Read the book: «Montana Dreaming»

“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

Montana Dreaming
Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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 McCutcheon’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 behind 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.”

“Stubborn and prideful just about sums the two of ’em up. But I’m with you, Bern. Seems foolish of them to throw all them years of friendship over this ranch sale. Still and all, so long as Guthrie stays away nursing his wounds, there ain’t no chance in hell of us hearin’ any wedding bells. Didn’t he take a job up near the North Pole somewheres?”

“Valdez, Badger.” Bernie sighed with exasperation. “That’s in Alaska. And the job was just seasonal. My guess is he’ll be hauling back into town any day now.” Bernie topped off his coffee, did the same for Charlie and went briskly about her business.

“Well now,” Badger said. “Seems to me Guthrie’s probably going to have a lot of competition when he gets back.”

“How’s that?” Charlie emptied two sugar packets into his mug. “Jessie hasn’t looked at another man since she was twelve, unless you count that Indian lawyer, but I didn’t see no sparks flyin’ there.”

“That don’t mean much. Injuns keep their sparks hid pretty good, and lower your voice, you old fool—he just walked in the door! Anyhow, sparks or no, every available gonad-packin’ money-grubbing bundle of testosterone in the county’s going to be courtin’ that gal, now that she’s a wealthy woman. Don’t hurt none that she’s prettier’n a speckled pup, either.”

Badger finished the last of his pie and pushed his plate away, carefully smoothing his white mustache. “Jessie can separate the wheat from the chaff, but if I was Guthrie Sloane, I don’t guess as I’d have pulled foot and run off to Alaska after that big fight they had. A woman’s heart is kind of like a campfire. If you don’t tend it regular, you’ll lose it, sure enough.”

STEVEN BROWN DID NOT return directly to Bozeman. After reading over the final papers with McCutcheon, he went to the little diner that Katy Junction supported in a big way and ordered an early dinner, keeping to himself and ignoring the gossip circulating in the small room. When he had finished his meal, he requested a large container of soup to go. Bernie raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Don’t you even want to know what kind of soup you’re ordering?”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be good.” He nodded politely.

Bernie smiled, in spite of her resolve to remain aloof. After all, Jessie’s friendship with the Indian lawyer was one of the reasons she and Guthrie had parted company. “Today was the closing on the ranch, wasn’t it?” she inquired. “I was hoping she might stop in afterward. Is she all right?”

He said nothing, his stoic demeanor a wordless reprimand.

Bernie’s shoulders drooped and she shook her head. “No, of course she isn’t. Stupid question. Poor girl, my heart goes out to her. You wait right here and I’ll get the soup. I have some fresh sourdough bread, too. How about a loaf of that and a big wedge of apple pie? It’s still warm from the oven.”

She gathered the components of a good, home-cooked meal and packaged them in a small cardboard box, not deluding herself that the lawyer was taking the meal back to Bozeman with him. No; he’d be delivering it to Jessie, to make sure she had something to eat after the traumatic event she had just endured. It was kind of him, but Bernie wished he wasn’t doing it. She ladled the hearty soup into the two-quart container and silently but heatedly summoned her absent brother: Why aren’t you here, Guthrie? Didn’t you get my letter? Jessie needs you right now! Why aren’t you here!

STEVEN DROVE to the Weaver ranch wondering how he would find Jessie, and if she would resent his presence.

Jessie drew him in a way that no other woman ever had. It seemed as if all his life he had been unconsciously waiting for her, and on that fateful day when she had walked into his Bozeman office, he had sat back in his ergonomic padded executive chair, struck speechless by the sight of her. She was possessed of the same strength and beauty of spirit as the wild, mountainous expanse she loved and had fought so hard to protect. She swept through the door and brought into his cluttered space all the freshness and freedom of the wind that blew across the lonely mountain valleys and the high, snow-crowned peaks.

“I need your help,” she had said, standing before his desk with her hat in hand, dressed in faded denim jeans and a white cotton shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled back, her long black hair drawn into a thick plait that hung clear to her waist, her dark eyes lustrous with turbulent emotion and her lithe figure vibrant with life.

He had risen from his chair, compelled by her very presence to leave off the frittering details that comprised his logically structured and suddenly stifling lifestyle. The urge to tear off his silk tie, suit jacket and vest, to take her hand and flee the office he had worked so hard to get, flee the tangled city streets, the noise and the chaos of the white man’s world and return with her to the place of his ancestors, became really overwhelming. She had reawakened in him the mystery and wonder he had felt as a young boy on the Crow Indian reservation when counting all the colors of a Rocky Mountain sunset.

“I need your help,” she had said, and with those four powerful words she had altered the very fabric of his carefully constructed life.

The ranch house was dark. He parked where he usually did and walked up the porch steps, bearing the small box of food in his arms. Knocked on the door and heard her little cow dog moving about, but nothing else. He looked toward the pole barn. Had she gotten back all right? He was about to set the food down and go check for her horse, when the door opened.

“Jessie?” he said. “It’s Steven. I brought you some food.”

