Montana Dreaming. Nadia Nichols

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