Big Sky Mountain

chapter ELEVEN



“I’LL NEED BOOTS,” Madison announced the next morning at breakfast. “Can we buy some, please? Today?”

Practically from the moment she’d opened her eyes, Madison had been fixating on the upcoming horseback ride out at Whisper Creek Ranch. Even as she spooned her way diligently through a bowlful of her favorite cereal, her feet were swinging back and forth under the table as though already carrying her toward the magic hour of three-thirty in the afternoon.

“Let’s wait and see,” Kendra said, sipping coffee. She didn’t normally skip breakfast, but that day she couldn’t face even a bite of toast. She had orchestrated this whole horseback riding thing, set herself up for yet another skirmish with Hutch and now the reality was almost upon her—and Madison.

What had she done?

More importantly, why had she put herself and her daughter in this position?

“Everybody at preschool has boots,” Madison persisted. Daisy, having finished her kibble, crossed the room to lay her muzzle on the child’s lap and gaze up at her with the pure, selfless love of a saint at worship.

“Most of those children have been riding since they were babies,” Kendra reasoned, making a face as she set her coffee cup down. Usually a mainstay, the stuff tasted like acid this morning. “Suppose you get on that horse today and find out you hate riding and you never want to do it again?”

“That won’t happen,” Madison said with absolute conviction. Where did all that certainty come from? Was it genetic—some vestige of all those English ancestors riding to the hunt, soaring over hedges and streams?

Kendra shook off the thought. She hadn’t slept all that well the night before, imagining all the things that might go wrong today, and now she was paying the price. Her thoughts were as muddled as her emotions.

“What makes you so sure of yourself, young lady?” she challenged with a small smile.

Madison grinned back at her. “You’re always saying it’s good to try new things,” she said with a note of triumph that underscored Kendra’s impression that the child was only posing as a four-year-old—she was really an old soul.

Busted, Kendra thought. She was always telling Madison that she shouldn’t be afraid—of preschool, for instance, or speaking up in class, or making friends on the playground—and now here she was, projecting her own misgivings onto her daughter. Speaking to the frightened little girl she herself had once been, instead of the bold one sitting across from her on a sunny, blue-skied morning full of promise.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Kendra said, brightening. “If you still want boots after this first ride, we’ll get you a pair.” She wondered if the child had visions of racing across the open countryside on the back of some gigantic steed, when she’d most likely wind up on a pony or an arthritic mare.

“Okay,” Madison capitulated, not particularly pleased but willing to negotiate. “But I’m still going to want those boots.”

Kendra laughed. “Hurry up and finish your breakfast,” she said. “Then go and brush your teeth while I let Daisy out for a quick run in the backyard. You need to be on time for preschool and I have to get to the office.”

The spiffing-up process over at the mansion was winding down, according to reports from the painting and cleaning crews, and she already had two appointments to show the place, one at noon and one the following morning.

Things were moving along.

Why did it suddenly seem so difficult to keep up?

Madison set her spoon down, wriggled off her chair, and carried her mostly empty cereal bowl over to the sink. She stood on tiptoe to set it on the drainboard, humming under her breath as she headed back toward the bathroom.

Daisy started to follow her small mistress, but when Kendra opened the back door, the dog rushed through it, wagging her tail. Kendra followed.

The morning was glorious—the grass green, with that fresh-cut smell, and lawn sprinklers sang their rhythmic songs in the surrounding yards. Birds whistled in the branches of trees and a few perched on Kendra’s clothesline, regarding Daisy’s progress with placid nonchalance.

Madison returned to the kitchen just as Daisy and Kendra were coming in from outside. She opened her lips wide to show Kendra her clean teeth.

Kendra pretended to be dazzled, going so far as to raise both hands against the sudden glare, as if blinded by it.

Madison giggled, this being one of their many small games. “You’re silly, Mommy,” she said.

Kendra tugged lightly at one of Madison’s coppery curls and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Have I mentioned that I love you to the moon and back?” she countered, taking Daisy’s leash from its hook and snapping it to the dog’s collar.

