The Great Montana Cowboy Auction

by Anne McAllister

  They were thick on the ground, all right.

  But as far as Polly could see, that was the trouble.

  "Who'd buy them?" Polly asked.

  But before she'd got an answer, Jack and Daisy had begun scuffling upstairs and she'd had to go sort them out. And then Lizzie had wanted her to coach her on her lines for an upcoming audition, and by the time Polly got back downstairs, her mother had gone to bed.

  Polly had gone to bed, too, and had spent a good part of the night thinking about Maddie, worrying about Maddie, and trying to figure out how this auction notion her mother was so proud of would work.

  It was all well and good to say you should auction off your surplus, but if you had too many, who'd want them?

  "Everybody," Joyce said cheerfully when Polly came downstairs in the morning and asked. Her mother was dishing up oatmeal for Daisy and Jack and humming as she did so. She still looked pleased.

  "I wouldn't buy one," Lizzie said. But Lizzie had little use for cowboys. She wore black, read Harold Pinter and Edward Albee and wanted someday to star in an off-off-Broadway production because Broadway, she said when her mother asked her, was too commercial and didn't speak with the voice of real people.

  Polly wasn't quite sure what she thought about that. "Liz…?"

  "Artemis," her daughter corrected firmly. She pushed back her chair and glided to the sink with her empty dish. Right. Artemis.

  As Artemis, Polly noticed, her daughter didn't simply move anymore, she glided. When she wasn't gliding, she swept. She didn't talk, she proclaimed. And she didn't feel, she experienced—and then emoted.

  Polly thought it was a lot of work being Artemis. She couldn't ever have done it. She didn't have that much energy.

  "Did you feed the rabbits, Artemis?" Polly asked her.

  "Not my turn," Lizzie said. "It's Jack's."

  "It's always my turn," Jack complained.

  "Maybe we could bid on a cowboy to feed the rabbits," Daisy suggested.

  "What are we bidding on them for?" Polly wanted to know. "Mending fences and baling hay and working cattle? They do that, anyway."

  "Yes, but this is extra," her mother explained. "They're donating time, and the money will go to Maddie."

  "But that means the guys who are scraping by are going to be doing all the supporting."

  "That's just part of it," Joyce said. "Virtually everyone in the valley can donate something cowboy related. Taggart and Noah are donating bull- and bronc-riding classes. And Brenna's donating one of her cowboy-hero paintings. Taggart said Tuck would donate a series of pen and ink sketches of last year's rodeo and he was sure Charlie Seeks Elk would provide some original cowboy photos. Artie said he'd donate some old cowboy postcards. There's a ton of cowboy-related items. People are still coming up with things."

  Polly began to see possibilities beyond, as her mother had said, the local market. They might get a few outsiders in for Brenna's painting. Brenna Jamison McCall's cowboy water-colors were well-known in art circles as far away as New York.

  And Charlie Seeks Elk, currently one of Polly's favorite people because he had allowed himself to be talked into directing this past year's Christmas pageant, was something of a household name as far as photographers went.

  "That might get us something," she agreed.

  "Taggart said he was pretty sure Felicity could talk a few of the single guys on the rodeo circuit into being bachelor dates so the girls can bid on them."

  "That ought to get us a dollar or two," Lizzie said dryly.

  "Lots of women love cowboys," Joyce said firmly. "Your father was a cowboy."

  "I know, but—"

  "And they will get the runoff from our big-ticket item."

  "What big ticket item?" Polly asked.

  Joyce was smiling smugly. "We're auctioning off a famous cowboy."

  The only famous cowboys Polly could think of were Roy Rogers, Will Rogers, Gene Autry and Buffalo Bill. "All the famous cowboys are dead."

  Joyce just smiled. "Not Sloan Gallagher."

  Polly poured coffee all over her hand. She said something rude and unprintable, slapped the mug down on the counter, then hastily mopped up the spilled liquid. "Don't be ridiculous. Sloan Gallagher's not coming here."

  "Sloan Gallagher's coming here?" Her sister Celie appeared, her face going red, then white.

  "Sloan Gallagher's coming here?" Lizzie, for the first time, looked delighted.

