Montana Dreaming

“The snow.”

“Huh.” He only rested for three, four minutes at most, and then started out again. The trail was steep and the snow was heavy and wet, sticking to the snowshoes. The next time he halted for a breather McCutcheon bent over himself once more in a prolonged coughing fit and then raised his head and looked around.

“It’s getting light,” he said.

Guthrie stared out across the valley. He could see the ranch buildings along the river, a grouping of black rectangular shapes against the brightness of the snow, toylike in the distance. “So you own it now,” he said softly. “The whole of it.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not a developer?”

“No,” McCutcheon explained, again struggling to catch his breath. “The land can never be divided up or developed. It’s written right into the deed.”

“Conservation easements?”

McCutcheon nodded. “Lots of ’em. But that’s fine with me. I like it just the way it is.”

Twenty minutes later the two men had snowshoed into the dawn, and by the time the sun had lifted over the jagged shoulders of the Beartooth Range they had intersected Jessie’s trail in the snow where it left Dead Woman Pass and headed down toward the road.

“Dammit!” Guthrie said, at once wildly relieved that she was okay and bitterly disappointed that she had chosen to take the shortcut and had missed them. “She can’t be too far ahead. She’s aiming for the road. It’s closer than the ranch, and she might be able to flag down a vehicle…if one should happen to pass her by.”

McCutcheon nodded in response, too winded to speak. The rising sun was rapidly warming the air and softening the snow. By the time they reached the valley floor they would be slogging through a foot of slush and stripping off their heavy parkas.

Hopefully by then they would have caught up with Jessie Weaver, because McCutcheon wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep pace with the younger man.

JOE NASH HAD FLOWN for Yellowstone HeloTours for nearly ten years, but he still felt that peculiar churn of excitement in his stomach when he got a call from the state police or the warden service to ask if he’d volunteer for a search-and-rescue flight. If the chopper wasn’t carrying clients he always agreed, and sometimes he did even with clients on board. Let his boss fire him if he wanted; seat-of-the-pants search-and-rescue missions sure beat hauling around a bunch of rich tourists or egotistical chest-beating hunters, pointing out Old Faithful or a herd of elk from one thousand feet up.

This time it was Ben Comstock who radioed him with the request. Joe liked the warden, though they had their differences of opinion regarding certain game laws. From what Comstock had told him, this mission would be particularly challenging, for it involved mountain flying, and mountain flying was always tricky. Sudden updrafts and downdrafts could toss the chopper around like a toy. Comstock climbed into the passenger seat and strapped himself in, then studied the map he’d laid out on his lap.

“We’ll head straight to Katy Junction and then up into Dead Woman Pass from this direction here, and fly a routine grid over Montana Mountain,” he said over the noise of the rotor chop, tracing his forefinger along the proposed route. “It’s rough country. The last person who got himself lost in that wilderness was never found.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve called me,” Joe said laconically.

“She’s been missing since yesterday afternoon, but she’s probably okay. She didn’t come by that reputation of hers by lying down and quitting.”

“She? Who’d you say we’re looking for?”

“Didn’t. It’s Jessie Weaver.”

“No foolin’? Jessie Weaver. I’ll be damned. I read about her latest scrap in the papers last summer, how that ornery longhorn bull just up and charged out of the brush, shouldered into her horse and put him down. How she jumped clear but her rifle was pinned under the horse, so she took off her hat and whipped the bull in the face with it to drive him away. One hundred pounds of Montana cowgirl facing down a pissed-off longhorn bull, and her with a broken collarbone to boot. By damn, but that took nerve! Met her once or twice, but it’s been awhile. Hope it won’t be too much longer till we see her again.”

Joe fed a stick of gum into his mouth and tried not to look too eager. Weaver, huh? As he recalled, she was kind of a good-looking girl. Must be some kind of rich, too. Maybe there’d be a big reward!

He’d find her, all right. He had no doubts about that. None at all. Joe Nash always found who he was looking for. He had the keenest eyes in the sky. That was why Comstock consistantly tried to engage his help when anyone needed finding. That was why big-game hunters paid him big bucks to fly them to some remote camp in the fall. He not only took them where they wanted to go, but he pointed out all the enticing possibilities along the way. Hell, he could spot a porcupine in a spruce tree from five thousand feet up and count the quills in its tail. Finding lost persons was a lark compared with that.

Which was why Comstock never raised an eyebrow when, less than an hour later, Joe spotted the bear. He was making a low-level run up into the pass, and as he delicately maneuvered the big chopper at an altitude that would have spooked most pilots and caused the FAA to ground him for life, he spied the grizzly, a good half mile beyond where the snowshoe tracks intercepted, then over-laid, the deeper track left by Jessica Weaver. He nosed the chopper toward the spot where the bear had disappeared into the heavily timbered draw.

“See it?” he said, sunglasses reflecting the rugged gandeur of the mountain slopes. Comstock shook his head, and Joe angled the nose a bit more. “There. To the left of that dead snag, near the base of the slope. That’s a horse. I’ll eat my hat if it isn’t. That bear killed a horse yesterday. We spooked it just now as it was feeding. See how the bear dragged all those branches over the horse? Snow’s melting pretty good now. That’s how I spotted the legs.”

Comstock shook his head again. He saw the dead snag at the base of the slope but still couldn’t find the horse, let alone the branches or the horse’s legs. Truth was, he hadn’t even seen the bear.

“Yessir,” Joe Nash said as he pivoted the chopper to follow the human tracks back down the mountain. “That big old grizzly killed himself a horse! I bet Jessie Weaver had a run-in with the bear, too. From where she spent the night to where that dead horse lay is less than half a mile. Oh, yes, I bet she’s got a scary tale or two to tell.” He got on the radio to let his boss know that he might be a little late bringing the big metal bucket home to roost.