“I love you ten times that much,” Madison responded on cue.

“I love you a hundred times that much,” Kendra pronounced, juggling her purse, car keys and a leash with an excited puppy at the other end.

“I love you the last number in the world times that much,” Madison said.

“I love you ten thousand times that much,” Kendra told her as they trooped outside and headed for the driveway, where the trusty Mom-mobile was parked.

“That isn’t fair,” Madison argued. “I said the last number in the world.”

“Okay,” Kendra answered, smiling. “You win.”

* * *

HUTCH MOVED FROM one stall to the next, assessing every horse he owned.

They were ordinary beasts, most of them, but they all looked too big and too powerful for a four-year-old to ride.

Was it too late to buy a pony?

He chuckled at the idea and shook his head. Whisper Creek was a working ranch and the horses pulled their weight, just as the men did. He’d be laughed right out of the Cattleman’s Association if he ran a Shetland on the same range as all these brush cutters and ropers. The sweet old mare he’d reserved for greenhorns had passed away peacefully one night last winter and much as he’d loved the animal, it hadn’t occurred to him to replace her. It was a matter of attrition.

Opal stepped into the barn just as he turned from the last stall, dressed for going to town. She wore a jersey dress, as usual, but a hat, too, and shiny shoes, and she carried a huge purse with a jeweled catch.

“I’ve got a meeting at the church,” she informed him. “After that, I thought I’d look in on Joslyn’s bunch, see how they’re doing.”

Hutch smiled, walked slowly in her direction. He’d already sent the ranch hands out onto the range for the day, assigning them to the usual tasks, which left him with nothing much to do other than look himself up on the internet and see how he was faring in the court of public opinion.

Not that he couldn’t have guessed. Team Brylee was probably still on the warpath, and so far a Team Hutch hadn’t come together.

“You don’t work for me,” he reminded Opal affably, as she had recently reminded him. “No need to explain your comings and goings.”

Opal stood stalwartly in his path, clutching her purse to her chest with both hands as though she expected some stranger to swoop in and grab it if she relaxed her vigilance for a fraction of a second. “I’m living under your roof,” she said matter-of-factly, “so it’s just common courtesy to tell you my plans.”

Hutch stopped, cleared his throat, smiled again. “All right,” he agreed. “You’ve told me. It was unnecessary, but I appreciate it just the same.”

Opal didn’t move, though she might have loosened her grip on her handbag just a little; he couldn’t be sure. “You and Boone,” she mused, sounding almost weary, even though it hadn’t been an hour since breakfast. “I declare, the two of you will worry me right into an early grave.”

Hutch’s chuckle sounded hoarse. He shoved a hand through his hair. “That would be a shame, Opal,” he said. “Boone will be fine and so will I.”

“Just the same,” Opal replied, “I sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to be able to cross you off my active prayer list.”

Hutch felt his mouth quirk at one corner. “We’re on your prayer list?” he responded. “Why, Opal, I’m both touched and flattered.”

“Don’t be,” she told him gruffly. “It means you’re a hard case, and so is Boone.”

“I see,” Hutch said, though he didn’t really. He wanted to laugh, but some instinct warned him that Opal was dead serious about this prayer list business. “Well, then, maybe I’m not flattered after all,” he went on presently. “But I’m still touched.”

She smiled that slow, warm smile of hers, the one that seemed to take in everybody and everything for miles around, like a sunrise. “There may be hope for you yet,” she said, her tone mischievously cryptic. “I’ll be back in plenty of time to make supper for you and Kendra and that sweet little child of hers. Try not to say the wrong thing and drive them off before I get back.”

Hutch merely nodded and Opal turned, her purse still pressed to her bosom, to leave the barn.

He’d fed the horses earlier; now he began the process of turning them out of their stalls and into the pasture—all except Remington, that is. He heard Opal’s station wagon start up with a gas-guzzling roar, listened as she drove away, tires spitting gravel.

Opal did everything with verve.