  Joyce rubbed her hands together. "Gus says he will."

  Gus Holt was the foreman at Blasingame's ranch. His wife, Mary, had been the other newcomer Polly had roped into the Christmas pageant. Gus had helped out, too. Polly was very fond of both of them. But she couldn't imagine how Gus could promise them Sloan Gallagher.

  "He and Sloan went to school together," Joyce explained. "They were best friends in elementary school and junior high. But then Sloan's mom died and his dad lost the ranch, and Sloan ended up down at Maddie's. You did know he lived at Maddie's?"

  Polly finished mopping up the coffee, then turned around, her fingers locked around the mug. Oh, yes, she knew he had once lived at Maddie Fletcher's. She remembered him well.

  "He was one of her foster kids," Celie said. "Like Lew. But that was years ago."

  "Celie's right," Polly said. "It's been years. Why would he bother?"

  "To save Maddie's ranch. Gus said he would."

  "I don't care what Gus said," Polly said flatly. "He won't. Lizzie, time to get the bus."

  "Of course he won't," Celie said.

  Joyce shook her head at both her daughters. "How did I ever raise such doubters? You—" she fixed her gaze on Celie "—I should think you'd be over the moon at the notion. You could bid on him! Stop this mooning around and get the man of your dreams. I'd love to have Sloan Gallagher for a son-in-law." Joyce looked positively enraptured at the prospect.

  Celie's face was bright red. "Don't be silly."

  "Exactly," Polly said.

  All these bright ideas were obviously going to her mother's head.

  "Just because Sloan Gallagher was Maddie and Ward's foster child for a brief period of time doesn't mean he'd allow himself to be auctioned off," she told her mother. "Not everyone has fond memories of being a foster child. He might have hated it. Anyway, if he wants to help, he'll just send a check. Good grief, he could probably just pay the whole loan back for her if he wanted to." She tapped her daughter on the shoulder. "Lizzie, Artemis, whoever you are, get a move on. Now! The bus will be here."

  Grumbling, Lizzie shoved back her chair and carried her dish to the sink. "He might be worth seeing," she said.

  "Don't count on it," Polly replied.

  Sloan Gallagher might once have been a tried-and-true, hell-bent-for-leather Montana cowboy, but he was currently one of the top five box office draws in America. Celie herself had read Polly that tidbit of information aloud from one of her many magazines not a week ago.

  He was in demand constantly. The world's best directors clamored to work with him. His involvement with any project made it instantly bankable. So there wasn't a chance in the world he would waste his valuable time coming back here.

  Of course even if he did he wouldn't remember her. The trouble was, she remembered him!

  And it had nothing to do with Sloan Gallagher, America's heart throb. It had a lot more to do with Sloan Gallagher, the thin, wiry fourteen-year-old who had surprised her and Lew that day in the barn!

  Polly shook her head, remembering. What a disaster! Every time she thought about it she felt equal parts mortification and amusement. She wondered what Celie would say if she knew Sloan Gallagher had seen her naked.

  No one knew now except Polly—and Sloan Gallagher.

  Fortunately, way too much had happened in his life for Sloan to recall one long-ago evening in Fletchers' barn. Polly was sure he'd seen far more memorable sights in the past twenty years.

  Most of the rest of Elmer might have stayed here and stayed the same, but Sloan Gallagher hadn't.
r />   He'd changed, grown up, moved on.

  And despite what Gus said, Polly was sure he wouldn't come back.

  Never in a million years.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  There were only three people in the world who had Sloan Gallagher's cell phone number—his agent, the director of his latest picture and Gus Holt.

  His agent called every few days with projects, news and gossip. The director called when he needed something.

  And Gus never called at all.

  Well, almost never. Twice in six years. Last winter, like a bolt out of the blue, Gus had rung to tell Sloan that he and Mary McLean were getting married at last. He'd been laughing then, singing almost. "You're not going to believe this," he'd crowed.

  And Sloan almost hadn't. "Married? You?"

  After a dozen footloose, run-around years, the notion of Gus ending up back where he'd started—with the woman he'd started with—was one heck of a shock.

