Montana Dreaming

by Nadia Nichols

  The bay gelding was standing right where she’d left him, but he was trembling, sweated up, rolling his eyes and obviously in a state of near panic. “Whoa, now. Easy, Billy… Whoa now.” She laid Blue down and eased toward the horse. Speaking softly, she took up the trailing rein and pressed her palm between his wide and frightened eyes. Slid that same hand over the crest of his neck and smoothed his long dark mane. “Easy, Billy. I know you’re smelling that bear and I know it scares the dickens out of you, but Blue’s hurt bad. We have to help her….”

  Even as she spoke she was reaching for the saddlebag that held the first-aid kit. She had the buckle undone and her fingers were pushing the top flap back, groping for the cordura bag secured within. “Easy now—”

  Without warning, Billy let out a scream of fear, a horrible sound that only a horse in sheer terror can make, and at the same moment he reared on his hindquarters and bolted for home. One second the gelding was a big solid presence right beside her; the next he was the sound of hooves drumming hard in a gravel-scattering uphill run and she was lying flat on her back where she’d landed when his shoulder had knocked her down.

  The bear was close. Very close. A grizzly, the same bear that had hurt Blue.

  Jessie scrambled to her feet, cradling her broken arm. The cast protected it from the constant insults she heaped upon it, but getting knocked down by Billy had hurt. Considering all the other problems she faced, she barely noticed the pain. She moved quickly to where she had left Blue, who was staring with bared fangs and throaty growls at the thick wall of brush behind her. She wasted no time hoisting the little cow dog into her arms again, and then, cradling her as best she could, she turned tail and ran. Oh, she’d read all the Yellowstone advisories that running from a bear was the very worst thing a person could do, but run she did, as fast as she could while carrying Blue.

  She chose the same path Billy had taken and she didn’t look back. Adrenaline gave her a speed, power and endurance she would not ordinarily have possessed. She ran with the dog in her arms until every fiber of her body protested and she could run no farther. She was back on the ridge trail and heading for home, and the wind was demonic, screaming out of the west at gale force. It was beginning to snow, and darkness was no longer a distant threat but a near reality.

  She gasped for breath, sinking to her knees with Blue in her arms. She had to get below the tree line, out of this killing wind! She wasn’t going to make it home, not by a long shot, but they couldn’t spend the night up here in the pass. They’d freeze to death, and then historians would have to rename it Dead Women Pass. Morbid thought. She weighed her options and pushed to her feet. Her injured arm ached unbearably beneath Blue’s weight. “It’s okay,” she soothed the hurt and frightened dog. “It’s all right. I’ve got you, Blue. You’ll be okay….”

  She staggered along, her body bent into the wind. Down and down they went, until finally the brunt of the wind was turned by the thickly forested slope. It was nearly full dark now, but she kept moving for as long as she dared, and then finally she knelt and laid Blue down. She had chosen a good spot to hole up. A blowdown had upended its great tangle of roots and earth, making a fine wind-break. She broke the dead branches from it in the last of the fading light and kindled a tiny fire at its base, more out of a need for light than for the little warmth such a small fire would cast. Blue was sluggish, shocky. She was in pain. Who knows what sort of internal injuries she might have sustained from the bear’s blows?

  The little cow dog had shared a working partnership and a special friendship with Jessie for eight years, and was irreplaceable. Blue mustn’t die. She couldn’t die. Jessie used her bandanna to bind the deepest wounds on the cow dog’s thigh, unzipped her coat and drew the shivering dog against her. Then she zipped the coat back up with the dog inside it. She fed the last of the firewood onto the small fire and sat back, cradling the trembling dog in her warmth.

  It was going to be a long, cold night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GUTHRIE SLOANE HAD BEEN driving since well before dawn, but he was too close to home to stop now, in spite of the darkness and the near-whiteout conditions. He had a good four-wheel-drive truck and the big plow rigs were out, keeping the drifts pushed back. He’d make Bozeman inside of an hour, and with any luck would be hauling into Katy Junction just shy of midnight.

