Montana Blue

Her mouth went still beneath his.

He wondered at the warm softness, tasted coffee and sweetness and thought he’d done the wrong thing. She would pull away. She didn’t want this.

God knew, he was a man. He was just out of prison. He couldn’t handle this.

She tilted her head and moved her lips against his.

She did want it. He’d done the right thing. So right it obliterated all the ugliness he’d seen and heard in the cells. So right it made him feel free.

Her lips moved on his and she kissed him back as if she liked it.

As if she needed it.

She lifted her hand and laid it on his neck, sure and sweet, as if she needed him.

What could a man like him have to offer a woman like her?

He couldn’t let himself want it. He was free, but not for this. So he caught her wrist, kissed her harder for one more heartbeat, then took his mouth away.

MONTANA BLUE

Genell Dellin

For Paula Hamilton

and

Karen Crane,

my companions on this journey

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank:

God, for the story

My agent, Nancy Yost, and my editor, Abby Zidle, for their insights and their faith in Montana Blue

My friends Sheila Forbes, Jill Peale and Robin Miller for their heartfelt encouragement

And my family – my husband, Art, and son, David, daughter-in-law, Julie, and grandson, Gage; my sister Linda, her husband, Luke, and their son, Lance, and daughter, Lucie; Lance’s wife, Tamara, and daughter, Elizabeth; Lucie’s husband, Joel, and children, Gracie and Waylon Grady; my sister Bonnie, her husband, Gary, and their sons, Ben and Sam; and my uncle Arlen and aunt Clara – for so much love.

CHAPTER ONE

THEY TURNED HIM LOOSE on a dazzling, yellow-robed morning ten years to the month—June—since they’d locked him in. The breeze whipped down from the mountains with a wet-dirt smell and the sun struck his face with a strong, hot hand. A crater of need opened in the center of him, the need to rise to meet that life-giving sun, to wallow in its warmth and try to suck it all into the empty sack that was his skin.

“Here,” he said, and shoved the bundle of paints and brushes he carried at the last guard, “take this to your kids.”

For what he had to do, he sure as hell didn’t need them. Besides, they carried the stink of the place just as he did. First thing he’d do was get more clothes and a shower somewhere.

If he could bear to go inside four walls and a roof again.

He could. He could stand anything. He had already been through the worst.

He still could not believe he was free. His sudden release had left him no time to prepare, to adjust his mind to these new circumstances.

On the edge of the road, he stood still, struck blind by the brightness.

“Over here. Take you straight to the bus station in Deer Lodge.”

A couple of other men, also newly freed, hurried toward the battered bus, but Blue turned his back and started down the road. He might walk all the way to Bozeman, just to be touching the face of the Earth Mother.

How many miles would it take to join him to her again? His feet were so used to concrete he could barely feel the clumps of grass that made him stumble.

The bus passed and honked but he didn’t look up.

Maybe he’d find a waterfall to stand under, wash himself and these clothes at the same time. Live off the land for a week or two. Like he used to do in the Oklahoma hills. He could go into the national forest.

But he’d need a weapon to hunt meat or something to make into snares or fishing lines. He gulped the fresh air, over and over again, and set one foot in front of the other. Could he still survive in the woods?

Not unless he could learn to see in all this color, all this light—the greens of the grass and the leaves on the trees shimmered and blurred because he wasn’t used to such richness. For a minute he thought he was looking through tears.

Maybe, in order to get his balance again, he should buy an old truck and go hunt a job riding some young ranch horses or driving cattle to summer pasture. Just until he got his feet under him and made a plan.

He moved his mind away from that. The sight of the high mountains stirred his spirit like a feather on the wind. He was free, for the first time in ten years, and he’d better enjoy it while he could.

Blue walked on and on, letting his mind drift and his body feel. Letting his senses fill.

The whine of a motor started coming up behind him. He moved farther over on the shoulder so the vehicle could pass. It didn’t.

A chill touched him. Was it a prison van come to take him back? Had his release been some freak mistake?

He looked over his shoulder. An old, faded red pickup and battered stock trailer moving fast, apparently determined to run over him in spite of the fact the whole opposite lane was empty.

