The Great Montana Cowboy Auction

by Anne McAllister

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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  Chapter 1

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  The last time Polly McMaster had missed a meeting of the Elmer, Montana, town council she had ended up mayor.

  It had put the fear of missing meetings into her for two solid years. Some things, however, took precedence over leadership avoidance—and one of them was your nine-year-old son bleeding all over your kitchen floor.

  "Look, Ma, I can spit through it," Jack said, taking a gulp of water and demonstrating how the inch-and-a-half gash in his chin, courtesy of his friend Randy Naylor's hockey stick, would work as an auxiliary mouth.

  Polly, though not squeamish—who could be after four children and fourteen years of marriage to a rodeo bullfighter?—still wasn't overly fond of gross. "Here." She pressed a dish towel against Jack's chin, bundled him into the truck and deputized her mother, Joyce, to attend the council meeting in her stead.

  "Keep my name out of things," she said. "I don't want to be commissioner of streets. I don't want to be town treasurer. And I especially don't want to wear funny hats or house any more livestock."

  It was enough that she had to run the council meetings, oversee the snow removal and the Christmas pageant, and just last month had got stuck housing the baker's dozen out-of-work rabbits who had last been employed as the Elmer Christmas pageant's livestock on the hoof.

  The only job she would do, Polly told her mother, was head the committee to raise funds for the library. The Elmer town library had seen better days. It had seen more books and more hours. Polly was among those who thought it needed to be improved. If she was going to be stuck with a committee, she wouldn't mind that.

  "If no one else will do it," she told her mother on her way out the door.

  Actually she had quite enough on her plate.

  Besides being mayor, with all that entailed, she was the Elmer postmistress, a part-time college student and single mother of four. That meant, this year, helping Jack make a giant flour-and-water relief map of the Amazon jungle, being a chaperone at the school dances at Daisy's junior high, helping sixteen-year-old Lizzie, who was presently calling herself Artemis, rehearse her lines for the school play, and serving as a bad example for nineteen-year-old Sara who thought she could surely do a better job than Polly at living a well-ordered life.

  Polly quite agreed.

  Well-ordered was not a word she had ever used to describe her life.

  Actually, she thought as she sat waiting for Jack to get stitches, and writing checks to pay her bills at the same time, she could be the poster girl for Ask A Busy Person If You Want Something Done. But when would she have time to pose?

  Three hours, eleven stitches and seven bills later, she and Jack finally got home. Her mother was sitting in the living room with a pile of twine in her lap.

  "So how did it go?" Polly unwrapped herself from the January snowstorm and shook snowflakes out of her unruly ginger-colored hair. She looked hopefully at her mother, who was sitting in her armchair by the fireplace doing her latest macramé project.

  What Polly meant, of course, was Am I home free?

  "Went very well," Joyce said with a satisfied smile. But she didn't quite meet her daughter's eyes and went straight back to the wall hanging she'd been macraméing for the past month.

  Polly, who understood the subtleties of eye contact or lack thereof, reached back into the kitchen to hang her jacket on the hook by the door, then came back in to face her mother squarely. "How well?"

  Joyce flicked a beaming smile in her direction. "Very well indeed." But then she looked at her mass of knots again.

  "Not the streets committee?"

  "Of course not. Artie said he'd do that. Come here," Joyce said to Jack. "Let me see." She admired his bandage. "Heavens, you'll look just like Harrison Ford."

  Jack smiled widely. "Cool. Hey, Dais'," he bellowed up the stairs at his sister. "Grandma says I look like Harrison Ford."

  "Not hardly," Daisy's disdainful voice floated down.

  "Do, too!" Jack shouted back. "I'll get the Raiders video."

  He started to sprint toward the kitchen where a door led into the small shop at the back of the house where his aunt Celie had her single-chair beauty salon and his oldest sister, Sara, rented out videos. It was called C&S Spa and Video and was among Elmer's most thriving businesses. It also provided Jack and his sisters with a never-ending supply of tapes to watch as long as they didn't mind them being at least six months old.

