urged. “I want to hear it. All of it. Everything that made this place what it is. Tell me about your earliest memory. Tell me about your grandmother.”
Jessie held his gaze for a few moments and then nodded slowly. “It was a horseback ride. I was young, maybe four years old, and the horse was as tall as the mountains and as swift as the wind that blew down the valley. The horse was running hard, but I wasn’t afraid. I was in my grandmother’s strong arms and she held me safe upon that horse as it flew homeward. Over the thundering wind I heard her singing a song in her native tongue. It was joyous and full of life. She sang into the wind as we galloped home from someplace away. That was a good memory!
“I remember that when we got back home my mother was very angry. She was afraid I might have been hurt. She took me from Grandmother and told me I was never to go with her again.” Jessie paused and smiled a faint, bitter smile. “That was a bad memory. My mother was white. She loved my father but never understood his heritage, and she feared what she didn’t understand. Life out here was hard for her. She came from Denver and she was never happy. My grandparents frightened her. The land frightened her. She hated the sound of the wind, the size of the mountains, the stillness at dawn.
“My father tried to make her happy. He built her this place of boards so she could have the house painted any color she wanted. But the wind and the weather stripped the paint away, and in one bad winter all her rosebushes froze. If she hadn’t died of the bad pneumonia, I think she would have left us.” Jessie ran her palm over the table. “She died because I brought home a bad flu from school when I was in the second grade and she caught it. I got sick and should have died too, but I didn’t. I was seven years old when she died.”
McCutcheon sat in silence for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been a hard time.”
“Harder on my father. He loved her so. He never got over her death. My grandparents died not many years after that, just months apart. And then it was just my father and me.”
“Any hired hands?”
Jessie nodded. “At first. In the good times we kept three full-timers down at the old cabin and a handful of part-timers during branding and roundup. Then, one by one, we had to let them go. Cattle prices kept falling. Land taxes and living costs kept rising. My father wanted me to go to college, so he took a second mortgage on the ranch to pay my tuition. I finished my four years of college and was in my third year of vet school, when he got sick. The medical bills were staggering, debts piled up, the bank sent notices. I quit school two years ago, Dad died last year…and here we are.”
McCutcheon drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Not your fault. Nobody’s fault, really. I’m just glad you came along when you did. Otherwise the bulldozers would already be at work carving out a golf course along the creek.”
“I guess we have Steven Brown to thank for that.” McCutcheon hesitated. “I have a question about the brand your horses and cattle wear. It looks like a D with a long bar through the middle. Is that what you call this place? The Bar D? Everyone just refers to it as the Weaver ranch, but don’t most ranches have names?”
“Most ranches aren’t owned by half-breed Indians,” Jessie replied. “The brand you’re referring to symbolizes a bow and arrow. If you look sharp, you’ll see there’s an arrowhead on one end of that bar. It was a pretty radical brand one hundred years ago, so we always just called it the Weaver ranch and let people scratch their heads and wonder.”
McCutcheon sat back in his chair. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “The Bow and Arrow.”
Jessie nodded. “Yessir. Big secret. Might get you scalped if you let it out. What about your wife? You’re married, aren’t you?”
“Twenty-odd years, no children. She didn’t want them. Wanted to be free to travel. She’s in Paris right now. Spends six months a year there. She’d never come out here, not in a million years. Not her kind of place. She likes bright lights and big cities. It’s not her fault that her husband’s a throwback to a different time and place. I can’t blame that on her. She’s smart, funny, beautiful, well educated. She should’ve been a politician. Maybe then we’d have a decent president someday.”
“Her?”
He laughed. “That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. She’d be right at home in the Oval Office, and she’d do a damn fine job of running this country, too.” He finished his coffee, pushed to his feet. “That was good, thanks. Now, if you’ll tell me where to find that fuel pump, I’ll get down to business.”
Jessie rose. “Mr. McCutcheon, really, I can fix the truck myself or hire someone to fix it. I have a little money now, in case you forgot.”
“I realize that,” he said. “But I’m going to fix it for you and you’re going to let me. And there’s something else.” He paused while he phrased his next announcement and shored himself up with a slow deep breath. “I need a caretaker for this place.” She shook her head fiercely and he raised a hand. “Yes, you have enough money to buy yourself a moderate spread and continue breeding your Spanish horses, but listen to what I have to say, because I’ve thought about this a long time.
“Nobody loves this place the way you do. Nobody would ever care about it as much or look after it as well. I’m asking you to stay on as my caretaker. Right here. In this house. I won’t be around much for a while, and when I come I’ll stay in the old cabin. I’ll pay you a good salary and all I ask is that you keep the place in good repair. You’d do that anyhow, without being asked, without being told. You know how to do what needs to be done.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to give me an answer right now. Think on it. And think on this. If you don’t stay I’ll have to hire someone else to do what you were born to do. I’d hate to do that. This place belongs to you in a way that all the money in the world and countless legal documents can’t change, and even more than that, you belong to this place. So please, I’m asking you to seriously consider my offer.”
Jessie shook her head before he had even finished speaking. “No,” she repeated. “This isn’t my home anymore. I have to move on. There’s no other way for me.”
“I wish you’d at least consider it.”
“I already have,” she said. “The answer is no, Mr. McCutcheon.”
STEVEN TOOK the call in his office. It was Caleb McCutcheon, speaking on his car phone as he drove from the Weaver ranch back to Katy Junction.
“Listen,” he began without preamble. “I need your advice….”
Steven sat at his desk while McCutcheon told him about the job offer he had made Jessie Weaver. “She refused me flat out,” McCutcheon finished. “I was hoping maybe you could talk to her. Get her to change her mind and stay on. She has to stay. Somehow we have to convince her!”
Steven closed his eyes and kneaded the band of tension between his eyes. He was silent for several long moments. “I’ll try,” he said. “But she has to walk her own path.”
After he hung up he sat in stillness and reflected that, in hindsight, they should have stipulated in deed that Jessie Weaver stay on at least another five years to manage the ranch and make the transition an easier one. Too late now. He stared out the window at the city below, but he was seeing Jessie’s mountains.
