Montana Blue. Genell Dellin

wrangle these here dishes,” Micah said suddenly, “you go on in yonder and clean up.”

      Blue glanced at him. The old man’s sharp gaze met his. What had Micah seen on his face?

      Micah set the skillet down with a thump.

      “Here,” he said, “I’ll show you the room and what’s in it. There’s duds you can wear instead of them sweaty ones.”

      He limped past Blue and gestured for him to follow.

      “We’ve had ever’ size of hired hand in the world pass through here one time or another and I reckon half of ’em left somethin’ behind. Boots, hats, coats, warbags, you name it, we got it.”

      Blue crossed the hallway behind him and Micah led the way into a room with two windows, a bed, a chest of drawers, and a closet with the door standing open. Assorted clothes hung on hangers and a jumble of boots covered the floor.

      “Help yourself,” Micah said. “Gordon’s known for running ’em off pronto if they give any lip or if they ain’t up to working fourteen hours a day seven days a week with a smile on their face for a wetback’s wage. If they leave somethin’ behind, ain’t no way they come back after it when he told ’em never set foot on the ranch again.”

      “Nice guy,” Blue said.

      Micah chuckled.

      “Oncet in a great while,” he said. “Oncet in a high lonesome blue moon, you might say.”

      He limped to one of the windows and banged on the sides of it with his fists to loosen it in the frame.

      “You ain’t workin’ for Gordon, remember that,” he said. “I got my own operation here.”

      He wrenched at the bottom of the window with both hands and then slid it up. The fresh, cold night poured in.

      “Air this room out a little bit,” the old man said.

      Two windows. One open. Doors open all the way to the front porch.

      If he couldn’t sleep inside the walls, he could sleep outside—blankets were piled on the bed. He was tired. Tireder physically than he had been for years. It felt good.

      But before sleep he needed the feel of hot water sluicing down his back and the smell of clean clothes—not prison clothes—in his nostrils.

      “Bathroom down the hall,” Micah said, and limped past him to the door. “Holler if you need anything.”

      “Right. Thanks.”

      The old man stopped and made a quick turn of his stiff body so he could see Blue.

      “You’ve got him now and he’s gonna make you a mount that won’t quit,” he said. “You done a helluva job today.”

      His voice held traces of envy and regret. But mostly happiness, satisfaction.

      “Thanks,” Blue said. “It took a while. You didn’t have to stay out there all that time.”

      The old man’s bushy eyebrows lifted.

      “Never know when I might could lend a hand,” he said, with a shrug.

      That touched Blue. Nobody had been concerned about his safety for a long, long time.

      Micah hesitated, then he said, “Whenever you want, we can get horseback and take him to a bigger pen.”

      We.

      “That’ll work,” Blue said. “If you furnish the horses.”

      Micah grinned.

      “Get some sleep,” he said. “Don’t worry, this is your deal. I won’t get in your way, son.”

      Blue returned the grin as Micah left him.

      Blue thought about the old man while he unbuttoned his shirt.

      Son. We.

      Being robbed of a ranch—even this ranch—was nothing. Not compared to being robbed of a father.

      CHAPTER THREE

      BLUE WOKE in the middle of the night in a cold fit of fear. He sat up, hands fisted, until the memory drifted up out of his sleep. He had turned over without hitting the wall and it had scared him awake.

      A bright fall of moonlight poured in through the window. The sturdy old room lay peaceful around him.

      A real bed, standing on legs, instead of a bunk hanging from the wall. Real quilts, instead of a scratchy blanket. Micah’s house.

      The whole of yesterday came flooding back to him.

      The Splendid Sky. He was on the Splendid Sky for the first time in his life. He had thought about how that would be since he was old enough to imagine anything—how the land and the house would look and how his father would act. When Blue was really little, in most versions of that daydream, Gordon would explain that he had inadvertently lost track of Rose and her children, and rejoice at finding them again.

      Blue hadn’t been very old when he’d trashed that little fantasy.

      He stared into the curtain of moonlight. Gordon was out there now. Within striking distance.

      Blue reached for the clothes Micah had given him and dressed. Loath to risk waking the old man, he ducked out through the window, crossed the porch on the balls of his feet, and stepped off into the space and the brightness.

      The night was all space, calling to him like a talking drum. It pumped power into his veins, it set a steady beat going in his blood like the need to dance. Dances and women and horses. Those had made him feel so alive, sometimes he’d thought his heart would burst with the joy of breathing, of being. Until now, he had forgotten completely how that felt.

      But he might have a chance to come back to it. The inside of his body hurt as if his heart and all his organs were almost gone to atrophy and the night had begun forcing life back into them. He had horses again, and if luck and God stayed with him as they had in bringing him here, he would have dances and women in his life once more. Maybe even joy.

      When Gordon was gone from the face of Mother Earth, then he would feel joy.

      He crossed the yard through the shadows of tree limbs floating on the grass. The breeze ruffled his still-damp hair across his shoulders. It sent such a cool freshness into him that he gasped a quick, shivery breath.

      Last night he’d been buried alive. Tonight he could fly. Last night he had only memories of moonlight and starlight. Tonight he could fill his eyes with them and rub them into his skin.

      Tonight he could look down right at the place where Gordon Campbell slept. He could bail off this hillside and run all the way to the main house and confront him with his sins right now. He savored the thought. But first, he had to plan. He was not going back inside for killing someone who needed to be killed.

      Dawn was coming in the air. He felt it as he walked across Micah’s road and headed for the edge of the west-facing bluff. Far away, down the valley, a cow bawled. Another one answered. Then, from still farther away drifted the lingering, lonesome howl of a coyote.

      Gooseflesh popped up on his arms. Twice blessed by the wild ones—by the sight of the deer and the sound of this coyote—he didn’t know how he’d survived so long shut up inside. The beat of his heart quickened again.

      He was here, through no plan of his own, so it was meant to be. He was here in the perfect place to find out Gordon’s habits and the best way to get to him. The perfect place to do what he had to do.

      Here where he should’ve lived all his life. Where, if that had happened, his mother and sister would be at this very moment. Alive and beautiful.

      Here in this enormous land that smelled of pine trees and sweet grass and snow on the mountains and dust and horse from the pen where he’d left the roan. He walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down. The moonlight glinted off a long body of water