  "Not," Polly said, using lightning-fast maternal reflexes to catch him by the neck of his sweatshirt as he bolted past, "on a school night. It's time for bed."

  "But—"

  Polly gave him her best I'm-the-mother-and-what-I-say-goes face. "Now."

  Jack knew exactly how far he could push. He rolled his eyes, gave a long-suffering sigh, then shrugged, turned and pounded up the stairs instead.

  "You'll see tomorrow," he yelled at Daisy. "Harrison McMaster, that's me!"

  "He never talks when he can shout, does he?" Joyce wasn't complaining, only stating a fact. She'd raised three daughters and considered herself an expert on girls. But Jack, though the apple of her eye, was a mystery. Even at nine, he was A Man.

  "No, he doesn't." Polly felt the adrenaline begin to fade. She actually found Jack restful—loud voice, pounding feet, stitches and all. He might be a boy, but to Polly he was far less of a challenge than the girls. He was like his father had been—cheerful, mellow, easygoing, uncomplicated.

  It still hurt sometimes, thinking about Lew. He had been gone almost six years, killed in a plane crash on his way back from Dodge City one stormy August evening. A day didn't go by that Polly didn't miss him. They'd been soul mates, best friends, lovers. They'd complemented each other.

  "Together," Lew used to say with a grin, "we make one complete person."

  Polly had discovered how very true that was after he was gone and she was left to do everything.

  What would Lew do? she asked herself half a dozen times a week, especially dealing with Jack. And then she did it.

  She knew he would have laughed when Jack had spat the water. So she had laughed, too. But inside she'd ached a little, wishing as she always did that he were here to be the father Jack needed.

  But she wouldn't let herself think about Lew now. There would be time for that tonight when she was alone in bed. Now she focused once more on her mother.

  Joyce was humming as she tied the knots. She hadn't looked up except to consult the directions and the picture in the Seventies era magazine she'd found the pattern in. It was supposed to be airy with a sort of fishnet quality to it.

  Polly thought it looked like a hair shirt.

  "So Artie's heading up the streets committee. Bless his heart." Artie Gilliam was ninety and he certainly didn't need to be worrying about Elmer's transportation future, but she was delighted he was. She would have to stop off at the hardware store in the morning and thank him. "So I got the library?"

  Joyce stuck her tongue between her teeth and scowled at the hair shirt. "Over, over, under, around. Loop. Loop," she muttered. "Carol Ferguson's doing that."

  Carol wasn't even on the council, so she must have turned up and volunteered. That was good. Unless…

  "Don't say I've got to do the Christmas pageant again this year!"

  Polly flung herself across the legs of the overstuffed armchair by the fireplace and looked at her mother, dismayed. "I thought we agreed Celie would volunteer for that. She's the drama freak—I mean, the entertainment whiz—not me."

  Celie knew more about actors than anyone a
live. She subscribed to every magazine, read every word, watched every gossip show and saw every movie as soon as it was released, even though she had to go clear to Bozeman to do it.

  Well, not every movie. Just those starring hunky handsome men—especially God's gift to women, Sloan Gallagher.

  Sloan Gallagher and his colleagues were Celie's defense against real men—the ones she met every day.

  Ever since Matt Williams had jilted her ten years ago, Celie had sworn off three-dimensional men. Silver-screen heroes, with their two-hour staying power, were the only ones she trusted. Her fantasy life was terrific.

  Her real one was dull as dirt.

  Polly rarely thought she knew better than anyone else how they should live. She didn't care if Celie wanted to swoon about Hollywood hunks for the rest of her life. She just figured that, with all her dramatic expertise, Celie might as well put it to work. She'd spent the last week telling Celie what a terrific experience it would be if she ran the pageant.

  Privately Polly thought, Let her see the nitty-gritty. Let her get stuck with kids with measles and pregnant Marys and stage-frightened ten-year-olds throwing up on her shoes. Let her talk some bashful cowboy into being Joseph. Let her tell him to bring his bathrobe to wear on stage, and be told with a grin that not only didn't he own a bathrobe—he didn't wear pajamas, either!