The long shadow of the rig captured him as it pulled alongside. The truck’s speed slowed, it drifted toward the shoulder of the road, slowed some more, and finally swerved off the pavement, rolling to a stop.

The open-topped trailer held a horse tied right behind the rusty cab, its head high and handsome.

Blue kept walking. Then he realized he should go to the other side of the road if he didn’t want the driver to talk to him and expect him to answer.

The horse drew his gaze again. It’d been a long time since he’d seen one in the flesh.

The door of the truck opened and, rattling, slammed closed. Blue stepped up onto the asphalt, ready to cross to the other side. That put him right in the line of sight of the driver, an old cowboy limping toward the trailer.

“Hey, buddy,” he called, “reckon you could help me out here?”

Blue didn’t answer. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the way was clear, and started to cross the road.

“Won’t take but a minute, pardner,” the old man said, “sure would be obliged to ya. I’d hate like sin to lose this here horse.”

Blue looked straight at him then. He’d stopped at the rear of the truck to lean on it. He was rubbing his hip and trying to straighten one of his legs.

Well, damn.

“I hit a bump and got skeered this here trailer was about to come off’n’ the ball,” the old guy said, with an apologetic grin, “and my artheritis is so bad today I cain’t hardly bend over to save my soul. Seein’ you hikin’ along back there was nothin’ short of a godsend.”

Didn’t he ever shut up?

Blue looked away, down the road, and started angling toward the other side. He wanted silence, he wanted to be alone. The old man’s troubles were none of his.

“Trailer come off the hitch, this horse would likely git killed,” the old chatterbox said. “Be a damnable shame. Never be another one like him.”

Blue glanced at the horse again, even though he didn’t intend to. The roan was looking at him.

Never be another one like me. Come on. See what you think if you call yourself a horseman.

Blue veered and walked toward him.

“Happened to me and a pardner of mine, oncet,” the man said, brightening considerably when he saw that Blue would help.

“Trailer come off on the down side of a hill and left the road going seventy-five mile an hour,” he went on in his rusty voice. “Passed us up on the right like we was standin’ still. Ol’ Skimpy stared and stared at it and finally he turned to me and said, ‘Well, damn it all to hell, Micah, looky there. That trailer and the horses in it looks just like ours.’”

He took off his hat and slapped it against his leg, laughing, and stuck out his hand to Blue.

“Micah Thompson’s the name,” he said.

Blue shook with him. His gnarled old grip was hard and strong. His faded brown eyes were sharp.

“Blue Bowman.”

“Good to meet you, Blue. And mighty good of you to give me a hand. Won’t slow you down for long and then you can get on your way.”

Blue stepped in between the truck and trailer, then over the hitch so they could both look at it at the same time. He bent to examine it and Micah stepped down on the bumper of the truck. He bounced it. The hitch didn’t come loose. Blue took hold of it and tried it, but it stayed the same.

A safety chain looped around the shaft. The battered bumper had the requisite two holes to thread it through.

“Why not use this?” he asked.

“Couldn’t bend over long enough to hook it up,” Micah said.

A sharp crack of sound rocked the rig. It jerked Blue’s back straight and his head around. Not a gunshot. The horse.

The same noise exploded the air again while the trailer shook some more. The horse glared at Blue with one wild eye.

Blue returned the stare. This was a direct challenge. Personal. He couldn’t help but grin.

“Thinks he’s King Kong,” Micah said.

The red roan kicked again, laid his ears back tighter, and twisted his head to snap at the rusted steel bar of the trailer.

“He might be right,” Blue said.

The good smell of horse filled up his nostrils. How strange for it to be real and not just a memory.

Micah laughed.

“We could run on down to my place and find out,” he said. “I’m betting you’re the man to settle him right down.”

The horse still had Blue nailed with one talking eye.

Come on. Try me. I’ll dust you, turn and strike you, too. Break your bones.

“What makes you think that?” Blue asked.

He felt Micah’s gaze steady on his face but he didn’t take his eyes off the horse. Beautiful head. Intelligent eye, but not a soft one. Savvy.

