the smartest of the lot. Watch.”

  Stan picked up a ball, then a second one. All of the dogs were instantly on their feet, ready to play—except the puppy still asleep in its pen. Stan heaved the first ball high. Five of the six dogs raced after it, striving to grab it out of the air. The sixth dog still sat on its haunches, looking from Stan’s face to the ball in his hand.

  Stan winged it low and fast. Before he even released it, Bertram was on the move. Reading Stan’s body language on the throw, he snagged it out of the air before it had traveled fifty feet, despite the wide angle and high speed that Stan had heaved it at. He dropped the ball at Stan’s feet while the other dogs were still wrestling over who could keep the first one.

  The two of them had settled into a game of catch of their own—a game that had shown so much of how Stan felt about his “best dog” that Nathan had felt he was intruding to watch more of it. Rather than retrieve his car, he had left the two of them to their game.

  That had been yesterday. Today, of all odd places (one of the last he looked), Nathan found his car in the dim confines of the garage—no daylight yet through the windows. His Miata was parked among the ATVs that weren’t all that much smaller. Doug had made good on his offer and the flat tire was repaired and back in place.

  The gas was full.

  It was all set to go.

  Julie was always thrown when she ate at Henderson’s. The contrast was so sharp to her own home experience that it almost gave her a sense of vertigo—like she was barrel racing and hit the turn wrong.

  At home, no one interrupted Dad during a meal. Matters unrelated to the farm or an upcoming rodeo were rarely discussed. The latter was the only time she had a real place as she was by far the best rider in the family and her display of ribbons and prizes were a point of family pride. There was a gap there that continued to irritate her father: the Miss Rodeo Montana award. Or even—never said aloud of course—the coveted Miss Rodeo America award.

  She hadn’t cared abo
ut manners and world affairs and “representing fine American traditions”. Instead she’d gone for the only prize she really cared about, and come closer to winning than she’d ever expected. She’d taken home Third Prize for Barrel Racing at the Calgary Stampede. The foot-tall bronze statue of a cowgirl and her horse carving a hard turn around a barrel held the place of honor in her bedroom. She’d beat out any number of professional riders for that coveted win. When she died, she was taking that statue to the grave with her.

  At a Henderson Ranch meal there were so many conversations that she didn’t know which to follow. Topics ranged all over the frontier from lame horses to the tourist economy to international news. Devin and Drake were either a goldmine (or maybe they were a landmine) of Hollywood celebrity gossip—at least about who was sleeping with who. It was both funny and just a little creepy. No one could ever pay her enough to put up with that. Being three-time top rodeo rider of Teton County had gained her far more notoriety than she liked. She had sight-unseen proposals from as far away as Bozeman and Missoula—not to ride, but to wed.

  Mac Henderson didn’t even make any attempt to corral the conversations. It was just crazy. Though the guys, even Patrick, were better behaved around Emily, which Julie appreciated.

  But the most disorienting thing of all was Nathan’s absence. The straw wasn’t deep enough for her to have missed him on the floor of Clarence’s stall. If he wasn’t here, where had he gotten off to? She wanted to ask Ama, but she was at the far end of the table taking care of one of her granddaughters. Emily too was at that end.

  Patrick and the non-twins were busy dissecting Tom Cruise’s latest Mission Impossible performance and debating that if he got to choose any one of the female costars, which one should it be.

  Chelsea was teasing them about which man the female costar should choose, and how it shouldn’t be Tom because “he was getting so old. Still cute, I mean I’d trip him if I hadn’t met Doug, but seriously? If you guys want to pretend you’re over fifty and would have a tenth of the chance that Tom would, go for it.”

  Mark and his dad were discussing possible fishing trip plans for guests. For a change, Mark’s ever-present mirrored Ray Bans were dangling from his shirt’s collar rather than hiding his steel-gray eyes.

  “For the back-country fly fishers, there’re several fine spots up towards the falls. Stan did a great job fixing up the fishing cabin last winter,” Mac said in his easy manner.

  Stan, as usual, made no comment though he was listening in. He wasn’t a fisherman, that she knew of, but he appeared even more bored by the on-going Hollywood discussion than she was.

  Mark’s speech was more clipped, more…recently ex-military. “Need to look into back-country permits. Helicopter them in for a true wilderness experience. Scout some lakes, fish them a bit to see what’s biting.”

  Mac had slapped Mark on the arm knowing exactly what his son was up to. “You never were made for just sittin’.”

  “Except along a trout stream.”

  Julie had never been one for “just sittin’ ” herself. And she realized that’s what she was doing, even though breakfast was already done. Another very non-Larson style activity, still at the table after the meal was eaten.

  She rose to her feet and cleared her place over to the sink. Still no sign of Nathan. It wasn’t as if he was duty bound to show up. And it definitely wasn’t that she wanted to see where that first hint of a soft kiss might have led if Clarence hadn’t taken exception to him.

  It definitely wasn’t that.

  Mac flagged her down halfway to the back door.

  “We need to talk, girl. Come along to my office.” He led her back through the ranch house and to the grand double staircase that swept up from the front entrance. The sunrise was shining in through some of the high windows, lighting the big foyer like a cathedral.

  She’d never actually been upstairs in the house since the Hendersons had taken it over.

