“Special trail ride today,” he said with a grin. “C’mere.” Amy walked closer, and Jake pointed at a large Igloo cooler in the bed of the truck. “There’s a picnic in there—sandwiches, drinks, chips, a piece of cheese, all kinds of stuff.”
“Sounds wonderful. But Jake, we were going to talk. Remember?”
“We will, Amy. I promise. But for right now, let’s get going.”
“Where are we going?”
“You get another Montana history lesson today,” Jake said. “There’s a sort of a ghost town an hour or so off the road not too far from here. Cuylerville it was called. It was a stage depot for a few years after a vein of gold was discovered. When the vein was all worked out, the town just kinda withered away. There’re still some buildings standing—a saloon, a storefront, parts of a little church. If you like, we can scrounge around for artifacts. I picked up an old pocketknife and a dinner plate—well, most of a dinner plate—the last time I was there.”
“Wow!” Amy exclaimed. “I love stuff like that. Hey, I’ve got a little camera. Can I bring it along?”
“Sure, grab it and let’s go.”
Amy started toward her house and then stopped and turned back. “Are we going through town? Past the News-Express building?”
“We go right past it to swing onto the old main road,” Jake said.
“Great—if we can stop for a minute, I have something I need to drop off. OK? I could email it, but I’m kinda superstitious—I’d like to hand the piece over rather than send it through cyberspace.”
“Sure, no problem. Like I said, we’re going right past it.”
When they got into town, Jake pulled up directly in front of the big glass main entry doors at the News-Express, and Amy dashed in with her envelope, leaving it with the receptionist. When she climbed back into the truck, Jake had put a tape into the player—Bonnie Raitt.
“I always liked her,” Amy said. “Is she still singing?”
“I dunno. This tape is older than dirt, but it still plays just fine.” He pulled onto the road and accelerated. “I can’t say much for pop music these days,” he said. “That hip-hop idiocy is nothing but noise, and the lyrics would make a buffalo hunter blush.”
“Yeah,” Amy agreed, “I can’t stand that stuff.” She leaned forward to raise the volume a bit—and moved a few inches closer to Jake. He noticed her move and took his hand from the shift lever and reached for hers. She fit her palm to his. They held hands until Jake needed to shift again.
They rode in silence for several miles, Jake keeping slightly below the speed limit because of the horse trailer he pulled. When he reached over again to take her hand, Amy smiled. “Let’s talk, OK?”
“Sure. You start.”
“Now, there’s a great way to kill a conversation before it even gets going.”
“Sorry.” Jake’s tone indicated that he actually was sorry. “I turned everything over and around in my mind last night after I left your place. I don’t know what words I can say that will tell you how... how I feel about you. I decided that the best thing I can do is answer any questions about Mallory or anything else as honestly as I can.”
Amy had to take a deep breath. Jake’s “how I feel about you” had made her feel that suddenly all the oxygen had left the cab of the truck. “I was confused, Jake—confused and hurt. When I saw you and Mallory at Porterville, the way you seemed so involved with one another, how good you seemed together, it made me believe that you’d lied to me. I’m an old-fashioned girl.”
“I guess I could see that about you right from the start, Amy. It’s a big part of what attracted me to you. See, I’m old-fashioned too. My folks had the most wonderful and loving marriage in the world. I decided early on that I didn’t have to settle for anything less than that.”
Amy let a moment pass. “Your parents—they’re both gone?”
“Yeah. For a few years now. They married late in life and had me late. I don’t have sisters or brothers. My dad died of lymphatic cancer, and it seemed like my mom couldn’t live without him. She died a couple years later.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy said.
“They both had good lives, and they gave me a good life. There wasn’t much money, but we had the ranch—the same place I own now. When they bought the place, land was at almost giveaway prices. My dad ran some cattle, some horses.” He squeezed Amy’s hand slightly. “What about your family?”
“Both my parents are alive. They live in Connecticut. They’re both retired. They travel quite a bit. I’m an only child, just like you.”
