Montana Sky

heard the muffled slam of the truck’s door, the yapping greeting of dogs. She wondered if he would look over and up on the rise. He would see the dark shadowof horse and rider. And she thought he would know who was watching from the border of his land.
    “We’ll see what happens next, McKinnon,” she murmured. “We’ll see who runs Mercy when it’s done.”
    A coyote sang out, howling at the three-quarter moon that rode the sky. And she smiled again. There were all kinds of coyotes, she thought. No matter how pretty they sang, they were still scavengers.
    She wasn’t going to let any scavengers on her land.
    Turning her mount, she rode home in the half-light.

THREE
    “T HE SON OF A BITCH .” BEN LEANED ON HIS SADDLE horn, shaking his head at Nate. His eyes, shielded by the wide brim of a dark gray hat, glittered cold green. “I’m sorry I missed his funeral. My folks said it was quite the social event.”
    “It was that.” Nate slapped a hand absently against the black gelding’s flanks. He’d caught Ben minutes before his friend was taking off for the high country.
    In Nate’s opinion, Three Rocks was one of the prettiest spreads in Montana. The main house itself was a fine example of both efficiency and aesthetics. It wasn’t a palace like Mercy, but an attractive timber-framed dwelling with a sandstone foundation and varying rooflines that added interest, with plenty of porches and decks for sitting and contemplating the hills.
    The McKinnons ran a tidy place, busy but without clutter.
    He could hear the bovine protests from a corral. Calves being separated from their mamas for weaning didn’t go happily. The males’ll be unhappier yet, Nate mused, when they’re castrated and dehorned.
    It was one of the reasons he preferred working horses.
    “I know you’ve got work to see to,” Nate continued. “I don’t want to hold you up, but I figured I should come by and let you know where we stand.”
    “Yeah.” Ben did have work on his mind. October bumped into November, and that shaky border before winter didn’t last long. Right now the sun was shining over Three Rocks like an angel. Horses were cropping in the near pasture, and the men were going about their duties in shirtsleeves. But drift fences needed to be checked, small grains harvested. The cattle that weren’t to be wintered over had to be culled out and shipped.
    But his gaze skimmed over paddocks and pastures to the rise, toward Mercy land. He imagined Willa Mercy had more than work on her mind this morning. “Nothing against your lawyering skills, Nate, but that legal bullshit isn’t going to hold up, is it?”
    “The terms of the will are clear, and very precise.”
    “It’s still lawyer crap.”
    They’d known each other too long for Nate to take offense. “She can fight it, but it’ll be uphill and rough all the way.”
    Ben looked southwest again, pictured Willa Mercy, shook his head. He sat as comfortably in the saddle as another man would in an easy chair. After thirty years of ranch life, it was more his natural milieu. He didn’t have Nate’s height, but stood a level six feet, his wiry build ropey with muscle. His hair was a golden brown, gilded by hours in the sun and left long enough to tease the collar of his chambray shirt. His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s and often just as cold in a face that had the weathered, craggy good looks of a man comfortable in the out-of-doors. A horizontal scar marred his chin, a souvenir of his youth and a slip of the hand when he’d been playing mumblety-peg with his brother.
    Ben ran his hand over the scar now, an absentminded, habitual gesture. He’d been amused when Nate had first informed him of the will. Now that it was coming into effect, it didn’t seem quite so funny.
    “How’s she taking it?”
    “Hard.”
    “Shit. I’m sorry for that. She loved that old bastard, Christ knows why.” He took off his hat, raked his fingers through his hair, adjusted it again. “And it’s got to stick in her craw that it’s me.”
    Nate grinned. “Well, yeah, but I think it’d sit about the same with anybody.”
    No, Ben mused, not quite. He wondered if Willa knew that her father had once offered him ten thousand acres of prime bottomland to marry his daughter. Like some sort of fucking king, Ben thought now, trying to merge kingdoms.
    Mercy would give it away, he thought, squinting into the sun. He’d give it away rather than ease his hold on the reins.
    “She