  “We used to sneak in here when we were little kids,” she told him to hide her nerves. “Big, spooky old place to a little girl, but I always liked it, too. Even then I could see the house’s bones were good under the age.”

  Mac nodded. “Bart Sr. offered it to me when I retired. How could I refuse? I’d saved his son during Desert Storm when we were forward deployed past Saddam’s lines. Nothing Bart Jr. wouldn’t have done if our positions had been reversed. But his dad was—still is—one of the big ten owners in Montana. Legally made this place mine as long as me or mine are working it. Can’t sell it except to him, and only for any added value. Fair a deal as I’ve ever been offered.”

  Almost a tenth of Montana private lands were owned by ten major holders. She’d always wondered how the Hendersons had afforded such a big spread. Neither theirs nor the Larson land was anywhere near the top ten category, but they were two of the bigger ranches around for a long ways. Her family had done it by moving onto the land back when Custer’s Last Stand at Little Bighorn and the Great Sioux War were passing into history. Back when no one had cared about this stretch of the Montana Territory except the “injuns”—who long since had been moved onto reservations or forcibly relocated.

  “It had gone fallow,” Mac continued telling his ranch’s recent history she barely recalled. “Only thing that saved the place is how remote it was. ‘Fix it up however you like,’ he told us. Five years back, he brought his grandkids out to ride horses. They were our first clients, insisted on paying. ‘Don’t give anyone no charity they haven’t earned,’ was one of Bart’s rules.”

  At the head of the stairs, the transition was dramatic. She vaguely remembered cobwebbed corridors and a long attic of weathered gray wood.

  The attic was now a big airy room with five big pedal looms and a couple of smaller ones. Dark cherry wood and bright maple, they stood on a floor of polished oak beneath large skylights. Tall windows, glowing with the morning sunlight, offered a sweeping view only a little less spectacular than the one from up at the cabins. The walls were hung with Cheyenne weavings: deep red, black, tan, and gray. Some were bright and new, probably Ama’s work. Others looked to be museum-quality heirlooms.

  “There’s such a sense of belonging here.” Julie wished she could somehow wrap this space around her and hold it inside so that she’d know it was always there. Mac gave her the time to walk through, brush her fingers over the rich colors and tight-woven geometric shapes, and pretend for a moment that she had such a depth of history.

  The Larsons were Minnesota dirt farmers who followed the cattle west in the late 1800s. They’d only arrived in Minnesota after working their way across from some long-lost Scandinavian famine. Their history hadn’t moved with them. Ama’s had; Julie could feel it in the air.

  “Thanks for that, Julie. We’ve worked hard to create that,” Mac sounded as if he still didn’t believe that they had. She remembered what he’d said about how a father worried, at least some fathers.

  Taking his hand for a moment, she looked at his lined face. “Your son and his wife could have chosen anywhere in the world to live. They chose here. You done good, Mac.”

  He nodded, looked aside for a long moment, then nodded again. “Come on back,” his voice was rough as he guided her along the corridor.

  To the other side of the main stairs from the majesty of the weaving, a door led to a cozy hallway adorned with family pictures and a few smaller wall hangings. This was the family’s private space, separate from all of the splendor downstairs. The dimensions were smaller, more human. The architecture simpler. This was their home.

  How did that feel, having a home? She had the house she’d grown up in, the bedroom that had been hers since the day Grandma had passed when Julie was four. But this was different.

  Home meant someone to live with, didn’t it?

  “You’re going to be a ‘hard woman’ soon,” her father had taken to saying. A hard woman: unmarried, alone, bitter. Too hard for any man to want her.

  It wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’
t. But sometimes she worried that it was.

  And then Nathan had cooked for her and done it like she was special. Kissed her softly as if that’s how she deserved to be kissed.

  For the first time in years, perhaps ever, he made it possible to imagine “home.”

  Nathan sat on a hay bale in the equipment garage and looked at his car parked among the ATVs. In front of him was a helicopter. Behind him, an entire array of machinery that he couldn’t begin to name. The metallic red Miata MX-5 fit in here just about as well as he did—not at all.

  It had been a crazy purchase for someone who so rarely left the city limits. He’d put more miles on it the two days of coming here than he had in the year before, maybe the two years before.

  And now?

  He should get in the damned thing and just drive away. Just go. Don’t even go up to the house to get his knives or his clothes, because she was up there.

  Just slide open the big door and fire out of here.

  What the hell was he playing at anyway?

  Julie was a startling woman. A breath of fresh air that he liked more with each passing moment. But how fair was what he was doing?

  To either of them?

  She was right. He’d be gone. Sooner or later, probably sooner, and then where would he be? Where would they be? They’d both be even more miserable than if he left now. Just toss the dice and start over.

  Somewhere.

  Seattle or Portland? They were supposed to both be hotbeds of foodie innovation.

  So was Brisbane, Australia. But he didn’t want to go to Brisbane, Australia.

  Back to the city?

  He’d go insane.

  And if he stayed here? Great Falls or Boise? Or was Boise in some other state?

  Even crazier.

  Maybe he should just drive until he ran out of gas, or money, and start over wherever chance landed him.

  Not cooking. He’d liked cooking for Julie. He liked watching her eyes slide shut as the flavors overwhelmed her.