“Here we go again.”

Guthrie sighed and laid down his spoon. “Say it. I was stifling you. I was jealous and possessive and all I wanted was for you to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.”

Jessie flushed. “That’s all true.”

Guthrie pushed aside his bowl…sat very still for a few moments, as if gauging her outburst. He stood. “I was hoping things might’ve changed between us, but I guess they haven’t. I’m sorry you feel the way you do. I’m sorry you believe I ever meant to stand in your way.” And he moved to leave. “I’ll be back to help in the morning.”

“I don’t need your help,” Jessie said. “You ran off to Alaska at the first sign of trouble, didn’t you?”

“You were the one who told me to go, Jess. Remember?” He strode out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. The cataclysmic events of the past year had hollowed her out, emptied her of the ability to feel anything remotely soft or vulnerable.

Anger. Of late, it was the only thing she could feel. Terrible pent-up anger about everything. That her father had gotten ill. That the medical bills had skyrocketed. That the insurance company had raked him over the coals. That the only way she could save the land she so fiercely loved was to give it to someone else.

Worst of all, she felt a terrible anger at Guthrie Sloane for abandoning her when she needed him most….

Dear Reader,

On a recent business trip to Montana I snuck away from the structured activities and spent a memorable afternoon riding into the high country with a surly old wrangler who was searching for some stray horses. Once he got used to being saddled with a greenhorn from Maine, he filled the afternoon with wonderful stories about the land and its history. On the ride back to the ranch (driving eight horses ahead of us at a dead gallop—over rough country for the last mile!) the threads of all those stories wove themselves firmly into my imagination.

By the time we reached the corrals, several strong characters and the different dreams they shared in this last great place were already coming to life. This is their story.

Nadia Nichols

Montana Dreaming
Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my mother and father,

for encouraging me to follow my dreams

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

What is life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of the buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

—Crowfoot

IT WAS TEN MILES to town, eight of them on the old dirt track that ran alongside the creek—the same road that her father’s grandfather had ridden back when the Crow Indians still lived in and hunted this valley. Ten miles of gentle descent that curved with the lay of the land and the bend of the creek. Ten miles that traced the path of her childhood and were as familiar to her after twenty-six years of traveling them as were the worn porch steps of the weather-beaten ranch house that sat at the end of that road.

Ten miles on horseback in a late-October rain. A cold rain, too, that might’ve been snow had the wind quartered out of the north. She couldn’t begrudge the rain. The only rain they’d had all summer hadn’t amounted to two kicks, as her old friend Badger was so fond of saying: “Two kicks and you’re down to dust.”

She rode a bay gelding called Billy Budd, which she’d raised herself and ridden for the past fourteen years. He was a good cow horse, not fast or flashy, but Billy could always be counted on when the chips were down.

Today, the chips were down. Her truck wouldn’t start—a chronic fuel-pump problem she’d put off fixing—and she was late for the signing at the real estate office. Her phone had been disconnected months ago due to nonpayment of bills. But it was no matter that she couldn’t call. She knew they’d be waiting for her when she finally arrived. They’d wait all night for her if need be.

Ten miles by truck took a mere twenty minutes. Ten miles on horseback took a good deal longer. By the time the small cluster of buildings came into view through the sheets of cold rain she was nearly an hour late.

Katy Junction sat at a crossroads that connected five outlying ranches with the main road to Emmigrant. It had four buildings: a garage with gas pumps, a general store, a feed store and a tall narrow building that shouldered between the general store and the feed store, and housed the Longhorn Café downstairs and a combination real estate–lawyer’s office up. There were still hitch rails in place fronting the boardwalk, recalling an era when horsepower had nothing to do with a mechanical engine. In fact, not much had changed in Katy Junction for a very long time, but Jessie Weaver was about to alter all that.

She tied Billy off to the hitch rail, parking him between a battered pickup and a sleek silver Mercedes. On the far side of the Mercedes she spotted the familiar dark-green Jeep Wagoneer and felt an irrational surge of relief that its owner would be at the meeting. She loosened the saddle cinch, removed her oilskin slicker and draped it over the gelding’s flanks. He was hot, and she didn’t like leaving him standing in the cold rain.

“I won’t be long, Billy,” she said. “This won’t take but two shakes.”

The stairs to the office ran up the outside of the building. When she burst into the room she was slightly out of breath. “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she entered. “My truck’s broke and I had to come a’horseback. My fault. I should’ve fixed the truck when I got the new fuel pump, but I kept putting it off.”

Three people stood in the cramped room, grouped around a small round table. The real estate agent, who was also her lawyer, Allen Arden, nodded to her. “That isn’t all that’s broken, by the looks of you. What happened to your arm?”

“Tangled myself in a lasso two days ago,” she said, giving the cast, which stretched left wrist to elbow, a scowl.

“That’s hard luck, Jessie,” Arden said.

“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been my signing hand. At any rate, it won’t slow me up. I’ll still round up my mares in time to be off the ranch when we agreed.”

Arden nodded again, hearing the bite in her words and shifting his eyes. “Jessie, you already know Caleb McCutcheon and his attorney, Steven Brown.”

Jessie stepped toward McCutcheon. She was so rattled that she felt this was the first time she’d laid eyes on the man, though she’d met him several months earlier. His handshake was firm, his eyes keen and blue and framed with crow’s-feet, his body long and lean, his features as rugged and tanned as if he’d spent his entire life out-of-doors. There was hardly a hint of gray in his sandy hair. She had come to like him more than she expected she would in the brief time they had known each other.

“Hi,” she said shortly. She turned and acknowledged Steven Brown but didn’t offer her hand. She didn’t want him to feel how it trembled, yet she was enormously grateful for his calm, solid presence. Although he was McCutcheon’s lawyer, he had helped her tremendously through all these proceedings. He looked somber and handsome in his dark three-piece suit, his shoulder-length glossy black hair pulled neatly back. He nodded to her in return, predictably stoic.

Arden motioned them to sit. Jessie glanced down at the papers on the table. Land maps. She snagged the nearest chair with her booted foot and drew it toward her, then dropped into it and studied the maps. When she bent her head, water streamed from the brim of her felt Stetson and spilled onto the table. She removed her hat as the others sat, and rested it in her lap, staring down at her paper dynasty. She was cold and wet and had never felt quite like this before, so disoriented and distraught. It was all she could do to keep her features from betraying her turmoil.

I’m doing the right thing, she told herself for the thousandth time as her fingers worked around and around the brim of her wet hat. I’m doing the right thing, and no harm shall come!

Arden had a stack of papers in front of him. He began shuffling through them in his usual ponderous way and Jessie’s fingers tightened on her Stetson. “My horse is standing in the rain and he’s all hotted up. I’d appreciate it if we could make this quick.” Her voice was taut, her words clipped. Arden glanced up and nodded anew. She avoided looking at the other two men and picked up one of the pens scattered on the table. “If you’ll just show me where I need to sign.”

Papers rustled and were pushed toward her; Arden’s stubby finger pointed to this spot and that. She scrawled her signature again, and again, hoping no one noticed how her pen shook. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that McCutcheon was signing the papers, too, at his lawyer’s direction. There was little to say. The negotiating had been done in the months prior to this meeting. Everything had been written up as agreed upon. All was in order, and the only thing required to make the agreement legal and binding was the signatures.

It was over in a matter of minutes. Chairs scraped back. Jessie stood so abruptly she nearly toppled hers. She bolted for the door and was nearly out of the room, when Arden’s voice stopped her. “A moment, Jessie,” he said. She turned around, unaware how pale her face was and how tightly drawn she appeared to the three men who watched her. Arden held something in his hand. “You’re forgetting the bank check,” he said.

Her eyes dropped to the piece of paper he extended toward her and quite suddenly she felt she was suffocating. She fled the room. Clattering down the rickety staircase, she struggled awkwardly into her oilcloth slicker. She jammed her hat back on her head, tightened the cinch using her good hand and her teeth and reached for the wet strip of rein that tethered Billy to the hitch rail. A wave of nausea swept over her and her knees weakened. She slumped against the saddle, forehead pressed against the cold wet leather, fingers clutching the horn. She drew several deep slow breaths and swallowed the bitter taste of bile.

It’s okay, she reassured herself. But it didn’t feel the least bit okay. It felt awful, worse than she had expected—and she had fully expected to die on the spot the moment she signed her name, struck down by the wrath of her betrayed ancestors, white and Indian both. What she was feeling now was far more painful than anything death could have handed out. She racked herself up and was stabbing her foot in the stirrup, when she heard a man call out behind her.

