Return To Big Sky

by Jade Cary

  I cannot say what woke me, but I sat straight up in my bag, my thin under layer shirt and johns doing nothing to stop the cold sweat that ran down my neck and back. Jed snored softly, his back to me. I slipped on my jeans and pulled a .45 out from my pack. I tugged on my boots and lifted the flap of the tent. Charlie was already standing near the smoldering fire.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. What did you hear?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Dawn was considering a break, and a glow crept up over the mountains to the east. I heard before I saw, a keening, a wail, a moan unlike anything I’d ever heard—except that was not true. I had heard it, once, more high pitched, but just as mournful.

  “No,” Charlie whispered. He went for Doolittle, who was tied to the trunk of an aspen and fed lazily on the grass that managed to find a way out of the dusting of snow. Charlie clicked his tongue and Doo lifted his head.

  “No, Charlie. What are you doing?”

  “It’s the herd. They’ve come down out of the hills, but something’s wrong.”

  How the hell did he know this? I pondered as I watched him saddle Doo, knowing damn well how he knew. The kid had it, that something certain people had that bore no name, unless you made movies: Horse Whisperer and the like.

  “Wait, stop. You can’t…” And then I heard it again, that wailing, sad, desperate, like a blues song that needed to be sung despite the ache it gave your soul. Yes, I’d heard it before, in the pasture, the calf, wailing over its mother, as she lay dead in the prairie grass.

  “Oh, my God.” I raced to Wind Dancer and got as far as tossing the blanket over his back when Jed came up behind me.

  “What the hell is going on?” His strong hand on my arm pulled me out of a fog I didn’t know I was in.

  “I don’t know. Listen.” He did as I continued to saddle Wind Dancer. Jed lifted a paternal finger in my direction.

  “Stay here.”

  “Jed, there is no fucking way I am doing that. Where’s Texas Clay?”

  “No idea,” he said as he saddled Paul. “You stay here,” he whisper-shouted.

  “As I said…”

  Charlie was on Doo and along side Jed by then. “You stay, too.” Charlie looked at me for what to do, and I gave a barely there shake of my head, as in don’t argue but follow my lead. Jed grabbed a high-powered flashlight with a jagged edge around the lens, and held it up as he galloped away from camp and toward the keening wail.

  “Clay!” I whisper-shouted. He was nowhere to be found, and I was not surprised. Whatever was going on, he was behind it, and Jed was out there alone.

  “I can’t bring you with me and I can’t leave you here alone. The only person I trust just took off.”

  “I’ll be fine,” my brother said, and he sounded twenty and looked thirty, and I believed him.

  “Please stay close. If anything happened to you…”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I have a ranch to run and a new business to handle.” All of fourteen with a mind at times half that age, yet here he was reassuring me.

  “Let’s go. Jed’s out there alone.”

  Fifty yards from camp and there was no sign of dawn. We were at an angle that obscured any hint of the sun behind the mountains. I pulled the same flashlight Jed had out of my pack and so did Charlie, and we rode as quickly as we could with the light we had, adrenaline moving us one foot at a time. Another two hundred yards from camp and we saw it. The herd of fifteen, all bulls, stood in a circle, bleating and wailing. Paul sidestepped away from one with horns and Jed tried to get him to steady. Another figure sat high on a horse next to him, and horror bled off them like a vapor. I could not see faces, only silhouettes of two cowboys on horseback gazing into darkness.

  “What’s going…?” but I got no further. Charlie slid off his horse before the gun report reached my ears, and the herd scattered as another echoed in the quiet dawn, the sound whipcracking off the mountains. A sting, like an insect bite, spread across the left side of my neck as I stared down at my brother, lying in the sage.

  I heard nothing. No sound, nothing moved. It was like I was underwater. His eyes stared up at me, confused, somewhat amused, like, how did I get down here? And then that space between his dark brows furrowed, and those deep blue eyes filled, and his mouth opened. And in that moment, my life stopped. My heart stopped, blood ceased flowing, and everything went numb.