He smiled as he fetched his gear from the tack room, carried it back to where the gelding waited, patiently chewing on the last of his grain ration.

Hutch opened the stall gate, and Remington stepped out into the breezeway—he knew the drill, and suddenly he was eager to be saddled, to leave the confines of that barn for the wide-open spaces.

Five minutes later, Hutch was mounted up, and the two of them were moving over the range at a graceful lope, headed for Big Sky Mountain.

Reaching the base of the trail Hutch favored, the horse slowed for the climb, rocks scrabbling under his hooves as he started up the incline.

Hutch bent low over the animal’s neck as they passed through a stand of oak and maple trees, the branches grabbing at both man and horse as they went.

The mountain was many things to Hutch Carmody—for as long as he could remember, he’d gone there when he had something to mourn or something to celebrate, or when he simply wanted to think.

From a certain vantage point, he could see the world that mattered most to him—the sprawling ranch lands, the cattle and horses, the streams and the river and, in the distance, the town of Parable.

After about fifteen minutes of fairly hard travel, he and Remington reached the small clearing that was, for him, the heart of Whisper Creek Ranch.

It was here that, as a boy of twelve, he’d cried for his lost mother.

It was here that he’d raged against his father, those times when he was too pissed off or too hurt or both to stay put in school or in his room or out in the hay-scented sanctuary of the barn.

And it was here that he and Kendra had made love for the first time—and the last.

He sighed, swinging down from the saddle and leaving Remington to graze on the tender grass.

The pile of rocks was still there, of course—waist-high and around six feet long, resembling a tomb, he thought wryly, or maybe an altar for Old Testament–style offerings to a God he didn’t begin to understand and, frankly, didn’t much like.

Opal definitely would not approve of such an attitude, he thought with a smile. She’d keep him on her hard-case prayer list for the duration.

No doubt, he belonged there.

After taking a moment to center himself, he walked over to the improvised monument, laid his hands on the cool, dusty stones on top and remembered. Every one of those rocks represented something he’d needed to say to John Carmody and never could, or something he had said and wished he hadn’t.

High over his head, a breeze whispered through the needles of the Ponderosa pines and the leaves of those stray maples and oaks that had taken root in this place long before he was born. Remington nickered contentedly, his bridle fittings jingling softly.

A kind of peace settled over Hutch.

“You were hard to love, old man,” he said very quietly.

John Carmody wasn’t actually buried under those rocks—he’d been laid to rest in the Pioneer Cemetery—but this was where Hutch came when he felt the need to make some connection with his father, whether in anger or in sorrow.

The anger had mostly passed, worn away by intermittent rock-stacking sessions following the old man’s death, but the sorrow remained, more manageable now, but still as much a part of Hutch as the land and the fabled big sky.

And that, he decided, was all right, because life was all of a piece, when you got right down to it, a jumbled mixture of good and bad and everything in between.

He turned his back to the rock pile then, folded his arms and drew the vast view into himself like a breath to the soul.

In the distance he could see the spires of Parable’s several small churches, the modest dome of the courthouse, with the flag rippling proudly at its peak. There was the river, and the streams breaking off from it, the spreading fingers of a great, shimmering hand.

His gaze wandered, finally snagged on the water tower.

Like the high meadow where he stood, that rickety old structure had meaning to him. He’d ridden bulls and broncos, ranging from mediocre to devil-mean, over the years, breaking a bone or two in the process. He’d floated some of the wildest rivers in the West, raced cars and skydived and bungee jumped, you name it, all without a flicker of fear.

And then there was the water tower.

Like most kids growing up in or around Parable, he’d climbed it once, made his way up the ancient ladder, rung by weathered rung, with his heart pounding in his ears and his throat so thick with terror that he could hardly breathe.

Reaching the flimsy walkway, some fifty feet above the ground, he’d suddenly frozen, gripping the rail while the whole structure seemed to sway like some carnival ride gone crazy. A cold sweat broke out all over him, clammy despite the heat of a summer afternoon and, just to complete his humiliation, Slade Barlow had been there.

