Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch)

by Nadia Nichols

  “Here we go again.”

  Guthrie sighed and laid down his spoon. “Say it. I was stifling you. I was jealous and possessive and all I wanted was for you to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.”

  Jessie flushed. “That’s all true.”

  Guthrie pushed aside his bowl…sat very still for a few moments, as if gauging her outburst. He stood. “I was hoping things might’ve changed between us, but I guess they haven’t. I’m sorry you feel the way you do. I’m sorry you believe I ever meant to stand in your way.” And he moved to leave. “I’ll be back to help in the morning.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Jessie said. “You ran off to Alaska at the first sign of trouble, didn’t you?”

  “You were the one who told me to go, Jess. Remember?” He strode out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

  She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. The cataclysmic events of the past year had hollowed her out, emptied her of the ability to feel anything remotely soft or vulnerable.

  Anger. Of late, it was the only thing she could feel. Terrible pent-up anger about everything. That her father had gotten ill. That the medical bills had skyrocketed. That the insurance company had raked him over the coals. That the only way she could save the land she so fiercely loved was to give it to someone else.

  Worst of all, she felt a terrible anger at Guthrie Sloane for abandoning her when she needed him most….

  Dear Reader,

  On a recent business trip to Montana I snuck away from the structured activities and spent a memorable afternoon riding into the high country with a surly old wrangler who was searching for some stray horses. Once he got used to being saddled with a greenhorn from Maine, he filled the afternoon with wonderful stories about the land and its history. On the ride back to the ranch (driving eight horses ahead of us at a dead gallop—over rough country for the last mile!) the threads of all those stories wove themselves firmly into my imagination.

  By the time we reached the corrals, several strong characters and the different dreams they shared in this last great place were already coming to life. This is their story.

  Nadia Nichols

  Books by Nadia Nichols

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1043—ACROSS A THOUSAND MILES

  Montana Dreaming

  Nadia Nichols

  For my mother and father,

  for encouraging me to follow my dreams

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  What is life?

  It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of the buffalo in the wintertime.

  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

  —Crowfoot

  IT WAS TEN MILES to town, eight of them on the old dirt track that ran alongside the creek—the same road that her father’s grandfather had ridden back when the Crow Indians still lived in and hunted this valley. Ten miles of gentle descent that curved with the lay of the land and the bend of the creek. Ten miles that traced the path of her childhood and were as familiar to her after twenty-six years of traveling them as were the worn porch steps of the weather-beaten ranch house that sat at the end of that road.

  Ten miles on horseback in a late-October rain. A cold rain, too, that might’ve been snow had the wind quartered out of the north. She couldn’t begrudge the rain. The only rain they’d had all summer hadn’t amounted to two kicks, as her old friend Badger was so fond of saying: “Two kicks and you’re down to dust.”

  She rode a bay gelding called Billy Budd, which she’d raised herself and ridden for the past fourteen years. He was a good cow horse, not fast or flashy, but Billy could always be counted on when the chips were down.

  Today, the chips were down. Her truck wouldn’t start—a chronic fuel-pump problem she’d put off fixing—and she was late for the signing at the real estate office. Her phone had been disconnected months ago due to nonpayment of bills. But it was no matter that she couldn’t call. She knew they’d be waiting for her when she finally arrived. They’d wait all night for her if need be.

  Ten miles by truck took a mere twenty minutes. Ten miles on horseback took a good deal longer. By the time the small cluster of buildings came into view through the sheets of cold rain she was nearly an hour late.

  Katy Junction sat at a crossroads that connected five outlying ranches with the main road to Emmigrant. It had four buildings: a garage with gas pumps, a general store, a feed store and a tall narrow building that shouldered between the general store and the feed store, and housed the Longhorn Café downstairs and a combination real estate–lawyer’s office up. There were still hitch rails in place fronting the boardwalk, recalling an era when horsepower had nothing to do with a mechanical engine. In fact, not much had changed in Katy Junction for a very long time, but Jessie Weaver was about to alter all that.

  She tied Billy off to the hitch rail, parking him between a battered pickup and a sleek silver Mercedes. On the far side of the Mercedes she spotted the familiar dark-green Jeep Wagoneer and felt an irrational surge of relief that its owner would be at the meeting. She loosened the saddle cinch, removed her oilskin slicker and draped it over the gelding’s flanks. He was hot, and she didn’t like leaving him standing in the cold rain.

  “I won’t be long, Billy,” she said. “This won’t take but two shakes.”

  The stairs to the office ran up the outside of the building. When she burst into the room she was slightly out of breath. “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she entered. “My truck’s broke and I had to come a’horseback. My fault. I should’ve fixed the truck when I got the new fuel pump, but I kept putting it off.”

  Three people stood in the cramped room, grouped around a small round table. The real estate agent, who was also her lawyer, Allen Arden, nodded to her. “That isn’t all that’s broken, by the looks of you. What happened to your arm?”

