Montana Dreaming. Nadia Nichols

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