“Jessie!” Steven Brown’s deep, familiar voice arrested her as she swung into the saddle. She was glad for the icy rain that streamed down her cheeks and hid her tears. He stood bareheaded in the storm, an island of calm. His dark eyes steadied her. “Take my Jeep back to the ranch. I’ll ride Billy.”

“No,” she said. “It’s only right that my last journey home should be a long one, and hard. Thank you, Steven. I couldn’t have gotten through all this without your help.” She reined Billy around, shrugging more deeply into her slicker as he stepped past the fancy silver Mercedes and the battered pickup. They had a wet, cold, ten-mile ride ahead of them and an early darkness was already beginning to gather in the foothills.

She rode out of Katy Junction and didn’t look back.

The darkness thickened around her on the long ride home and she welcomed the gloom. The rain lashed down and she gave herself to it, letting it wash the very thoughts from her head. Billy plodded on. When he finally stopped she raised her eyes and was looking at the side of the pole barn just below the ranch house. She slid out of the saddle, landing on legs that were stiff and numb from the cold, and led Billy inside the pole barn. There, she stripped the gear from him, rubbed him down as best she could, draped a light wool blanket over him after and fed him a good bait of sweet feed and a flake of hay.

She left the barn but didn’t go to the house. Instead, she walked up the hill behind it to a grove of tall pine. It was a sacred place. Here they were buried. Here in the wet gloaming, she could see the solid roof of the ranch house, the pole barns and corrals and, tucked close to the curve in the creek, the roof of the original homestead, with its massive fieldstone chimney. She could listen to the wind blow a blue lonesome through the trees and hear faintly the rush of the creek. Here on a clear day she could see pretty much forever, and on an overcast one still could see the Beartooth Mountains, rearing their imposing bulk over the valley below.

It was a good place to spend eternity.

She knelt and unfolded her pocketknife, and with it cut the lower third of her braid, then laid it upon the ground. She drew the same keen blade across the palm of her left hand and felt warm blood flow in the darkness. She pressed her palm against the cool wet earth. There were no tears, no laments. She was beyond all that now. She knelt among the graves of those she had loved the most and spoke in a voice that was low and quiet.

“This I promise all of you. No harm shall ever come to this place.”

SHORTLY AFTER the signing in the second story of the old building, tongues were wagging in the Longhorn Café directly below.

“If you ask me, she’s just plain damn crazy,” Badger said, stirring the third heaping teaspoon of sugar into his black coffee and leaning his elbows on the cracked linoleum bar. “I mean, that developer from Denver offered her a fortune.” He lowered his voice a few notches. “I heard it was well over three million dollars. Three million samolians! And she turned him down so’s she could sell the whole shebang to that wannabe cowboy from someplace back East for a whole lot less money. Crazy! Guthrie tried to argue her out of it, tried to get her to keep the ranch buildings and sell the land.”

“Didn’t work, obviously,” his friend observed.

“Nope. If I told that boy once, I told him half a hundred times. There’s two theories to arguin’ with Jessie Weaver, and neither one of ’em works.” Badger lifted his cup and took a slurp, then smoothed his mustache with his knuckle. “Where’d you say that rich city slicker was from?”

“Can’t remember,” Charlie replied. “But someone said he made his money playing baseball. Probably one of them sorry souls that was signed on for a trillion some–odd dollars over ten years.”

“No! Baseball?” Badger shook his head in disgust. “By God, that cracks it! Well, at least he ain’t another one of them smarmy movie stars. We’ve got way too many of them as it is. But I betcha he eats quiche just the same as them. Anyway, he can’t be whacking balls with a bat anymore, not if he’s plannin’ to live here. He must be retired.”

“He didn’t whack the balls with a bat. He was a pitcher. A pitcher throws the balls, in case you didn’t know. And he’s too young to be retired. Hell, Badger, you retired when you were seventy-three and I still say you hung your spurs up too soon. Speaking of quiche, you know how to cook one?”

“Certain I do!” Badger racked himself up on his bar stool and narrowed his eyes while he recalled the recipe. “First, you scramble a bunch of eggs into a piecrust, then you put it in the oven. Meantime, grill up a nice thick steak, and when it’s medium raw, eat it. As for the quiche, leave it in the oven and forget about it. Say, Bernie, got any more of that lemon pie?”

Bernie was two tables behind them, taking someone’s order. She pointedly ignored his question until she had finished her task and given the slip to the cook, then she scooped a piece of homemade pie onto an ironstone plate. “There you go,” she said, sliding it in front of him. “You don’t need another piece, but that won’t stop you.” Her voice was stern, but her expression was cheerful. She was petite, thirty, the mother of three, wife of the best Ford mechanic in the state and highly thought of by everyone who patronized the Longhorn—which was everyone who lived within thirty miles of Katy Junction. Badger hunkered over the pie and eyed it with relish.

“Say, Bern, how about that Jessie? Guess she won’t be waitressing here now that she’s gone and got herself that big chunk of money.”

“I’m glad for her,” Bernie said. “I know she didn’t want to sell the ranch, but she’s been working way too hard for too many years.”

“She busted her arm two days ago,” Badger said in an aside to Charlie. “Was reelin’ in one of them wild horses of hers and got caught up in the rope somehow. Jerked her right out of the saddle. She drove herself to Bozeman to get it fixed. Too stubborn to ask anyone for help.”

“That don’t surprise me much,” Charlie said with a shake of his head. “Knowing Jessie, I’m surprised she didn’t just fix it herself.”

“Say, Bern,” Badger mumbled around a mouthful of pie, “what’s she gonna do now? She tell you her plans?”

“She’s been pretty quiet. I hope she stays around here. I wish she and Guthrie would hurry up and get back together. They’ve been miserable ever since they parted ways. They need each other, but they’re both too stubborn and prideful to admit it.”

“Stubborn and prideful just about sums the two of ’em up. But I’m with you, Bern. Seems foolish of them to throw all them years of friendship over this ranch sale. Still and all, so long as Guthrie stays away nursing his wounds, there ain’t no chance in hell of us hearin’ any wedding bells. Didn’t he take a job up near the North Pole somewheres?”

“Valdez, Badger.” Bernie sighed with exasperation. “That’s in Alaska. And the job was just seasonal. My guess is he’ll be hauling back into town any day now.” Bernie topped off his coffee, did the same for Charlie and went briskly about her business.

“Well now,” Badger said. “Seems to me Guthrie’s probably going to have a lot of competition when he gets back.”

“How’s that?” Charlie emptied two sugar packets into his mug. “Jessie hasn’t looked at another man since she was twelve, unless you count that Indian lawyer, but I didn’t see no sparks flyin’ there.”

“That don’t mean much. Injuns keep their sparks hid pretty good, and lower your voice, you old fool—he just walked in the door! Anyhow, sparks or no, every available gonad-packin’ money-grubbing bundle of testosterone in the county’s going to be courtin’ that gal, now that she’s a wealthy woman. Don’t hurt none that she’s prettier’n a speckled pup, either.”

Badger finished the last of his pie and pushed his plate away, carefully smoothing his white mustache. “Jessie can separate the wheat from the chaff, but if I was Guthrie Sloane, I don’t guess as I’d have pulled foot and run off to Alaska after that big fight they had. A woman’s heart is kind of like a campfire. If you don’t tend it regular, you’ll lose it, sure enough.”

STEVEN BROWN DID NOT return directly to Bozeman. After reading over the final papers with McCutcheon, he went to the little diner that Katy Junction supported in a big way and ordered an early dinner, keeping to himself and ignoring the gossip circulating in the small room. When he had finished his meal, he requested a large container of soup to go. Bernie raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Don’t you even want to know what kind of soup you’re ordering?”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be good.” He nodded politely.

Bernie smiled, in spite of her resolve to remain aloof. After all, Jessie’s friendship with the Indian lawyer was one of the reasons she and Guthrie had parted company. “Today was the closing on the ranch, wasn’t it?” she inquired. “I was hoping she might stop in afterward. Is she all right?”

He said nothing, his stoic demeanor a wordless reprimand.

Bernie’s shoulders drooped and she shook her head. “No, of course she isn’t. Stupid question. Poor girl, my heart goes out to her. You wait right here and I’ll get the soup. I have some fresh sourdough bread, too. How about a loaf of that and a big wedge of apple pie? It’s still warm from the oven.”

She gathered the components of a good, home-cooked meal and packaged them in a small cardboard box, not deluding herself that the lawyer was taking the meal back to Bozeman with him. No; he’d be delivering it to Jessie, to make sure she had something to eat after the traumatic event she had just endured. It was kind of him, but Bernie wished he wasn’t doing it. She ladled the hearty soup into the two-quart container and silently but heatedly summoned her absent brother: Why aren’t you here, Guthrie? Didn’t you get my letter? Jessie needs you right now! Why aren’t you here!

