Montana Sky

  He seemed harmless, and she did have the loaded twenty-five-caliber pistol in her bag. She smiled, her thin face going sly. “You gotta wear a slicker, cowboy.”

  “Sure.” He’d no more have dipped his wick into a street whore without protection than slit his own wrists. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

  With a wink, he watched his fifty disappear into her shiny vinyl handbag. He started the engine and drove out of Bozeman.

  It was a pretty night, and the road was clear, tempting him to push the gas pedal to the floor. But he drove moderately, humming along with Billy Ray Cyrus on the radio. And as the dark became country dark, he was a happy man.

  “This is far enough for fifty.” It made her nervous, the quiet, the lack of light and people.

  Not far enough, he thought, and smiled at her. “I know a little place, just a couple miles up.” Steering with one hand, he reached under the seat, amused at the way she shrank back and reached for her bag. He pulled out a bottle of the cheap wine he’d doctored. “Drink, Suzy?”

  “Well . . . maybe.” Her johns didn’t usually offer her wine, or call her pretty, or use her name. “Just a couple more miles, cowboy,” she said, and tipped back the bottle. “Then we’ll ride.”

  “Me and my pal here are more than ready.” He patted his crotch, turned up the radio. “Know this one?”

  She drank again, giggled, and sang along with him and Clint Black.

  She was a little thing, barely a hundred pounds. It took less than ten minutes for the drug to work. He nipped the bottle neatly from her limp fingers before it could spill. Whistling now, he pulled to the side of the road.

  She was slumped in the corner, but he lifted an eyelid to be certain, then nodded. Climbing out, he dumped the rest of the drugged wine out, then heaved the bottle, sending it in a long, flying arc into the dark.

  He heard it shatter as he walked to the bed of the rig and got out the rope.

  “Y OU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS, WILL.” ADAM STUDIED HIS sister as they walked their horses through a narrow stream.

  “I want to. For you.” She paused, let Moon drink. “For her. I know I haven’t come to her grave very often. I let other things get in the way.”

  “You don’t have to go to our mother’s grave to remember her.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t remember her. Except through you.”

  She tipped back her head. It was a gorgeous afternoon and she was pleasantly tired, her shoulders just a little achy from unrolling wire and hammering fence.

  “I didn’t come, very often, because it always seemed morbid. Standing there, looking down at a piece of earth and a carved stone, having no memories of her to pull out and hold on to.” She watched a bird flit by, chasing the breeze. “I’ve started thinking of it differently. It was seeing Lily with her mother, and Tess with hers. It’s thinking of the baby Lily’s carrying. The continuity.”

  She turned to him, and her face was relaxed. “It was always the land that was continuity to me, the seasons, the work that had to be done in each one of them. When I thought of yesterday or of tomorrow, it was always the ranch.”

  “It’s your heart, Willa, your home. It’s you.”

  “Yeah, that’ll always be true. But I’m thinking of the people now. I never really did before—except for you.” She reached out, closed a hand over his. “You were always there. My memories are of you. Picking me up, me riding your hip, your voice talking to me and telling me stories.”

  “You were, and always will be, a joy to me.”

  “You’re going to be such an amazing father.” She gave his hand a last squeeze, began to walk Moon again. “I’ve been thinking. It’s not just the land that continues, not just the land we owe. I owe her my life, and I owe her you, and I owe her the child I’ll be aunt to.”

  He was silent a moment. “It’s not just her you owe.”

  “No, it’s not.” Adam would understand, she thought. He always did. “I owe Jack Mercy, too. The anger’s gone now, and so is the grief. I owe him my life, and the lives of my sisters, and so the child I’ll be aunt to. I can be grateful for that. And maybe, in some way I owe him what I am. If he’d been different, so would I.”

  “And what about the tomorrows, Will? What about your tomorrows?”

  She could only see the seasons, and the work that had to be done in each one of them. And the land, waiting endlessly. “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you tell Ben how you feel about him?”

  She sighed and wished for once there could be some corner of her heart secret from Adam. “I haven’t made up my mind how I feel.”

  “Your mind has nothing to do with it.” His lips curved as he kicked his horse into a trot. “Neither does his.”

  And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she wondered. Her brow knit, she clicked to Moon and galloped after him. “Don’t start that cryptic business with me. I’m only half Blackfoot, remember. If you have something to say—”

  She broke off as he held up a hand. Without question she pulled up and followed his gaze toward the tilting stones of the cemetery. She smelled it too. Death. But that was to be expected here; it was another of the reasons she so rarely came.

  But then she knew, even before she saw, she knew. Because old death had a quiet and dusty murmur. And new death screamed.

  They walked the horses slowly again, dismounted in silence with only the wind in the high grass and the haunting song of birds.

