Thankful For You

Nick was about to offer his condolences when Dallas made a sudden right-hand turn onto a heavily pitted dirt road. They immediately drove through a deep dip in the road and this time, Nick left his seat and had to put his hand on the roof of the Bronco in order to stop his head from smacking up against it.

“It’s a bit bumpy,” Dallas acknowledged, but didn’t slow down.

Nick wanted to ask her to ease up on the gas pedal, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It seemed out of step for the man to ask the woman to take a rocky road more gently. If this cowgirl could take it, so could he. He simply hoped that the road to Lightning Rock was short. He had spent a couple of summers at Bent Tree when he was a kid; Bent Tree held thousands of acres, so there were many areas of the ranch he’d never seen. Lightning Rock, fifty acres of high ground, was new to him.

A couple of S curves later, Dallas stopped in front of a rickety fence with a gate that was half off its hinges.

“We’ll walk it from here.” Dallas turned off the engine. “We’ve been slammed by rain lately—Bessy’s too heavy. She’s bound to get stuck in the muck.”

Nick nodded his understanding. He hadn’t exactly planned to be walking around in the mud, but he could adapt. He took off his jacket and rolled up the long sleeves of his light blue shirt. Together, they walked through the narrow opening between the sagging gate and the rotted fence post. As far as the eye could see, grassy knolls abutted hills with craggy gray and white rock pinnacles, and farther still, majestic snowcapped mountain ranges. It felt as if he had stepped into paradise on earth.

“Look.” Dallas pointed to a flat expanse of land, knee-high with golden, willowy brush. A small group of moose was moving slowly through the grassland.

Nick spoke his thoughts. “I feel like I’ve just discovered heaven on earth.”

“You have.” Dallas continued on her way. “I can’t believe you’re gonna sell it.”

Nick didn’t answer immediately. After a minute, he said, “My father has a responsibility to do what’s best for my aunt’s trust.”

Dallas disagreed. “Selling off the crown jewel of Bent Tree can’t be what’s best.”

Nick heard her but didn’t continue with that topic. The fifty acres of pristine Montana land that was Lightning Rock had been heavily disputed by the Brand family since the untimely passing of his paternal grandfather. His uncle Hank had inherited the bulk of Bent Tree Ranch; any parcels of land he hadn’t inherited, he had purchased outright from his three siblings. Hope, his only aunt on his father’s side, who had died young from breast cancer, had inherited Lightning Rock. Upon her death, his father had become executor of her estate and trust, including managing control of the fate of Lightning Rock.

“There she is...” Dallas pointed to a tall cluster of rocks jutting out from the apex of a mound a short distance away. “Lightning Rock.”

“Do you want to head that way?” she asked.

Nick nodded. He had been curious about the namesake of this parcel of land. It was an anomaly—a cluster of rocks that had been struck by lightning so many times that the quartz veins that crisscrossed the surface of the rocks had been turned into petrified glass. As they approached the rock formation, Nick realized that the family of rocks was much larger than he had originally thought. Lightning Rock was as wide as a midsize car and at least twelve feet in height.

“There’s a perfect spot to sit down at the top.” Dallas put her foot into a foothold and started to climb Lightning Rock.

Nick, although he hadn’t really climbed anything since he was a teenager, followed her lead. At the top of Lightning Rock, there was an indentation that was an ideal place to sit and watch nature’s drama unfolding all around the landmark.

“Look at all of this fulgurite.” Dallas traced her fingers along the veins in the rock. “It’s everywhere.”

Every time lightning had struck the cluster of rocks, the silica, or quartz, had turned to glass. From the sheer amount of fulgurite that could be seen with the naked eye, Nick imagined that the rocks must have been struck by lightning hundreds of times. This oasis, tucked away in the middle of Bent Tree Ranch, had inexplicably drawn the wrath of lightning for generations. For a little bit longer, they sat together on top of Lightning Rock, and then Dallas took him to the small homestead that her father, Davy, had leased from the Brand family. The homestead, tucked away in a forest at the base of a mountain, included a barn, a small cabin, a single-wide mobile home, an old yellow school bus and several antique trucks that were in various stages of decay. Dallas took the key to the mobile home off her key ring and handed it to him.

