Montana Standoff

“You’re still seeing that guy? Is it true that he’s been married three times already?”

Molly felt the heat rise into her face. “John’s a very nice man. The file, please?”

“Of course he is,” Tom said. “He’s a very nice man with three divorces under his belt. If you want my opinion, you should be thanking Brad for coming down with the flu and getting you out of that date. And there’s still time for you to discover how good a real man can be. I’ll be around for another week.”

“The file,” Molly repeated, and Tom tossed it on her desk with a smirk.

“You lose,” he said.

Molly frowned at Tom’s departing back. “I don’t think so,” she muttered under her breath, and then began scanning the first page. John wouldn’t be happy. He’d been looking forward to hearing the quartet play. It was almost four o’clock, and he’d no doubt be teaching a music class. She glanced at the phone. No point in putting it off. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate until she made the call. She picked up the receiver and dialed. His secretary answered on the first ring.

“John’s in the middle of a private lesson with a rather important client,” the snooty woman informed her. “Are you quite certain that you wish for me to disturb him?”

“Yes, please,” Molly said with as much haughty loftiness as she could inspire. “It’s actually really important.” She drummed her fingers on her desktop as she waited. And waited…

“Hello?” John’s voice was brusque.

“John, it’s Molly. Listen, something’s come up and I have to attend a town meeting in Moose Horn at seven tonight. I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone our dinner, and as for the recital—”

“Moose Horn?”

“Yes. It’s a small town about a hundred miles south of here.”

There was a brief, chilly silence. “You know I’ve been planning this evening for quite some time. The violinist was a student of mine.”

“Yes, I do know, and I’m so sorry, but Brad’s sick and I’ve been asked to cover for him.”

“Tell them you can’t.”

Molly hesitated. “It’s my job, and besides, this is the first real assignment I’ve had. I need to—”

“I see,” he interrupted. “Well, my student is waiting for me.”

She flinched at the sound of the phone slamming down and gingerly replaced her own receiver. This wasn’t her first glimpse of John’s temper, but she decided then and there that it would be her last. She sighed, focused on the first page again and began to read. At five p.m. she replaced the papers neatly into the file folder and tucked it into her briefcase. Time to go. But the brief study she’d given the file hadn’t scratched the surface of the vast scope of this mining project. She only hoped the townsfolk wouldn’t notice her ignorance. The project ought to be a fairly easy sell. After all, how could anyone protest the creation of hundreds of good-paying jobs and a greatly increased tax base?

She took the elevator down to the lobby and exited the building. Her vehicle was parked in a reserved space, one of the few benefits that came with being the newest member of the firm. As always, she admired her sleek red sports car as she walked briskly toward it, leather briefcase in one hand, keys in the other. She deactivated the alarm and the door locks, and moments later was leaving Helena and heading to Moose Horn.

Molly had moved to Montana after she’d graduated Yale law school and passed the bar exams. Her family was from Boston, a mix of Scottish/Irish immigrants that included a few cops, a few priests and an assortment of outlandish and sometimes feuding clan members who kept life interesting even from so far away. She loved them dearly and missed them all very much, but enjoyed living in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. She felt like a pioneer of sorts, being both the first bona fide lawyer as well as the first Ferguson to head West. It gave her a legendary status within her family, one that she tried only halfheartedly to dispel on her trips home at Christmas and in June, for her mother’s birthday.

Helena was an okay town to live in. Tiny, compared to Boston, but it had all the necessary cultural endowments to keep from being considered…well, to keep from being a town like Moose Horn. Where on earth had they ever come up with that name? She sighed and slipped a CD into the player, cranked the volume and let the little red sports car hit cruising speed on Interstate 15.

STEVEN YOUNG BEAR SLIPPED away from the wedding reception at the Bozeman Grand Hotel with a feeling of relief. The party was still cranking along in high gear and no one noticed his early departure, certainly not the bride and groom, who were swaying in each other’s arms on the dance floor. He didn’t like weddings. He didn’t particularly enjoy dressing up, but his sister Pony had asked him to attend. “It would mean a lot to Ernie and Nana if you came.”

And so, he’d attended the wedding of Nana’s sister’s granddaughter Leona to that fancy-talking owner of Jolly John’s car dealership in Livingston. Jolly John Johnson was the grandson of Lane Johnson, the senator who had been instrumental in destroying half of the Crow tribe’s buffalo herd under the pretense of protecting the white man’s cattle from brucellosis. Unlike cattle, the buffalo had never been proven to carry brucellosis, but Johnson had ordered the slaughter just to hurt the tribe, and hurt them he had. Of course, that had been twenty years ago and Jolly John had had nothing to do with it. He’d been seven years old. But Steven remembered it vividly. Remembered the sounds of the rifles, the stink of the carcasses, the dark vultures clouding the skies.

And now Jolly John, grandson of Indian-hater Lane Johnson, had married a full-blooded Crow. Life was full of such ironies.