  He felt as if he’d been gone forever. When he’d left this past spring he’d wanted to go. Couldn’t wait to put as many miles as possible between Jessie Weaver and him. But over the summer his hurt and anger had faded, to be replaced by a kind of chronic depression. He’d worked hard, putting in sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, at the fish processing plant. The job was inglorious, but it paid very well and kept him busy, kept him from dwelling on his miseries.

  That is, until he got the letter from his sister, Bernie, back in Katy Junction. “Jessie needs you,” she’d written. “She’d never admit to it, but it’s true. Please come home!”

  The day the processing plant shut down for the winter Guthrie stood on the wharf smelling the salt tang of the harbor, admiring the mountainous coastline, the rugged beauty that was Alaska, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to go back to Katy Junction. That very day he’d closed his account at the bank, thrown his collection of moldering camping gear into his truck and headed south.

  He had no illusions about returning home to Jessie’s welcoming arms, no matter what Bernie had written. Jess had made her position clear and was not the sort of woman to say anything she didn’t mean. “We don’t share the same dreams, Guthrie,” she’d told him at their parting. “Lately all we do is fight. I think it’s best we don’t see each other anymore.”

  Or something to that devastating effect.

  Jessie’s dreams were her wild Spanish mustangs and somehow preserving some small part of the rapidly shrinking range for them to roam free. Her dreams were grand. His were far more humble and modest. He dreamed of marrying Jess and proving up that little claim he’d staked for himself along Bear Creek. He wanted to run a few head of cattle, put some acres to good alfalfa hay, tinker with farm machinery and work for his sister’s husband. He wanted to raise a few towheaded, chubby-cheeked, milk-toothed babies, love his woman, have a good dog, a good horse and a dependable truck.

  His dreams fell far short of Jessie’s aspirations. She wanted to save Montana, and was driven by a desperate passion that intimidated Guthrie. Sure, he saw where she was coming from. Who wouldn’t? Didn’t they all love the vast rolling plains and towering mountains that boldly defied distance and description?

  Guthrie downshifted to slow his truck as he came up behind a small foreign car. Visibility was poor, snow was building up on the road surfaces and his drive south would be arduous, but it would be worth it, because when he arrived, no matter what time it was, he would be home. Finally, he would be back where he belonged.

  MCCUTCHEON HAD BEEN standing on the ranch house porch for twenty minutes. It was the third time this day that he had made the long drive from town to talk to Jessie, ask her if she’d thought about his offer, tell her that she couldn’t pass it up because where else would her horses have as much running room and feel so much at home as right here on their own range?

  It was snowing hard, and had been since midafternoon. Jessie had ridden up in the high country that morning to look for her wild mares and she wasn’t back yet. And it was dark. Full dark. On a stormy night when an unexpected blue norther was piling down wind-driven snow at the rate of an inch an hour. He checked his watch again, its dials luminescent, and swore softly. This wasn’t how he’d imagined this day to be…standing on her porch—his porch, dammit—his stomach tied in knots.

  Over the sound of the wind came another sound out of the darkness—that of horse’s hooves muffled in six inches of fresh snow. “Jessie!” he shouted. He switched on his flashlight and shone it into the whirling snow. “Jessie Weaver!”

  There was no answer to his call, but the footfalls came on steadily
. A horse, plastered in wet snow, plodded up to the porch rail as if he’d walked up to it hundreds of times before. The animal was exhausted. McCutcheon panned the horse with his flashlight. His initial relief plummeted at the sight of the empty saddle.

  “Oh, no,” he said. He stepped down the stairs and brushed the snow from the saddle. One of the bridle reins was broken. One of the saddlebags was unbuckled, but still full of gear. He picked up the trailing rein and led the exhausted gelding into the pole barn, where he stripped off bridle and saddle it, rubbed the horse down with a burlap sack, pitched him some hay and water and a bait of sweet feed before making for his car and town to tell the authorities that something very bad had happened to Jessie Weaver on this wild and stormy night.

  “DON’T YOU DIE on me, Blue,” Jessie said, her voice inaudible to her own ears over the moan of the wind. “Don’t you die on me! You’ve been with me too long to leave me, and I need you now more than ever. You stay right here with me and we’ll keep each other warm and safe.”

