Montana Dreaming

CALEB MCCUTCHEON HAD her truck fixed by midmorning and departed for Katy Junction, but it seemed as though the better part of the day was gone. The best part was early morning, because then the whole of the day stretched before her, as long and golden as the sun’s early rays slanting across the valley. There were always half a million tasks to complete before the sun disappeared behind the westward mountain range. So many things to do, and only so many hours of daylight. These had been her days for as long as she could remember, an earthy ferment of timeless cycles, and it was hard to imagine that only three more remained. Time, which had always been immeasurable here, was quickly running out.

She had to bring the broodmares down from the high country. She’d gotten four of them into the home corral already, including the one that had broken her arm, but seven still ranged up in the foothills where the graze was good, although hard frosts had already yellowed the grass. She sorely missed old Gray, that big handsome stallion that had kept the mares under close guard and brought them down each fall to the safety of the valley. Lightning had killed him in an early-summer thunderstorm—just one more blow to send her reeling, one more wrenching pain to twist an already broken heart.

One of the mares would be hard to root out, a wily mare called Fox, who had lived up to her name on more than one occasion. She was with foal, and impending motherhood made her even cannier. Fox just plain didn’t like being fenced in. She was wild at heart, wild to the core, and to run free in the high country was all she asked of life. Jessie would gladly have gifted her that freedom, but those days had ended for Fox. No more the high lonesome for that tough Spanish mare. It was time for both of them to adjust to a new life. Jessie didn’t know which of them would take it the harder—her or Fox.

She saddled Billy, and with the little cow dog trotting at heel, she set out along the river, keeping to the river trail until she intersected the old Indian trace that led up into the foothills. Centuries ago the Crow Indians had worn this trail from the river up over the shoulder of Montana Mountain, through Dead Woman Pass and down to their winter encampment on the eastern flanks of the Beartooth. Some said their ghosts still haunted this trail, though Jessie had never chanced upon one. Nonetheless, she felt a deep connection to the storied mysteries of the historic trace, and rarely followed it without remembering a distant and very different time.

A crash in the brush nearby caused her heart to leap. The dog dashed in pursuit and she caught a blur of mahogany, a flash of horn, before dog and steer disappeared into the thicket. She gave a short, sharp whistle. “Blue! Come heel!” She wasn’t for chasing after longhorn steers. They were as wild as the deer, and she held them in the same esteem as the other wild creatures of the land. They had come up from Texas and remnants of her great-great-grandfather’s herd still roamed, shy and reclusive, as tough and enduring as the harsh wilds in which they lived. Over the past century they’d interbred with the eastern breeds, but there was no mistaking a cow with longhorn blood running in its veins.

“Come on, Blue. Never mind them wild steers. Find Fox. Find that wily old mustang!” The dog looked up at her bright eyed, ears cocked and head tipped to one side. Fox. She knew the name. That little cow dog was smarter than most humans. “Find Fox, Blue! The rest of ’em’ll be real close.”

The dog spun around and dashed off. Jessie reined Billy to follow. Two hours later they had climbed nearly one thousand feet up into the pass, and still no sign of the broodmares. Worse, more clouds were building over the mountain range to the west and the air had a keen edge. It tasted of snow and promised an early winter. “Damn that mare!” she muttered, reining Billy around an outcrop of rock as the trail climbed higher. “She knows! Somehow she knows I’m after her, and she’s on the run!”

Past noon and Jessie was wishing she’d had the fore-thought to pack a thermos of hot coffee and a sandwich. Normally she would have, but nothing had been normal of late, including the fact that the ranch’s larder was bare. If Steven hadn’t brought that food by last night, she’d have gone to bed on an empty stomach. He was such a sweet and thoughtful man.

She paused to rest Billy in a sheltered hollow, swinging down out of the saddle and loosening the cinch. Lord, but it was getting chilly! The wind had picked up and the sun had long disappeared. She shrugged more deeply into her coat and led Billy, keening her eyes for any movement as they climbed, scanning for tracks and wondering where Blue had gotten to. They’d have to turn back soon if they were going to make it to the ranch by dark. She hated to give up the search, but she hated worse the idea of spending a night out unprepared with another storm blowing in.