The silence stretched while he waited patiently and then she said in a low, weary voice, “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

“Hunger will come. This isn’t the end.”

“It feels like the end.”

Steven stepped past her then, not waiting for her to invite him inside. The room was cold and dark. He fumbled for the table he knew was there and set the cardboard box down. “Light the lamps,” he said.

She did so reluctantly as he went about the business of kindling a fire in the kitchen’s woodstove. While it caught he found a pan and poured the soup into it, then laid the sourdough loaf atop the cast-iron stove to warm. “I’ll come back Sunday morning. Early. I’ll bring help. Pete Two Shirts manages the Crow Indian buffalo herd. It’s the largest herd in the country—over fifteen hundred head. Remember? You said you’d like to see the buffalo someday. Our bi’shee, grazing over the land, like the old times.

“Pete’s a good man with horses. We’ll ride up and find your mares for you,” he said, reaching down a bowl from a shelf and setting it on the table. “I’d come tomorrow, but Pete works at the agency. I’d come alone, but I’m not good with horses. Anyway, there’s no rush. McCutcheon says to take all the time you need. We’ll get your truck fixed, too.”

Eyes grave, he took her ice-cold signing hand in his. He turned it over and saw the shallow cut she had drawn across her palm. “When I go, you eat something. Tend to yourself. Get some sleep. This isn’t the end. It is a beginning.”

He left her then, because he knew she needed solitude in which to grieve for what she’d lost.

CALEB MCCUTCHEON couldn’t sleep. He lay in his bed, fingers laced behind his head, and listened to the rain. The luminous dials on the bedside clock read 2:00 a.m. No traffic passed the little motel some twenty miles northwest of Katy Junction. He had chosen to stay close to the ranch rather than return to Bozeman, and had brought a bottle of champagne with him from the city, planning to celebrate after the signing, but he felt no desire to celebrate now. All he could think about was that girl.

He hadn’t expected to meet Jessica Weaver and be completely swept up in her turmoil. Steven Brown had told him bits and pieces about her—that she’d lost her mother when she was seven years old, that she’d inherited the ranch when her father died a year ago, that he’d left her with insurmountable debts and that she’d struggled to make ends meet, waitressing at the local diner nights, working the ranch by day. She’d raised fine bloodstock—Spanish horses—and sold the foals before they hit the ground, but it hadn’t been enough. Too big a ranch, too much work, way too much debt. Too much for one woman alone.

He’d waited several months to sign, and now the historic Weaver ranch belonged to him…and he didn’t feel the least bit good about it. Could he have done things differently? Would anything have made it easier for her? The money certainly hadn’t eased her pain. That much was obvious when she fled the lawyer’s office without the bank check.

McCutcheon sighed. Jesus, he was getting soft, pitying a woman he’d just made wealthy even after all her enormous debts had been settled. “She chose to sell the ranch to me,” he’d said to those gathered for the signing. “She could’ve kept it by selling off parts to developers—they’ve been after it for years. She could’ve kept the house, the outbuildings, enough land to run a small herd of horses. But she didn’t. She chose to sell.”

The words had echoed in the room and sounded false even to his ears, for he was fully aware that Jessica Weaver had made the greatest of sacrifices. Rather than see the land divvied up in lots, she had ensured that it would remain whole for eternity. She had done this the only way she’d known how: by writing numerous conservation restrictions into the deed, thereby taking a tremendous loss in land value.

On her own, in a last-ditch move of sheer desperation, she had approached a local chapter of the Rocky Mountain Conservancy with her plight, and there she had found Steven Brown, a full-blooded Crow Indian and an environmental advocate, whose legal knowledge had made him a perfect choice for the Conservancy’s chairman. Brown had phoned him to ask if he might be interested in looking at the property, since the Conservancy did not have the funds to purchase it outright. Through previous contacts, Brown had known of his interest in buying a big ranch. He explained that the land holding was a watershed of great ecological value embracing critical plants and wildlife. As well, it provided an important buffer to the Greater Yellowstone system.

Were there any buildings on the property? he had inquired of Brown. Oh, yes, he was told. Some of them dating back to the 1800s. Brown’s description of the ranch had intrigued him enough to schedule a flight within the week to view the property. One look and he was sold on both the ranch and the girl, Jessie Weaver. That she loved the land was apparent to anyone who watched her gaze out upon it. That she would give it up in the manner she had only proved the depth of that love. It must have been a terribly difficult thing for her to do.

As if that weren’t enough, just before the signing she had broken her arm. How would she fix her truck, load her things, round up her little band of broodmares all by herself? She’d ridden ten miles in that rainstorm to make it to the property closing. She was tough, but she needed help. Maybe he could arrange for some for her. Or maybe… Maybe he could provide it himself. Hell, why not? He’d fixed his share of beaters in his teen years. He could repair her truck easily enough. He could do a lot for her. Maybe then he’d feel the joy he thought he’d be feeling right now.

In the morning. He’d go in the morning, first thing. Somehow, he’d make things right with Jessie Weaver.