Montana Red
Clea would have to do her own barn chores for Ari and whatever inexpensive horse or horses she could find to keep Ari company. Most of her barn chores in the past had been done by other people, true, but she knew how. She could do it. She’d helped out at a million horse shows, hadn’t she?
Being the wife and hostess of a successful man had given her some skills, but how many paying jobs existed for a woman who could pretend to be fascinated when she was bored stiff—both in and out of bed? She raised her eyebrows to her reflection in the mirror. Well, it would be an asset in the oldest profession, which, if she hadn’t truly loved Brock—or thought she did at first—she would compare to her position as his wife.
No more. Never again would she give a man that power. Her days of catering to and obeying a man were gone.
Firmly, Clea looked at the road and the traffic. She blocked the past out of her mind one more time. That was another skill of hers—compartmentalizing—and she needed to use it now. No memories. No more. Just adventure ahead.
She concentrated on the sound of the tires on the road and tried to imagine details of her new life while the miles rolled by. A trip to Jackson with Brock to meet some business associates and another to ski at a private lodge near Kalispell were the only times she’d been to Wyoming or Montana. She’d never seen this place she’d leased. There wasn’t even a picture of it on the Internet.
She tried to imagine the first day, which she intended to sleep away. After so many miles and trying to sleep in the trailer—pray God she could find a fairgrounds or two where she could get Ariel out for some exercise and maybe even park close enough that she could leave her in a stall overnight—she’d sleep for a week.
Oh, no, she couldn’t! Not even for one day and night. She’d have nobody else to do the chores twice a day.
Get it down, C. Real life ahead.
She merged smoothly onto I-35E and, proud of the way she’d handled a crowded tangle of traffic, sped north, headed for Oklahoma. And then Kansas. Then Nebraska. And then Wyoming. All the way, well no, more like halfway west into it and finally north to Montana. Maybe her new home state forever—if she found out that she liked lots of winter.
Clea had intended to stop at the first convenience store she saw after she crossed Red River to buy a cup of coffee to celebrate but instead she just kept on going. Stopping would break her momentum and she felt compelled to continue moving away.
Just past Ardmore, though, the trailer started rocking. It shocked her at first and then she hoped she’d imagined it. But no. Ari was weaving and rocking it. Definitely. Clea could feel it swaying behind the truck, pulling the whole rig to one side, then the other.
Damn. She should’ve known Miss Ari wouldn’t be too good for too long.
Well, who could blame her? She wasn’t exactly used to being kidnapped from her stall in the middle of the night or to being without other horses for company.
But that wasn’t the reason. Diva that she was, center of the universe as she felt she was, Ariel felt compelled to try to get any bit of control over this whole operation that she could.
Finally, after a mile or two of intermittent rocking and swaying, Clea saw a rest area up ahead and pulled off the road. She turned off her lights because this was still the horse country of southern Oklahoma and north Texas where everybody knew everybody in the industry and someone might stop to see who she was and if she needed help.
Clea got out, walked back the length of the trailer, switched on her little flashlight and turned off the interior lights before she opened the door. She felt like a spy in a movie as she stepped in and shined the light over Ariel, who was still swaying rhythmically.
When the light reached her head, Ariel turned toward Clea with her eyes flashing, lifted a front hoof and pawed, hard.
Before Clea could open her mouth to make soothing sounds, Ari did it again and then started to rear, fighting the rope to try to get her head up, tearing at it with a vicious strength.
A terrible chill bloomed in Clea’s gut as she started moving toward the horse, making soothing noises, trying to get her mind together enough to make words. What if she’d brought Ari out here only to have her break a leg and die?
She hadn’t tied her tight enough. She’d been too happy to have her—too excited, too scared, too eager for Ariel to eat hay, too much in a hurry and too careless to make sure the tie was short enough.
Clea looked at it again. No. It wasn’t all that long.
She started stroking the mare’s muscled rump, over and over, as she started a soothing line of patter and moved toward Ari’s head.