STEVEN DROVE to the Weaver ranch wondering how he would find Jessie, and if she would resent his presence.

Jessie drew him in a way that no other woman ever had. It seemed as if all his life he had been unconsciously waiting for her, and on that fateful day when she had walked into his Bozeman office, he had sat back in his ergonomic padded executive chair, struck speechless by the sight of her. She was possessed of the same strength and beauty of spirit as the wild, mountainous expanse she loved and had fought so hard to protect. She swept through the door and brought into his cluttered space all the freshness and freedom of the wind that blew across the lonely mountain valleys and the high, snow-crowned peaks.

“I need your help,” she had said, standing before his desk with her hat in hand, dressed in faded denim jeans and a white cotton shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled back, her long black hair drawn into a thick plait that hung clear to her waist, her dark eyes lustrous with turbulent emotion and her lithe figure vibrant with life.

He had risen from his chair, compelled by her very presence to leave off the frittering details that comprised his logically structured and suddenly stifling lifestyle. The urge to tear off his silk tie, suit jacket and vest, to take her hand and flee the office he had worked so hard to get, flee the tangled city streets, the noise and the chaos of the white man’s world and return with her to the place of his ancestors, became really overwhelming. She had reawakened in him the mystery and wonder he had felt as a young boy on the Crow Indian reservation when counting all the colors of a Rocky Mountain sunset.

“I need your help,” she had said, and with those four powerful words she had altered the very fabric of his carefully constructed life.

The ranch house was dark. He parked where he usually did and walked up the porch steps, bearing the small box of food in his arms. Knocked on the door and heard her little cow dog moving about, but nothing else. He looked toward the pole barn. Had she gotten back all right? He was about to set the food down and go check for her horse, when the door opened.

“Jessie?” he said. “It’s Steven. I brought you some food.”

The silence stretched while he waited patiently and then she said in a low, weary voice, “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

“Hunger will come. This isn’t the end.”

“It feels like the end.”

Steven stepped past her then, not waiting for her to invite him inside. The room was cold and dark. He fumbled for the table he knew was there and set the cardboard box down. “Light the lamps,” he said.

She did so reluctantly as he went about the business of kindling a fire in the kitchen’s woodstove. While it caught he found a pan and poured the soup into it, then laid the sourdough loaf atop the cast-iron stove to warm. “I’ll come back Sunday morning. Early. I’ll bring help. Pete Two Shirts manages the Crow Indian buffalo herd. It’s the largest herd in the country—over fifteen hundred head. Remember? You said you’d like to see the buffalo someday. Our bi’shee, grazing over the land, like the old times.

“Pete’s a good man with horses. We’ll ride up and find your mares for you,” he said, reaching down a bowl from a shelf and setting it on the table. “I’d come tomorrow, but Pete works at the agency. I’d come alone, but I’m not good with horses. Anyway, there’s no rush. McCutcheon says to take all the time you need. We’ll get your truck fixed, too.”

Eyes grave, he took her ice-cold signing hand in his. He turned it over and saw the shallow cut she had drawn across her palm. “When I go, you eat something. Tend to yourself. Get some sleep. This isn’t the end. It is a beginning.”

He left her then, because he knew she needed solitude in which to grieve for what she’d lost.

CALEB MCCUTCHEON couldn’t sleep. He lay in his bed, fingers laced behind his head, and listened to the rain. The luminous dials on the bedside clock read 2:00 a.m. No traffic passed the little motel some twenty miles northwest of Katy Junction. He had chosen to stay close to the ranch rather than return to Bozeman, and had brought a bottle of champagne with him from the city, planning to celebrate after the signing, but he felt no desire to celebrate now. All he could think about was that girl.

He hadn’t expected to meet Jessica Weaver and be completely swept up in her turmoil. Steven Brown had told him bits and pieces about her—that she’d lost her mother when she was seven years old, that she’d inherited the ranch when her father died a year ago, that he’d left her with insurmountable debts and that she’d struggled to make ends meet, waitressing at the local diner nights, working the ranch by day. She’d raised fine bloodstock—Spanish horses—and sold the foals before they hit the ground, but it hadn’t been enough. Too big a ranch, too much work, way too much debt. Too much for one woman alone.

He’d waited several months to sign, and now the historic Weaver ranch belonged to him…and he didn’t feel the least bit good about it. Could he have done things differently? Would anything have made it easier for her? The money certainly hadn’t eased her pain. That much was obvious when she fled the lawyer’s office without the bank check.

McCutcheon sighed. Jesus, he was getting soft, pitying a woman he’d just made wealthy even after all her enormous debts had been settled. “She chose to sell the ranch to me,” he’d said to those gathered for the signing. “She could’ve kept it by selling off parts to developers—they’ve been after it for years. She could’ve kept the house, the outbuildings, enough land to run a small herd of horses. But she didn’t. She chose to sell.”

The words had echoed in the room and sounded false even to his ears, for he was fully aware that Jessica Weaver had made the greatest of sacrifices. Rather than see the land divvied up in lots, she had ensured that it would remain whole for eternity. She had done this the only way she’d known how: by writing numerous conservation restrictions into the deed, thereby taking a tremendous loss in land value.

On her own, in a last-ditch move of sheer desperation, she had approached a local chapter of the Rocky Mountain Conservancy with her plight, and there she had found Steven Brown, a full-blooded Crow Indian and an environmental advocate, whose legal knowledge had made him a perfect choice for the Conservancy’s chairman. Brown had phoned him to ask if he might be interested in looking at the property, since the Conservancy did not have the funds to purchase it outright. Through previous contacts, Brown had known of his interest in buying a big ranch. He explained that the land holding was a watershed of great ecological value embracing critical plants and wildlife. As well, it provided an important buffer to the Greater Yellowstone system.

Were there any buildings on the property? he had inquired of Brown. Oh, yes, he was told. Some of them dating back to the 1800s. Brown’s description of the ranch had intrigued him enough to schedule a flight within the week to view the property. One look and he was sold on both the ranch and the girl, Jessie Weaver. That she loved the land was apparent to anyone who watched her gaze out upon it. That she would give it up in the manner she had only proved the depth of that love. It must have been a terribly difficult thing for her to do.

As if that weren’t enough, just before the signing she had broken her arm. How would she fix her truck, load her things, round up her little band of broodmares all by herself? She’d ridden ten miles in that rainstorm to make it to the property closing. She was tough, but she needed help. Maybe he could arrange for some for her. Or maybe… Maybe he could provide it himself. Hell, why not? He’d fixed his share of beaters in his teen years. He could repair her truck easily enough. He could do a lot for her. Maybe then he’d feel the joy he thought he’d be feeling right now.

In the morning. He’d go in the morning, first thing. Somehow, he’d make things right with Jessie Weaver.

CHAPTER TWO

THE RAIN BROKE at dawn and a stiff wind blew out of the west, driving the wet with it and bringing a chill out of the mountains that crisped the grass and glazed the water buckets with ice. Jessie poked up the fire in the kitchen stove and put the coffeepot on to boil. She didn’t bother to light a lamp. The murky darkness suited her mood. The little cow dog, Blue, sulked at her heels, sensing her disquiet and misery, and tried to dispel it with frequent displays of affection that went unnoticed, unreturned. Her arm ached, but she welcomed the pain. It was a distraction she needed.

This place had always been her home. This place was her mother and father, her grandparents, her great-grandparents and a handful of loyal hands long dead now and buried with the family in the plot up on the hill. All of them would remain on the land they had so fiercely loved and slaved over and fought for and defended. All except her. In a few short days she would walk out the door, never to return.

This was McCutcheon’s place now. Perhaps he would bring in grid power from the main road. He might even pave the dirt track that paralleled the creek. He most certainly would throw parties here, grand parties, and he and his wealthy friends would drink and laugh and look out at the valley and the mountains for a day or two before returning to their rich and sophisticated lives in the city. They would never know of the immense struggle that had shaped this land. They would never know of a man with a dream who had driven a herd of longhorns up from Texas in another century and made a life for himself here, back when the West still had enough snap and snarl in it to give a body pause.

Jessie fed a few sticks into the woodstove and pumped water into the sink. Everything her family had fought so hard for was for nothing. Over one hundred and forty years of mighty struggle upon the land was gone, signed away forever with the sweep of a pen.

She didn’t eat breakfast. Wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been hungry for weeks. Hadn’t slept well for months. For the past year a part of her had been dying, and now it was time for the funeral, time to bury the past and get on with life.