He’d be an interesting way to get horseback, especially for a man who hadn’t stepped up onto a horse in ten years.

Micah was still looking at Blue instead of the horse. Blue could feel his gaze on his skin. On the braid of his hair. He turned.

The old man’s heavy-lidded eyes were waiting for him, full of knowing, like an ancient turtle’s. They met his and held.

“You walk like a horseman,” he said.

Blue grunted his disbelief.

Thompson looked at him for another long moment, then he glanced at the horse and chuckled.

“This here colt’ll fly you over the mountain, Blue,” he said, “but when you get ’im broke and solid, he’ll last you for years. Make a hell of a usin’ horse and babies just like him, too.”

Blue’s heart thumped.

“You’re selling?”

The old cowboy twisted even more wrinkles into his long neck to turn and spit tobacco juice out of the other side of his mouth.

“Yep. I shore as hell cain’t break him.”

Blue locked eyes with the horse again.

“Two-year-old?”

Micah nodded.

“Yep. Ain’t never been rode—but not for lack of tryin’. Started him right after Christmas, with the rest of my string.”

As if to show how tough he was, the horse sat back on the rope and started pulling, hooves scrabbling.

“Here now! Here! Stop that, you big fool.”

Micah limped alongside the trailer and took hold to climb up on the fender, which made the horse lunge forward into the rattling bars. His rear feet slid up to his front ones and then, fast and impossible as a magician’s trick, he slipped his forefeet up between his body and the wall and managed to rear, going higher and higher, one leg on each side of the rope that tied his head up short.

“If he tries to come over the top he’ll break his neck,” Micah yelled. “Keep him in there ’til I can get another rope.”

But the colt had already started choking, eyes rolling. He twisted his head and his right forefoot slid off the top and lodged in between two of the beat-up bars of the trailer. He jerked sideways and wedged it in tighter.

“Forget the rope,” Blue called toward the truck, without taking his eyes off the colt. “Come here and hold his head.”

He broke out in a sweat. Suddenly he wanted this colt freed safely. It was the first time he’d let himself want anything for a long time.

Micah came back at a lurching run and Blue held out a cautioning hand without looking at him.

“Easy,” he said. “Easy, now.”

He was talking to all three of them, but mostly to himself.

The small, neat hoof had plunged through a wide space between the bent bars, but now the tender ankle was in a much narrower spot, held tight. Blue grunted comfort to the horse as he and Micah moved slowly toward him.

“It’ll take us both,” Blue said in a soothing tone. “Stand on the fender, hold his head, and get ready to grab the hoof. I’ll spread the bars.”

The colt trembled with fear so strong Blue could smell it. His eyes rolled white and his nostrils flared. They didn’t have long until he hurt himself bad. No, until he hanged himself.

“Got yourself in trouble, huh?” Blue murmured to him as he climbed up onto the fender. “Huh?”

He began a rhythmic “huh, huh, huh,” the old calming sound that mimicked a horse’s own talk, and set his feet as far apart as the space permitted. He glanced sideways as Micah stepped up there, too, and took hold of the halter.

The roan colt was on the sharp edge of panic. The air was filled with it.

Blue felt shaky inside. He hadn’t done anything—actually done anything remotely important in too long. But he had to do this now. He took hold of the two bars and put his back into separating them. It was a lot harder than he expected but when he pulled them apart and bent them out at the same time, he could make enough room. Micah grabbed the hoof and turned it, pushed it back into the trailer, gave it back into the roan’s control.

The colt dropped to the floor and stood, trembling.

Micah and Blue looked at him, then at each other. Micah grinned and Blue felt an answering grin lift the corners of his mouth. Micah let go of the halter and checked the tie knot. They stepped down to let the colt have a little space.

“Damned if he didn’t nearly hang his ornery self right here,” Micah said. “I allus say there ain’t no limit to what kind of a fix a hoss can git hisself into.”

Blue looked at the roan’s shiny hide glistening with the sweat of fear. He knew the feeling.

