Montana Blue

CHAPTER THREE

BLUE WOKE in the middle of the night in a cold fit of fear. He sat up, hands fisted, until the memory drifted up out of his sleep. He had turned over without hitting the wall and it had scared him awake.

A bright fall of moonlight poured in through the window. The sturdy old room lay peaceful around him.

A real bed, standing on legs, instead of a bunk hanging from the wall. Real quilts, instead of a scratchy blanket. Micah’s house.

The whole of yesterday came flooding back to him.

The Splendid Sky. He was on the Splendid Sky for the first time in his life. He had thought about how that would be since he was old enough to imagine anything—how the land and the house would look and how his father would act. When Blue was really little, in most versions of that daydream, Gordon would explain that he had inadvertently lost track of Rose and her children, and rejoice at finding them again.

Blue hadn’t been very old when he’d trashed that little fantasy.

He stared into the curtain of moonlight. Gordon was out there now. Within striking distance.

Blue reached for the clothes Micah had given him and dressed. Loath to risk waking the old man, he ducked out through the window, crossed the porch on the balls of his feet, and stepped off into the space and the brightness.

The night was all space, calling to him like a talking drum. It pumped power into his veins, it set a steady beat going in his blood like the need to dance. Dances and women and horses. Those had made him feel so alive, sometimes he’d thought his heart would burst with the joy of breathing, of being. Until now, he had forgotten completely how that felt.

But he might have a chance to come back to it. The inside of his body hurt as if his heart and all his organs were almost gone to atrophy and the night had begun forcing life back into them. He had horses again, and if luck and God stayed with him as they had in bringing him here, he would have dances and women in his life once more. Maybe even joy.

When Gordon was gone from the face of Mother Earth, then he would feel joy.

He crossed the yard through the shadows of tree limbs floating on the grass. The breeze ruffled his still-damp hair across his shoulders. It sent such a cool freshness into him that he gasped a quick, shivery breath.

Last night he’d been buried alive. Tonight he could fly. Last night he had only memories of moonlight and starlight. Tonight he could fill his eyes with them and rub them into his skin.

Tonight he could look down right at the place where Gordon Campbell slept. He could bail off this hillside and run all the way to the main house and confront him with his sins right now. He savored the thought. But first, he had to plan. He was not going back inside for killing someone who needed to be killed.

Dawn was coming in the air. He felt it as he walked across Micah’s road and headed for the edge of the west-facing bluff. Far away, down the valley, a cow bawled. Another one answered. Then, from still farther away drifted the lingering, lonesome howl of a coyote.

Gooseflesh popped up on his arms. Twice blessed by the wild ones—by the sight of the deer and the sound of this coyote—he didn’t know how he’d survived so long shut up inside. The beat of his heart quickened again.

He was here, through no plan of his own, so it was meant to be. He was here in the perfect place to find out Gordon’s habits and the best way to get to him. The perfect place to do what he had to do.

Here where he should’ve lived all his life. Where, if that had happened, his mother and sister would be at this very moment. Alive and beautiful.

Here in this enormous land that smelled of pine trees and sweet grass and snow on the mountains and dust and horse from the pen where he’d left the roan. He walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down. The moonlight glinted off a long body of water on the west side of the valley. All over the east side, man-made lights shone like harsh imitations of stars. The arms of the mountains formed a cradle to keep it all safe.

Had his mother ever seen this? Had Gordon ever brought his young lover to this spot on the bluff to look down on his kingdom?

Had she been happy while she was with Gordon? Had loving him made her happy? When she was a seventeen-year-old on her first job, falling in love with her boss?

Even if it did at the time, why didn’t she quit loving him later, when she was so alone and unhappy? She could’ve stopped if she’d tried. Over the years, she could’ve married—and loved—any one of a half-dozen good men.

Blue pushed away the old grief and guilt and stared down into the valley at the scattering of steady-burning farm lights standing guard over every building. Security lights.

Gordon was in there behind them. Feeling secure.