  It was her father’s grave that had been desecrated. What rose up in her was disgust, chased by superstition. To mock and insult the dead was a dangerous matter. She shuddered, found herself murmuring a chant in her mother’s tongue to calm restless spirits.

  Then to calm her own, she turned away and stared over the land that rolled and waved to forever.

  Not a very subtle message, she thought, as the healing rage took over. The mutilated skunk had been spread over the grave, its blood staining the mound of new grass. The head had been removed, then placed carefully just under the headstone.

  The stone itself had been smeared with blood, going brown now in the sun. And words had been printed over the deep carving:

  Dead but not forgotten

  She jerked when Adam laid a hand on her shoulder. “Go back to the stream, Willa. I’ll take care of this.”

  Her weak legs urged her to do as he asked, to crawl back onto her horse and ride. But the rage was still here, and beneath that, the debt she had come to acknowledge.

  “No, he was my father, my blood. I’ll do it.” Turning, she fumbled with the clasps on her saddlebags. “I can do it, Adam. I need to do it.”

  She took out an old blanket, spent some of her temper ripping it. After digging for her gloves, she tugged them on. Her eyes were bright and hard. “Whatever he was, whatever he’d done, he didn’t deserve this.”

  She took a piece of the blanket and, kneeling beside her father’s grave, began the filthy task of removing the corpse from it. Her stomach revolted, but her hands stayed steady. Her gloves were stained with gore when she finished, so she stripped them off, tossed them into the heap. Tying the blanket securely, she set it aside.

  “I’ll bury it,” Adam murmured.

  She nodded, rose. Using her canteen, she soaked another piece of the blanket, then knelt again to wash the stone.

  She couldn’t get it clean, no matter how she scrubbed. She would have to come back with something more than water and a makeshift rag. But she did her best and sat back on her heels, her hands raw and cold.

  “I thought I loved you,” she murmured. “Then I thought I hated you. But nothing I ever felt for you was as deep or as deadly as this.” She closed her eyes and tried to clear her lungs of the stench. “It’s been you all along, I think. Not me, but you it’s been aimed at. Dear God, what did you do, and who did you do it to?”

  “Here.” Adam reached down to lift her to her feet. “Drink a little,” he said, and offered her his canteen.

&nb
sp; She drank, gulping deep to wash the nasty taste from her throat. There were flowers blooming on her mother’s grave, she realized. And blood staining her father’s.

  “Who hated him this much, Adam? And why? Who did he hurt more than me, and you? More than Lily and Tess? Who did he hurt more than the children he ignored?”

  “I don’t know.” He worried only about Willa now, and gently led her back to her horse. “You’ve done all you can do here. We’ll go home.”

  “Yes.” Her legs felt brittle, like ice ready to crack. “We’ll go home.”

  They rode west, toward Mercy and a sky stained red as the grave.

  T HE FOURTH OF JULY MEANT MORE THAN FIREWORKS. IT meant roping and riding, bronco busting and bull riding. For more than a decade, Mercy and Three Rocks had held a competition for cowboys on their ranches and any of the neighboring spreads who didn’t choose to go farther afield for holiday entertainment.

  It was Mercy’s turn to host. Willa had listened to Ben’s request that they move the competition to Three Rocks that year, to Nate’s advice that they cancel it altogether. She’d considered, then ignored.

  She was Mercy, and Mercy continued.

  So people crowded corral fences, cheering on their picks. Cowboys brushed off their butts as they were tossed out of the saddle, into the air, and onto the ground. In a near pasture, the barrel-racing competition entered its second phase. Near the pole barn, hooves thundered and ropes flew through the air.

  A bandstand was set up, draped with bunting of red, white, and blue. Music was interrupted periodically as names and places were announced. Gallons of potato salad, truckloads of fried chicken, and barrels of beer and iced tea were consumed.

  Hearts were broken, along with a few bones.

  “I see we’re up against each other in the target shooting,” Ben commented, slipping an arm around Willa’s waist.

  “Prepare to lose.”

  “Side bet?”

  She angled her head. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well.” He tucked his tongue in his cheek, leaned down close so their hats bumped, and whispered something that made her eyes round.

  “You’re making that up,” she decided. “No one could live through that.”

  “Not chicken, are you?”

  She straightened her hat. “You want to risk it, McKinnon, I’ll take you on. You’re in this round of bronc busting, aren’t you?”

  “I’m on my way over.”

  “I’ll go with you.” She smiled sweetly. “I’ve got twenty on Jim.”

  “You bet against me?” He wobbled between insult and shock. “Hell, Willa.”

  “I’ve been watching Jim practice. Ham’s been coaching him.” She sauntered away. No point in telling him she’d bet fifty on Ben McKinnon. It would just go to his head.