SHE RESTED FREQUENTLY on the long hike out to the road. Walking downhill was hard on her knees, and the wet snow was slippery. It was warm out, too, though the warmth was more than welcome after the frigid night. Blue was getting heavier by the moment, though in truth she was a small dog, the runt of her litter, and weighed scarcely more than thirty-five pounds. When Jessie stopped she sank onto her knees and took the weight of the dog on her upper thighs to give her arm a rest. Her pace was much slower than she had estimated. By the time she made it to the road the morning traffic—what little there was of it—would already have come and gone; but there might yet be a plow truck, and there was always the mail carrier. Even if no one happened along, the hard, even surface of the road would make for an easier trek.

She walked for ten minutes, rested for five. Thought about all the things left to do before leaving the ranch. Wondered how she’d ever get Fox and those mares back. Wanted not to have to think about any of that. Wished there were nothing left to do but eat a hot meal, drink a gallon of coffee and sleep until all her mental and physical aches and pains had disappeared.

Yet so much was unresolved within her. She still had no idea where she was going to go, what she was going to do. Sure, she could bring the mares down, load them into the big stock trailer, throw her personal gear into the truck. But then what? Sit there with the engine idling until inspiration struck? She had some money now, and the bulk of it would go toward finding a new home for herself. But just where would that be? She couldn’t stay in Katy Junction. She couldn’t bear the thought of living near the ranch, knowing it was no longer her home. It would be better just to pull up stakes completely and find someplace far away.

Canada, maybe. British Columbia. Big tracts of land were for sale up there, some of them pretty reasonable. She’d looked at real estate ads the past few months, but a part of her hadn’t accepted that she would have to leave home. A part of her had clung to the foolish hope that some miracle would save the ranch and save her. And a miracle had saved the ranch.

But not her, because the ranch wasn’t her home anymore.

Guthrie’s sister, Bernie, had begged her to stay in Katy Junction. “Dan Robb’s place is for sale,” she’d said. “It doesn’t have any creek frontage, but it has good deep wells and a great big ark of a barn. It’s been on the market forever and you could probably pick it up for a song.”

Jessie liked Bernie a lot. She missed working for her at the Longhorn. She missed the friendly faces, the banter, the feeling of community she had found there. Once her father had died, she discovered that living out on the edge of nowhere was at times lonely and daunting. Mostly, she was too busy to dwell on it much; nevertheless, the hours she spent working at the café had been as much for social as for financial reasons.

Still, as much as she liked the folks of Katy Junction, staying would be too painful, especially once Guthrie got back. Because as sure as the Canada geese left Alaska in the fall, Guthrie Sloane would be hard on their heels, and she really didn’t feel up to facing him. The pain was still there; the raw wounds their failed relationship left had hardly even begun to heal. No, it was time to move on.

Jessie heard a sound and knelt to listen and to rest. The wind was blowing through the pines, but she heard it again. A voice. Way out in the middle of nowhere, a human voice. Familiar.

Very familiar!

And it was calling her name!

MCCUTCHEON HAD SPENT far more enjoyable times than this, but as his mother once told him a long time ago, “Son, sometimes you just have to keep dancing even when the music’s bad.”

He followed Guthrie Sloane as he double-timed it up and down and over and around, never stopping to rest, never pausing to regroup, just shuffling along tirelessly, a young man on an urgent mission. McCutcheon followed until his lungs screamed for air and the muscles in his legs burned in protest and the muscle in his chest warned him to slow down.

“I see her!”

Guthrie’s words jerked McCutcheon from the misery of his exhaustion. He stopped, his legs immediately cramping, and gazed down the wooded slope. Guthrie was forging on toward the dark shape that moved far below them. “Jess!” Guthrie belted out, as strong and deep as if he hadn’t just covered ten miles in the mountains on snowshoes. “Jess!”

McCutcheon rubbed his burning thighs and watched as Guthrie charged down the slope, kicking up spumes of wet snow. The girl turned to look behind her. She was carrying something in her arms, something heavy enough to make her kneel when she stopped. But it was Jessie Weaver, and she was all right. McCutcheon felt the tightness in his stomach ease. Everything would be okay.

JESSIE COULDN’T BELIEVE her eyes. Blue cradled in her arms as she knelt, she watched as a man plunged recklessly down the slope toward her. She recognized him even from this great distance. Hard not to. She’d known him for more than half her life. Knew the way he moved, the sound of his voice, and if that wasn’t enough, she recognized his tall, broad shouldered build, and that hat. His broad-brimmed brown felt Stetson. The same hat she’d snatched from his head and flung into the creek the day they’d had the argument about her working for a veterinarian the summer of her sophomore year at college.

“Arizona!” he’d said, rounding on her in disbelief. “Jess, do you have any idea how far away that is?”

“It’s a good opportunity for me. I’m lucky to have been chosen. The practice specializes in horses.”

“Why can’t you work with Doc Cooper? He does horses. He does cows, pigs, sheep. Hell, he does it all. And he’d love to have your help.”

“I want to learn everything I can, Guthrie. I need to. This lady doc’s real smart, real good at what she does. I’m going. I’ve already accepted the offer. I’m sorry if you don’t approve and I realize it’ll be hard being so far apart.”

“Hard?” he’d said. “I don’t know how I’ll ever survive without you.”

She’d lost her temper at him then. She’d reached up and snatched that hat from his head and flung it into the creek. “Dammit, Guthrie Sloane, all you ever think about is yourself!” Not exactly true, of course, but she’d been angry.