For a long time, Blue stood watching, memorizing as much as he could see while the stars faded and the moon began to set. As soon as he could ride the roan outside a pen, he would take him up along the ridge that crossed the road from the highway. That lowest crest circled to the west and south from Micah’s place to form the rim of the valley. He would learn the lay of it and every road and trail into and out of the headquarters.

He would gather some gear in case he had to run into the mountains and some cash money in case he didn’t. He would have Micah take him up on the highway and into town one of these days soon and leave him for a while so he could start pricing things. He hadn’t bought anything in so long he didn’t remember how to make a deal.

He turned and started back to Micah’s. The rising sun was painting the sky pink. The wind reached out to blow his hair back from his face. It was going to be a fine, free day, and a man could never tell how many of those he would be given.

He watched the streaks in the sky go from pink to red, then to orange and purple and blue. This dawn made all of the colors, every color, seem like a separate wonder. His fingers itched to paint. He needed to buy more supplies.

Yes, he’d have a chance to paint a little bit before he took care of Gordon.

And he wanted time to get the colt going well, whether he got to keep him or had to sell him. Whichever way that went, he would need the most he could get out of the horse, in either money or performance.

He stopped and stood quiet for a while, watching the sky’s glory dissolve until the tints were as faint as a watercolor, then he walked on toward the barn, thinking about how much Micah might ask for the roan. The few thousand dollars he’d earned off the paintings he’d sold from prison over the years would be enough, he hoped, to buy the roan and a rig of some kind.

Of course, Micah would pay him something for the job riding the colts.

Blue glanced into the round pen as he passed. The colt was standing near the water bucket, eyes closed in a doze.

“Rest up,” Blue muttered. “I’ll be with you after breakfast.”

He took another long draught of morning air off the mountains. Crisp and fresh enough to crackle in his lungs, it carried the promise of a whole new life.

It gave him a fleeting thought of roaming with the colt through the mountains that were turning to purple crystal in the rising light. Roaming, not running. Wandering with no one on the back trail trying to hunt him down.

But when he stepped into the barn and stood in the midst of its aromas of manure and horse and hay and sweet feed all mixed with the smells of aged wood and oiled leather, he wanted not to run or roam. What he wanted was to have no reason to leave and, instead, every reason to stay in a place that felt this much like a home.

Micah kept his barn clean and neat and the horses in it were all hanging their heads over the stall doors looking at Blue with trusting, gentle eyes. They talked to him.

Where is it? The morning feed? Are you here to feed us and turn us out?

The peace. For a minute, Blue could feel it like a hand on his shoulder. There was nothing better than an old barn and animals depending on him to center a man.

But there was no peace for him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

If not, so be it. Rose and Dannie never knew peace.

He went to pull a bale of hay down from the stack. There was a lot of satisfaction in feeding hungry animals. He reached for the wire cutters Micah had stuck by the handle into the cross-timber supporting the wall, and snipped the baling wire. While he broke off flakes and carried them to the stalls, he looked over the horses and kept his mind on them. There was a cute sorrel mare with a wide blaze and a tall gray gelding with black points. Last night, Micah said they both belonged to a friend of his.

The stalls across the aisle held a stocky gelding that Micah said had been his best mount for fifteen years and a young filly who’d been easier for him to start than the roan. She bore a vague resemblance to him. Half sister, maybe, since she had some gentle blood from somewhere.

He liked his roan colt better, though.

That thought made him grin but it also bothered him some. He hadn’t even bought him yet, but he must be getting attached to the ornery rascal.

Once they all had fresh hay and water, Blue stopped at the sorrel mare and, murmuring to her, started scratching her nose. Her neighbor, the gray, stuck his head out, too, and reached over to nudge Blue on the shoulder.

“Demanding your share of the attention, hmm, buddy?” Blue said, petting him with his other hand. “I’m thinking Micah’s friend has spoiled you both.”