  “Tangled myself in a lasso two days ago,” she said, giving the cast, which stretched left wrist to elbow, a scowl.

  “That’s hard luck, Jessie,” Arden said.

  “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been my signing hand. At any rate, it won’t slow me up. I’ll still round up my mares in time to be off the ranch when we agreed.”

  Arden nodded again, hearing the bite in her words and shifting his eyes. “Jessie, you already know Caleb McCutcheon and his attorney, Steven Brown.”

  Jessie stepped toward McCutcheon. She was so rattled that she felt this was the first time she’d laid eyes on the man, though she’d met him several months earlier. His handshake was firm, his eyes keen and blue and framed with crow’s-feet, his body long and lean, his features as rugged and tanned as if he’d spent his entire life out-of-doors. There was hardly a hint of gray in his sandy hair. She had come to like him more than she expected she would in the brief time they had known each other.

  “Hi,” she said shortly. She turned and acknowledged Steven Brown but didn’t offer her hand. She didn’t want him to feel how it trembled, yet she was enormously grateful for his calm, solid presence. Although he was McCutcheo
n’s lawyer, he had helped her tremendously through all these proceedings. He looked somber and handsome in his dark three-piece suit, his shoulder-length glossy black hair pulled neatly back. He nodded to her in return, predictably stoic.

  Arden motioned them to sit. Jessie glanced down at the papers on the table. Land maps. She snagged the nearest chair with her booted foot and drew it toward her, then dropped into it and studied the maps. When she bent her head, water streamed from the brim of her felt Stetson and spilled onto the table. She removed her hat as the others sat, and rested it in her lap, staring down at her paper dynasty. She was cold and wet and had never felt quite like this before, so disoriented and distraught. It was all she could do to keep her features from betraying her turmoil.

  I’m doing the right thing, she told herself for the thousandth time as her fingers worked around and around the brim of her wet hat. I’m doing the right thing, and no harm shall come!

  Arden had a stack of papers in front of him. He began shuffling through them in his usual ponderous way and Jessie’s fingers tightened on her Stetson. “My horse is standing in the rain and he’s all hotted up. I’d appreciate it if we could make this quick.” Her voice was taut, her words clipped. Arden glanced up and nodded anew. She avoided looking at the other two men and picked up one of the pens scattered on the table. “If you’ll just show me where I need to sign.”

  Papers rustled and were pushed toward her; Arden’s stubby finger pointed to this spot and that. She scrawled her signature again, and again, hoping no one noticed how her pen shook. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that McCutcheon was signing the papers, too, at his lawyer’s direction. There was little to say. The negotiating had been done in the months prior to this meeting. Everything had been written up as agreed upon. All was in order, and the only thing required to make the agreement legal and binding was the signatures.

  It was over in a matter of minutes. Chairs scraped back. Jessie stood so abruptly she nearly toppled hers. She bolted for the door and was nearly out of the room, when Arden’s voice stopped her. “A moment, Jessie,” he said. She turned around, unaware how pale her face was and how tightly drawn she appeared to the three men who watched her. Arden held something in his hand. “You’re forgetting the bank check,” he said.

  Her eyes dropped to the piece of paper he extended toward her and quite suddenly she felt she was suffocating. She fled the room. Clattering down the rickety staircase, she struggled awkwardly into her oilcloth slicker. She jammed her hat back on her head, tightened the cinch using her good hand and her teeth and reached for the wet strip of rein that tethered Billy to the hitch rail. A wave of nausea swept over her and her knees weakened. She slumped against the saddle, forehead pressed against the cold wet leather, fingers clutching the horn. She drew several deep slow breaths and swallowed the bitter taste of bile.

  It’s okay, she reassured herself. But it didn’t feel the least bit okay. It felt awful, worse than she had expected—and she had fully expected to die on the spot the moment she signed her name, struck down by the wrath of her betrayed ancestors, white and Indian both. What she was feeling now was far more painful than anything death could have handed out. She racked herself up and was stabbing her foot in the stirrup, when she heard a man call out behind her.

  “Jessie!” Steven Brown’s deep, familiar voice arrested her as she swung into the saddle. She was glad for the icy rain that streamed down her cheeks and hid her tears. He stood bareheaded in the storm, an island of calm. His dark eyes steadied her. “Take my Jeep back to the ranch. I’ll ride Billy.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s only right that my last journey home should be a long one, and hard. Thank you, Steven. I couldn’t have gotten through all this without your help.” She reined Billy around, shrugging more deeply into her slicker as he stepped past the fancy silver Mercedes and the battered pickup. They had a wet, cold, ten-mile ride ahead of them and an early darkness was already beginning to gather in the foothills.

  She rode out of Katy Junction and didn’t look back.