Slade, his half brother, and at the time, sworn enemy, had dared him to make the climb in the first place. Ironically, Slade had been the one to come up that ladder and talk him down, too, since there was nobody else around just then.

Thank God.

Even now, after all his time, the memory settled into the pit of Hutch’s stomach and soured there, like something he shouldn’t have eaten.

He forced his attention away from the tower—most folks agreed that, being obsolete anyhow, the thing ought to be torn down before some darn-fool kid was seriously hurt or even killed, but nobody ever actually did anything about the idea. Maybe it was nostalgia for lost youth, maybe it was plain old inertia, but talking seemed to be as good as doing where that particular demolition project was concerned.

Hutch sighed, a little deflated, wondering what he’d expected to achieve by coming up here, approached Remington and gathered his reins before climbing back into the saddle.

He stood in the stirrups for a moment or two, stretching his legs, and then he headed for home, where no one was waiting for him.

* * *

AT NOON, KENDRA showed the mansion to the first potential client, a busy executive from San Francisco who was looking, he said, for investment opportunities. His wife, he told Kendra, had always wanted to start and run a bed-and-breakfast in a quaint little town exactly like Parable.

She’d smiled throughout, listening attentively, asking and answering questions, and finally telling the man straight out that there were already three bed-and-breakfasts in town, and they were barely staying afloat financially.

The man had nodded ruefully, thanked Kendra for her time and driven away in his rented SUV. Most likely he’d promised his wife he’d take a look, and now he’d done that and could dismiss the plan in good conscience. Instinctively she knew no offer would be forthcoming, but she wasn’t discouraged.

Kendra had returned to the office afterward, where she’d left Daisy snoozing contentedly in a corner, and eaten lunch—a carton of yogurt and an apple—at her desk.

Taking a client through the mansion, although almost certainly a fruitless enterprise, had served as a welcome distraction from her mixed-up thoughts about Hutch and that afternoon’s horseback ride, but now she was alone in her quiet office, except for Daisy, and her imagination threatened to run wild.

The phones were silent.

The computer monitor yawned before her like the maw of a dragon, ready to suck her in and devour her whole.

She was ridiculously grateful when the mailman dropped in with a handful of flyers and bills, thrilled when the meter reader put in a brief appearance.

“I’m losing my mind,” she confided to Daisy, when the two of them were alone in the silent office again. “You’ve been adopted by a crazy woman.”

Daisy yawned broadly, closed her lovely brown eyes, and went back to sleep.

“Sorry if I’m boring you,” she told the dog.

Daisy gave a soft snore.

By the time three o’clock rolled around, Kendra was practically climbing the walls. She attached Daisy’s leash to her collar, shut off the lights, locked the front door and all but raced out the back way to her car.

When she arrived at the community center, Madison was waiting for her, along with her teacher, Miss Abbington.

Miss Abbington did not look like a happy camper.

“What’s wrong?” Kendra asked as soon as she’d parked the car and gotten out.

“I think Madison should answer that,” Miss Abbington said. She was a small, earnest woman with pointy features that made her look hypervigilant—a quality Kendra appreciated, especially in a person who spent hours with her daughter every day.

Madison flushed, but her chin was set at an obstinate angle. “I was incordiable,” she told Kendra.

“Incorrigible,” Miss Abbington corrected stiffly.

“What happened?” Kendra asked the little girl, at once alarmed and defensive. How could a four-year-old child be described as “incorrigible?” Wasn’t that word usually reserved for hard-core criminals?

“I misrupted the whole class,” Madison said, warming to the subject.

“Disrupted,” Miss Abbington said.

Kendra gave the woman a look, then refocused her attention on her daughter. “That isn’t good, Madison,” she said. “What, specifically, did you do?”

Madison squared her small shoulders and tugged her hand free from Miss Abbington’s. “I borrowed Becky Marston’s cowgirl boots,” she admitted without a hint of shame. “When she took them off to put on her sneakers for gym class.”