They made him laugh, both of them, with their signs of pleasure as he pinched along the toplines of their manes and rubbed their polls. The mare had a sweet spot behind one ear that made her moan when Blue caressed it. She curled her top lip and let the bottom one tremble.

Blue petted them for a long time, not letting himself think, only being. Being with friendly horses, exchanging breaths with them, letting the feel of them comfort his hands. The sun poured into the barn and streamed down the aisle to paint all of them warm and yellow-gold.

GETTING UP and getting outside right before dawn, greeting the morning and the mountains and the horses, became a habit with Blue, if four days in a row could be called a habit. Micah usually slept until daylight and had breakfast ready when Blue went back to the house. After they ate, Blue helped clean up the dishes and then they both went on to their hard day’s work—Blue with the roan and the toughest of the twos, and Micah with the ones he’d been able to start on his own. The comfort of the routine was already beginning to ease into Blue’s bones.

This morning, he puttered around the barn as if it belonged to him, rearranging the saddles in the tack room and spreading fresh bedding in the stalls. He had fed Micah’s friend’s horses and they and the roan were about finished with their hay. It was time to get to work.

He knew that but instead of leaving the barn, he fell into a mindless reverie, sweeping out the aisle and feeling the sun on his back through the wide-flung doors. Finally, he roused himself.

“All right,” he said, petting the sorrel and then the gray, “I need to get on that ornery roan and you two need to be outside. Ready?”

He turned to take their halters from the wall.

His gaze swept across the west door of the barn and he froze.

From the corner of his eye, he’d caught a glimpse of movement, he would swear it, at the edge of the opening. But he waited and no one stepped into his line of sight.

The hackles lifted on his neck. He kept watching the doorway.

Micah was still in the house, as far as he knew. If not, he certainly wouldn’t come to the barn and look in without saying something. That old man liked to talk too much for that. Besides, he wouldn’t be sneaking around on his own place.

Maybe it was an animal. Blue crossed the aisle to the opposite side of the door with two silent strides.

He listened. Nothing.

He took a step forward and looked out. No one.

But when he turned to look toward the house out the east end of the barn aisle, he saw him.

Gordon.

Blue knew it the way a horse knew a storm was coming. He knew it, even though all he could see was his back as he strode toward the house.

Walking away, Gordon gave off the feeling that he was advancing instead. He wore ordinary clothes. A battered Resistol, faded jeans, and a plain white shirt made him look like a thousand other men, but every line of his substantial body gave that the lie. Tall, broad-shouldered, with hair as white as his shirt curling at his neck, he walked with a rare authority. The way his feet touched the ground told anybody with eyes to see that these acres belonged to him.

It was an easy arrogance he wore, simple as his clothes, one that never expected to be challenged.

Blue’s gut stretched, then tightened like a guitar string. His hands were trembling. Gordon had looked in on him as he would a horse in a stall, and had walked away without a word.

Which was one step up from the way he’d treated him his whole life.

It wasn’t until Gordon had reached the porch, walked up on it and shouted for Micah that Blue realized how shaken he was and how tangled his thinking. Gordon didn’t know him. Gordon had no clue that his son was there.

Or that now it was Blue watching him.

THE ROAN COLT KICKED the trailer just as they were pulling out of the yard with him. Kicked it so hard it sounded like the metal split in two.

Micah shook his head and flashed a grin at Blue.

“Just like old times,” he said.

Blue moved on over against the door and sat sideways so he could look through the back window at the colt.

“Aw, now, cut us some slack,” he said. “We’ve not had our hauling lesson yet.”

“That’s what you get for babyin’ him along,” Micah said. “Seven or eight days of playin’ games and pettin’ and such carryings on. That’s liable to ruin any horse. Why don’t you just tote him around on a pillow?”

“Yeah,” Blue said. “Reckon I ought to tie his nose to his tail or whatever it was that the Little Creek boys did to him. That’s the way to get control of this outlaw.”

“On second thought, take your time,” Micah said.