“Royally bred for a cutting horse,” Micah said, as they stood and watched the young horse get his wits back together again, “even if he’s too big for one and acts like a crazy no-name on top of that.”

“Maybe he never heard the old saying, ‘Blood will tell.’”

Micah Thompson didn’t answer. When Blue finally looked at him again, his eyes had taken on a glint of humor.

“It will tell sometimes, and then again it won’t,” Micah said, still studying him.

Then he added, “This sucker hates the sight of a cow.”

That made Blue’s smile widen and he laughed out loud. He hardly recognized the feeling or the sound.

The horse kicked then, and snorted at them as if they weren’t taking him seriously enough. Blue laughed again.

“God knows I’m too crippled up to fork the big bastard,” Micah Thompson said. “If’n I kin make a hundred or two on him, he’s down the road.”

He turned and started walking to the truck as if he expected Blue to go with him. With another look at the chastened colt, Blue followed.

“It’s not far to my place,” Micah said as he started around to the driver’s side. “Couple of hours as the crow flies. I’ve got a few more for sale, too, if you’re thinking you might want somethin’ different.”

Blue stopped.

“Or if you can ride, I could use some help with the whole bunch of twos,” Micah said. “That is, if you happen to need a job.”

He opened his door and got in behind the wheel. Blue hesitated only another second, then he walked to the passenger door and got into the old truck.

His hands were shaking just a little, so he spread them flat on his knees. In ten years he might’ve lost his balance and every trick he knew for staying on a rank one.

But he felt his lips curve again in the stupid grin. That roan devil behind him would make him remember how to ride or wish he never had tried. That horse would make him know he was alive again, at least for a little while.

He twisted in his seat and looked back. Horses had been living only in his dreams and his memory for so long and this one was real.

The roan was lifting his muzzle into the wind, real as the cracked glass of the window between them. Blue felt the blood rise in his veins.

The feel of a horse beneath him. That sweet challenge of swinging up onto a new one and finding out how to learn the secrets he had in his heart, what all he could do and would do with his four legs and thousand pounds of muscle and sinew. Bronc or ranch horse or cutter or anything else, Blue had never stepped on a new one without feeling that fierce, wild thrill.

“This here’s a pretty day,” Micah said, pushing down hard on the gas pedal. “Reckon it’s good to see summer comin’ on again.”

Getting hooked up with this old man and trying this colt was all right. He had a job and a place to stay now, at least.

This was okay. He’d known a hundred men like Micah Thompson when he was a kid.

“He’s still a stud, you said?” he asked.

“Yep. Reckon that might account for his meanness. A couple of swipes of the knife and he’ll likely turn into a pussycat.”

Blue slanted a look at him. “Not entirely, I’d say.”

Micah gave an evil chuckle.

“Told you you was a horseman, didn’t I?”

I used to be. I don’t yet know what all I’ve lost. Or will lose again.

Micah began ranting on about the characteristics of a real horseman, giving examples from a long list of the best horsemen he had known down through the years. He was talking as much to himself as to Blue, so Blue tuned him out as the miles rolled past his window.

The power of the mountains began taking him over, filling him up with their fierceness, an excitement nearly as strong as the one that had come with his first glimpse of the roan. Great Spirit of the Earth and Sky, how had he lived ten years without being out among the hills and mountains, the trees and the plains, ten years without laying his hand on a horse’s warm flesh?

Or a woman’s. Ten years without the touch of a woman.

No mountains and no horses and no tenderness for that long time. It was a miracle he hadn’t died.

But he hadn’t. That meant he could do anything he had to do. He had already gone through the worst.

He stared out of the truck as if his head couldn’t turn. It couldn’t. He couldn’t get enough of looking.

Or of smelling the wind and hearing it. Or of tasting fresh air on his tongue and feeling the worn paint of the truck door smooth beneath his hand. He wanted to hang his head out the window and soak it all up through his pores. They drove on and on and the farther they traveled, the freer he felt.

The land was huge. The sky was enormous. The day he’d arrived in Montana, following Dannie and her scumbag boyfriend, that was what had struck him. The sky could be big in Oklahoma. The hills there 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.