But how could she bury the very best part of herself? How could she possibly leave all this behind? This beloved room, this warm homey kitchen. Damn that Guthrie Sloane! Damn him for running out on her when she needed him the most!

She sat down at the table and dropped her head into the cradle of her arm, her body rigid with pain. She was so absorbed in her wretchedness that she didn’t hear the dog bark. Didn’t hear the rattle of the diesel engine until it was right outside the ranch house. A car door slammed and she jumped to her feet, smoothing her hair back from her face. Who?

She opened the kitchen door—and visibly recoiled at the sight of the Mercedes and the man mounting the steps. Caleb McCutcheon, and he was carrying a toolbox.

“Hello,” he said, apologetic. “I hope I’m not too much of an intrusion. I know it’s early, but I figured you for an early riser.”

Jessie was completely taken aback. “I had until Tuesday. That was the agreement!”

“Yes, ma’am, it was.” He nodded. “Though you can have ten years if you want. I thought I’d give you a hand with your truck. I was a pretty fair mechanic way back when.”

“When what?”

He paused, looking very much like a chastened little boy. “When I was a lot younger than I am now,” he said.

“I don’t need your help, Mr. McCutcheon. I can fix my own truck.”

“Well, with that broken arm, I just—”

“Come to think of it,” she interrupted, “if I can’t fix that old junker I guess now I can buy myself a new one.”

He nodded again. “I guess you could, though I didn’t figure you were that type.”

“What type might that be?”

“Extravagant.”

“Have you seen my truck?”

“I passed it on the way in. Ford, 1986-ish? Flatbed, supercab, four-wheel drive. Sweet old girl. The fuel pump’s gone—isn’t that what you said?”

Now Jessie nodded. “I’ve had the part for weeks. It’s out in the barn.”

“Right. Okay, then.” He stood there for a few moments, uncertainty flickering in his eyes, then shrugged in a what-the-hell manner. “Well, I suppose if I search long enough I’ll find it.” He made to go.

“Mr. McCutcheon, I surely wish you wouldn’t.”

He stopped, half turned and considered what he wanted to say. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, thinking about things. After what you did to save this ranch, to keep it whole…” He raised the toolbox. “Fixing your truck is the least I can do.”

“You don’t owe me anything. All I ever ask is that you respect the land. I would have done anything to keep it, anything at all…except sell it off piecemeal to pay off debts until nothing of it was left.”

McCutcheon lifted his gaze to the glaciated summits of the mountain range that towered to the east. “I understand that, and I respect you for what you’ve done. But to tell you the truth, the way I’m feeling right now I almost wish I hadn’t bought it.

“When Steven Brown called me out of the blue, I had pretty much decided that maybe my wife was right—buying a ranch was a foolish dream. Then he started describing the place to me, and suddenly I wanted to see it. See if it was the way I’d imagined it in my dreams. If the mountains looked big enough, the cabins looked honest-to-God real, the creek had just the right bend in it.

“I cut out a picture once when I was a kid living in the middle of a Chicago slum,” he said. “Cut it out of a magazine. I’ve kept it all these years. It was a picture of a ranch, a real working ranch. The house was like this, all weather-beaten and silvery, with a long porch fronting it and facing the river. There were log cabins in the background, a bunkhouse, a pole barn, corrals. Big mountains. Just like this. This is the place I’ve imagined all these years, right down to the bend in the creek that passes by the old homestead cabin.”

The smell of boiling coffee permeated the cold morning air. “I should shift the pot,” Jessie said, glancing behind her into the kitchen. She paused, then ducked him a shy glance. “Whyn’t you come inside and have a cup.”

McCutcheon’s face brightened. “Gladly. Maybe you could tell me a little more about the history of this place. We didn’t have a whole lot of time for that when I was last here.”

She ushered him into the kitchen, poured two chipped ironstone mugs full of hot black brew, and they sat down at the table together. She put her hand on the table, felt the smooth irregularities of it. “My great-grandfather made this,” she said. “Hewed it from one thick plank of a big old cedar felled up in the mountains. He made it for my great-grandmother. She was the daughter of a Crow medicine man and she was given to my great-grandfather in thanks for the cattle that kept them alive through a very bad winter. He was also gifted some of the tribe’s finest horses. Those horses became the founding bloodlines of one of the purest registries of Spanish Barbs in the West.

“He kept a journal, which my father donated to the Montana Historical Society. In it he wrote often of his wife. When I was young I read that journal a whole passel of times, but it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that my father told me my great-grandmother had been a full-blooded Crow Indian. My great-grandfather never made mention of that except for one brief passage in the journal, where he regretted that they couldn’t communicate better.

“Which was probably quite an understatement, considering she probably didn’t speak one word of English, nor he of Crow. From the way he wrote about her, it was plain that he loved her a great deal, so they somehow managed to overcome the language barrier. She bore him two sons. One died when he was fifteen, thrown from a rough bronc. The other was my grandfather.” Jessie glanced at McCutcheon and then let her eyes drop to her mug of coffee.

“My grandfather was a half-breed destined to inherit one of the largest ranches in Montana at a time when people looked darkly on all things Indian, and particularly despised half-breeds. He married another half-breed, a girl from the Blackfeet tribe, whose mother had married a Scottish trapper. She was very beautiful and kind. Her name was Elsa, and she was my father’s mother. She is one of my earliest memories. A good memory.” Jessie glanced again at McCutcheon, mortified at her unnatural wordiness. “Sorry. I guess I’m giving you the lowdown on the Weaver women.”

“Please, continue,” McCutcheon urged. “I want to hear it. All of it. Everything that made this place what it is. Tell me about your earliest memory. Tell me about your grandmother.”

Jessie held his gaze for a few moments and then nodded slowly. “It was a horseback ride. I was young, maybe four years old, and the horse was as tall as the mountains and as swift as the wind that blew down the valley. The horse was running hard, but I wasn’t afraid. I was in my grandmother’s strong arms and she held me safe upon that horse as it flew homeward. Over the thundering wind I heard her singing a song in her native tongue. It was joyous and full of life. She sang into the wind as we galloped home from someplace away. That was a good memory!

“I remember that when we got back home my mother was very angry. She was afraid I might have been hurt. She took me from Grandmother and told me I was never to go with her again.” Jessie paused and smiled a faint, bitter smile. “That was a bad memory. My mother was white. She loved my father but never understood his heritage, and she feared what she didn’t understand. Life out here was hard for her. She came from Denver and she was never happy. My grandparents frightened her. The land frightened her. She hated the sound of the wind, the size of the mountains, the stillness at dawn.

“My father tried to make her happy. He built her this place of boards so she could have the house painted any color she wanted. But the wind and the weather stripped the paint away, and in one bad winter all her rosebushes froze. If she hadn’t died of the bad pneumonia, I think she would have left us.” Jessie ran her palm over the table. “She died because I brought home a bad flu from school when I was in the second grade and she caught it. I got sick and should have died too, but I didn’t. I was seven years old when she died.”

McCutcheon sat in silence for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been a hard time.”

“Harder on my father. He loved her so. He never got over her death. My grandparents died not many years after that, just months apart. And then it was just my father and me.”

“Any hired hands?”

Jessie nodded. “At first. In the good times we kept three full-timers down at the old cabin and a handful of part-timers during branding and roundup. Then, one by one, we had to let them go. Cattle prices kept falling. Land taxes and living costs kept rising. My father wanted me to go to college, so he took a second mortgage on the ranch to pay my tuition. I finished my four years of college and was in my third year of vet school, when he got sick. The medical bills were staggering, debts piled up, the bank sent notices. I quit school two years ago, Dad died last year…and here we are.”

McCutcheon drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Not your fault. Nobody’s fault, really. I’m just glad you came along when you did. Otherwise the bulldozers would already be at work carving out a golf course along the creek.”

“I guess we have Steven Brown to thank for that.” McCutcheon hesitated. “I have a question about the brand your horses and cattle wear. It looks like a D with a long bar through the middle. Is that what you call this place? The Bar D? Everyone just refers to it as the Weaver ranch, but don’t most ranches have names?”

“Most ranches aren’t owned by half-breed Indians,” Jessie replied. “The brand you’re referring to symbolizes a bow and arrow. If you look sharp, you’ll see there’s an arrowhead on one end of that bar. It was a pretty radical brand one hundred years ago, so we always just called it the Weaver ranch and let people scratch their heads and wonder.”

McCutcheon sat back in his chair. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “The Bow and Arrow.”

Jessie nodded. “Yessir. Big secret. Might get you scalped if you let it out. What about your wife? You’re married, aren’t you?”