  But nowhere near the shock he'd got last month when Gus called again.

  "I'm a dad!" Gus's voice had broken, his words somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Can you believe it? Poor little beggar. Imagine havin' me for an old man!"

  Sloan had laughed, but he'd been awed, too—and just a little envious—though he'd been in bed with a starlet at the time.

  "A dad? You've got a kid?" He'd echoed Gus's astonishment.

  And the eagerness in his tone had sent the starlet scrambling away, as if parenthood was catching.

  He'd assured her it wasn't. Sloan was always careful that way. He'd had sex with her—love had nothing to do with it—but all the while his mind had been on Gus and Mary and their brand-new baby boy, Daniel McLean, called Mac.

  Sloan could remember that easily enough.

  He could barely remember the starlet's name. He wondered if she remembered his.

  Probably. That was why she'd slept with him—because of his name—because he was Sloan Gallagher, Hollywood star. He was a notch on her bedpost, a stepping stone on her quest for stardom.

  After six years on Hollywood's short list, Sloan understood the way things worked. And he could hardly complain.

  In the early days he'd been as eager as they were. Sex for the asking—women pressing their phone numbers into his hand, tucking them in his pockets, stuffing them down the waistband of his jeans—what was there to complain about?

  There's too damn many women wanting to crawl into my bed!

  Yeah, right. He'd win the sympathy vote with that one, hands down.

  Gus would split a gut laughing.

  Not that he'd ever find out at the rate they talked to each other these days. Gus was up to his ears in cattle and snow, working as a foreman on a ranch near Elmer, while Sloan was in Key West, land of sun and surf and sand, finishing up an action-adventure film that would be released in the summer. He wasn't even thinking about Gus tonight when his cell phone rang again.

  "Don't answer it," murmured Tamara Lynd, one of the latest crop of up-and-coming actresses to try their wiles on him. She was curled around him in a hammock wearing little more than the skin she'd been born in, and she clearly had seduction on her mind.

  But Sloan, who knew that Suzette, his agent, was trying to work out a meeting for him with the director on his next picture and Becca Hall, a possible costar, knew he had to. "Sorry," he said, reaching for the phone on the wicker table. "Duty calls."

  "Oh, Sloan." Tamara smothered his mouth with one last kiss.

  "Hey, Suz," he said, "What's up?"

  "Sorry, man. I ain't your girl," an immediately familiar male voice said.

  Sloan almost tipped out of the hammock. "Gus? What the—? Cripes, not another kid!"

  "Mary'd see me dead first," Gus laughed. "Mac's not sleeping more than two hours at a time. We're walkin' the floor right now, him an' me."

  "Mac's a goer," Sloan agreed.

  "My respect for my parents goes up daily." Gus stifled a yawn and Sloan heard a baby's cry. "Shh, feller," Gus crooned in a tender, loving voice. It was so unlike his roughneck buddy that Sloan felt another jolt of surprise. "He's a peck of trouble," Gus said. "But I wouldn't trade him, tell you that. You oughta come visit. See the chip off the old block."

  "Maybe this spring," Sloan said. "I should have some time. I got it written into my contract that no matter where I am, I get branding time off."

  Tamara raised her eyebrows. He ignored her. No one understood why he insisted on going back to Montana every spring, least of all the women who were eager to get him into bed.

  Even Gus thought he was a little crazy. "Why don't you come when you don't have to put in sixteen-hour days? Brandin's work!"

  "Spoken like the true rodeo cowboy you are."

  "Were," Gus corrected. "I'm a man of the land now. Or," he said wryly, "I will be when I find a piece I can afford."

  Sloan could already afford it several times over. He had the land now. It had been the first thing he'd bought—the land that had been in his family for years and years. Five generations of Gallaghers had lived on the acreage Sloan's great-great-grandparents had homesteaded in the 1880s. It had always been a challenge, eking out a livelihood on it, but they'd managed until the depression. Then his grandfather had been forced to sell all but the house and a few hundred acres.

  His dad had had to sell what was left the year Sloan's mother died, the year their lives—and their family—had fallen apart.