“Without permission,” Miss Abbington embellished, looking down her long nose at Madison. “And then, when Becky asked for her boots back, you told her you weren’t through wearing them yet.”

“Madison.” Kendra sighed. “We talked about the boot thing, remember? This morning at breakfast?”

“I just wanted to see what they felt like,” Madison said, but her lower lip was starting to wobble and she didn’t look quite as sure of her position as before. “I would have given them back tomorrow.”

Kendra looked at Miss Abbington again. Miss Abbington’s gaze connected with hers, then skittered away.

“I’ll take it from here,” Kendra told the other woman.

“Fine,” Miss Abbington said crisply.

“It’s wrong to take someone else’s things, Madison,” Kendra told her daughter. “You know that.”

From the car, Daisy poked her muzzle through a partly open window and whimpered.

Madison’s eyes filled with tears, real ones. She was a precocious child, but she didn’t cry to get her way. “Are you mad at me, Mommy?”

“No,” Kendra said quickly, trying not to smile at the image of her little girl clomping around the schoolroom in a pair of purloined boots. This isn’t funny, she scolded herself silently, but it didn’t help much.

“Do I still get to go to the cowboy man’s house and ride a horse?”

Canceling the outing would have made sense, giving Madison reason to think about her behavior at preschool, but Kendra privately nixed the idea on two counts. One, she knew Madison’s disappointment would be out of all proportion to the misdemeanor she’d committed and, two, she’d have to reschedule the ride and she didn’t think her nerves could take the strain.

She was a wreck as it was.

“Yes,” she said, leading Madison to the car and helping her into the safety seat in back. Daisy was on hand to lick the little girl’s face in welcome. “You can still ride Mr. Carmody’s horse. But tomorrow, as soon as you get to school, you will apologize to Miss Abbington and to Becky for acting the way you did.” A pause. “Fair enough?”

Madison considered the proposition as though it were a proposition and not an order. “Okay,” she agreed. “But I still think Becky is a big crybaby.”

“Don’t push your luck, kiddo,” Kendra warned.

She got behind the wheel, fastened her seat belt, started the engine.

“None of this would have happened,” Madison offered reasonably, “if I had my own cowgirl boots.”

Kendra closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed a laugh. She wanted Madison to be spirited and proactive, yes. But a demanding brat? No way.

“One more word about those boots,” she said, glancing at the rearview mirror to read her daughter’s face, “and there will be no visit to Mr. Carmody’s ranch, no horseback ride and definitely no day at the rodeo.”

Madison’s jaw clamped down tight. She obviously had plenty more to say, but she was too smart to say it.

She wanted that ride.

Half an hour later, after a quick stop at home, where Kendra and Madison both changed into jeans and T-shirts and gave Daisy a chance to lap up some water and squat in the backyard, the three of them set out for Whisper Creek Ranch.

On the way, Kendra told herself silently that she was making too big a deal out of this. Nothing earthshaking was going to happen; Hutch would lead a horse out of the barn, Madison would sit in the saddle for a few minutes and that would be it.

She and Madison could turn right around and come home, none the worse for the experience.

Big Sky Mountain loomed in the near distance as they drove on toward the ranch, towering and ancient. If there was one thing in or around Parable that made Kendra think of Hutch Carmody, it was that mountain.

How many times had they gone there, on horseback and sometimes on foot, to be alone in that hidden meadow he loved so much, to talk and laugh and, often, to make love in the warmth of the sun or the silvery glow of starlight?

A blush climbed her neck and pulsed in her cheeks.

Too many times, she thought glumly.

It had been wonderful.

Her grandmother had found out about the trysts eventually—probably by reading Kendra’s diary—and said, “You’re just like your mother. I can’t trust you out of my sight any more than I could trust her. You turn up pregnant, girl, and I’ll wash my hands of you.”

Kendra had taken great care not to get pregnant, but not because of her grandmother’s threat—the old woman had long since washed her hands of her daughter’s child. No, it was because she hadn’t wanted to trap Hutch, force him into marriage because she was having his baby. A few of the other girls in school had gone that route with their boyfriends, and the consequences were sobering, to say the least.