  She wasn’t frightened by the dark, but the cold scared her. It had the teeth of winter and its bite was painfully sharp. She had dressed as she always did for a high-country ride in fall, and could not lay blame on her choice of clothing. But an empty stomach didn’t help. A mug of hot chocolate and a big bowl of spiced beef and beans would see her through this night.

  Guthrie!

  Jessie jerked at the image that came so suddenly out of the darkness. The unexpected memory flooded through her and galvanized her into wakefulness. She tightened her grip on Blue and fought to quell the butterflies that fluttered through her stomach and made it hard to draw breath. Why on earth was she thinking about him now, of all times? Why was his face so clear to her—its strong, lean planes, the way it felt beneath her fingertips, the sensual roughness of his twelve-hour stubble, and his mouth, so firm and masculine…

  Those images usually only came to her at night in her sleep. During the day she could keep them at bay, overshadow them with the anger she felt at his abandoning her in the midst of such difficult times.

  “Baloney!” Jessie said, startling the dog. Blue raised her head and whined. “It’s all right, honey,” she soothed. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay….”

  Guthrie was gone. He’d run off and headed north. Alaska, she’d heard. One bad argument between them and he’d turned tail and bolted, and he’d been gone nearly five months. If that was the sort of man he was, soft and full of butter, she was better off without him. Sooner or later her heart would realize that, then those dreams of Guthrie that tormented her nights would quit.

  Jessie shivered with the cold, her trembling matching that of the injured dog she cradled beneath her coat. “I have to stay awake,” she said to Blue. “Can’t fall asleep. Don’t want to dream those dreams anymore….”

  “WHAT IN HELL is taking them so long to get here!”

  Caleb McCutcheon was mad. He paced the floor of the Longhorn between the counter and the door—a space too small for his big strides, which irritated him even further.

  “It’s the storm,” Bernie said, refilling his coffee cup then those of the others sitting at the counter. Eight locals waited there for the warden, the state police and Park County Search and Rescue to arrive.

  The phone rang and Bernie picked it up, listened for a few moments, said, “All right,” and hung up. She looked at the questioning faces. “That was the warden. Comstock says the state police are tied up with accidents. Search and rescue are mobilizing, but they won’t be here till dawn. He’s arranged for Joe Nash to take him up in his chopper at first light. He suggested that someone go out to the Weaver ranch, just in case Jessie makes it back on her own.”

  “First light? They’re going to wait until morning? But that’s ridiculous! She could be hurt! Freezing to death!” McCutcheon said.

  “What can they do in the middle of a blizzard in pitch-darkness?” Badger reasoned. “No tracks, no scent for the dogs, no direction to start in or head for. Sometimes it’s better to set your horse and do nothin’ than wear him out chasin’ shadows.”

  “You can set your horse if you like. I’m driving out to the ranch,” McCutcheon said, reaching for his coat.

  “Snow’s gettin’ pretty deep,” Badger said. “Your fancy car won’t make it. Might even be too deep for my truck, though I doubt it. She’ll go through just about anything.” He stroked his mustache, considering for a moment, then levered his arthritic body off the stool and reached for his Stetson. “Let’s get goin’. This waitin’ ain’t easy on me, either.”

  Badger was right about the snow. Where the wind had piled it up, the drifts pushed up against the undercarriage of the truck as they crept down the unplowed ranch road. But they made it.

  No one else was there. They entered the dark ranch house and Badger lit an oil lamp in the kitchen after reaching it down from an open shelf with easy familiarity. “I used to work here,” he explained, setting the lamp on the kitchen table. “Back when Drew and Ramalda lived in the old cabin that stood behind the corrals. Gone now. Fire took it after they left. Lord, that woman could cook! I’m going to get the woodstove going, put on a pot of coffee. This place is colder’n a dead lamb’s tongue.”

  McCutcheon prowled restlessly, stepping out onto the porch periodically to listen and holler Jessie’s name into the stormy darkness before retreating into the warmth and light of the kitchen. The two men shared few words. Badger seemed content to feed chunks of split wood into the firebox and poke at the coffeepot from time to time, waiting for the water to boil. McCutcheon, on the other hand, paced like a caged lion. He couldn’t understand how the people of Katy Junction could be so calm. That girl was out there all by herself, certainly very cold, probably hurt, maybe even dead, yet they all acted as though it was just another sleepy Sunday.