  The darkness thickened around her on the long ride home and she welcomed the gloom. The rain lashed down and she gave herself to it, letting it wash the very thoughts from her head. Billy plodded on. When he finally stopped she raised her eyes and was looking at the side of the pole barn just below the ranch house. She slid out of the saddle, landing on legs that were stiff and numb from the cold, and led Billy inside the pole barn. There, she stripped the gear from him, rubbed him down as best she could, draped a light wool blanket over him after and fed him a good bait of sweet feed and a flake of hay.

  She left the barn but didn’t go to the house. Instead, she walked up the hill behind it to a grove of tall pine. It was a sacred place. Here they were buried. Here in the wet gloaming, she could see the solid roof of the ranch house, the pole barns and corrals and, tucked close to the curve in the creek, the roof of the original homestead, with its massive fieldstone chimney. She could listen to the wind blow a blue lonesome through the trees and hear faintly the rush of the creek. Here on a clear day she could see pretty much forever, and on an overcast one still could see the Beartooth Mountains, rearing their imposing bulk over the valley below.

  It was a good place to spend eternity.

  She knelt and unfolded her pocketknife, and with it cut the lower third of her braid, then laid it upon the ground. She drew the same keen blade across the palm of her left hand and felt warm blood flow in the darkness. She pressed her palm against the cool wet earth. There were no tears, no laments. She was beyond all that now. She knelt among the graves of those she had loved the most and spoke in a voice that was low and quiet.

  “This I promise all of you. No harm shall ever come to this place.”

  SHORTLY AFTER the signing in the second story of the old building, tongues were wagging in the Longhorn Café directly below.

  “If you ask me, she’s just plain damn crazy,” Badger said, stirring the third heaping teaspoon of sugar into his black coffee and leaning his elbows on the cracked linoleum bar. “I mean, that developer from Denver offered her a fortune.” He lowered his voice a few notches. “I heard it was well over three million dollars. Three million samolians! And she turned him down so’s she could sell the whole shebang to that wannabe cowboy from someplace back East for a whole lot less money. Crazy! Guthrie tried to argue her out of it, tried to get her to keep the ranch buildings and sell the land.”

  “Didn’t work, obviously,” his friend observed.

  “Nope. If I told that boy once, I told him half a hundred times. There’s two theories to arguin’ with Jessie Weaver, and neither one of ’em works.” Badger lifted his cup and took a slurp, then smoothed his mustache with his knuckle. “Where’d you say that rich city slicker was from?”

  “Can’t remember,” Charlie replied. “But someone said he made his money playing baseball. Probably one of them sorry souls that was signed on for a trillion some–odd dollars over ten years.”

  “No! Baseball?” Badger shook his head in disgust. “By God, that cracks it! Well, at least he ain’t another one of them smarmy movie stars. We’ve got way too many of them as it is. But I betcha he eats quiche just the same as them. Anyway, he can’t be whacking balls with a bat anymore, not if he’s plannin’ to live here. He must be retired.”

  “He didn’t whack the balls with a bat. He was a pitcher. A pitcher throws the balls, in case you didn’t know. And he’s too young to be retired. Hell, Badger, you retired when you were seventy-three and I still say you hung your spurs up too soon. Speaking of quiche, you know how to cook one?”

  “Certain I do!” Badger racked himself up on his bar stool and narrowed his eyes while he recalled the recipe. “First, you scramble a bunch of eggs into a piecrust, then you put it in the oven. Meantime, grill up a nice thick steak, and when it’s medium raw, eat it. As for the quiche, leave it in the oven and forget about it. Say, Bernie, got any more of that lemon pie?”

  Bernie was two tables b
ehind them, taking someone’s order. She pointedly ignored his question until she had finished her task and given the slip to the cook, then she scooped a piece of homemade pie onto an ironstone plate. “There you go,” she said, sliding it in front of him. “You don’t need another piece, but that won’t stop you.” Her voice was stern, but her expression was cheerful. She was petite, thirty, the mother of three, wife of the best Ford mechanic in the state and highly thought of by everyone who patronized the Longhorn—which was everyone who lived within thirty miles of Katy Junction. Badger hunkered over the pie and eyed it with relish.

  “Say, Bern, how about that Jessie? Guess she won’t be waitressing here now that she’s gone and got herself that big chunk of money.”

  “I’m glad for her,” Bernie said. “I know she didn’t want to sell the ranch, but she’s been working way too hard for too many years.”

  “She busted her arm two days ago,” Badger said in an aside to Charlie. “Was reelin’ in one of them wild horses of hers and got caught up in the rope somehow. Jerked her right out of the saddle. She drove herself to Bozeman to get it fixed. Too stubborn to ask anyone for help.”

  “That don’t surprise me much,” Charlie said with a shake of his head. “Knowing Jessie, I’m surprised she didn’t just fix it herself.”

  “Say, Bern,” Badger mumbled around a mouthful of pie, “what’s she gonna do now? She tell you her plans?”

  “She’s been pretty quiet. I hope she stays around here. I wish she and Guthrie would hurry up and get back together. They’ve been miserable ever since they parted ways. They need each other, but they’re both too stubborn and prideful to admit it.”