was McCutcheon’s place now. Perhaps he would bring in grid power from the main road. He might even pave the dirt track that paralleled the creek. He most certainly would throw parties here, grand parties, and he and his wealthy friends would drink and laugh and look out at the valley and the mountains for a day or two before returning to their rich and sophisticated lives in the city. They would never know of the immense struggle that had shaped this land. They would never know of a man with a dream who had driven a herd of longhorns up from Texas in another century and made a life for himself here, back when the West still had enough snap and snarl in it to give a body pause.
Jessie fed a few sticks into the woodstove and pumped water into the sink. Everything her family had fought so hard for was for nothing. Over one hundred and forty years of mighty struggle upon the land was gone, signed away forever with the sweep of a pen.
She didn’t eat breakfast. Wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been hungry for weeks. Hadn’t slept well for months. For the past year a part of her had been dying, and now it was time for the funeral, time to bury the past and get on with life.
But how could she bury the very best part of herself? How could she possibly leave all this behind? This beloved room, this warm homey kitchen. Damn that Guthrie Sloane! Damn him for running out on her when she needed him the most!
She sat down at the table and dropped her head into the cradle of her arm, her body rigid with pain. She was so absorbed in her wretchedness that she didn’t hear the dog bark. Didn’t hear the rattle of the diesel engine until it was right outside the ranch house. A car door slammed and she jumped to her feet, smoothing her hair back from her face. Who?
She opened the kitchen door—and visibly recoiled at the sight of the Mercedes and the man mounting the steps. Caleb McCutcheon, and he was carrying a toolbox.
“Hello,” he said, apologetic. “I hope I’m not too much of an intrusion. I know it’s early, but I figured you for an early riser.”
Jessie was completely taken aback. “I had until Tuesday. That was the agreement!”
“Yes, ma’am, it was.” He nodded. “Though you can have ten years if you want. I thought I’d give you a hand with your truck. I was a pretty fair mechanic way back when.”
“When what?”
He paused, looking very much like a chastened little boy. “When I was a lot younger than I am now,” he said.
“I don’t need your help, Mr. McCutcheon. I can fix my own truck.”
“Well, with that broken arm, I just—”
“Come to think of it,” she interrupted, “if I can’t fix that old junker I guess now I can buy myself a new one.”
He nodded again. “I guess you could, though I didn’t figure you were that type.”
“What type might that be?”
“Extravagant.”
“Have you seen my truck?”
“I passed it on the way in. Ford, 1986-ish? Flatbed, supercab, four-wheel drive. Sweet old girl. The fuel pump’s gone—isn’t that what you said?”
Now Jessie nodded. “I’ve had the part for weeks. It’s out in the barn.”
“Right. Okay, then.” He stood there for a few moments, uncertainty flickering in his eyes, then shrugged in a what-the-hell manner. “Well, I suppose if I search long enough I’ll find it.” He made to go.
“Mr. McCutcheon, I surely wish you wouldn’t.”
He stopped, half turned and considered what he wanted to say. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, thinking about things. After what you did to save this ranch, to keep it whole…” He raised the toolbox. “Fixing your truck is the least I can do.”
“You don’t owe me anything. All I ever ask is that you respect the land. I would have done anything to keep it, anything at all…except sell it off piecemeal to pay off debts until nothing of it was left.”
McCutcheon lifted his gaze to the glaciated summits of the mountain range that towered to the east. “I understand that, and I respect you for what you’ve done. But to tell you the truth, the way I’m feeling right now I almost wish I hadn’t bought it.
“When Steven Brown called me out of the blue, I had pretty much decided that maybe my wife was right—buying a ranch was a foolish dream. Then he started describing the place to me, and suddenly I wanted to see it. See if it was the way I’d imagined it in my dreams. If the mountains looked big enough, the cabins looked honest-to-God real, the creek had just the right bend in it.
“I cut out a picture once when I was a kid living in the middle of a Chicago slum,” he said. “Cut it out of a magazine. I’ve kept it all these years. It was a picture of a ranch, a real working ranch. The house was like this, all weather-beaten and silvery, with a long porch fronting it and facing the river. There were log cabins in the background, a bunkhouse, a pole barn, corrals. Big mountains. Just like this. This is the place I’ve imagined all these years, right down to the bend in the creek that passes by the old homestead cabin.”
The smell of boiling coffee permeated the cold morning air. “I should shift the pot,” Jessie said, glancing behind her into the kitchen. She paused, then ducked him a shy glance. “Whyn’t you come inside and have a cup.”
McCutcheon’s face brightened. “Gladly. Maybe you could tell me a little more about the history of this place. We didn’t have a whole lot of time for that when I was last here.”
She ushered him into the kitchen, poured two chipped ironstone mugs full of hot black brew, and they sat down at the table together. She put her hand on the table, felt the smooth irregularities of it. “My great-grandfather made this,” she said. “Hewed it from one thick plank of a big old cedar felled up in the mountains. He made it for my great-grandmother. She was the daughter of a Crow medicine man and she was given to my great-grandfather in thanks for the cattle that kept them alive through a very bad winter. He was also gifted some of the tribe’s finest horses. Those horses became the founding bloodlines of one of the purest registries of Spanish Barbs in the West.
“He kept a journal, which my father donated to the Montana Historical Society. In it he wrote often of his wife. When I was young I read that journal a whole passel of times, but it wasn’t until I was in my early teens that my father told me my great-grandmother had been a full-blooded Crow Indian. My great-grandfather never made mention of that except for one brief passage in the journal, where he regretted that they couldn’t communicate better.
“Which was probably quite an understatement, considering she probably didn’t speak one word of English, nor he of Crow. From the way he wrote about her, it was plain that he loved her a great deal, so they somehow managed to overcome the language barrier. She bore him two sons. One died when he was fifteen, thrown from a rough bronc. The other was my grandfather.” Jessie glanced at McCutcheon and then let her eyes drop to her mug of coffee.
“My grandfather was a half-breed destined to inherit one of the largest ranches in Montana at a time when people looked darkly on all things Indian, and particularly despised half-breeds. He married another half-breed, a girl from the Blackfeet tribe, whose mother had married a Scottish trapper. She was very beautiful and kind. Her name was Elsa, and she was my father’s mother. She is one of