Another mile passed, another chilly hour. Jessie tightened the saddle cinch and again swung aboard Billy. “Blue!” she shouted. She put two fingers in her mouth and let loose a piercing whistle that was whipped away on the strong wind. “C’mon, Blue! Time to head home!” Blue knew better than to range too far afield, but something had lured her astray. Still and all, that dog could find her way home in a blizzard. Jessie wasn’t overly worried. She was reining Billy around, when she heard the dog’s faint barking. She stood in the stirrups, craning to place the sound so shredded by the wind. There—down in that draw!

Billy was as surefooted as a mountain goat, and when Jessie pointed him down the slope he sat back on his haunches like a giant dog and slid in a scatter of loose gravel until the slope flattened out into a thick coniferous forest that darkened the ravine. Blue’s barking became much clearer once they were out of the wind. It had a frightened, desperate pitch, and Jessie kept Billy moving as quickly as she dared as apprehension tightened her stomach. “Blue? Hang on, girl! I’m coming!”

Suddenly, Billy shied and blew like a deer. “Easy, easy now… Whoa now…” Jessie soothed, swinging out of the saddle before he could jump again. “It’s all right.” She tried to lead him forward, but he threw his head back and balked. This was unusual behavior for an old pro like Billy, and Jessie didn’t force him. She knew that a horse could hear and smell far better than a human. She ground-tied him and continued toward Blue’s bark. Not too far beyond where she’d left the horse, she spotted the dog. Blue was lying in a small gravelly clearing fringed with dense growth. She was lying very still, with her front paws stretched out in front of her. Behind her the ground was scuffed. At the sight of Jessie the dog struggled to rise but failed.

“Blue!” Jessie crossed to her quickly and dropped to her knees. “Oh Blue! What’s happened to you!” But even as she spoke, she intuitively knew. Blue had tangled with something—mountain lion, bear?—and had come out the poorer. Why had she attacked it, and more to the point, where was the creature now? Even as she rapidly assessed the dog’s injuries, Jessie was taking in her immediate surroundings, the hair on her nape prickling with fear.

Blue was badly hurt. She had half a dozen deep wounds to her side and flank where claws had raked her. The span of the claw marks was far bigger than what a mountain lion would have inflicted. It had to have been a bear. The dog had lost a great deal of blood and was too injured to move any farther—it looked to Jessie as if Blue had dragged herself quite a ways before finally collapsing. “It’s okay, Blue. Easy, old girl. I’ll take care of you. You’ll be all right. We’ll get you back home safe.”

She needed the supplies in Billy’s saddlebags. There was a good first-aid kit, and her rifle was in the saddle scabbard, where it always rode snugly, just in case. She rose to her feet, scooping the cow dog into her arms as she did. “Hold on, Blue. We’ll get you home. You’ll be okay!” Then she walked swiftly back to Billy.

The bay gelding was standing right where she’d left him, but he was trembling, sweated up, rolling his eyes and obviously in a state of near panic. “Whoa, now. Easy, Billy… Whoa now.” She laid Blue down and eased toward the horse. Speaking softly, she took up the trailing rein and pressed her palm between his wide and frightened eyes. Slid that same hand over the crest of his neck and smoothed his long dark mane. “Easy, Billy. I know you’re smelling that bear and I know it scares the dickens out of you, but Blue’s hurt bad. We have to help her….”

Even as she spoke she was reaching for the saddlebag that held the first-aid kit. She had the buckle undone and her fingers were pushing the top flap back, groping for the cordura bag secured within. “Easy now—”

Without warning, Billy let out a scream of fear, a horrible sound that only a horse in sheer terror can make, and at the same moment he reared on his hindquarters and bolted for home. One second the gelding was a big solid presence right beside her; the next he was the sound of hooves drumming hard in a gravel-scattering uphill run and she was lying flat on her back where she’d landed when his shoulder had knocked her down.

The bear was close. Very close. A grizzly, the same bear that had hurt Blue.

Jessie scrambled to her feet, cradling her broken arm. The cast protected it from the constant insults she heaped upon it, but getting knocked down by Billy had hurt. Considering all the other problems she faced, she barely noticed the pain. She moved quickly to where she had left Blue, who was staring with bared fangs and throaty growls at the thick wall of brush behind her. She wasted no time hoisting the little cow dog into her arms again, and then, cradling her as best she could, she turned tail and ran. Oh, she’d read all the Yellowstone advisories that running from a bear was the very worst thing a person could do, but run she did, as fast as she could while carrying Blue.