Though she’d loved Hutch, and sometimes feared that she still did, Kendra had wanted to go to college. Yes, she’d wanted children, but at the right time and in the right way. Knowing what it felt like to be a living, breathing burden, she’d been determined to wait, to start her family when she and Hutch were both ready.

Instead she’d gotten involved with Jeffrey Chamberlain. It had been an innocent friendship at first—she’d been fascinated by Jeffrey’s accent, his dry British sense of humor, his style and manners.

Still, she hadn’t married him out of love, not really. She’d wanted to love him, wanted the fairy-tale life he offered, wanted things to be settled, once and for all, so she could get on with her life.

But right up until the moment she’d said, “I do,” she’d expected Hutch to step in, to reclaim her, to be willing to slay dragons to keep her.

He’d done none of those things, of course. And she’d been a dreamy-eyed fool to expect him to.

Now nearing the gate at the base of Hutch’s long driveway, Kendra put the past firmly out of her mind.

That was then. This is now.

Hutch was in front of the barn, and he’d saddled three horses—two regular-size ones and a little gray pony with black-and-white spots.

Daisy began to bark, noticing the shy black dog lurking nearby, and Madison, spotting the pony, gave a delighted squeal.

But Kendra was still counting the horses.

By her calculations, there was one too many.

She barely got the car stopped before Madison was freeing herself from the restraint of her safety seat, pushing open the rear door, scrambling out.

Daisy leaped out after her, and Hutch laughed as both the dog and the little girl bounded toward him and the horses. He introduced his own dog, Leviticus, who stayed a little apart, looking on cautiously.

“That’s the littlest horse in the whole world!” Madison raved, having barely noticed the dog, stopping finally to stare at the pony in wonder.

“Maybe,” Hutch agreed, grinning. His gaze rose slowly to Kendra’s face and locked on with an impact she actually felt.

“I’m little, too,” Madison chattered on eagerly.

Hutch looked serious, thoughtful. “Now, isn’t that a coincidence?” he asked. “You and the pony being so suited to each other, I mean?”

Kendra tightened her fists at her sides, forcibly relaxed them. She knew next to nothing about the day-to-day operation of Whisper Creek Ranch, but she was ninety-nine percent sure there was no job here for such a tiny horse.

Everything about the animal was miniature, even by pony standards, including the Lilliputian saddle and bridle.

“Simmer down,” Hutch said to Kendra in a near whisper, though he was still grinning. “I borrowed the horse from a neighbor. She’s as gentle as they come.”

Kendra swallowed. “Oh,” she said.

Hutch’s attention shifted back to Madison. The little girl basked in the glow of his quiet approval. “Want to give this thing a try?” he asked her.

Madison nodded wildly. Daisy had lost interest by then, and gone off to sniff the surrounding area for heaven only knew what. Leviticus followed her, as if to make sure she behaved throughout the visit.

Once again, Hutch’s eyes rested on Kendra’s face. He was waiting for her permission.

“You’re sure this animal is tame?” she asked him.

“Sure as can be,” Hutch assured her.

“Well—” She stopped, bit her lower lip. “All right, then.”

Hutch chuckled, put his hands to Madison’s waist and swung her easily into the saddle. He put the reins in her small hands, told her how to hold them, explaining quietly that she shouldn’t pull on them too hard, because that was hard on the pony’s mouth.

Madison, for her part, looked not just overjoyed, but transported.

“Look, Mommy!” she cried. “I’m on a horse! I’m on a real horse!”

Kendra had to smile. “Yes,” she agreed. “You certainly are.”

Hutch led the pony around in slow but ever widening circles, there in the barnyard, letting Madison get the feel of riding. The child seemed spangled in light, she was so happy.

I’m on a horse! I’m on a real horse!

Inwardly, Kendra sighed.

Madison was hooked.

And that meant she was, too.