“It’s just you, isn’t it, Ari? You’re not happy. You’re a problem child, but hey, you’ve made your point. I should’ve asked you first if you wanted to go for a long drive. Next time I’ll consult you. Okay, baby. It’s okay. Calm down now.”
The real problem was that this mare loved to be difficult and was under the illusion that she was David Copperfield. She planted her rear feet on the rubber matting and rose even higher on the front end.
Clea wanted to grab the rope and try to pull Ari down but she didn’t want to make the contrariness worse. She could hardly bear to watch. Almost.
The left hoof almost caught in the feeder.
A broken leg and it would be all over.
Wild thoughts raced each other through her head while she froze in horror. What would she do? She couldn’t shoot her own horse. She couldn’t pay for a surgery and a long recovery….
Come on, Clea. Stop it.
She set her jaw. She hadn’t gone through all this fear and effort to let it all end now, before the mare ever even saw Montana.
Ari came down and stood, trembling. Clea stepped up to the mare’s head and took hold of the rope.
“You’re working yourself into a fit,” she said in her most authoritative tone. “Ariel, settle down.”
She stroked Ari’s nose and talked to her. She patted her neck and talked to her. Ari snorted, then pricked her ears and listened.
“That’s my girl,” Clea murmured. “Now listen, sweetie…”
Sweetie threw her weight as hard as she could from side to side, then kicked out behind and swayed again, harder still. She pinned her ears, jerked her head free and tried to rear again, reaching for the wall.
No choice. No doubt. Clea would have to tranquilize the horse so they could get on down the road. They weren’t even started on this trip yet and Clea hadn’t gone through all her fear and trauma to let it all fall apart now.
Now Ari’s eyes were rolling. She made little choking sounds.
Break a leg or strangle. Great choices.
Without wasting any more breath, Clea turned and moved toward the door.
She jumped to the ground and fighting the urge to hurry—hurry that was beating harder in her veins with every sound that came from Ari—she punched in the numbers to open the door to the dressing room, letting its light come on automatically because it was on the side away from the road. She stepped up into it, closed the door almost all the way and took down the first-aid box.
Stay calm. Be deliberate. Ari was excited enough without sensing more fear from Clea.
She found the Ace tranquilizer and filled a syringe, despite her hands shaking a little. She forced herself to think positively.
Thank God, she’d had sense enough to prepare for this. She’d worried about this very thing because Ari had been hard to haul at times, so she’d asked Sherilyn’s boyfriend, a veterinarian who didn’t know Brock, to sell her the medicine and teach her how to administer it.
Sherilyn was Clea’s hairdresser and best human friend, the only person in whom Clea ever confided. The only person she trusted enough to tell about her plans for a new life, that was for sure.
With the needle and an alcohol wipe in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Clea pushed the door open with the toe of her sneaker, stepped down to the ground, went around back and shouldered the rear door aside. The trailer was still rocking.
“You have to settle down, Ari darlin’,” she said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. “Maybe take a little nap. We’ve gotta get on up the road.”
She kept on and on with the calm, slow words, trying to calm herself as much as the mare and Ariel did actually stand a bit more still when Clea reached her. Part of Clea screamed to hurry before the mare started pulling against the rope again; another part cautioned her to go slowly and do this right. That tension made her bite down on the little flashlight until she thought her teeth might break.
She found what she hoped was a good spot in a muscle—no way did she have the nerve to try for a vein—and tightened her lips around the torch in her mouth while she wiped her target clean. Through her nose she took in a long, deep breath to steady herself and slid the needle in with hands that felt stiff as wood.
Ariel squatted and pulled back but the needle was in. Clea hit the plunger and pushed it all the way.
She pulled the needle out and with a last pat on the butt, left the mare, closed up the back door, went to the dressing room and put things away. Deliberately. Efficiently. Quickly.
Heart hammering—she’d successfully managed her first emergency of the journey!—she jumped out, locked up and headed around the trailer to the truck. Ariel was looking at her through the bars on the window.