She chose the same path Billy had taken and she didn’t look back. Adrenaline gave her a speed, power and endurance she would not ordinarily have possessed. She ran with the dog in her arms until every fiber of her body protested and she could run no farther. She was back on the ridge trail and heading for home, and the wind was demonic, screaming out of the west at gale force. It was beginning to snow, and darkness was no longer a distant threat but a near reality.

She gasped for breath, sinking to her knees with Blue in her arms. She had to get below the tree line, out of this killing wind! She wasn’t going to make it home, not by a long shot, but they couldn’t spend the night up here in the pass. They’d freeze to death, and then historians would have to rename it Dead Women Pass. Morbid thought. She weighed her options and pushed to her feet. Her injured arm ached unbearably beneath Blue’s weight. “It’s okay,” she soothed the hurt and frightened dog. “It’s all right. I’ve got you, Blue. You’ll be okay….”

She staggered along, her body bent into the wind. Down and down they went, until finally the brunt of the wind was turned by the thickly forested slope. It was nearly full dark now, but she kept moving for as long as she dared, and then finally she knelt and laid Blue down. She had chosen a good spot to hole up. A blowdown had upended its great tangle of roots and earth, making a fine wind-break. She broke the dead branches from it in the last of the fading light and kindled a tiny fire at its base, more out of a need for light than for the little warmth such a small fire would cast. Blue was sluggish, shocky. She was in pain. Who knows what sort of internal injuries she might have sustained from the bear’s blows?

The little cow dog had shared a working partnership and a special friendship with Jessie for eight years, and was irreplaceable. Blue mustn’t die. She couldn’t die. Jessie used her bandanna to bind the deepest wounds on the cow dog’s thigh, unzipped her coat and drew the shivering dog against her. Then she zipped the coat back up with the dog inside it. She fed the last of the firewood onto the small fire and sat back, cradling the trembling dog in her warmth.

It was going to be a long, cold night.

CHAPTER THREE

GUTHRIE SLOANE HAD BEEN driving since well before dawn, but he was too close to home to stop now, in spite of the darkness and the near-whiteout conditions. He had a good four-wheel-drive truck and the big plow rigs were out, keeping the drifts pushed back. He’d make Bozeman inside of an hour, and with any luck would be hauling into Katy Junction just shy of midnight.

He felt as if he’d been gone forever. When he’d left this past spring he’d wanted to go. Couldn’t wait to put as many miles as possible between Jessie Weaver and him. But over the summer his hurt and anger had faded, to be replaced by a kind of chronic depression. He’d worked hard, putting in sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, at the fish processing plant. The job was inglorious, but it paid very well and kept him busy, kept him from dwelling on his miseries.

That is, until he got the letter from his sister, Bernie, back in Katy Junction. “Jessie needs you,” she’d written. “She’d never admit to it, but it’s true. Please come home!”

The day the processing plant shut down for the winter Guthrie stood on the wharf smelling the salt tang of the harbor, admiring the mountainous coastline, the rugged beauty that was Alaska, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to go back to Katy Junction. That very day he’d closed his account at the bank, thrown his collection of moldering camping gear into his truck and headed south.

He had no illusions about returning home to Jessie’s welcoming arms, no matter what Bernie had written. Jess had made her position clear and was not the sort of woman to say anything she didn’t mean. “We don’t share the same dreams, Guthrie,” she’d told him at their parting. “Lately all we do is fight. I think it’s best we don’t see each other anymore.”

Or something to that devastating effect.

Jessie’s dreams were her wild Spanish mustangs and somehow preserving some small part of the rapidly shrinking range for them to roam free. Her dreams were grand. His were far more humble and modest. He dreamed of marrying Jess and proving up that little claim he’d staked for himself along Bear Creek. He wanted to run a few head of cattle, put some acres to good alfalfa hay, tinker with farm machinery and work for his sister’s husband. He wanted to raise a few towheaded, chubby-cheeked, milk-toothed babies, love his woman, have a good dog, a good horse and a dependable truck.