Blue chuckled, too, as the old rig straightened out on the gravel road and headed for the asphalt one that ran between the highway and the valley. Then his stomach clutched.

He might see Gordon today. Face to face. The big indoor arena wasn’t very far from the main house. It was Gordon’s arena.

It galled him to use anything of Gordon’s. Yet it had occurred to him that he was entitled, after all—as the son and heir.

Yeah. Right.

“Micah,” he said, “do we pay a fee to use the indoor? You said your operation’s separate from Gordon’s.”

Micah shot him a narrow-eyed glance while he shifted gears.

“It is,” he said. “But I done paid that rent. Years ago. Workin’ for nothin’ but grub and bed them first coupla years and short pay for five or six more.”

“That’s you,” Blue said. “This is my horse.”

Micah shrugged. “Then you can pay the same way,” he said.

“Hell’ll freeze over before I work for Gordon.”

Micah gave him a look. “I meant pay me.”

“With which? Working for only grub and bed? Or short pay?”

The old man grinned and mashed his foot down on the accelerator.

“Ain’t my cookin’ worth every dusty, bone-jarring minute of every ride?”

Blue squinted back at him. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”

Micah raised one scraggly eyebrow. “Think about my biscuits,” he said. “They’re better’n any canned biscuit you ever did eat.”

“Canned biscuits don’t set the bar too high,” Blue said.

“Stubborn man,” Micah muttered to himself. “Hardheaded as a mule.”

He shook his head sorrowfully, then turned and fixed Blue with one of his piercing looks.

“Why’re you in a fret about using that arena?”

“No way will I be beholden to Gordon.”

“How come?”

“I don’t like him.”

“How do you know that? You ain’t even met the man.”

“I despised him the minute I laid eyes on him.”

“You didn’t even know who that was the minute you seen him. Not ’til I told you.”

“I knew him. Who else would step up on your porch and holler for you like you’d damn well better appear right then and be all ears when you got there?”

Micah clicked his teeth and looked out across the valley. “Sounds like prejudging to me. Or jumping to conclusions, I’d say.”

“I knew I didn’t like him the same way you’d know a horse you didn’t like.”

“Lotsa times, a man has to get close to a horse to know that.”

“If there’s gonna be any question at all about me bringing my horse into that arena, I’d rather haul out to the fairgrounds,” Blue said. “I saw we passed them that day on the way in.”

“Look, son,” Micah said. “You can set your mind to rest. Every horse in my barn and in my pastures is my deal. I ain’t started a horse for Gordon for right at ten years and he ain’t got a dime in anything I own.”

He gunned the motor and pushed it up to sixty, but when they got close to turning onto the road that ran out to the highway, he sucked in his breath and started pumping the brakes. “Hey, what the hell?”

Blue turned toward the noise of another vehicle coming. Another pickup, a big white one, was roaring downhill into the valley.

Micah got their rig stopped just before the dually reached the intersection. It swerved to the right as it passed them, as if they were still moving into its path.

Blue caught a glimpse of long blond hair beneath a cowboy hat and a woman’s slender hand on the wheel, then all he could see was the rear end of the truck fishtailing. Ahead of it, he saw why.

A fawn, with the doe too far ahead, flashed across the road in a blur of tan and white and away into the trees in the blink of an eye, the truck missing it by a hair. The woman ran off the asphalt onto the shoulder of the road and corrected too fast back up over the edge of the pavement.

“That’s Andie Lee,” Micah said. “God damn it, that girl’s gonna kill herself to save a fawn and I’ll have to set right here and see it.”

The big pickup spun around in a full circle twice, ran astraddle of the right-hand edge of the pavement for a hundred yards or so and then left the road for good, headed south in its original direction. The woman managed to run it down the ditch awhile, then it took a jump or two and hit a bank of earth, slowed, finally jarred to a stop, lurched, lifted on one side and rocked as it threatened to roll. Finally, it landed and stayed upright on all six tires.

Micah started shifting gears. “Maybe she ain’t hurt, after all,” he said.