Clea felt a broad smile come over her face—victory and relief all mixed up together. She stopped in her tracks and looked at the mare, who was standing still at last. “You just hang on, my girl, and you’ll be a Montana horse before you know it.”
She couldn’t tell whether Ari’s reply expressed excitement or dismay. Whichever, it was a full-hearted whinny that reverberated thrillingly against the rocky walls of the Arbuckle Mountains and echoed up the road.
CHAPTER TWO
THE WIND whipped the stallion’s whinny of alarm up from the valley, a sound so wild and shrill that it rang Jake’s bones. The harem band fled ahead of the red stud snaking them away from the scent of the wildcat and Jake’s own horse danced beneath him. It spoiled his aim.
He used his legs to hold the gelding together and his voice to steady him while he lined up the sight again.
“Stand,” he said, surprised his voice could come out this calm with his chest so tight. “Whoa now.”
His jaw clamped down. He had one shot to save the foal. It had better be now.
The rhythm of the band’s drumming hooves matched the thunder of the blood in his arms. He steadied the rifle, drew his breath, made sure his crosshairs rested on the spot in the middle of the tawny shoulders that were folding into a crouch on the rocky ledge below and ahead of his horse.
For one split second, endless in time, he let the air out of his lungs and slowly squeezed the trigger. The back-and-forth threatening motion of the cougar’s long, black-tipped tail kept going. And going.
The shot went off at the start of the cat’s leap. At first he thought he’d missed, but its body crumpled in midair and dropped out of sight.
Jake dismounted and walked far enough to look over and down. The cougar lay within twenty yards of the foal, but neither its scent nor the sound of the shot had made the little orphan move more than a few inches away from the mare, who lay as dead as the mountain lion.
He guessed the foal at two or three weeks old. It was red like the stud, although the mare was a pale palomino. The mare must not have been dead too long or it wouldn’t still be alive to stand this dogged vigil. Its head was hanging. It wouldn’t last much longer.
What had he done?
The lion’s body would keep away any stallion that might snap the foal’s neck to put it out of its misery. Odds were slim that another mountain lion would come along. Therefore, it would have a slow death unless Jake did something.
If you have a grain of sense in your head, Hawthorne, you’ll jack in one more round and send the pathetic little bag of bones to the great grassy pasture in the sky. You’d be cruel not to do it.
True, but he’d already made the decision. He’d sacrificed the mountain lion’s beauty and wildness for the foal, so now he’d have to step up and take care of it, no matter how slim its chances. “Well, shit.”
He scanned both ways along the steep hillside for any sign of a trail that would take him down. “Come on, Stoney, my man. We’re in the nursery business now.”
He thought he could see a faint trail that the wild horses made to get down from this ridge, going to water at the small runoff lake at the bottom of the hill. He started down, leading his horse. A rock rolled out from under his feet and Stoney’s hind feet scrabbled in the gravel for purchase on the slope.
They’d have to find another way back to the road—that was for damn sure. This steep grade would be way too hard to negotiate while carrying the foal.
They finally got to the bottom and the baby turned its head to look at Jake. Weakly, it stumbled closer to the mare’s body, instinctively knowing that of the four enemies existing for wild horses—man, fire, drought and mountain lions—man was the most dangerous.
It was a filly, huddled here in a little brushy cove protected by the mountains surrounding it on three sides, where the mare had come with her. Maybe she was one of those wild mares that liked to change stallion bands every once in awhile. She’d been killed by a falling rock that rolled about a yard away after crushing half her head.
The foal’s knees buckled and she collapsed in a heap. Her spirit was what was strong about her; it showed in her eyes. But her body was dehydrated and weak. She might not even live until they got home.
Jake went back to Stoney and led him over to the baby, picked her up, and laid her, belly-down, over the big gray’s withers, feet hanging off on either side. He steadied her with his rein hand as he caught the horn with the other and the stirrup with his toe to swing up into the saddle.