“Twenty-odd years, no children. She didn’t want them. Wanted to be free to travel. She’s in Paris right now. Spends six months a year there. She’d never come out here, not in a million years. Not her kind of place. She likes bright lights and big cities. It’s not her fault that her husband’s a throwback to a different time and place. I can’t blame that on her. She’s smart, funny, beautiful, well educated. She should’ve been a politician. Maybe then we’d have a decent president someday.”

“Her?”

He laughed. “That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. She’d be right at home in the Oval Office, and she’d do a damn fine job of running this country, too.” He finished his coffee, pushed to his feet. “That was good, thanks. Now, if you’ll tell me where to find that fuel pump, I’ll get down to business.”

Jessie rose. “Mr. McCutcheon, really, I can fix the truck myself or hire someone to fix it. I have a little money now, in case you forgot.”

“I realize that,” he said. “But I’m going to fix it for you and you’re going to let me. And there’s something else.” He paused while he phrased his next announcement and shored himself up with a slow deep breath. “I need a caretaker for this place.” She shook her head fiercely and he raised a hand. “Yes, you have enough money to buy yourself a moderate spread and continue breeding your Spanish horses, but listen to what I have to say, because I’ve thought about this a long time.

“Nobody loves this place the way you do. Nobody would ever care about it as much or look after it as well. I’m asking you to stay on as my caretaker. Right here. In this house. I won’t be around much for a while, and when I come I’ll stay in the old cabin. I’ll pay you a good salary and all I ask is that you keep the place in good repair. You’d do that anyhow, without being asked, without being told. You know how to do what needs to be done.”

“No.”

“You don’t have to give me an answer right now. Think on it. And think on this. If you don’t stay I’ll have to hire someone else to do what you were born to do. I’d hate to do that. This place belongs to you in a way that all the money in the world and countless legal documents can’t change, and even more than that, you belong to this place. So please, I’m asking you to seriously consider my offer.”

Jessie shook her head before he had even finished speaking. “No,” she repeated. “This isn’t my home anymore. I have to move on. There’s no other way for me.”

“I wish you’d at least consider it.”

“I already have,” she said. “The answer is no, Mr. McCutcheon.”

STEVEN TOOK the call in his office. It was Caleb McCutcheon, speaking on his car phone as he drove from the Weaver ranch back to Katy Junction.

“Listen,” he began without preamble. “I need your advice….”

Steven sat at his desk while McCutcheon told him about the job offer he had made Jessie Weaver. “She refused me flat out,” McCutcheon finished. “I was hoping maybe you could talk to her. Get her to change her mind and stay on. She has to stay. Somehow we have to convince her!”

Steven closed his eyes and kneaded the band of tension between his eyes. He was silent for several long moments. “I’ll try,” he said. “But she has to walk her own path.”

After he hung up he sat in stillness and reflected that, in hindsight, they should have stipulated in deed that Jessie Weaver stay on at least another five years to manage the ranch and make the transition an easier one. Too late now. He stared out the window at the city below, but he was seeing Jessie’s mountains.

They were everywhere, those mountains. Rearing up in every direction, walling off the horizon in hues of blue and purple and slate gray, except at dawn or dusk, when they glowed as if lit from within. There was snow on some of the higher peaks—snow that remained nearly year-round, a constant reminder of the harsher life in mountain country. Yet, for all their violent moods, the mountains were heartbreakingly beautiful.

Seemingly rugged and yet so fragile. So vulnerable to the predation of mankind. He understood why Jessie had done as she had. He had seen the ugly urban sprawl, the housing developments, the new roads, the encroachment of a wealthy and burgeoning population into sacred areas that one once thought would never be sullied.

Thanks to Jessie Weaver’s sacrifice some of the land was safe. But how was he going to convince her to remain? McCutcheon’s plea had aggravated an anguish of his own: the prospect of Jessie leaving this place and the incomprehensible reality that he might never see her again. In their times together Jessie had never led him to believe that anything other than friendship existed between them; still, he felt closer to her than he had to any other woman.

McCutcheon could hire other caretakers, men or women with environmental acumen, who had the good sense to manage the land largely by diplomatic non-interference with Mother Nature. Yet clearly the best of them wouldn’t be enough.

So Jessie Weaver had to stay. The fact was as elemental as the sun rising in the east. Without her presence, the very spirit and soul of the land she loved would wither and die; he was as convinced of this as McCutcheon was. Somehow, they had to convince her of the same thing.

But how?

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.

“It’s the storm,” Bernie said, refilling his coffee cup then those of the others sitting at the counter. Eight locals waited there for the warden, the state police and Park County Search and Rescue to arrive.

The phone rang and Bernie picked it up, listened for a few moments, said, “All right,” and hung up. She looked at the questioning faces. “That was the warden. Comstock says the state police are tied up with accidents. Search and rescue are mobilizing, but they won’t be here till dawn. He’s arranged for Joe Nash to take him up in his chopper at first light. He suggested that someone go out to the Weaver ranch, just in case Jessie makes it back on her own.”

“First light? They’re going to wait until morning? But that’s ridiculous! She could be hurt! Freezing to death!” McCutcheon said.

“What can they do in the middle of a blizzard in pitch-darkness?” Badger reasoned. “No tracks, no scent for the dogs, no direction to start in or head for. Sometimes it’s better to set your horse and do nothin’ than wear him out chasin’ shadows.”

“You can set your horse if you like. I’m driving out to the ranch,” McCutcheon said, reaching for his coat.

“Snow’s gettin’ pretty deep,” Badger said. “Your fancy car won’t make it. Might even be too deep for my truck, though I doubt it. She’ll go through just about anything.” He stroked his mustache, considering for a moment, then levered his arthritic body off the stool and reached for his Stetson. “Let’s get goin’. This waitin’ ain’t easy on me, either.”

Badger was right about the snow. Where the wind had piled it up, the drifts pushed up against the undercarriage of the truck as they crept down the unplowed ranch road. But they made it.

No one else was there. They entered the dark ranch house and Badger lit an oil lamp in the kitchen after reaching it down from an open shelf with easy familiarity. “I used to work here,” he explained, setting the lamp on the kitchen table. “Back when Drew and Ramalda lived in the old cabin that stood behind the corrals. Gone now. Fire took it after they left. Lord, that woman could cook! I’m going to get the woodstove going, put on a pot of coffee. This place is colder’n a dead lamb’s tongue.”

McCutcheon prowled restlessly, stepping out onto the porch periodically to listen and holler Jessie’s name into the stormy darkness before retreating into the warmth and light of the kitchen. The two men shared few words. Badger seemed content to feed chunks of split wood into the firebox and poke at the coffeepot from time to time, waiting for the water to boil. McCutcheon, on the other hand, paced like a caged lion. He couldn’t understand how the people of Katy Junction could be so calm. That girl was out there all by herself, certainly very cold, probably hurt, maybe even dead, yet they all acted as though it was just another sleepy Sunday.

“It’s got to be nearly zero with that windchill!” he burst out to Badger, as if it were the old man’s fault.

“Yessir, I expect it is,” Badger replied calmly.

“We have to do something! We can’t just sit around and wait! She’ll freeze to death!”

“Well now, mister, I highly doubt it. Knowing Jessie, she’s holed up somewhere’s safe, waiting the storm. And right now there ain’t a whole lot we can do, except go out into it and get ourselves good and lost. That don’t sound like a very good plan to me. Haul on up to a cup of coffee and cool your jets. We’ll head out at first light.”

GUTHRIE WAS SURPRISED to see all the trucks parked in front of the Longhorn so late of an evening. Bernie usually closed the café up at 8:00 p.m. sharp to go home and kiss her babies good-night. He parked at the end of the line, relieved that his long drive was over and pleased as all get out at the thought of a cup of hot coffee and the prospect of seeing his sister.

He climbed out of the truck into over a foot of heavy snow and clumped up the boardwalk, knocking the snow off his boots as he pushed open the Longhorn’s door. The place was crowded with familiar faces. They all turned toward him and half raised up out of their seats as if they’d been expecting him for hours.

“Guthrie!” Bernie came out of the kitchen holding a platter stacked high with sandwiches. She dropped the platter on the counter and ran across the room to hug him fiercely. “Oh, Guthrie, how on earth did you know? Thank God you’re here!”

Guthrie felt a peculiar tightening in his stomach as he gently pried himself out of her desperate embrace and held her at arm’s length. “How did I know what? What’s the matter, Bernie? What’s wrong?”

IN SPITE OF THE COLD she slept, and in her dream the snow-laden moan of the wind became the somber voice of her father. He was sitting at his desk, working on the books the way he often did in the evening, his pen scratching spidery figures in the columns, his eyebrows drawn together in a perpetual frown of concentration. He laid his pen down and glanced up at her with a weary sigh.

