Montana Dreaming. Nadia Nichols

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.