Then he smooched to the gelding and started looking for a way out.
CLEA DROVE with both hands on the steering wheel as if that could make up for not keeping her eyes strictly on the two-lane road. The enormous land and sky overwhelmed her, just as they had that day during the ski trip when Brock had immersed himself in business as usual and she’d driven miles and miles alone in a rental car, exploring Montana.
Looking for something; she didn’t know what.
That day had been the beginning of the end.
She’d waked to hear Brock in the other room, dressing down somebody over the phone, cursing and demanding and then changing calls and becoming charming as he tried to make a deal. She lay there and listened to him. From what he said she knew that he’d be at it all day. The last day of the romantic vacation trip he’d given her for Valentine’s Day.
Which was the first romantic gesture he’d bothered to make in ages. Which was just as well because she could hardly stand him anymore.
She ran from the sound of his voice—into the shower, then into the dressing room where she tried to distract herself by choosing exactly the right items from her extensive new ski wardrobe. Her ski lessons were going well. She liked being out on the slopes in the crisp air and forgetting about everything except learning this new sport.
But as she slid the hangers along the rod, opened drawers and started putting pieces together, the hollow in the center of her body began to grow, inching its way into her veins, pushing her blood aside to make room for the empty tentacles stretching toward her heart with a cold efficiency that promised loneliness would soon own her. She dropped the ski clothes into a bright-colored heap on the floor, dressed in jeans and hiking boots instead, called the desk for a vehicle and walked into the living room of the suite.
Sunlight coming in through the windows lay in stripes on the floor. In the air, dust motes danced in them, held up, probably, by the raw electricity running through every nerve in her body. Brock liked to be in control and he didn’t like surprises.
She was past caring what Brock liked. That was new. She hadn’t known that before.
“I’ll be busy all day,” he said without looking up from his Blackberry phone.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll be gone.”
He glanced at her. Just long enough to see what she was wearing. “You’re not skiing?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to go driving.”
This unusual stroke of independence made him actually look at her this time. He narrowed his eyes as if this was the most irritating thing she could possibly have said to him.
“I should’ve had enough sense not to bring you to a resort with no town,” he said in the tone he liked to use with her. The tone that implied You idiot child. “Gotta be spending my money or you don’t know what to do with yourself.”
She ignored that and walked past him to find her parka and bag.
“Hold on ‘til I talk to a couple of people and then I’ll call Jim to fly you down to Jackson Hole. You can shop all day.”
“Jackson is the town,” she said. “Jackson Hole is the valley.”
She slid her arms into the sleeves of the parka.
He actually dropped the phone and stood up.
“What th’ hell is the matter with you? You can’t go running around by yourself in a place you’ve never been. That’s some wild country out there. This is insane. This isn’t like you, Clea.”
It sure as hell isn’t. But maybe I’m changing.
She didn’t have the guts to go quite as far as to say that out loud, but she’d already gotten his attention. He was staring, no, glaring, at her. All she wanted was to be away from him.
“I don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “Have you lost your mind?”
She’d love to blurt out the truth of her feelings right then but even as she thought about it she knew she didn’t have the nerve. He would go ballistic.
And actually, until she had a chance to think, she didn’t know exactly what she did feel or want. So as usual, she took the easy way.
“Look,” she lied, “I saw an ad. I just want to go look at a horse.” Brock relaxed. This was something familiar. This was something he could control.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? When have I ever denied you a horse?” He sat down and began dialing the phone again. “Just remember not to use your whole fifteen K for the down payment or the rest of your nags won’t eat. I’m not putting another red cent in that account until next month.”
Halfway to the elevator, she knew she couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell lies forever to preserve the accustomed parameters of their so-called marriage. It was a bargained deal that she’d let her daddy make for her.
She’d thought she loved Brock, though. Or maybe she’d just told herself that because she wanted to please Daddy.