  Polly had been told exactly that.

  She'd been chair of the Elmer Christmas pageant five out of the past seven years. Only twice had she been lucky enough to presume upon the ignorance of newcomers. But she'd just taken advantage of the last newcomer when Charlie Seeks Elk, Cait Blasingame's new husband, had run the pageant this past year.

  Now, unless some unsuspecting fool moved in or Celie volunteered, there was no one else but her—and Polly had run out of ideas and patience with cowboys and ten-year-olds.

  The only thing she hadn't run out of was bunnies—somebody's idea of "incorporating a touch of realism into the pageant" a couple of years back.

  They were out in the shed behind the house right now. There were thirteen of them at last count. By next Christmas, God knew how many there would be.

  Polly would deal with the bunnies. But she wanted Celie to run the pageant.

  "Celie let you volunteer her, didn't she?" Celie had evening haircutting appointments so she couldn't go to the council meeting herself.

  "Mmm? Yes. Yes, she did."

  "Wonderful!" Polly sighed and stretched her arms over her head. The weight of perpetual responsibility began to lift. She smiled and kicked her feet and wiggled her toes. "I'm off the hook."

  "Not quite."

  Polly's feet stopped kicking. "What do you mean, not quite?"

  Joyce blinked over her half glasses. "Oh, nothing much." She gave a little laugh. "There was just a bit of new business."

  "What new business?"

  "It's about Maddie."

  "Maddie Fletcher? She's not ill, is she?"

  Maddie was seventy-five if she was a day, and she still worked as hard as two men trying to keep the family ranch going. The Fletcher place, called the Arrow Bar, had been in her late husband, Ward's, family for four generations. It wasn't a large spread, but it was one of the nicest in the valley—and since Ward's death two years ago Maddie had done her best to keep it up on her own.

  "No. But it's almost as bad. Ward took out a loan to buy a new bull and fix up the buildings four, five years back. It wasn't any problem making the payments as long as he was alive, but…" She shrugged sadly.

  Polly stared. "Don't say they're foreclosing!"

  "Not yet. But they're expecting payment. It was one of those balloon things. Maddie got behind when Ward was sick and now she can't catch up. Worse, some Hollywood fellow is interested in buying it, and the bank thinks he's a better bet."

  "They can't do that!"

  "Actually, Will Jones is afraid they can."

  Will, a retired rancher and an old neighbor of Maddie's, was well versed in the kinds of things banks could do. He'd dealt with them for more years than Polly had been alive. A few years back he'd left the running of the ranch to his son, Taggart, and moved to Bozeman, but it didn't stop him staying abreast of local business concerns. If Will thought the bank could do something awful, Polly was ready to believe him.

  "Will came to the meeting?"

  "He and Taggart. They think we, as a community, should help Maddie out."

  "Well, of course we should. But … Maddie let them?" That didn't sound like the stubbornly self-reliant Maddie that Polly knew.

  "Ha! You know Maddie. Proud as a post. She'd have gone under and never said a word. But Will ran into her at the bank right after she got the news and she looked so bad he thought she was ill."

  "I'd be ill," Polly said flatly. She swung around and sat up straight. "So what are we going to do to help?"

  Elmer and environs were home to a fair share of independent-minded folks who took care of themselves and went their own way—Maddie among them. But no one ever turned their back on a neighbor and they always took care of their own.

  The Fletchers had always been good neighbors—the best.

  They'd always lent a hand when anyone else was in need. They'd been right there taking care of the kids for Polly after Lew's accident.

  They'd even had a hand in raising Lew himself. Ward and Maddie Fletcher had opened their home and their hearts to a passel of foster kids for over forty years. One of those kids had been Lew. He'd thought the sun rose and set on Maddie Fletcher. Madeleine was their Sara's middle name.

  Joyce beamed at Polly over the top of the hair shirt. "I knew you'd feel that way. I told 'em you would."

  The penny dropped.

  "So I'm chair of the Save Maddie Fletcher's Ranch Committee?"