  “Chandler,” he gurgled. “Chandler…”

  I turned from my brother as the herd parted, and on the ground lay two cows, burned beyond recognition.

  I slid off my horse into Jed’s arms, and everything went black.

  Not On My Watch

  I gripped the porch railing and stared out into the late afternoon sun as it beat down on what remained of the snow that fell not 36 hours prior. It was contemplating a set down soon, as the days got shorter and the nights got colder.

  Maria came along side me with a margarita, and I took it gratefully. She followed with a shot of our finest anjeo. A half dozen sheriff’s deputies, Montana ATF and an FBI agent gathered near the corral where Wind Dancer got his start, and where I discovered the beauty of horses so long ago.

  The graze across my neck felt like a deep burn and looked like a cartoon flame coming out the back of a hot rod. The jagged edges made clear the trajectory of the bullet that came from a spot somewhere on 3,000 acres of rangeland and slid along the left side of my neck. According to the gentlemen with tan uniforms over faded jeans, badges on their shirts and guns at their hips, had I not turned when I did, the bullet could have entered my neck, gone through my jaw or, God forbid, my head. My brother falling off Doo in a faint after seeing those burnt cows before I did saved my life. I’d have to remember to thank him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jed hissed, climbing the porch stairs two at a time “She’s on painkillers, for Christ sake.” He reached for the glass, but I snatched it up and out of his reach and knocked back the shot of tequila.

  “I have to officially take the damn things first, Jed. Do not ride roughshod over me. I am not in the mood.”

  The man had been unrecognizable to me since the moment I fell into his arms before the sun had a chance to rise. After I’d been cleaned, swabbed and bandaged at the local clinic, Jed saw to it that I was off my feet until, I was guessing, the scar disappeared, or I’d aged into an assisted living facility. I’d had enough of being still. I needed to hang on to the fury that encompassed me. For the time being, there was no other feeling to have. He stood before me now, staring at the wonderful elixir Maria had prepared, looking as if he wanted to flay me. I’d kick him in the throat if he so much as flinched toward the glass.

  “What’s happening out there?” I said, gesturing to the circle of uniforms on my property. I wasn’t sure if I cared just yet, but I wanted to make conversation so Jed got his mind off me.

  “They’ll be questioning the men soon.”

  “Start with that one,” I said, jerking my head toward Texas Clay, who stood off to the side with Jackie Blue and Collin, hat low, arms crossed like he actually gave a shit.

  “They’ll get to everyone.”

  “Where the hell was he when all this was going down?”

  “He says he was taking a leak and saw the fire. He saddled up and rode out. He was with the herd when I got there.”

  “Yeah? And did you ask him why he didn’t wake anyone?”

  “Didn’t think it was a fire. How can you light a fire in a field of snow?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Let’s get you inside. Maria, can you…?”

  “That’s enough!” I snapped. “Do not baby me!”

  Jed paced the floorboards of the porch. I knew that, had Maria not been standing there, along with several law enforcement representatives, I’d be over his knee mooning the sky in a heartbeat. By the look on his face, the night was still young.

  “Excuse me. I’ll just see to Carlos,” Maria muttered.
>
  “Thanks,” I said to her retreating back.

  “Welcome,” Maria muttered.

  “Some friend you are.” At that, Jed’s hand cracked across the seat of my jeans with such force my hips shot forward. The men milling about were none the wiser. I spun on him.

  “What? For God’s sake, what, Jed?” I hissed. I was teary and angry and frustrated and hog-tied and numb.

  “I want to make something clear: I will baby you and I will ride roughshod over you whenever I deem it necessary.”

  “You’ve gone insane.” I brushed past him to go into the house but his firm grip on my upper arm halted me.

  “You don’t get shot on my watch,” he bit out, anger burning in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. It was not my intention.”