She was nothing but Brock’s arm ornament and his ticket into some social circles, plus his business alliances with her father. He disdained her really or he wouldn’t use that tone with her.
And why shouldn’t he? She kept her mouth shut and did as she was told and in return he bought her anything she wanted and gave her plenty of money to support her horse habit. To him, she was only as good as her manicure.
Only as good as her last social performance. Like a rodeo cowboy who was only as good as his last ride.
Clea was barely out of sight of the resort when she began to really see. The mountains and the sky, cobalt and white meeting in sharp, clean edges. Gray gravel coming through the dirty scraped snow in front of the car. One tan deer bounding across the road into green trees that were as deep as a vertical dream. Yellow sun so bright it made her smile.
This world so huge and wild it filled her heart.
She smiled to herself. Right now, that day with Brock seemed a hundred years ago. Now here she was in Montana again and she was in the middle of the end. It wouldn’t be the end of the end with Brock until somehow he accepted the fact that Ariel belonged to her. Rightfully. Morally.
But when had Brock ever cared about right and wrong?
She took a deep breath and pushed the past and future from her mind. She let the land and the sky take her again. Then she realized she was getting close to her destination. She should begin to look for the sign where she would turn in on her road. There was one, wasn’t there? According to the realtor, there was.
Holding the wheel with one hand, she fished deep into her new chocolate-brown Gucci bag to find the map the man had faxed to her, then slowed while she looked at it. Yes. The sign would be on her right and it read Firecreek Mountain Road.
After two nights, each with no more than four or five hours of nervous dozing in the living quarters of the trailer—which she could never have done without the alarm system and the gun she’d bought when she took the course in home protec-tion—she’d gone right on through exhaustion and come out the other side. A sharp edge of excitement—and quite a bit of fear also, to be totally honest—had wound her up tight.
This was her new world, the one where she would become another person. She could only pray she was strong enough to do that.
These snow-topped mountains, this endless sky, that narrow road that wound up and up, following Fire Creek to its source, as the man had described it, they all were hers now. And she’d be theirs. She’d belong to them and to the log cabin and barn he’d told her were at the top of the first high ridge.
She would not belong to any people.
She drove more and more slowly, looking for the sign, determined not to miss it because if she passed it she’d be forced to find a good place to turn the trailer around. Just the thought of having to drive even one unnecessary mile was more than she could bear. Ariel needed to get out of the trailer. She’d been exercised at both nights’ roadside rest stops, but that wasn’t nearly enough.
A bed would be wonderful, but later. Right now, a shower and something homemade to eat, even if it was only a scrambled egg and toast.
If the realtor had brought in the food and supplies that she’d ordered.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t even checked on the cost for that service. She shouldn’t have asked for it at all. If she wanted to live for at least a year on the money she had, she had to learn to think differently. From now on she had to do everything for herself, including clean her own house. She had to make every penny count.
And every brain cell. Brock would be beside himself by now and he’d be looking for her. That was a given. She’d slept in the trailer to keep from leaving a trail at horse hotels or horse people’s places, so she had to make that sacrifice count, too. She’d ordered a new cell phone no one knew about. She’d brought hair dye—Sassy Black—to cover Ari’s white markings. Perhaps she should use it before anybody here saw the mare.
There it was. The sign, Firecreek Mountain Road.
And another one, fancier, that read, Wild Horses.
Right. The realtor was all excited about the wild horse sanctuary. He said that sometimes tourists could see bands of them and sometimes they couldn’t, but they could always buy T-shirts and mugs and photographs with photos of wild horses on them and spend the night at the local motels and eat at the cafés in the little town of Pine Lodge.
She only hoped she could get close enough to shoot some pictures of the wild horses for herself. But if they wouldn’t cooperate, she could understand—at the moment, she needed her own space with a longing that went to the bone.
However, it’d be something fun to try, a challenge. Taking pictures was her other comfort, besides horses. It soothed her somehow. After her mother died, it had made her feel secure, as if whatever subject she captured would be hers to hold in her hand forever.