could feel like they were going on and on forever in layers out to the edge of the earth and then lifting into the sky, but when a person hit Montana it was like God had opened up his hand and laid out all the freedom in the world for whoever was brave enough to take it.
Something deep within him, something too unformed to be a memory, awakened from sleeping in his bones. Tanasi Rose had returned to Oklahoma when he was nearly two years old and Dannie not yet born, but his spirit knew this place.
“Always good to see spring, ain’t it?” Micah said.
Blue didn’t answer. The sun shone with such a yellow power that his eyes watered in its glare. The breeze blew in through the open window and dried the sudden wetness on his cheeks.
Maybe he would take this gift of spring and not think about what else he had to do until later in the summer.
He turned away from the thought and looked back at the roan. The horse was staring off across the wide spaces, thinking of freedom, too.
The old truck slowed at last.
“This here’s our turnoff,” Micah said. “Be about three more miles to my place.”
He turned west onto gravel.
The road led them north and west, winding down, then up and over, each rise a little less than its drop on the other side. It crossed a cattle guard, then a creek, running fast and wide over rocks.
“Looky yonder,” Micah said, flicking one gnarled finger toward the windshield as they started uphill again. “Whitetails.”
Three deer, surprisingly close, bolted. They crossed the road and vanished in among some cedar trees before Blue could realize he’d actually seen them in the flesh, but still his blood thrilled from the glimpse of their wildness.
Micah mashed the brakes as they lurched downward to a low-water bridge over a deeper creek with steeper banks than the first, then gunned the old truck as it labored up the next rising hill. They topped it and picked up speed on the way down as if the rattling trailer pushed the truck to go faster.
Blue looked down into a wide, grassy valley with mountains on the horizon, with trees gathered together in long sweeps of woods, with grain fields and pastures.
With buildings enough to make a town.
Black-topped roads running in every direction made him think for a minute that it was a town. But it was a ranch headquarters, with barns and bunkhouses, pens and shops and sheds flung all over the place. A big house at the heart of it with flags flying in front must be the main house.
What a dream, set in a sweet, protected valley.
They kept on rolling down the hill while Blue stared, trying to put it all together with the falling-down rig Micah drove. The closer they came to the valley, the more it was clear that this was headquarters to a big operation, one that had been there for many a year, one that was prospering.
Micah sure seemed to be a broken-down cowboy without much in the way of possessions but appearances could deceive. Or maybe, more likely, he just worked here. Lived in the bunkhouse, maybe. He was too stove up to work.
The road took another bend to run along a ridge above the ranch, then began curving in easy switchbacks leading down into the valley. Through the pines, Blue saw a truck with a hay spike on the back driving away from one of the farthest barns. It looked like a toy in the distance.
“That there’s where I live,” Micah said, as his rig left the gravel road for the asphalt.
He was pointing to a log house and barn nestled onto a low knoll at the base of this west-facing hill. Before Blue could open his mouth to ask who lived in the big house, the sound of a diesel motor came chugging up the last little rise to meet them.
Micah glanced at the driver and slowed to a stop. The other truck stopped, too. It was new and white under the mud that had splattered up onto the doors. Nice truck. One ton flatbed with a crew cab.
The front door bore a brand painted in black and gold, two parallel serpentine lines, elongated versions of the letter S, with the word Wagontracks arching above them. The driver leaned out the window to glance at the roan.
“Micah,” he said, “what are you asking for that hayburner you’re hauling?”
Micah grinned and shook his head.
“Save your breath, Pickle. I’m sellin’ this one to somebody who can ride ’im.”
They talked some more but Blue was only dimly aware of the sound and took in none of their meaning. He was caught up in reading the words that formed a crescent below the Wagontracks brand.
Splendid Sky Ranch.
When the other truck had downshifted and gone growling on its way, Blue spoke, even though he had to push his breath past the pounding of his heart.
“Where’s the Splendid Sky?”
“You’re sittin’ on it, son,” Micah said. “That’s the headquarters right down there.”
CHAPTER TWO
MICAH DROVE ON.
“Yes sir,” he said, “this here’s the Splendid Sky Ranch. Gordon Campbell’s place is famous all over the West.”
He cocked his head and shot a sharp glance at Blue from under the brim of his hat.
“You ever heard of it?”
Blue met his gaze. He had to do it to prove he could conceal his shock and he did.
“Sure, everybody’s heard of the Wagontracks horses,” Micah said, “and I’ll tell you right now, there ain’t a line of ranch horses anywhere, including them famous ones in Oklahoma and Texas that can measure up to ours.”
Blue couldn’t even listen to him. How, in the name of all that was holy, had he ended up here so soon? He didn’t have his balance yet—hell, he wasn’t even used to trying to see in the sunshine.
“I started every horse in the Wagontracks cavvy for fifty year,” Micah said. “For the main ranch. How many head you reckon that amounts to?”
Blue’s gut clenched as he looked out his window at the main ranch. Gordon could be down there in the big headquarters house right now. Or out there in that pickup zipping down the paved, black road that led away from it. Or he could be that tiny man on top of the tiny horse way off riding across the pasture.
Micah answered his own question. “More’n a thousand head, and that guess is a little on the low side,” he said, pride lacing his voice. “Yessir, Blue, back then, I could ride ’em.”
The sound of his own name, a voice calling him Blue instead of Bowman, felt almost as warm as a friendly hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at the old man, who was staring through the windshield into the long distance.
“I was always limber as a cat and I could ride them sunfishin’ sumbitches all day long.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Blue said.
Either