Steven exited the building, surprised and gratified to see that the sun hadn’t yet set, and slung his tuxedo jacket over his shoulder as he walked to the parking lot and his dark green Wagoneer.

Moments later he was heading for home. His mood was melancholy. He was tired of weddings. There had been too many of late. An old friend earlier that spring. And the fall before that, Jessie and Guthrie’s. He doubted he would ever find the kind of happiness they had found, and the older he got, the less likely it seemed.

Fortunately, Pony had. Strange, how things had worked out for her. Steven would never have imagined his traditionalist sister marrying a white man, yet seeing her with Caleb McCutcheon for the past few months had made him realize how right they were for each other, and in less than a month, they, too, would be married. He was glad for Pony, even if it did mean he’d have to get dressed up in a tuxedo again. She deserved to have the kind of life that Caleb could offer her—the love and the happiness and the freedom from want.

All was truly as it should be. He repeated this mantra silently as he drove, but by the time he reached Gallatin Gateway and turned down the long drive that ended at the little cedar post-and-beam house, he was ready for some time alone to nurse his lonely heart. The last thing he wanted was company, but the first thing he saw as he approached the house was a strange vehicle parked in his drive, and two people, a man and a woman, sitting on his step.

They stood and watched quietly as he got out and shut the Wagoneer’s door. The woman was a girl, really, dressed in blue jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, her boyishly short dark hair framing a thin face. The man was older, in his late forties, a lean back-woods type with thick glasses and serviceable work clothes.

“Wow,” the girl said as he approached. “I guess you were at a fancy party.”

“A wedding.” Steven stopped in front of them. “I assume there’s a reason you were sitting on my step. I’m StevenYoung Bear.” He reached out to shake their hands.

“Rob Brown,” the man said. “This is Amy Littlefield. We’re both from Moose Horn. I’m the first selectman there. We’ve been waiting here for three hours, hoping you’d get back in time.”

“In time for what?”

Brown glanced at his watch. “There’s a town meeting being held at seven tonight to discuss the proposed New Millennium mine on Madison Mountain. Are you familiar with that project?”

“Somewhat,” he hedged, guessing what was to come.

“We…that is, the citizens of Moose Horn…had hired Sam Blackmore to represent us at this meeting.”

“He’s a good attorney,” Steven nodded, thinking that they’d come to get his opinion on their choice of representation. “Experienced. He’ll steer you in the right direction.”

“Then, you haven’t heard?”

Steven recognized the undertones of darkness in those four words and felt the weariness within him deepen. The day had been long, and it wasn’t over yet. “I’ve been gone all afternoon.”

Brown shifted uneasily. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Sam was killed this morning in a single-car crash. He was coming down the access road on Madison Mountain when he lost control of his vehicle.”

“Sam’s dead?”

Brown nodded. “Was he a good friend of yours?”

“I knew him.” Steven rubbed the back of his neck, stunned. He pictured Sam the way he’d last seen him, not three weeks ago, on the courthouse steps in Bozeman. Balding, overweight, kind brown eyes and a slow-spoken honesty that made people rethink their negative attitudes toward lawyers. They’d shaken hands and spoken briefly, then gone their separate ways. Sam had a wife and three grown children. “What caused the crash? Do the police know?”

“I don’t know. They were still investigating the scene when Amy and I went up on the mountain. We couldn’t get anywhere near the site.”

Steven dropped his hand, stared out across the valley. Wondered if Sam had felt any different when he got out of bed on the morning of his death. “Hard to believe.”

“He was so nice,” the girl said. “He really cared about what was happening. And now…”

“Condor International, the mining company that owns the New Millennium project, is sending their geologist to talk to us about the proposed mine,” Rob Brown explained. “It isn’t really an official meeting. It’s more of a courtesy on the part of the mining company, but we wanted to show them we meant business when we came out opposed to this mine. We thought the best way to do that was to hire a good lawyer. So we collected money, held bake sales and bottle drives, sold raffle tickets for a donated Hereford calf. We raised five hundred dollars and then we contacted Sam, who agreed to represent us.

“We gave him all our information. He went up on the mountain several times himself in the past four weeks to see what was happening. I paid him the retainer just this morning and I also gave him all the water samples we’d taken from the area streams. I believe all of it was with him when he crashed his car.”

“I see.” The great weariness mired Steven’s thoughts. He wanted nothing more than to go inside his peaceful little house and close the door. He wanted to tell these earnest people to go away and leave him alone. He wanted to hide away from the mean, ugly world. Sam Blackmore was dead. He’d died this morning, while Steven was readying himself for Leona’s wedding to a slick car salesman who had those hokey radio commercials….

“So you need someone to speak for you at this meeting that’s being held in…” he glanced at his watch “…a little less than an hour, but you have no money. I suppose you asked around and somehow found out that I was the lowest-paid attorney in the state of Montana, so you staked out my house.”