He didn’t take his eyes from the white truck as he sawed on the steering wheel, gunned the motor and started toward it.

Blue stared at it, too, hoping that the woman wasn’t hurt—for her own sake but also, selfishly, for his. He didn’t need to get involved in anybody’s upset. He didn’t even want any contact with anybody but the roan and Micah.

They plunged downhill as fast as Micah could push his old rig, but the woman was faster and she opened the driver’s door before they could get there. She half jumped, half fell from the running board down to the ground, a distance of about three feet since the truck was angled high on the left.

She had lost the hat and her golden hair caught the light from the sun. Her legs were long and slender in jeans and boots. Clinging to the door for only a second to get her balance, she looked to see them approaching, pushed her loose hair out of her face, and started climbing up the side of the ditch to meet them on the road.

Micah slowed, Blue opened the door, and she got in before they even came to a stop. Her eyes met his for one direct instant, as if to see who he was. Or whether he could help her.

They were gray, storm-cloud eyes with a sure purpose. That was clear even through the fear and relief.

“Girl, you are mighty lucky,” Micah said. “I thought you was a goner for sure. Scared me half to death.”

“Baby,” she said, gasping for air. “Couldn’t bear to hit it.”

She pointed down the road while she dragged in enough breath to talk more. “Go, Micah,” she said. “Shane’s in trouble again.”

Her voice was a little bit low, with a catch in it.

Micah blurted, “Damn,” and stepped on the gas.

Blue reached behind her, with the truck already moving again, and slammed the door closed. The woman’s slender body fell into the curve of his arm. That was such an unfamiliar sensation it roused his instinct to really hold her. That and the fact that she was shaking. Her back pressed against his taut bicep, but she didn’t seem aware of him.

“He got drugs again?” Micah asked.

Sympathy twinged in Blue. She cared about somebody like Dannie.

“He’s got a gun and he’s holding his girlfriend hostage. We’ve reached a whole new low.”

Now her voice sounded cold as a rock on the bottom of the river. Anger. It was anger that had her trembling.

“That stupid-ass Jason is no di-rector at all,” Micah said.

The woman bent over and slammed her thighs with her fists. Her hair fell forward and pooled in Blue’s lap, then she raised her head and it whipped past his face.

It smelled like flowers. That and the woman-scent of her skin went all through him. Fragrance from another universe.

She arched her back, twisted up to fish something out of her pocket, dropped back down and scraped her hair away from her face with both hands. She pulled it all together and fastened it flat against her neck with a heavy silver clip.

“I have such a rage in me I could wreck the world,” she said, slamming her fists on her thighs again.

Micah shot her a sideways glance.

“You done wrecked your truck,” he said. “Ain’t that enough?”

She shook her head and stared straight ahead with her lips pressed together. Too near tears now to talk, probably.

Or not. With her hair out of the way Blue could see the pure line of her jaw. Hard and determined.

Blue moved his arm and braced his hand against the door frame to hold himself away from her, trying to give her some room and still keep his legs out of the stick shift but they were all three jammed together in the narrow old cab and there was no space to put between them. Her thigh trembled against his.

“What the hell else am I supposed to do?” she cried. “What can I do?”

“Honey, you’re doin’ all you can,” Micah said. “It’s like a man who’s a slave to whiskey.”

She whipped her head around to look at him and leaned across Blue to get even closer as if Micah had to see her lips to hear her.

“I can’t come this far and fail,” she said. “I can’t. I won’t. I’ve given everything I’ve got to this fight for two years and I’m not quitting now. What else can I do?”

Her face was so close to Blue’s her breath was warm on his chin. He could see that she was not wearing one speck of makeup and she was beautiful.

He also could see that her eyes were full of tears but she wouldn’t let them spill out. He admired that.

Like her jawline, her cheekbones showed strong underneath her light tan. Her eyelashes were long and thick, much darker than her hair, and the wing of her brow made a perfect arch that he wanted to trace with his fingertip.