“You can go in if you want. I’ll wait out here,” she said.

Davy Dalton had died in the mobile home, so Nick could understand why Dallas didn’t want to go in. He unlocked the door and entered the odd world of the rodeo legend. In that later part of his life, he had become a hermit of sorts. He didn’t have visitors and he only went in to town when supplies were too low to be ignored. The trailer was piled high to the ceiling with papers and magazines and tin coffee cans and rodeo trophies. There was a small path leading to the back of the trailer, but Nick didn’t explore past the foyer.

“Your father was quite the collector.” Nick pulled the door of the trailer shut behind him.

Dallas half laughed, half snorted. “That’s a nice way of puttin’ it.”

Nick slipped his sunglasses back on. “Is the cabin in the same shape?”

Dallas nodded. “And the barn and the bus and the shed. I don’t know what drove him to do it, but no matter how many times I badgered him into cleanin’ up the place, he’d just fill it up again. I finally just gave up and let him live his life how he wanted.”

Nick spent a little longer walking the homestead, assessing the expense of cleaning up the property. He didn’t know the whole story of Davy’s final years, but it was sad to think of a rodeo legend ending his life on such a sad note. The last stop Nick made was the three antique Chevy trucks embedded into the earth.

“These are real heartbreakers,” Nick said to Dallas when she joined him.

Dallas had her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans. “Pop always meant to get around to restoring one of these for me. He was going to fix up this middle one and use the other two for original parts.”

“What year are they?”

“Nineteen fifty,” Dallas said. “Nothing more than a heap a’ junk now.”

For Dallas, these trucks were almost her undoing. It was hard work not to let her sorrow show at being back at Lightning Rock now that her father was gone. Her stomach felt like it was jumbled up in a giant knot and tears of sorrow had been trying to push through ever since she first turned down that familiar dirt road. If she didn’t get out of here quick, she’d end up bawling in front of Nick Brand, and that didn’t suit her at all.

Dallas turned away from the trio of old trucks. “Ready to head back?”

She was relieved when Nick gave a slight nod of his head; she got the impression that he had seen enough to get a sense of the place: it was a mess.

On the way back to the Bronco, Nick said to her, “I was really expecting to deal with your brother. Won’t he want any of his father’s trophies?”

“You won’t see Brian within a hundred miles of this place,” Dallas said bluntly. “He hated Pop almost as much he hated life on the rodeo circuit. Blames Davy for all of his problems. Last I heard, he was working for Lowe’s in the garden department.”

Dallas smacked a bug that had landed on her arm, flicked it off, while she continued talking. “I always knew that I would be the one to tie up the loose ends of Davy’s life. I’m his daughter, and I loved him like crazy, so...that’s that...”

For the rest of the walk back to where they had parked, neither of them spoke. It wasn’t until they were back inside the Bronco that Nick asked, “What’s on your agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Practice.” Dallas made a quick U-turn and stepped down on the gas. “You can watch if you want.”

* * *

He wasn’t the only man who wanted to watch Dallas practice barrel racing. A small group of cowboys were hanging on the fence or leaning on the fence, which surrounded the practice arena. Nick positioned himself on the opposite side of the fence and waited for Dallas to start.

“You Angus’s boy?”

Nick turned slightly to the left to see if the question had been posed to him. An older man with severely bowed legs, deep wrinkles carved into his face and a thick black mustache peppered with white stood next to him.

“I am.”

The cowboy offered his hand. “Tom Ketchum.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Your father and I go way back.” Tom joined him at the fence. “You take after him.”

Nick caught a glimpse of Dallas walking out of one of the many Bent Tree barns leading a sleekly built blue roan gelding over to the arena. She swung into the saddle and started to work the mare to warm her muscles. Once Dallas started to ride in the arena, all eyes were on her.

“She draws a crowd,” Nick said to Tom.

“That she does.” Tom chuckled. “I’ve trained her off and on since she was a kid, and it’s always been that way.”

The more Nick watched Dallas ride, the more he wanted to watch. She had that “it” factor—that intangible quality that makes the world stop and take notice without ever really knowing why.