  Well, fine. No problem. It was a job worth having. And Polly had run countless PTA fund-raisers. She'd helped the 4H raise money for the county fair, had baked several thousand cookies for several hundred bake sales, and had just this past month organized a snow shoveling contingent made up entirely of hyperactive nine year olds. She could raise money blindfolded with one hand tied behind her back—as soon as she figured out what would bring in the amount of money required.

  "I don't think a bake sale is going to do it," she said, her mind whirling through possibilities as she stared into the fire. "It would take an awful lot of cookies and cakes to pay off even the interest on a bank loan."

  "It would." Joyce nodded.

  "And even if I got all the kids to shovel all the snow for the rest of the winter and donate all their proceeds, that wouldn't do the trick."

  "You're right," Joyce said.

  "Maybe a benefit dance?" Polly thought out loud.

  "Not enough revenue," her mother said.

  Polly blinked, surprised at Joyce's comment, even though her mother was certainly correct. "Er, right."

  "We need something with broader consumer appeal," Joyce went on.

  "Um, yeah." Polly stared at her mother. The hair shirt sat unnoticed in Joyce's lap now. There was a sparkle in her eyes.

  It was the first sparkle Polly had seen in a long time.

  Her mother had once been cheerful and content—a rancher's wife, doing all the things that needed to be done to keep the ranch running. But when Polly's father, Gil, had died of a heart attack two years ago, everything changed.

  Joyce couldn't run the ranch by herself. So she'd sold it to Mace and Shane Nichols and their wives, and she had moved in with Polly. For a year she'd been a mere shadow of her former self as she'd grieved. She'd gone through the motions of living, but until last winter when she got a job four nights a week as the receptionist at the Livingston hospital, she'd hardly done more than stare out the window.

  Finally, on her sixtieth birthday, four months ago, Joyce had woken up and realized she wasn't going to die—even if she wanted to. She was going to be stuck on this mortal coil for a while, and ever since she'd been determined to make up for lost time.

  A week didn't go b
y that she didn't start a new project—like the hair shirt. The study of market economics was another.

  "I want to know what a bull market is," she'd said over dinner three weeks ago. "And a bear. And cost-averaging strategy." She'd gone into Bozeman and bought an economics book. Now she used terms like revenue and broader consumer appeal.

  It took some getting used to.

  "Nothing we've done before will do," Joyce said now. "We need a large-scale effort and a lot of community participation. We need to take it beyond the local market."

  "I'll give it some thought."

  "I already have."

  "You? I mean, er, wow. And you think your idea will, um … generate enough revenue?" She tried to sound economic.

  "Oh, yes. Everyone else did, too." Joyce's eyes sparkled. "We're going to have an auction."

  "An auction? You mean everybody contributes white elephants and stuff?"

  It was a nice idea, but she didn't see how it was going to raise a pile of money, but then, she supposed her mother couldn't be expected to understand all economic issues in three short weeks.

  "Not enough revenue." Joyce finished the knot she was tying and looked up quite pleased. "White elephants won't do it. And they won't get enough people involved. Besides, it wouldn't use up our surplus. You should always work from your surplus," she informed Polly gravely. "I read that in chapter four."

  "Chapter four. Right," Polly said. "Of course. But I don't quite see. I mean, what have we got a surplus of … besides snow?"

  Joyce tied one last knot, looked up and smiled beatifically. "Cowboys."

  Well, yes. If there was one thing Elmer had a lot of, if there was one thing it was simply overloaded with—besides snow—it was cowboys.

  They worked on the valley ranches, rode the fences, herded the cattle and came into Elmer to hoist a few beers and raise a little hell. They played pool in the Dew Drop, Elmer's tavern, they ate meat loaf at the Busy Bee Cafe, they hung around Loney's welding shop getting their trailer hitches welded and prowled the aisles of Gilliam's Hardware buying rolls of baling wire and cases of duct tape. And besides the local contingent there were always a couple of dozen passing through or going to bull- and bronc-riding school at Taggart Jones's place.