  “It’s got to be nearly zero with that windchill!” he burst out to Badger, as if it were the old man’s fault.

  “Yessir, I expect it is,” Badger replied calmly.

  “We have to do something! We can’t just sit around and wait! She’ll freeze to death!”

  “Well now, mister, I highly doubt it. Knowing Jessie, she’s holed up somewhere’s safe, waiting the storm. And right now there ain’t a whole lot we can do, except go out into it and get ourselves good and lost. That don’t sound like a very good plan to me. Haul on up to a cup of coffee and cool your jets. We’ll head out at first light.”

  GUTHRIE WAS SURPRISED to see all the trucks parked in front of the Longhorn so late of an evening. Bernie usually closed the café up at 8:00 p.m. sharp to go home and kiss her babies good-night. He parked at the end of the line, relieved that his long drive was over and pleased as all get out at the thought of a cup of hot coffee and the prospect of seeing his sister.

  He climbed out of the truck into over a foot of heavy snow and clumped up the boardwalk, knocking the snow off his boots as he pushed open the Longhorn’s door. The place was crowded with familiar faces. They all turned toward him and half raised up out of their seats as if they’d been expecting him for hours.

  “Guthrie!” Bernie came out of the kitchen holding a platter stacked high with sandwiches. She dropped the platter on the counter and ran across the room to hug him fiercely. “Oh, Guthrie, how on earth did you know? Thank God you’re here!”

  Guthrie felt a peculiar tightening in his stomach as he gently pried himself out of her desperate embrace and held her at arm’s length. “How did I know what? What’s the matter, Bernie? What’s wrong?”

  IN SPITE OF THE COLD she slept, and in her dream the snow-laden moan of the wind became the somber voice of her father. He was sitting at his desk, working on the books the way he often did in the evening, his pen scratching spidery figures in the columns, his eyebrows drawn together in a perpetual frown of concentration. He laid his pen down and glanced up at her with a weary sigh.

  “Looks like we took another big loss this year, Jessie. Maybe Harlan Toombs was right. Maybe we should’ve held the prime
steers over another year rather than sell them at that ridiculously low price. I don’t know.” He sighed again and ran his fingers through his thin, close-cropped hair. “I don’t know much of anything anymore. Times are changing so fast I can’t keep up. Cattle prices keep dropping. taxes keep climbing. You should’ve stayed in school, Jessie. By now you’d be well on your way to being a veterinarian. You’d be a good one. Hell, you were almost there. There’s still time. Go back to school and finish up your degree!”

  And then Guthrie was in the room with them, his face lean and handsome, his expression intense in the glow of the lamplight. “Marry me, Jess! We could have a good life together. You don’t have to be a veterinarian to have a good career. You have one now, raising those fine Spanish horses of yours. And the most important career you could ever have would be raising our babies.”

  Another figure moved out of the shadows, a man nearly as tall and lithe as Guthrie in spite of being a good twenty years older. Caleb McCutcheon held out the bank check. “Take it. It’s your money now, Jessie. It’ll buy you a fresh stake someplace else if you feel you have to leave, but give some thought to my job offer. It still stands. This place needs you, and you’ll always need this place.”

  Steven Brown was a silent presence in the background, his dark eyes somber. He was watching her, but he said nothing. He gave no opinions, made no requests or demands. He was simply there, the way the rocks and the trees and the mountains were there. She felt herself being drawn to his quiet solid strength.

  Fox was running at a dead gallop along the creek where the west fork fed into it. Ears pinned back, nostrils flaring, her mane and tail streaming behind her, she looked as if she were flying just above the earth. The other mares followed at her heels. They were heading for the old Indian trace that led up Montana Mountain. Jessie knew Billy could never catch them up. She reined him in as they raced past, running hard for a place where the wind blew free and the land stretched out as far as the eye could see, a place with no fence lines, no roads, no boundaries. A place that no longer existed except in their memories.