Christmas On His Ranch: Maggie's Dad / Cattleman's Choice

“You mean, Powell’s known the truth for nine years?” Antonia asked, aghast.

“I didn’t say he believed Dawson,” the other woman replied gently, averting her eyes.

“Oh. Yes. Well.” Antonia fought for composure. How ridiculous, to think Powell would have accepted the word of his enemy. He and Dawson never had gotten along. She said it aloud even as she thought it.

“Is it likely that they would? My stepfather beat old man Long out of everything he owned in a poker game when they were both young men. The feud has gone on from there. Dawson’s land borders Powell’s, and they’re both bent on empire building. If a tract comes up for sale, you can bet both men will be standing on the Realtor’s doorstep trying to get first dibs on it. In fact, that’s what they’re butting heads about right now, that strip of land that separates their ranches that the widow Holton owns.”

“They own the world between them,” Antonia said pointedly.

“And they only want what joins theirs.” Barrie chuckled. “Ah, well, it’s no concern of ours. Not now. The less I see of my stepbrother, the happier I am.”

Antonia, who’d only once seen the two of them together, had to agree. When Dawson was anywhere nearby, Barrie became another person, withdrawn and tense and almost comically clumsy.

“Well, if you change your mind about the holidays, my door is open,” Barrie reminded her.

Antonia smiled warmly. “I’ll remember. If Dad can’t come down for the holidays, you could come home with me,” she added.

Barrie shivered. “No, thanks! Bighorn is too close to Dawson for my taste.”

“Dawson lives in Sheridan.”

“Not all the time. Occasionally he stays at the ranch in Bighorn. He spends more and more time there these days.” Her face went taut. “They say the widow Holton is the big attraction. Her husband had lots of land, and she hasn’t decided who she’ll sell it to.”

A widow with land. Barrie had mentioned that Powell was also in competition with Dawson for the land. Or was it the widow? He was a widower, too, and a long-standing one. The thought made her sad.

“You need to eat more,” Barrie remarked, concerned by her friend’s appearance. “You’re getting so thin, Annie, although it does give you a more fragile appearance. You have lovely bone structure. High cheekbones and good skin.”

“I inherited the high cheekbones from a Cheyenne grandmother,” she said, remembering sadly that Powell had called her Cheyenne as a nickname— actually meant as a corruption of “shy Ann,” which she had been when they first started dating.

“Good blood,” Barrie mused. “My ancestry is black Irish—from the Spanish armada that was blown off course to the coast of Ireland. Legend has it that one of my ancestors was a Spanish nobleman, who ended up married to a stepsister of an Irish lord.”

“What a story.”

“Isn’t it, though? I must pursue historical fiction one day—in between stuffing mathematical formulae into the heads of innocents.” She glanced at her watch. “Heavens, I’ll be late for my date with Bob! Gotta run. See you Monday!”

“Have fun.”

“I always have fun. I wish you did, once in a while.” She waved from the door, leaving behind a faint scent of perfume.

Antonia loaded her attaché case with papers to grade and her lesson plan for the following week, which badly needed updating. When her desk was cleared, she sent a last look around the classroom and went out the door.

Her small apartment overlooked “A” mountain in Tucson, so-called because of the giant letter A that was painted at its peak and was repainted year after year by University of Arizona students. The city was flat and only a small scattering of tall buildings located downtown made it seem like a city at all. It was widespread, sprawling, sandy and hot. Nothing like Bighorn, Wyoming, where Antonia’s family had lived for three generations.

She remembered going back for her mother’s funeral less than a year ago. Townspeople had come by the house to bring food for every meal, and to pay their respects. Antonia’s mother had been well-loved in the community. Friends sent cartloads of the flowers she’d loved so much.

The day of the funeral had dawned bright and sunny, making silver lights in the light snow covering, and Antonia thought how her mother had loved spring. She wouldn’t see another one now. Her heart, always fragile, had finally given out. At least, it had been a quick death. She’d died at the stove, in the very act of putting a cake into the oven.

The service was brief but poignant, and afterward Antonia and her father had gone home. The house was empty. Dawson Rutherford had stopped to offer George’s sympathy, because George had been desperately ill, far too ill to fly across the ocean from France for the funeral. In fact, George had died less than two weeks later.

Dawson had volunteered to drive Barrie out to the airport to catch her plane back to Arizona, because Barrie had come to the funeral, of course. Antonia had noted even in her grief how it affected Barrie just to have to ride that short distance with her stepbrother.

Later, Antonia’s father had gone to the bank and Antonia had been halfheartedly sorting her mother’s unneeded clothes and putting them away when Mrs. Harper, who lived next door and was helping with the household chores, announced that Powell Long was at the door and wished to speak with her.

Having just suffered the three worst days of her life, she was in no condition to face him now.

“Tell Mr. Long that we have nothing to say to each other,” Antonia had replied with cold pride.