Jake seemed to be waiting for more. When Amy didn’t go on, he asked, “Are you close to them?”
“I love them both, and they love me,” she answered honestly. “But we have totally different value systems and perspectives. They thought I was nuts for moving to Montana, for instance. My mom’s sure all Montana men chew tobacco, drink corn liquor, and carry guns.”
“Some do.” Jake chuckled. “You’ve described some of the cowhands I’ve had working for me.” He waited a beat. “So, you’re not close?”
“No. There’s love between us, but not... I don’t know... warmth. Or understanding.”
A comfortable silence began. Amy leaned back, closed her eyes, and drifted with her thoughts. When Jake downshifted, and she felt him turning to the right shoulder, she opened her eyes and looked around her. “Are we there?” she asked.
Jake stopped the truck and set the hand brake. Amy looked out the window. There was nothing but prairie—no fences, no signs, no ranches—in all directions. She turned to him quizzically.
“No, we’re not there yet. But I had to stop. I kept glancing over at you after you closed your eyes.” He unsnapped his shoulder harness and moved closer to Amy. “I... well...” he mumbled as he took her in his arms.
Amy waited for his kiss, wanting it, loving the spontaneity of it—and grinning inwardly at his little-boy shyness. His lips were warm on hers, and she inhaled his scent, the clean, masculine fragrance that seemed to emanate from him. It was a gentle kiss with no urgency to it, and they both reveled in it for a long moment. “Whew,” Jake said as he moved back behind the wheel.
“Whew,” Amy agreed.
The ghost town was about an hour and a half ride on horseback from where Jake parked the truck and trailer. There was no road—not even a path—to follow. When they were out of sight of the truck, Amy felt as if she and Jake were in their own universe; the total population consisted of two humans and two horses. She told Jake about it.
“Not a bad world, Amy,” he said. “I’d go there in a second.”
Daisy, the same bay mare Amy had ridden when she and Jake visited the Indian burial mounds, was her mount again today. The horse did her job admirably with no arguing or fractiousness, giving Amy a most pleasant ride.
The few buildings that stood in Cuylerville were gray and tired and leaned sharply away from the prevailing wind, looking like each minute would be their last. Daisy stumbled over a wagon rut but easily recovered. “This would have been the main street,” Jake said. “A mud pit in the spring and winter and a dust bowl during the summer.” He pointed to a pile of warped, desiccated lumber and crumbling bricks. “That was the church, I think.” He swung his arm in the other direction, at a two-car-garage-sized building, only the front and one side of which were standing—and those precariously. “That was the saloon. I know that because there are lots of broken whiskey bottles scattered around inside it.”
Amy was fascinated; she tugged the camera from the pocket of her jeans and fitted her hand through its carrying cord. “Can we tie the horses and poke around a bit?” she asked. “I want to get pictures of all this.”
A few trees baked in the sun not far beyond where the church had once stood. They provided minimal shade but at least would keep the horses from the direct assault of the sun. “Over there,” Jake said. “Then we can poke around all you like.”
Amy found the cover and a few pages of a book of hymns un
der some boards in the church. In the saloon Jake dug out a cup that was almost whole except for a nick in its rim. The treasure of the day was a serving spoon Amy found while grubbing through the ruins of what they decided had been a general store.
They stood in the center of the street as Amy clicked off her final snapshots.
“You’ve really enjoyed this, haven’t you?” Jake said. “You’re like a kid in a candy store, digging around in all this junk.”
“It’s a wonderful place,” Amy answered. “It’s like a skeleton of the Old West, in a sense. If I close my eyes, I can see wagons and men on horseback and barefoot kids and ladies with parasols walking up and down the street, raising dust and going about their business.”
Jake put his arm around Amy’s waist. She flashed on the image of him with Mallory and her arm around his waist, but she quickly dismissed the thought. “You got quite an imagination,” Jake said.