  Getting the land back had been Sloan's first priority as soon as he had enough money. He couldn't get his family back. His father had died three years before. All the money in the world wouldn't bring the Gallaghers together again. But at least he had the ranch, and someday, he vowed, he'd have a family to live on it.

  What he didn't have now was the time to enjoy it.

  "You'll find yourself a piece," he promised Gus.

  "I might," Gus said. "Actually, that's why I'm callin'."

  When he'd first hit it big in Hollywood and had bought his own place, Sloan had made a point of telling Gus that when he decided to settle down, to give a shout and Sloan would help him out with a loan.

  "Don't hold your breath," Gus had said. But that had been the old Gus, the footloose wanderer, not the man who'd come to his senses and married Mary McLean.

  "You found a place?"

  "No. But you remember Maddie Fletcher's place?"

  Oh, yeah, Sloan remembered Fletchers' place.

  "She's not sellin', is she?" Sloan was shocked that Maddie Fletcher might be selling out. He knew her husband Ward had died, but he couldn't imagine Maddie leaving the place except in a pine box. She'd married the ranch as much as she'd married Ward all those years ago. They'd loved it the way he and his old man had loved the Rafter Two T.

  "Tryin' not to," Gus said. "She's got a problem."

  Sloan rolled up and out of the hammock, leaving Tamara to stare at him. "What's goin' on?"

  Gus told him.

  "What d'you mean they're going to foreclose? How the hell can they do that?"

  And Gus explained that, too—how Ward had taken out a loan, how he'd made only sensible improvements, how they'd been meeting the payments until he got sick—and now Maddie was in over her head.

  "Shouldn't be happenin' to her," Gus said.

  "No, it shouldn't."

  There were no better people on earth than Maddie and Ward Fletcher. Even after Sloan had left their home, he'd thought of them often. Three years ago he'd got a couple weeks off in the summer and he'd flown into Bozeman, then rented a car to drive to the ranch. He'd been heading north when he'd come to the turnoff to Fletchers' ranch, and on the spur of the moment, he'd decided to stop.

  He hadn't seen Maddie and Ward since he'd gone to live in Billings with his dad once the old man had stopped drinking and sorted himself out again. That had been eighteen years ago—but he'd never forgotten them.

  They'd taken him in at the worst time in his life. He'd just turned fourteen, a miserable, angry k
id whose world had been shattered—his mother had recently been killed, his father had turned into an emotional wreck, drinking himself into a stupor and into deeper and deeper debt. The family ranch—the past, present and future of Gallagher hopes, had had to be sold.

  There had been nothing left of the life he'd known, when Sloan had been sent to live with Maddie and Ward. Sullen, angry and unresponsive, he had hated the world.

  Slowly, with infinite patience, Maddie and Ward had helped change his mind. They'd given him the toehold he'd needed to hang on.

  And even though he'd eventually gone back to live with his father, and then at eighteen had moved out on his own, he'd always remembered … and been grateful.

  So that afternoon he'd stopped to see them. He'd seen Ward's new prize bull. They had talked bloodlines and birth weights and Ward had shown how pleased he was by the twinkle in his normally grave hazel eyes. When they'd finally left the corral to walk to the house, he'd clapped Sloan on the shoulder and said, "Glad you ain't forgot your roots."

  Maddie had given him a bag of homemade cookies to take along. "You come back now," she'd said when he left. "Don't be a stranger."

  "I won't," he'd promised. "You come see my place, too."

  He'd meant to set a date and a time. He'd promised himself he'd have them up next time he was home. But his commitments kept him away most of the year. And the next thing he heard Ward had passed away.

  Now he felt guilty as well as sad.

  "I'll write a check," he promised Gus. "Just tell me how much and who to send it to."

  "You know Maddie won't let you do that."

  "Why the hell not?" Sloan demanded, pacing around the patio. "I can afford it."

  "That's not the point."

  "I thought the point was saving her ranch."

  "Yeah. But it's not just you. It's all of us. Everybody around Elmer is helping out."

  "Fine. Everybody else can pitch in and I'll write a check for the difference."

  "We're having an auction," Gus said.