The Man From Montana

Carefully, she picked up the curled, yellowed photograph on the passenger seat. Tom McKee in army green with his Vietnam platoon, a giant man dependent on a wheelchair since 1970. Tom, Purple Heart recipient, had lost his legs and left arm saving the ragtag remainder of his men from Hells Field. A battle that had been swept under the military’s carpet for over three decades. She wanted to beat the dust from that carpet, make her dad proud.

But according to the locals, Tom rarely came into town. His son was the McKee they knew. Midthirties and widowed, Ashford McKee ran the Flying Bar T and guarded his family’s privacy like a jackal on a fresh kill.

Ash. The man she had to get through to get to Tom. They said he resembled his father. Tall as a pine, silent as a forest.

And keeper of the Flying Bar T gates.

Tossing down the photograph, Rachel took a slow breath. We’ll see.

Stepping on the accelerator, she headed for the snowy peaks shimmering with sunlight, for the pine and forest man.

She would get her story, come hell or Ash McKee.

Beyond the fence lines, fields undulated over hill and knoll and into gullies. “I hope you’re worth it, Sergeant Tom,” she muttered. “I hope you’re worth every shivering second Charlie and I have had to endure in this backwater hole.”

Ten days she and her seven-year-old son had been in Sweet Creek, Montana. Ten days in this godforsaken land of snow and bone-freezing temperatures. And in this final week of January, with spring still a couple months away, the warmth of her previous job in Arizona was a frosty memory.

But all would be worthwhile if she got this story. Tom would be the last of seven vets she had interviewed over the years, Sweet Creek the conclusion to the no-name towns she and her little boy would have to pretend was home.

Was it too much to hope Tom McKee would rent out his guesthouse as Old Joe said? Maybe. She had been living on hopes and wishes for years; might as well add one more.

In a fenced pasture, she saw cows huddling around piles of hay on the frozen ground, while long-haired horses munched from bins in lean-to shelters. Evidently, the sunlight belied the eight below temperature.

She turned onto the last stretch of road and saw a dark, writhing mass a quarter mile in the distance. Soon, the mass became a herd of Black Angus flanked by a pair of horses with riders: a man wearing a quilted navy coat and a deep brown Stetson, and a young woman bundled in a red parka and wool hat. Two black-and-white border collies swept back and forth across the road, instinctively herding any animal selecting a different direction.

Rachel pulled behind the riders and tooted her horn; the herd’s stragglers broke into a trot, tails aloft.

The man scowled at her car. The woman—no, teenager—smiled. Rachel recognized the girl from their meet last Monday. Eager to write a weekly high school column for the Rocky Times, Daisy McKee had come to the newspaper during the girl’s forty-minute lunch break. A few words about her proposed column and she was out the door, rushing back to school.

A nice kid and Ashford McKee’s daughter.

Rachel looked back at the man astride a mammoth horse the color of dense fog. Ash McKee. Big and commanding as the far-reaching, pristine landscape on which he lived. Four days after her arrival, she had noticed him at the feed and seed, intent on getting whatever it was he was buying into the bed of his truck.

Darby at the coffee shop had pointed him out. A coup for Rachel, who, as a reporter, needed to know her town, and right now Sweet Creek was that town. Most essentially, she needed to ferret out details about the McKees; they were her reason for securing the position at the Rocky Times, a twenty-page weekly aptly named during the Depression Years, and now reaching conservative ruralists throughout Park County.

The herd trotted toward the ranch’s wide-spanning iron gates, neither McKee nor Daisy making an effort to move the cattle aside. Rachel rolled down the window. “Excuse me,” she called to the man.

He whistled between his teeth at one of the dogs.

“Excuse me,” she called again. “Mr. McKee? Could I get by?”

Cold, dark eyes turned her way. “Can you wait? We’re a hundred yards from the pasture gate.”

Yes, she could wait. If he’d ask nicely.

“I’m looking for Tom McKee,” she said to the broad rump and ground-reaching charcoal tail of his horse. “Would you know if he’s home?”

The man reined the beast around on its hind legs, its tail swinging like a banner on a battle field. Two leaps and the animal danced beside her car.

“Who wants to know?” McKee demanded.

He was cowboy through and through, down to the scuffed, worn brown boots he wore. She shivered. A modern-day Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. All he needed was the six-shooter.

“Rachel Brant. I’d like to talk to him.”

The horse was magnificently male and powerful, crowding her spot on the road. Safety inside her vehicle seemed trivial in lieu of those commanding legs, that mighty chest. And she wasn’t just thinking of the horse.

“What about?” McKee snapped.

“That would be between me and Mr. Tom McKee, sir,” she said, her tone friendly but firm.

“Not when it comes to reporters.”

Surprise struck. “How did—” Had he recognized her in Sweet Creek on a given moment, watched her as she’d watched him?

“Entire town knows,” he said, reading her perplexity.

Of course. She’d experienced enough of small-town America to know how the grapevine worked with six-hundred-and-ninety-two souls. New face arrives, phone lines hum, coffee klatchers drain buckets of dark roast—and tongues waggle.

From her position in the car, she had a clear view under his low-brimmed Stetson. Down a smooth, elegant nose the man’s aloof eyes bored into hers.

Perhaps if she got out of the car.

She looked at the powerhouse horse shifting its lethal hooves. Come on, Rachel. You’ve dealt with difficult situations all your life.

Opening the door, she climbed out. The wind blew her short hair into her eyes, flapped her coat hem around her tall boots. The scent of horse, cow and leather rivered across her nose.

McKee’s willful jaw was dark with overnight stubble. His scowl deepened. “Go report somewhere else, Ms. Brant. You’re not welcome here.”

Beneath its rider the huge stallion pranced, the saddle creaking with the man’s weight, the animal’s energy. Frothy clouds gusted from red nostrils and long white teeth champed the bit. Headgear metal jingled. A knight’s horse. A rogue knight’s horse.

Along with her fanciful imagination a thrill traced Rachel’s skin. “I’ll let Tom make that decision.”

“His decision’s no different than mine.”

She clutched the panels of her coat. “According to you, maybe. But I’d like to hear him say it.”

“Tom doesn’t like reporters.”

No, you don’t like reporters. So she had heard in town. Could she blame him? She knew about his wife dying in a car accident five years ago. A reporter chasing a mad-cow story in the community. A Rocky Times reporter. Driving too hard, too fast, taking a curve like the reckless kid he was. The impact had killed McKee’s wife instantly. The reporter walked away.

McKee’s eyes were tough, remote and held her in a vice.

Hugging herself against the cold, she looked up at him, a man of dominion in an expanse of blue. Somehow, she had to win over this warden of the Flying Bar T.

“Please. I’m looking for a temporary place to live until I can find something in town. I understand your ranch has a guesthouse for rent. I’m willing to pay summer rates.” Anything to get Charlie out of that seedy Dream On Motel.

McKee leaned forward, arm on the saddle horn, and her skin flushed under his stern survey of her body. “The cottage is closed,” he said, then slowly straightened in the saddle. Under him, the big horse spot-danced like a Lipizzan, its mane swaying a foot below its neck while McKee controlled the reins with one large, gloved hand.