  “Staying put like I told you to would have reduced your chances far beyond mere intention.”

  “I think you’ve made your point.”

  “Not yet, I haven’t, woman. You need a good seeing-to.”

  “You overgrown Neanderthal sonofa…!”

  “Finish that and I’ll turn you over my knee right here, right now, while those men look on.”

  “I’ll…!”

  “Going to jail will be worth it. Now, I have business with these men, and then we are going to sit as a family and have dinner, because your brother is beside himself. He needs you next to him for the next handful of hours because all he understands is that you got hurt. But understand me, Chandler: at the end of the evening we are going up to my place and we are going to have a very serious discussion about what ‘stay put’ means. By the time I’m through with you, you will have a keen understanding of that concept, I assure you. Now get in that house before I paddle you on principle alone!”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. He uttered the threat a bit too loud for my taste, and besides, this was going in a direction I did not like. I didn’t want him mad at me, for God’s sake. I held on to enough anger for all of us, times ten.

  All through dinner, Charlie sat next to me, leaned into me like we were attached at the arms. Several times I put my arm around him, patted his shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay, honey. I’m okay.”

  “I fainted,” he said with pride as we stood at the sink doing the dinner dishes.

  “I know! I’ve never fainted in my life.”

  “Well, I have! This morning, early!”

  I laughed, the first one I had all day. “I know, honey. I was there.”

  Charlie got quiet. “Who’d hurt the cattle? What kind of a person…?” Tears swam in his eyes and he rubbed his chest. I knew that pain, the kind that sat low and deep and defied explanation.

  “The kind we will never understand, and I don’t want you to understand. People are good, Charlie, but some folks…they’re missing something.”

  “I’m missing something,” said he.

  “Who told you that?”

  “I dunno. I just heard it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to find Maria, see if she was listening. She was out of the room. We were alone for the time being.

  “Let me tell you something: we’re all missing something. But you, my friend…you are a most amazing young man. Your capacity to love and to accept people and to see and feel things here…” I placed my hand over his heart. “…that many, many others can’t or don’t is a gift.” My nose stung. “What you think you’re missing, you more than make up for in every single way that counts. Don’t let anyone put that light out in you. Never.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, his voice raw as he grabbed me in a bear hug.

  “Me, too, honey. Me, too.”

  “Did you say goodnight?” I was sitting on the couch, staring into the fire and lost in thought when I felt my chin being lifted by a warm, calloused finger.

  “Yes. Maria’s settling him now.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  I sighed dramatically and stood. “I think I’ll just stay here…”

  Jed raised a brow and I didn’t bother finishing that statement.

  “Fine,” I huffed.

  The drive up to his place was a quick one, mostly because Jed gunned the truck up the hill. Jed came around and opened the door, took my hand and set me on my feet.

  “I’m not sorry,” I said.

  “Ha. No kidding.”

  “Why is the idea that your lover refuses to allow you to go off into the great unknown alone a foreign concept to you?”

  “Why is doing as you’re told a foreign concept to you?”

  “It’s not, when it makes sense.”

  “You got shot, Chandler. An inch either way—you heard the sheriff. And your brother could have caught a bullet. Did you think about that?”

  “Every second since it happened.”

  “Good. Come on in, and I’ll make sense of it all, just for you.”

  He didn’t speak again until I was standing in the middle of his bedroom. His hands went to his hips. “Would you like to take your pants down, or should I?”

  I stood in a corner of Jed’s bedroom, naked from the waist down. Jed sat on one of the saddle stools from the collection along his breakfast bar. It’s former home was the corner where I now stood—irrelevant, of course, in the scheme of things. A worn brown belt hung limply from Jed’s hand.

