would be home. Finally, he would be back where he belonged.
MCCUTCHEON HAD BEEN standing on the ranch house porch for twenty minutes. It was the third time this day that he had made the long drive from town to talk to Jessie, ask her if she’d thought about his offer, tell her that she couldn’t pass it up because where else would her horses have as much running room and feel so much at home as right here on their own range?
It was snowing hard, and had been since midafternoon. Jessie had ridden up in the high country that morning to look for her wild mares and she wasn’t back yet. And it was dark. Full dark. On a stormy night when an unexpected blue norther was piling down wind-driven snow at the rate of an inch an hour. He checked his watch again, its dials luminescent, and swore softly. This wasn’t how he’d imagined this day to be…standing on her porch—his porch, dammit—his stomach tied in knots.
Over the sound of the wind came another sound out of the darkness—that of horse’s hooves muffled in six inches of fresh snow. “Jessie!” he shouted. He switched on his flashlight and shone it into the whirling snow. “Jessie Weaver!”
There was no answer to his call, but the footfalls came on steadily. A horse, plastered in wet snow, plodded up to the porch rail as if he’d walked up to it hundreds of times before. The animal was exhausted. McCutcheon panned the horse with his flashlight. His initial relief plummeted at the sight of the empty saddle.
“Oh, no,” he said. He stepped down the stairs and brushed the snow from the saddle. One of the bridle reins was broken. One of the saddlebags was unbuckled, but still full of gear. He picked up the trailing rein and led the exhausted gelding into the pole barn, where he stripped off bridle and saddle it, rubbed the horse down with a burlap sack, pitched him some hay and water and a bait of sweet feed before making for his car and town to tell the authorities that something very bad had happened to Jessie Weaver on this wild and stormy night.
“DON’T YOU DIE on me, Blue,” Jessie said, her voice inaudible to her own ears over the moan of the wind. “Don’t you die on me! You’ve been with me too long to leave me, and I need you now more than ever. You stay right here with me and we’ll keep each other warm and safe.”
She wasn’t frightened by the dark, but the cold scared her. It had the teeth of winter and its bite was painfully sharp. She had dressed as she always did for a high-country ride in fall, and could not lay blame on her choice of clothing. But an empty stomach didn’t help. A mug of hot chocolate and a big bowl of spiced beef and beans would see her through this night.
Guthrie!
Jessie jerked at the image that came so suddenly out of the darkness. The unexpected memory flooded through her and galvanized her into wakefulness. She tightened her grip on Blue and fought to quell the butterflies that fluttered through her stomach and made it hard to draw breath. Why on earth was she thinking about him now, of all times? Why was his face so clear to her—its strong, lean planes, the way it felt beneath her fingertips, the sensual roughness of his twelve-hour stubble, and his mouth, so firm and masculine…
Those images usually only came to her at night in her sleep. During the day she could keep them at bay, overshadow them with the anger she felt at his abandoning her in the midst of such difficult times.
“Baloney!” Jessie said, startling the dog. Blue raised her head and whined. “It’s all right, honey,” she soothed. “It’s okay. We’ll be okay….”
Guthrie was gone. He’d run off and headed north. Alaska, she’d heard. One bad argument between them and he’d turned tail and bolted, and he’d been gone nearly five months. If that was the sort of man he was, soft and full of butter, she was better off without him. Sooner or later her heart would realize that, then those dreams of Guthrie that tormented her nights would quit.
Jessie shivered with the cold, her trembling matching that of the injured dog she cradled beneath her coat. “I have to stay awake,” she said to Blue. “Can’t fall asleep. Don’t want to dream those dreams anymore….”
“WHAT IN HELL is taking them so long to get here!”
Caleb McCutcheon was mad. He paced the floor of the Longhorn between the counter and the door—a space too small for his big strides, which irritated him even further.
“It’s the storm,” Bernie said, refilling his coffee cup then those of the others sitting at the counter. Eight locals waited there for the warden, the state police and Park County Search and Rescue to arrive.
The phone rang and Bernie picked it up, listened for a few moments, said, “All right,” and hung up. She looked at the questioning faces. “That was the warden. Comstock says the state police are tied up with accidents. Search and rescue are mobilizing, but they won’t be here till dawn. He’s arranged for Joe Nash to take him up in his chopper at first light. He suggested that someone go out to the Weaver ranch, just in case Jessie makes it back on her own.”
“First light? They’re going to wait until morning? But that’s ridiculous! She could be hurt! Freezing to death!” McCutcheon said.
“What can they do in the middle of a blizzard in pitch-darkness?” Badger reasoned. “No tracks, no scent for the dogs, no direction to start in or head for. Sometimes it’s better to set your horse and do nothin’ than wear him out chasin’ shadows.”
“You can set your horse if you like. I’m driving out to the ranch,” McCutcheon said, reaching for his coat.
“Snow’s gettin’ pretty deep,” Badger said. “Your fancy car won’t make it. Might even be too deep for my truck, though I doubt it. She’ll go through just about anything.” He stroked his mustache, considering for a moment, then levered his arthritic body off the stool and reached for his Stetson. “Let’s get goin’. This waitin’ ain’t easy on me, either.”
Badger was right about the snow. Where the wind had piled it up, the drifts pushed up against the undercarriage of the truck as they crept down the unplowed ranch road. But they made it.
No one else was there. They entered the dark ranch house and Badger lit an oil lamp in the kitchen after reaching it down from an open shelf with easy familiarity. “I used to work here,” he explained, setting the lamp on the kitchen table. “Back when Drew and Ramalda lived in the old cabin that stood behind the corrals. Gone now. Fire took it after they left. Lord, that woman could cook! I’m going to get the woodstove going, put on a pot of coffee. This place is colder’n a dead lamb’s tongue.”
McCutcheon prowled restlessly, stepping out onto the porch periodically to listen and holler Jessie’s name into the stormy darkness before retreating into the warmth and light of the kitchen. The two men shared few words. Badger seemed content to feed chunks of split wood into the firebox and poke at the coffeepot from time to time, waiting for the water to boil. McCutcheon, on the other hand, paced like a caged lion. He couldn’t understand how the people of Katy Junction could be so calm. That girl was out there all by herself, certainly very cold, probably hurt, maybe even dead, yet they all acted as though it was just another sleepy Sunday.
“It’s got to be nearly zero with that windchill!” he burst out to Badger, as if it were the old man’s fault.
“Yessir, I expect it is,” Badger replied calmly.
“We have to do something! We can’t just sit around and wait! She’ll freeze to death!”
“Well now, mister, I highly doubt it. Knowing Jessie, she’s holed up somewhere’s safe, waiting