They walked back to the horses hand in hand, listening to the silence of the ghost town, savoring the time they were spending together exploring not only Cuylerville but a new relationship.
They rode back to the trailer and loaded the horses on it. Then Jake drove down the road a few more miles to a spot where a small stream cut through a stand of trees. Amy carried the blanket and a pair of plastic buckets to carry water back to the horses, and Jake carried the cooler. They arranged their picnic in the speckled shade quite close to the stream. The heat of the day was fully on them, its presence heavy and pervasive, but the mellifluous whisper of the water over the rocks in the streambed created an aura of gentle coolness.
Their conversation followed no particular fashion, and there were periods when no words were said for several minutes as they ate their sandwiches, drank their icy-cold tea, and enjoyed the perfect little oasis. Only once was the quiet intruded upon. Engine roar and the screech of tires scrambling for traction on the hot pavement from out on the road seemed as out of place there by the stream as a circus calliope would have been. Amy looked questioningly at Jake.
“Kids drag racing or something, I suppose,” he said. He smiled. “You know—to impress a girlfriend.”
Amy grinned. “Kind of like taking a girl to a ghost town and then on a picnic by a stream, right?”
“Exactly. And it’s working, isn’t it?”
She reached for his hand. “It’s working perfectly.”
Amy packed the scraps into the cooler while Jake was carrying the buckets of water back to the trailer. She sat on the blanket and tugged off her boots and socks and rolled her jeans up to her knees. The stream water was startlingly cold, and the bottom silty and littered with pebbles and larger pieces of rock and stone. The quick chill that ran the length of Amy’s spine felt wonderful in contrast to the ovenlike heat that had settled in. Minnows zipped about in the clear water, at first frightened away but then returning to get a better look at Amy’s feet. A piece of rusted metal protruded from the mud on the other side of the stream, and Amy crossed to it, placing her feet carefully to avoid the slippery larger rocks. She tugged at the edge of the object, and with a slurpy, sucking sound, a shallow pan—most of its bottom corroded away—came free.
“Looks like some old dreamer was panning for gold here a hundred or so years ago,” Jake said from shore. Amy started at his voice. She turned around to face him.
“I wonder if he found any nuggets, if he ended up rich,” she mused.
Jake laughed. “He’d probably been just as well off panning in his bathtub. Looks like whoever he was, he wandered too far away from where the gold was to make any money.”
Amy liked her own version of history better. “That doesn’t mean that this fellow didn’t come upon a whole bunch of it right here, loaded up his pockets and his horse, and chucked his pan away because he knew he was rich beyond his wildest dreams.”
“His mule,” Jake corrected. “Panners used mules as pack animals, not horses.”
“This guy used a horse,” Amy insisted. “He built a fine mansion, married the lady of his dreams, and lived happily ever after.”
She turned when he touched her shoulder. “Sometimes people find gold nuggets when they’re not even looking for them, you know.” There was something in his eyes she’d never seen there before, something that made her heart swell in her chest. “I have, so I know that’s true,” he went on. “I thought I was falling in love with you. That’s the wrong tense. The falling part is over and done with. I love you, Amy.”
She moved into his embrace, feeling the strength in his arms and the slightest tremble in his chest. The words were difficult to say, but they were liberating, wondrous, tremendously honest words. “I love you too, Jake Winter.”
Amy had noticed many times that euphoria didn’t tend to last for long in her life. She was still drifting behind the sweet memories of her time with Jake when her telephone rang and Lloyd Sturgiss’s voice brought her back to the real world.
“I’m just checking in with my favorite new literary icon,” the agent said with a chuckle. “I completely realize that writers can hit snags, and that deadlines can seem oppressive when the ideas aren’t flowing for whatever reason. I don’t want to put any more pressure on you—that isn’t why I called. My purpose here is to find out if there’s anything I can do to help you through this dry spell. That’s part of my job, you know. I have faith in you and in The Longest Years. You know that, right?”
“I do know that, Lloyd. You’ve been great.”