“Looks like we took another big loss this year, Jessie. Maybe Harlan Toombs was right. Maybe we should’ve held the prime steers over another year rather than sell them at that ridiculously low price. I don’t know.” He sighed again and ran his fingers through his thin, close-cropped hair. “I don’t know much of anything anymore. Times are changing so fast I can’t keep up. Cattle prices keep dropping. taxes keep climbing. You should’ve stayed in school, Jessie. By now you’d be well on your way to being a veterinarian. You’d be a good one. Hell, you were almost there. There’s still time. Go back to school and finish up your degree!”

And then Guthrie was in the room with them, his face lean and handsome, his expression intense in the glow of the lamplight. “Marry me, Jess! We could have a good life together. You don’t have to be a veterinarian to have a good career. You have one now, raising those fine Spanish horses of yours. And the most important career you could ever have would be raising our babies.”

Another figure moved out of the shadows, a man nearly as tall and lithe as Guthrie in spite of being a good twenty years older. Caleb McCutcheon held out the bank check. “Take it. It’s your money now, Jessie. It’ll buy you a fresh stake someplace else if you feel you have to leave, but give some thought to my job offer. It still stands. This place needs you, and you’ll always need this place.”

Steven Brown was a silent presence in the background, his dark eyes somber. He was watching her, but he said nothing. He gave no opinions, made no requests or demands. He was simply there, the way the rocks and the trees and the mountains were there. She felt herself being drawn to his quiet solid strength.

Fox was running at a dead gallop along the creek where the west fork fed into it. Ears pinned back, nostrils flaring, her mane and tail streaming behind her, she looked as if she were flying just above the earth. The other mares followed at her heels. They were heading for the old Indian trace that led up Montana Mountain. Jessie knew Billy could never catch them up. She reined him in as they raced past, running hard for a place where the wind blew free and the land stretched out as far as the eye could see, a place with no fence lines, no roads, no boundaries. A place that no longer existed except in their memories.

The grizzly was huge and angry. It rose up on its hind legs and stared in her direction, swinging its massive head as it tasted the air for some scent of her. She felt herself cowering, paralyzed with fear. Mouth dry, heart pounding, she was unable to move when it suddenly dropped back onto all fours and began to charge toward her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. Her legs felt mired in quicksand. The bear lunged and grabbed her arm in its powerful jaws, and pain shot through her—

“No!” She came awake in midcry, gasping for breath in blind panic, until reality reasserted itself and chased the nightmare away. Blue was tense and whining in her arms. Oh, her arm hurt! It ached unbearably. She shifted her position and sat in the inky darkness until her heartbeat steadied.

Where was the bear? What time was it? Surely morning was near. It was so dark. And cold… It was so very, very cold….

STEVEN SET ASIDE the paperwork he’d been reading, or at least pretending to read, and glanced up at the clock. Midnight. He’d called the Longhorn ten minutes ago. Would it be rude to call again so soon? He pushed out of his easy chair, carried his cup of coffee with him to the door and opened it. The windblown snow whirled past. Jessie Weaver was out in the brunt of it tonight. Alone. Perhaps hurt. Maybe dead. And he was here, his back to the warm room, a cup of hot coffee in his hand.

He slammed the door and stood in the foyer of his little cedar-clad post-and-beam house in Gallatin Gateway, hating the fact that he was safe while she was in trouble. Hating the helplessness that had overwhelmed him since he’d gotten McCutcheon’s message on his answering machine earlier that evening. He’d spoken with Bernie four times since, and each time had brought the same information.

No news.

He walked into the kitchen, slatted the remains of his coffee into the sink and rinsed the mug. Without even thinking of what he would do when he got there, he dressed himself for a winter storm, and less than ten minutes later he was in his Jeep Wagoneer, heading for Katy Junction.

CHAPTER FOUR

GUTHRIE WAS TAKEN ABACK by the stranger who opened the door of the Weaver ranch when he banged on it just past midnight. “Who the hell are you?” he said.

“Caleb McCutcheon. Are you the warden?”

“No! I’m here to look for—” He spotted someone else in the lamp-lit room. “Badger! Where’s Jess!” Guthrie pushed past the stranger and into the kitchen, relieved to see the bewhiskered and familiar face.

“Oh, I expect she’s up on the mountain somewheres, hunkered down and waiting for dawn. Same as we are. Only, I don’t doubt as we’re a whole lot more comfortable. Good to see you, Guthrie. You been gone awhile. Too long. A lot’s happened since you left. This here gent’s bought the whole Weaver ranch, lock, stock and barrel.”

Guthrie rounded on the stranger as if drawing a sword. “You’re a developer?”

“No. Like I said, I’m Caleb McCutcheon. And if you have any ideas on how to find Jessica Weaver, I’m listening. We’ve been sitting around doing nothing for way too long.”

The two men measured each other for a brief moment, and then Guthrie nodded curtly. “I brought snowshoes from my place. You’re welcome to a pair. She’s up on Montana Mountain—like Badger says. Probably went looking for Fox. That mare always heads up there this time of year, trying for North Dakota. Damn mustang thinks they don’t have such things as fences there, though that gray stallion of Jessie’s usually manages to convince Fox to stick around.”

“Old Gray’s dead,” Badger said bluntly. “Got struck by lightning this summer.”

Guthrie was taken aback for the second time in as many minutes. “She thought highly of that horse.” He could hardly conceive of what Jessie had been through in the past year, but if he had thought himself to be suffering this past summer, it was nothing compared with the hell that she had endured. “C’mon, let’s go. I have a backpack full of emergency supplies and spare headlamp batteries. I don’t guess I’m waiting for daylight. And by the way,” he said to McCutcheon, thrusting out his hand, “I’m Guthrie Sloane. From what Badger says, we’re neighbors.”

IT WAS DARK YET, but nearing the dawn. The snow had stopped. Her muscles were stiff and sore and she was cold and hungry, but both the night and the storm had lost their grip, and with the coming of daylight she would be able to walk down out of this high place. It would be slow going, carrying Blue. She could keep to the trail, or cut off it just below the big lightning-struck pine, climb over the ridge and head down for the main road. That would be quicker, and there was bound to be some traffic—a rancher heading for Katy Junction for his morning coffee, newspaper and goodly dose of gossip at the Longhorn; a plow truck sweeping back the drifts.

She could catch a ride, and maybe even get hauled over to Doc Cooper so’s she could have Blue seen to. Some of the dog’s wounds needed stitching up. Jessie could have done it herself if she’d had two good hands—and made a better job of it, too. Half the women in the county could lay in a neater row of stitches than Doc Cooper. Still and all, he knew his stuff and had helped the Weavers through many a livestock crisis. Never nagged about payment, either—eventually he always got his due and then some. Folks out here just naturally stood by one another in tough times, and lately it seemed that the times had always been tough.

In the gloaming Jessie struggled to her feet, stomping them to restore circulation. She had thought to let Blue free for a bit, but as she started to unzip her coat the zipper had stuck and she gave up. When she moved out from beneath the sheltering overhang of the blowdown, the depth of the snow surprised her. She made up her mind without really thinking about it. She would take the shortcut out to the main road. It would shave five miles off her journey, though still leave her with another ten to cover if no traffic happened by. Ten miles in nearly a foot of wet October snow, carrying an injured dog, ought to be a good workout. And to think that some folks paid good money to join a health club to exercise!

Jessie pointed her feet in the right direction and started walking.

GUTHRIE SLOANE DIDN’T give much thought to the man struggling along behind him, except to note that he was doing all right for a person his age. Jess was in trouble, and he had no intention of holding back. Nossir. If McCutcheon signed up for the trip, he was in for the long haul, and it was proving up to be a long rough haul. The trail up into the pass was steep, and there were a lot of places that a man could run afoul on a dark and stormy night like this.

He was going on pure hunch, figuring what route she’d have taken, where the mares might’ve been headed until this unexpected storm had caught them out. Of course he could be wrong. Maybe Jess had started up into the pass while at the same time the mares had angled down out of it, sensing the storm. Maybe she’d caught their sign and trailed after them. Maybe she was already out of the high country, encamped in some sheltered draw, with a cheerful fire keeping the darkness at bay, Blue tucked beside her and a billy can of hot coffee boiling.

Such thoughts did little to ease his torment. If anything happened to Jessie he’d blame himself for ever leaving her. He should’ve stuck it out and helped her through this awful time. True, she’d told him it was over between them and she’d meant it, but could they erase all those years of friendship just because as lovers they had failed?