  Things had gone horribly from the get-go. Never one to come to a spanking with grace, I came to presenting myself bare-assed with about as much cooperation as a cow off to the slaughterhouse. I fought and I struggled, I cursed and I sassed and I name-called. All that landed me in the corner after the spanking was over. The belt Jed held in his hand came after I elbowed him in the ribs—twice. Now I stood facing the corner like a naughty child, and I was as petulant as I could be about it.

  “Would you like to come out of the corner now, or do you plan to throw another tantrum?”

  I folded my arms and affected the most petulant pose I could summon.

  “Chandler Elise.” His tone was quiet, and very serious. I huffed out a breath and relaxed. “Come here.”

  A jolt soared through me despite my throbbing nates. That voice, so sweet and so kind after his stern lecture, delivered while spanking my bare butt, then deathly silent as he whipped his belt off and tanned my hide, sent the throb between my legs into overdrive, and now it pulsed in concert with my flaming ass. He tipped my chin up.

  “That hurt!” I hissed through tears.

  Announcing the fact was unnecessary. I bleated and howled through it all.

  “You had it coming,” he said, raising his brows. “And it didn’t have to hurt so bad, did it?”

  He went still as soon as my elbow connected. I knew I’d ratcheted us up to another level by the way the air in the room quite simply vanished. Jed reached between us and I heard the distinctive clink of metal as he undid his belt. A line of fire slid along the bare skin above my waist as he tugged the strip of leather through the loops of his jeans. He folded the belt in half and wound the buckle end once around his broad hand. I’d met Jed’s belt under much friendlier terms, and I hadn’t minded it, but it soon became my mortal enemy forever and ever.

  I fought him anew with the usual flair and maneuvers women have been using for centuries to avoid physical correction. It helped not one iota. He removed my pants and panties before he laid eight inches of leather across my ass and thighs a couple dozen times. And it had been a perfectly foul experience. No, this one didn’t have to hurt as much as it did, dammit.

  I shook my head with a pout.

  “Would you like to sit in my lap, or do you need more spanking, young lady?”

  “In your lap, please.” I felt childish, petulant, borderline furious.

  “Good decision.”

  “Good decision,” I mocked. Jed turned me around and cracked the folded belt across my sit spots. Hard.

  “Anything else?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come with me, then.” He led me to the rocker by the fireplace. He sat and pulled me ont
o his lap, my ass in his crotch and my legs over his. He set me on my side and pulled a chenille throw over me.

  “We’re going to work on your behavior, before, during and after a spanking.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You’re acting very spoiled right now. Would you like to feel my hand on your bare bottom again?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Then sit here and settle down. This can be over if you want it to be.”

  “I don’t like these kinds of spankings,” I announced unnecessarily.

  “Then mind me when I tell you to stay put.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Yeah? How does your bottom feel?”

  “Don’t gloat.”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to make you see reason.”

  “I dislike your methods.”

  “Then mind me.”

  “Meh.”

  “You’re sassing again. What can I do to settle you down?”

  “Don’t spank me like that ever again.”

  “That’ll be up to you.”

  “That’ll be up to you,” I mocked.

  Jed grabbed my chin and forced my head up. His brows flew up into his hairline. He looked cartoonish. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Laughed.

  “I’m very mad right now,” I managed after I resumed my pout.

  “I’m not, and I’m the one who should be mad.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Gonna tie you to my hip.”

  “Roping and herding will be hard.”

  “Lock you in my room…”

  “People will talk.”

  “Spank you daily, just so you know you’re mine.”

  “People will wonder why I walk funny and you don’t.”

  “Curb your tongue by giving that sassy mouth of yours a good fucking.”

  “You need to attend church more often.” Jed chuckled. “Are you terribly mad?” I asked, eyes still wet.

  “I’m disappointed.”

  Well, fuck me. That was worse than the hardest spanking. Something sat low and deep inside me, and I recognized it as guilt. I’d done something else he asked me not to do, and I wondered now if my actions in town had anything to do with what happened to us this morning. I shook it off, because it was too much to think about while across his lap with my nethers afire.