“Thanks. But if there’s anything I can do, you let me know. In the meantime, I’ll get in touch with Meadow-dale. They’re good to work with. I’ll tell them we need a bit more time, is all. Believe me, this happens with a lot of books—particularly first novels.”
“It’s going to start rolling again, Lloyd—I know it is. If you can buy us that extra time, that would be great.”
“Consider it done, Amy. No sweat. Now, what else do you need from me?”
“I can’t think of a single thing, Lloyd. Really. But I appreciate the offer and your concern.”
“Sure. Look, Amy, give me a call every so often, let me know how it’s going, OK? And don’t worry about anything here in the Big Apple.”
“OK. I’ll be in touch. Bye, Lloyd.”
Amy stood at the telephone after the call was completed and looked over at the table across the kitchen from her. She started toward it, stopped, and veered off to the refrigerator. She hadn’t eaten since the picnic with Jake, and she was suddenly voraciously hungry. She built a large and sloppy sandwich from bologna, lettuce, and several slices of Swiss cheese, and spread Roquefort salad dressing liberally over the ingredients before topping the mess with a second slice of bread. She sagged into a love seat and, with a plate and a wad of paper toweling in her lap, watched the shadows stretch across the wall.
Lloyd’s a gem—and I owe both him and the publisher a book. I know that—and I also know I’ll deliver the novel, and that it’ll be a darn good story. A quick swing of mental images brought a smile to her face. The time with Jake was wonderful. There could be something happy and enduring starting for both of us.
Amy was up early the next morning, but in spite of the few hours of sleep she’d gotten, she felt fresh, rested, ready to meet the day. By seven o’clock she’d fed her animals, accompanied Bobby on his morning walk, and washed and dried her breakfast dishes—as usual, a bowl, a spoon, and a juice glass. Her laptop seemed to eye her from the kitchen table as she went about her morning chores, but it no longer intimidated her.
She’d noticed that Jake’s mares were grazing placidly in the pasture when she went out with Bobby. Things began early at Jake’s, she knew; the mares were turned out just before first light by half-asleep cowboys. Amy took her second cup of coffee outside and stood at the corner of her garage, watching the mares and enjoying the peace of the morning. The rain the night before had scrubbed the world clean, and everything around her seemed to sparkle with new life. That reminded her. Her Jeep was a mess. Dust-coated and unke
mpt, it hardly seemed like the vehicle she had anguished over before buying, planning a fanatical maintenance program to ensure that the SUV would still be in prime condition many years after her final payment was made.
She stepped into the garage and ran an index finger across the Jeep’s rear gate, just below the rear window. Her finger came away grimy, and the finish had felt like sandpaper. “Car wash time,” she said to Bobby. “And not just a hosing down in the driveway—the whole deal, the $6.95 Super Shine job in town.”
She was loading Bobby into the passenger seat when she heard the telephone’s insistent summons. After debating through a couple of rings, she dashed inside.
“Amy Hawkins,” she answered.
“Amy,” a businesslike female voice responded, “this is Nancy Lewis at the News-Express.”
“Hi, Nancy,” Amy said. “I hope the piece was all right. It’d been some time since I’d done any journalism, and I was a bit rusty.”
“The story was terrific,” Nancy said. “Very good—very professionally written. What I particularly liked was the approach. I know that you didn’t know Will or his family, but a reader would think you’d been following the situation forever. That’s good writing.”
“Well... thanks,” Amy said, nonplussed for a moment. “I’m glad it worked for you.”
“It did. I’m wondering if you could stop by anytime today to talk for a minute. I’ll be here chained to my desk all day, so whenever you can swing by is fine.”
Amy grinned. It was obvious to her that Nancy Lewis wasn’t accustomed to having invitations to meet with her turned down, that she made the automatic assumption that whomever she called would appear in her doorway soon. “I was just about to come into town,” Amy said. “I can be there in fifteen or twenty minutes, if that works.”
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