“Guess he knows how it feels to lose somebody, since he lost Sally a few years back,” Mrs. Harper reminded her, and then watched to see how the news would be received.

Antonia had known about Sally’s death. She hadn’t sent flowers or a card because it had happened only three years after Antonia had fled Bighorn, and the bitterness had still been eating at her.

“I’m sure he understands grief,” was all Antonia said, and waited without saying another word until Mrs. Harper got the message and left.

She was back five minutes later with a card. “Said to give you this,” she murmured, handing the business card to Antonia, “and said you should call him if you needed any sort of help.”

Help. She took the card and, without even looking at it, deliberately tore it into eight equal parts. She handed them back to Mrs. Harper and turned again to her clothes sorting.

Mrs. Harper looked at the pieces of paper in her hand. “Enough said,” she murmured, and left.

It was the last contact Antonia had had with Powell Long since her mother’s death. She knew that he’d built up his purebred Angus ranch and made a success of it. But she didn’t ask for personal information about him after that, despite the fact that he remained a bachelor. The past, as far as she was concerned, was truly dead. Now, she wondered vaguely why Powell had come to see her that day. Guilt, perhaps? Or something more? She’d never know.

She found a message on her answering machine and played it. Her father, as she’d feared, was suffering his usual bout of winter bronchitis and his doctor wouldn’t let him go on an airplane for fear of what it would do to his sick lungs. And he didn’t feel at all like a bus or train trip, so Antonia would have to come home for Christmas, he said, or they’d each have to spend it alone.

She sat down heavily on the floral couch she’d purchased at a local furniture store and sighed. She didn’t want to go home. If she could have found a reasonable excuse, she wouldn’t have, either. But it would be impossible to leave her father sick and alone on the holidays. With resolution, she picked up the telephone and booked a seat on the next commuter flight to Billings, where the nearest airport to Bighorn was located.

Because Wyoming was so sparsely populated, it was lacking in airports. Powell Long, now wealthy and able to afford all the advantages, had an airstrip on his ranch. But there was nowhere in Bighorn that a commercial aircraft, even a commuter one, could land. She knew that Barrie’s stepbrother had a Learjet and that he had a landing strip near Bighorn on his own ranch, but she would never have presumed on Barrie’s good nature to ask for that sort of favor. Besides, she admitted to herself, she was as intimidated by Dawson Rutherford as Barrie was. He, like Powell, was high-powered and aggressively masculine. Antonia felt much safer seated on an impersonal commuter plane.

She rented a car at the airport in Billings and, with the easy acceptance of long distances on the road from her time in Arizona, she set out for Bighorn.

The countryside was lovely. There were scattered patches of snow, something she hadn’t thought about until it was too late and she’d already rented the car. There was snow on the ground in Billings, quite a lot of it, and although the roads were mostly clear, she was afraid of icy patches. She’d get out, somehow, she told herself. But she did wish that she’d had the forethought to ask her father about the local weather when she’d phoned to say she was leaving Tucson on an early-morning flight. But he was hoarse and she hadn’t wanted to stress his voice too much. He knew when she was due to arrive, though, and if she was too long overdue, she was certain that he’d send someone to meet her.

She gazed lovingly at the snow-covered mountains, thinking of how she’d missed this country that was home to her, home to generations of her family. There was so much of her history locked into these sweeping mountain ranges and valleys, where lodgepole pines stood like sentinels over shallow, wide blue streams. The forests were green and majestic, looking much as they must have when mountain men plied their trade here. Arizona had her own forests, too, and mountains. But Wyoming was another world. It was home.

The going got rough the closer to home she went. It was just outside Bighorn that her car slipped on a wide patch of ice and almost went into a ditch. She knew all too well that if she had, there would have been no way she could get the vehicle out, because the slope was too deep.

With a prayer of thanks, she made it into the small town of Bighorn, past the Methodist Church and the post office and the meat locker building to her father’s big Victorian house on a wide street off the main thoroughfare. She parked in the driveway under a huge cottonwood tree. How wonderful to be home for Christmas!

There was a decorated tree in the window, all aglow with the lights and ornaments that had been painstakingly purchased over a period of years. She looked at one, a crystal deer, and remembered painfully that Powell had given it to her the Christmas they’d become engaged. She’d thought of smashing it after his desertion, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The tiny thing was so beautiful, so fragile; like their destroyed relationship. So long ago.

Her father came to the door in a bathrobe and pajamas, sniffling.

He hugged her warmly. “I’m so glad you came, girl,” he said hoarsely, and coughed a little. “I’m much better, but the damn doctor wouldn’t let me fly!”

“And rightly so,” she replied. “You don’t need pneumonia!”

He grinned at her. “I reckon not. Can you stay until New Year’s?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have to go back the day after Christmas.” She didn’t mention her upcoming doctor’s appointment. There was no need to worry him.