No! She was his best friend and nothing would ever change that. It was suddenly the most important thing on earth to him that she realize he would be there for her, no matter what. Always.

Guthrie was unaware that the snow had stopped until McCutcheon mentioned it the first time they paused to take a breather. The older man had pulled up beside him and slumped over himself. Hands braced on his knees, he’d drawn deep gasping breaths until his lungs had caught up with the rest of him, at which point he’d raised his head and said, “It’s stopped.”

“What?”

“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.

He’d had to jump into the water to fetch his hat. It’d been cold, too. Early spring, the ice barely out. He’d retrieved it, though, and he’d never said another word about her summer job in Arizona.

As he came down the slope Jessie spotted another man far above, nearly hidden in the trees, but it was Guthrie she watched. And then he was close enough to touch her. He sank to his knees, braced his palms against his thighs and struggled to catch his breath.

They stared at each other, his shoulders heaving, a pandemonium of emotions churning in her.

“You all right?” he asked, as soon as he could speak.

She nodded. “I’m fine, but Blue’s hurt,” she said.

“How bad?”

“Bad.” And then, to her absolute mortification, her eyes filled with tears. She turned away, blinking back their sharp sting.

“It’s okay, Jess,” he said. “We’ll get her to Cooper. He’ll fix her up. What about you? Badger told me you busted your arm a few days ago.” She gazed down at Blue, unable to speak past the ache in her throat. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and silently she damned herself for being weak. “You’re all wet,” he said. “We need to get you home and into some dry things,” he said. He touched her shoulder. She stiffened and shook her head.

“Don’t.”

He pulled his hand away. “Let’s have a look at Blue,” he said. Jessie tried to unzip her parka but couldn’t with just one hand. She dropped her eyes while Guthrie did it for her, then gently extricated the little cow dog from her warm cocoon. “Hey, Blue,” he said as he drew out the dog gently and cradled her in his arms. “Hey, old girl. Easy… It’s all right, I’ve got you.” He glanced at Jessie. “What happened?”

“Bear,” Jessie said.

“She sure enough looks clawed,” he said as he stroked Blue’s head. “Lost a lot of blood?”

She nodded. “She’s pretty weak. I tried to bind up the worst wounds.”

“You did just fine. She’s tough. She’ll be all right.”

Jessie raised her brimming eyes to his and shook her head. “She can’t die on me. Not now.”

“She won’t. We’ll get her home, take her to Doc Cooper’s…”

They heard the sound at the same time and turned their heads simultaneously toward it. It was faint but growing louder, a rumble that sharpened and defined itself as it approached. A helicopter snaked out of the ravine from which she’d just walked. It came into view barely above tree height, skimming right over the top of McCutcheon, so close and looming so large that both she and Guthrie, though already on their knees, ducked. Instead of passing straight overhead, it circled and hovered for a few moments, long enough for her to see an arm wave out the passenger-side window and for her to read the big letters on the side.

Yellowstone HeloTours.

Jessie lifted her own arm in startled response, wondering what the devil Joe Nash would be doing flying his sight-seeing clients way out here. He seemed to be looking for a place to land. The big machine thumped its way downslope about five hundred feet from where she stood and then, in a clearing scarcely big enough for the spinning helicopter’s blades, it set down. The passenger jumped out and raced toward her in a crouch. He was dressed in a green wool Filson jacket that sported a prominent and familiar shoulder patch.

Jessie rose to her feet and stared with disbelief at the entire spectacle. As Comstock drew near, she turned to Guthrie, who was still on his knees, holding Blue, and asked in a rush of remembered anger, “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you ran off to Alaska!”

CHAPTER FIVE

BEN COMSTOCK HAD BEEN a warden for nearly twenty years. He’d passed through all the standard phases a warden goes through, from the idealism of youth to the disillusionment of experience. He’d seen it all, and he’d long since stopped believing he could single-handedly protect and defend the wilderness and wildlife of Montana. Even though he was aware that Joe Nash had broken just about every game law in existence, slyly eluding all the traps Comstock had set for him, he never hesitated to call on Joe when he needed his services. And right now, he was glad he had. He had both considerable affection and tremendous respect for Jessie Weaver. He’d known her since she was a little girl, having spent many a pleasurable evening at the Weaver ranch, playing poker at the kitchen table and sharing good sipping whiskey with her father.

He’d heard from Bernie that she’d just sold the ranch. For her to do it had taken a lot of guts. He hadn’t really believed she’d have deliberately ridden out in the midst of a freak autumn snowstorm, hoping she’d freeze to death up on that mountain she loved, but the doubts had nagged at him ever since he’d gotten the call that she was missing. She had to be pretty depressed after losing her father, breaking up with Guthrie Sloane and now losing the ranch, as well.

No doubt his relief at finding her alive and well showed plainly on his face as he approached. “Good to see you, Jessie,” he said. “Can you make it to the chopper?”

“I’m fine, but my cow dog’s hurt.”

Guthrie struggled to his feet, holding the injured dog, and Comstock eyed him keenly. He was looking a mite winded, Guthrie was. Hell, that was to be expected. The boy had run more than ten miles of rough mountain trail on snowshoes, searching for his girl. Guess he had a right to appear wrung out. But that wasn’t the whole of what was ailing him, either. He felt a strong twinge of paternal pity for Guthrie Sloane. “Sorry to have taken so long getting our tails up here,” he said. “The storm pretty much shut everything down. You all right, son?”

A curt nod. “McCutcheon’s up on the hill. He’s tuckered out. Maybe you could give him a ride back to the ranch.”

“The chopper carries four, but I’m sure we can fit you in, too. Jessie doesn’t weigh much more than that dog of hers.”

“No, thanks. It’s not that far to the main road, and you’ll make better time with a lighter load. You’ll take care of Jess?”

“You know I will.” Comstock nodded, gently lifting the injured dog out of Guthrie’s arms. “I’ll get them loaded while you fetch McCutcheon down.” Squinting against the glare of the sun on the snow, both men glanced to where McCutcheon had last been seen. “Oh, jiminy,” Comstock said. “You see what I see?”

Guthrie’s eyes narrowed. “Damn! You suppose he’s had a heart attack?”

“Well, he’s definitely down, and the way he’s lying doesn’t look quite natural, does it?”

Without another word Guthrie started slogging, head down, back up the slope.

BADGER HAD SEEN a lot of things in his seventy-eight years, but he’d never seen a helicopter land up close. He heard the big machine appraoch long before it set down in front of the Weaver ranch, causing a stampeding panic among the horses corralled next to the pole barn. He stood on the porch, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his old sheepskin coat, and watched as Ben Comstock jumped out of the helicopter’s side door. He reached up and handed down none other than Jessie Weaver.

Badger nodded a greeting to Comstock. He’d known darn well that Jessie would be okay. She probably would’ve walked out herself in another hour or so. The chopper had passed overhead not ten minutes ago, so she had to have been close to home when they found her. ’Course, a fast machine like Joe Nash’s could cover some ground in ten minutes.

“Badger!” Jessie said as she climbed the porch steps. She stopped in front of him and stared, then glanced past him to where Steven stood in the kitchen doorway, watching silently. “If the both of you are here, I guess maybe the whole town’s in the kitchen.”

“No…no, they’re not. The state police and Park County Search and Rescue are at the Longhorn, waitin’ on Comstock’s call.” Badger shifted under the burn of her eyes. Jessie didn’t like an audience. He understood that better than anyone. Still, she hadn’t rounded on that Indian lawyer. In fact, unless he’d gotten too old to read sign, Jessie and that lawyer were real glad to see each other.

“Badger, I need you to drive out and meet Guthrie,” she said. “He’ll be coming onto the road about three miles shy of Katy Junction near the Bear Creek crossing. You know the place.” She was unbuckling her chaps one-handed as she spoke. That done, she flung them, dark and heavy with meltwater, over the porch railing. Badger stood back, fidgeting. He knew better than to offer to help.

“I’ll get right out there,” he said.

“I expect he’ll be pretty tired by the time he gets to the road,” she said, straightening. “How’re the horses? Did Billy make it back?”

Dang, but she looked wrung out! Her eyes were as intense as ever, but they were shadowed with pain and fatigue, and improbable as it seemed, it appeared as though she’d been crying. This upset Badger more than anything else. Jessie Weaver never cried. Never. “Billy’s here and the horses are all fine. Fed and watered,” he said. “C’mon inside and get out of them wet clothes—warm yourself up. You’ve had a time of it. That’s plain enough to see.”

She shook her head, chin lifting, shoulders squaring. “Blue’s been hurt. Got all clawed up by a grizzly. Joe’s going to drop us at Cooper’s on his way to flying McCutcheon to the hospital in Bozeman. He fell and hurt his ankle. Looks broke to me.”