  “Hey, Will.” A little blood drying on his chin, his arm around a blonde in girdled-on jeans, Billy beamed at her. “Jim’s in the chute.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.” She propped a boot on the rail beside his. “How’d you do?”

  “Aw, shit.” He rolled a sore shoulder.

  “That good, huh?” With a laugh she squeezed over to make room for Ben. “Well, you’re young yet, kid. You’ll still be breaking bronc when geezers like McKinnon here are riding their rocking chairs. You get Ham to work with you.”

  She looked up, saw her foreman was standing on the outside wall of the chute, snapping last-minute instructions to Jim.

  “I was thinking maybe you could. You ride better’n anybody on Mercy except for Adam. And he won’t bust broncs.”

  “Adam’s got a different way of taming them. We’ll see,” she added, then let out a whoop as the chute opened and horse and rider shot out. “Ride that devil, Jim!”

  He careened by in a cloud of dust, one hand thrown high.

  When the eight-second bell clanged, he jumped clear, rolled, then gained his feet to the wild cheers of the onlookers.

  “Not bad,” Ben said. “I’m coming up.” With manhood and pride at stake, he cupped his hands under Willa’s elbows, lifted her up, and kissed her. “For luck,” he said, then swaggered off.

  “Think he’ll take our Jim, Will?” Billy wanted to know.

  She thought Ben McKinnon could take damn near anything. “He’ll have to ride like a hellhound.”

  Though the blonde shifted under his arm in a bid for attention, Billy tugged Willa’s sleeve. “You’re up against him in the target shooting, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ll take him, Will. We all put money on you. All the boys.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to lose it.” She watched Ben climb over the chute. He tipped his hat to her, a cocky move that made her grin back at him.

  When his horse leaped out of the door, her heart did a foolish little roll in her chest. He looked . . . magnificent, she decided. Riding straight on that furious horse, one hand grabbing for the sky, the other locked to the saddle. She caught a glimpse of his eyes, the dead-focused concentration in them.

  They look like that when he’s inside me, she realized, and her heart did another roll, quicker. She didn’t even hear the bell clang, but watched him jump down, the horse still kicking furiously. He stayed on his feet, boots planted. And though the crowd cheered, he looked straight at her. And winked.

  “Cocky bastard,” she muttered. And I’m hip-deep in love with him.

  “Why do they do that?” Tess asked from behind her.

  “For the hell of it.” Grateful for the excuse to think of something else, Willa turned. Tess had turned herself out for the day. Tight jeans, fancy boots, a bright blue shirt with silver trim that matched the band on her snowy-white hat. “Well, ain’t you a picture. Hey, Nate. Ready for the race?”

  “It’s a tight field this year, but I’m hopeful.”

  “Nate’s helping out with the pie-eating contest.” Tess chuckled and tucked an arm through his. “We were hunting up Lily. She wanted to watch, since she helped make the pies.”

  “I saw her . . .” Willa narrowed her eyes and searched the crowds. “I think she and Adam were helping out with the kids’ games. Egg toss, maybe, or the three-legged races.”

  “We’ll find her. Want to tag along?”

  “No, thanks.” Willa shrugged off Tess’s invitation. “I may catch up later. I need a beer.”

  “You’re worried about her,” Nate murmured as they zigzagged through the crowd.

  “I can’t help it. You didn’t see her the day she came back from the cemetery. She wouldn’t talk about it. Usually I can goad her into talking about anything, but not this.”

  “It’s been over two months since Jesse Cooke was murdered. That’s something to hang on to.”

  “I’m trying.” Tess shook herself. There was music, people, laughter. “It’s a hell of a party. You do throw amazing parties out here.”

  “We can start throwing our own anytime you say.”

  “Nate, we’ve been there. I’m going back to LA in October. There’s Lily.” Desperate for the distraction, Tess waved wildly. “I swear, she glows all the time now. Pregnancy certainly agrees with her.”

  Nate thought it might agree with Tess as well. That was something else they could start—once he’d finished pecking away at this stubborn idea of leaving.

  T HE FIRST FIREWORKS EXPLODED AT TWENTY MINUTES PAST dusk. Color leaped over the sky, shadowed the stars, then bled down like tears. Willa let herself be cuddled back against Ben to watch the show.

  “I think your daddy likes sending those bombs off more than the kids like to watch.”

  “He and Ham argue over the presentation and order every blessed year.” Ben grinned as a gold starburst bloomed overhead with a crackling boom. “Then they cackle like hens, taking turns lighting fuses. Never would let Zack or me have a hand in it.”

  “It’s not your time,” she murmured. That, too, would come. That, too, was continuity. “It was a good day.”

  “Yeah.?
?? He covered her hands with his. “Real good.”

  “Not miffed ’cause I beat you shooting?”