His dreams fell far short of Jessie’s aspirations. She wanted to save Montana, and was driven by a desperate passion that intimidated Guthrie. Sure, he saw where she was coming from. Who wouldn’t? Didn’t they all love the vast rolling plains and towering mountains that boldly defied distance and description?

Guthrie downshifted to slow his truck as he came up behind a small foreign car. Visibility was poor, snow was building up on the road surfaces and his drive south would be arduous, but it would be worth it, because when he arrived, no matter what time it was, he would be home. Finally, he would be back where he belonged.

MCCUTCHEON HAD BEEN standing on the ranch house porch for twenty minutes. It was the third time this day that he had made the long drive from town to talk to Jessie, ask her if she’d thought about his offer, tell her that she couldn’t pass it up because where else would her horses have as much running room and feel so much at home as right here on their own range?

It was snowing hard, and had been since midafternoon. Jessie had ridden up in the high country that morning to look for her wild mares and she wasn’t back yet. And it was dark. Full dark. On a stormy night when an unexpected blue norther was piling down wind-driven snow at the rate of an inch an hour. He checked his watch again, its dials luminescent, and swore softly. This wasn’t how he’d imagined this day to be…standing on her porch—his porch, dammit—his stomach tied in knots.

Over the sound of the wind came another sound out of the darkness—that of horse’s hooves muffled in six inches of fresh snow. “Jessie!” he shouted. He switched on his flashlight and shone it into the whirling snow. “Jessie Weaver!”

There was no answer to his call, but the footfalls came on steadily. A horse, plastered in wet snow, plodded up to the porch rail as if he’d walked up to it hundreds of times before. The animal was exhausted. McCutcheon panned the horse with his flashlight. His initial relief plummeted at the sight of the empty saddle.

“Oh, no,” he said. He stepped down the stairs and brushed the snow from the saddle. One of the bridle reins was broken. One of the saddlebags was unbuckled, but still full of gear. He picked up the trailing rein and led the exhausted gelding into the pole barn, where he stripped off bridle and saddle it, rubbed the horse down with a burlap sack, pitched him some hay and water and a bait of sweet feed before making for his car and town to tell the authorities that something very bad had happened to Jessie Weaver on this wild and stormy night.

“DON’T YOU DIE on me, Blue,” Jessie said, her voice inaudible to her own ears over the moan of the wind. “Don’t you die on me! You’ve been with me too long to leave me, and I need you now more than ever. You stay right here with me and we’ll keep each other warm and safe.”

She wasn’t frightened by the dark, but the cold scared her. It had the teeth of winter and its bite was painfully sharp. She had dressed as she always did for a high-country ride in fall, and could not lay blame on her choice of clothing. But an empty stomach didn’t help. A mug of hot chocolate and a big bowl of spiced beef and beans would see her through this night.

Guthrie!

Jessie jerked at the image that came so suddenly out of the darkness. The unexpected memory flooded through her and galvanized her into wakefulness. She tightened her grip on Blue and fought to quell the butterflies that fluttered through her stomach and made it hard to draw breath. Why on earth was she thinking about him now, of all times? Why was his face so clear to her—its strong, lean planes, the way it felt beneath her fingertips, the sensual roughness of his twelve-hour stubble, and his mouth, so firm and masculine…

Those images usually only came to her at night in her sleep. During the day she could keep them at bay, overshadow them with the anger she felt at his abandoning her in the midst of such difficult times.

“Baloney!” Jessie said, startling the dog. Blue raised her head and whined. “It’s all right, honey,” she soothed. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay….”

Guthrie was gone. He’d run off and headed north. Alaska, she’d heard. One bad argument between them and he’d turned tail and bolted, and he’d been gone nearly five months. If that was the sort of man he was, soft and full of butter, she was better off without him. Sooner or later her heart would realize that, then those dreams of Guthrie that tormented her nights would quit.

Jessie shivered with the cold, her trembling matching that of the injured dog she cradled beneath her coat. “I have to stay awake,” she said to Blue. “Can’t fall asleep. Don’t want to dream those dreams anymore….”

“WHAT IN HELL is taking them so long to get here!”

Caleb McCutcheon was mad. He paced the floor of the Longhorn between the counter and the door—a space too small for his big strides, which irritated him even further.