“I could drive you to the veterinarian,” Steven said, speaking for the first time. He stepped out onto the porch, thumbs hooked in his rear pockets and head canted slightly to one side, but again Badger wasn’t fooled. There was nothing casual about the way that Indian lawyer felt about Jessie.

“Thanks, but it’ll be quicker in the chopper, and Joe’s offered.” She looked at him and the faintest of smiles traced her lips. “Thanks,” she said once more. She turned and almost as an afterthought as she descended the porch steps, she said over her shoulder, “I never did find my mares.”

DOC COOPER WAS DRUNK. It was nearly 11:00 a.m. and he’d already downed nearly a fifth of good Kentucky bourbon, the kind his daddy had drunk way back when times were easy and the land was bountiful and ranchers could pay their vet bills and people still ate red meat and family farms were the mainstay of an honest and hardworking nation. He was drunk and singing a religious ballad his daddy had sung a long time ago about a wheel way up in the middle of the sky.

“Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the sky.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, way in the middle of the sky!”

Those were the only words that he could remember, because he wasn’t an overly religious man himself, but that was okay. He didn’t know what the wheel was about, either, but that was all right, too. There was snow on the ground, October was nearly played out and the winter would be long and dark and cold. There was nothing else it could be. All the winters out here were the same. The wind blew, the temperature dropped, the snow fell, animals died. Animals were always dying. In fact, anything at all that was alive was always getting hurt or sick or old, and in the end they always died.

And now he’d lost his best friend. A phone call in the middle of the night from Drew’s wife, Ramalda, who could barely speak English, but she’d found just enough words to tell him that Drew wouldn’t be makin’ it to the Halloween Stomp this year. Dammit all, it was enough to drive a man to drink! He raised the bottle for another sip, then sang some more.

“Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the sky.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, way in the middle of the sky!”

And then he heard the sound. A strange deep rhythmic sound that grew louder and louder. He got up, went outside and stood with his eyes upturned. Great God in heaven! Could that be Ezekiel’s wheel? Could such a miracle ever happen to him? He raised the bottle in mute salute as the apparition descended from the heavens and a man who resembled the local game warden came forth from it and moved toward him.

“Ezekiel?” Dr. Cooper said. And then he lost his balance and sat down hard on the wooden bench outside the door of his modest house, spilling a generous splash of good Kentucky bourbon onto the weathered porch boards at his feet. He raised the bottle again, reverently. “Welcome to Katy Junction. Welcome!”

JOE NASH GLANCED to look behind him to where Jessie sat next to McCutcheon, cradling the wounded dog in her arms. “Well, Jessie Weaver, offhand I’d say you got yourself a little problem. What’s plan B?”

Jessie had never seen Dr. Cooper in this state before. There was no denying that he was severely incapacitated. He wouldn’t be able to stitch Blue up or take X rays to check for internal injuries. He wouldn’t be able to reassure her that her longtime friend, companion and working partner would be all right. Dr. Cooper couldn’t even stand up. She shook her head. “I don’t have a plan B,” she said, despair curdling her blood. “Blue needs help and she needs it now.”

Joe nodded. “Hey, Comstock! C’mon, crawl your official carcass back in here.” He shouted out the door. “We’re heading for Bozeman. I know a doctor there who owes me a big favor.”

Jessie leaned forward. “Blue needs a veterinarian.”

“Anything Cooper can do, any competent physician can.”

“A people doctor doesn’t know anything about dogs.”

“No offense,” Joe said, “but Cooper doesn’t know all that much about dogs, either, though I’m told he’s a genius with cattle and pigs. C’mon, Comstock! Hurry it up. We got a man here with a busted ankle, and a dog that needs surgery. And if I don’t get this chopper back to home base by 5:00 p.m. my posterior is going to be a sling.”

“Let me out, Joe,” Jessie said, edging toward the door. “I can tend my dog right here, and when Doc sobers up he can help me.”

“Not a good plan, little lady,” Joe said, powering up the Bell JetRanger as Comstock climbed aboard. “By the looks of him, that old man won’t be sober for a week. Pray all the cows and pigs in Katy Junction stay healthy, and just relax and enjoy the ride.”

KATY JUNCTION HADN’T known this much excitement since the day the outlaw Billy Bowden shot Lieutenant John Gatlin right in front of his entire regiment back in 1878. The whole town and half the regiment had chased after Bowden, but they’d never caught him. It took a U.S. marshal by the name of Joe Belle down in Arizona Territory to bring that outlaw to justice. Wouldn’t that just figure. An Arizona lawman! Probably shot him out of pocket, too. Them damn Arizonians were famous for hiding pistols in their pockets. But no matter. Bowden had deserved what he got.

Badger shook his head and cut himself a plug of tobacco, shifting on the cracked vinyl of the old truck seat and staring at the place where Bear Creek twisted and tumbled out of the foothills.

Yessir, this’d be a topic of conversation for months to come. What were the odds that Guthrie Sloane would come back to roost on the very night Jessie Weaver disappeared? And then he’d taken off after her in the middle of the night; didn’t matter that it was snowing like the blue blazes. Found her, too! Lord a’mighty. Surely this would soften her. Couldn’t she see that the boy was crazy about her? Always had been; always would be. Maybe he wasn’t perfect. Maybe he didn’t have a lot of money. Maybe he didn’t think exactly the way she did about everything. But hell, Guthrie Sloane was all wool and a yard wide. He’d do to ride the river with.

Badger caught a flash of movement through the pines that flanked the creek. Yep, there he was. Snowshoes over his shoulder, striding along in what was left of the rotting snow. Paying careful attention where he put his feet because the going was slick. Not noticing Badger’s truck until he nearly stumbled over it. Badger bumped the horn with the palm of his hand, leaned out the window and spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Hey, mister, wanna ride?”

Guthrie stopped and stood flat-footed, weaving slightly. He stared at Badger for a long blank moment and then recognition glimmered and he said, “She’s okay. Jessie’s okay. We found her.”

“I know that, son. She’s bringing the dog to Doc Cooper’s place. She sent me here to pick you up.”

Guthrie nodded. He looked worse than Jessie had. Hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and reeling with exhaustion. He and Jessie made a pair, that’s for certain. “I better go there, then,” he said. “Her arm needs tending, but she won’t see to herself until she’s seen to Blue. And even then she might just let it go.”

He explained this very slowly and carefully, as if Badger hadn’t known Jessie Weaver all her life.

“Son,” Badger said, “you might as well have something to eat first, before you pitch onto your face. You ain’t slept in a couple of days, nor eaten in that long, either, by the looks of you. C’mon. Crawl in the truck. Your sister cooks a mean breakfast, and she’s expectin’ you.”

Didn’t matter that it was well past noon. Nossir, it didn’t. Badger was right. Steak, eggs, home fries and lots of strong black coffee would go down real fine. Real fine. Guthrie nodded. Rubbed his burning eyes. Rubbed the stubble over his jaw. Hadn’t shaved since leaving Valdez. Must look like a rough-cut lumberjack. Didn’t care one damn bit. Nodded again. “Okay,” he said.

GUILT. Jessie crept into the sterile, high-tech room in the surgical wing and sat gingerly on the edge of a plastic chair drawn up beside McCutcheon’s hospital bed, completely overwhelmed by guilt. “I’m sorry about your ankle, Mr. McCutcheon,” she said. “This is all my fault, you lying here all stove up and Blue being hurt. It’s because I didn’t bring the mares down earlier. I should’ve known they’d sneak off that way when they saw me corralling the others. I should’ve brought them in first. Without Old Gray to help me…I should’ve known.”

“You can’t take the credit for breaking my ankle,” McCutcheon said in a gruff voice. “I did that all by myself, with a little help from my snowshoes and a low-flying helicopter that scared the bejesus out of me. And by the way, there’s nothing worse than listening to a Catholic at confession.”

“I’m not Catholic,” Jessie said, taken aback.

“No? Well, you should’ve been. Anyhow, no one forced me to tramp off looking for you—I did that voluntarily. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Mr. McCutcheon…”

“Caleb. Call me Caleb. Please.”

Jessie rose to her feet. “I can’t stay. Joe Nash, the helicopter pilot, is waiting for me. Blue’s all right. She’s been tended to and he’s keeping watch on her until I get back. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“What time is it?”

“Suppertime. I can smell the food in the hallways.” She smiled faintly. She had gone past the point of hunger a long, long while ago. She was light-headed, giddy; she felt as if she could float away. The pain in her arm was the only thing that kept her grounded. That, and the enormous guilt that burdened her conscience. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call your wife?”

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