Montana Sky

under the scatter of stars. Her eyes rolled in pain and fear, the way a horse’s did when you dug in spurs and drew blood.
    When he was finished, he rolled off her, panting. “That was good. That was good. Yeah, I’m going to do that again in just a minute or two.”
    She was curled into a ball and, weeping, tried to crawl. Lazily, he picked up the gun, fired a shot at the sky. It stopped her cold. “You just rest there, Suzy Q. I’m going to see if I can work up the gumption for another round.”
    He sodomized her this time, but it wasn’t as good. It took him too long to get hard, and the orgasm was small and unsatisfying. “Guess that’s it for me.” He gave her a friendly slap on the rump. “And for you.”
    He thought it was a shame he couldn’t keep her a couple days like he had little Traci with an I. But that kind of game was too risky now.
    And there would always be another whore.
    He opened his pack, and there it was, waiting. Lovingly he slipped the knife from its oiled-leather sheath, admired the way the starlight caught the metal and glimmered.
    “My daddy gave me this. Only thing he ever gave me. Pretty, ain’t it?” After shoving her onto her back, he held it in front of her face so that she could see it. He wanted her to see it.
    And smiling, he straddled her.
    And smiling, he went to work on her.
    Now there was a trophy of red hair in his box of secrets. He doubted anyone would find her where he’d left her. Or if they did, if they would be able to identify what was leftof her once the predators had done with what he’d left behind for them.
    He didn’t need the fear and the fame any longer. It was enough that he knew.

TWENTY-NINE
    S UMMERS IN MONTANA WERE SHORT AND FIERCE . AND August could be cruel. Sun baked the dirt and dried the trees to kindling and made men pray for rain.
    A match flicked the wrong way or a well-aimed bolt of lightning would turn pasture into fire, crops into tears.
    Willa sweated through her shirt as she surveyed a field of barley. “Hottest summer I remember.”
    Wood merely grunted. He spent most of his time scowling at the sky or worrying over his grain. His boys should have been there worrying with him, but he’d gotten tired of their spatting and sent them off to bother their mother.
    “Irrigation’s helping some.” He spat, as if that drop of moisture would make a difference. Mercy was both joy and worry to him, and had been for too many years to count. “Water table’s dead low. Couple more weeks of this, we’ll be in trouble.”
    “Don’t sugarcoat it for me,” she said wearily, and remounted. “We’ll get through it.”
    He grunted again, shook his head at her as she rode off.
    The ground bounced heat back at her relentlessly. Thecattle she passed stood slack-legged, with barely enough energy to swish tails. Not even the stingiest breeze stirred the grass.
    She saw a rig well out along a fence line, and the two men unrolling wire. Changing directions, she galloped out.
    “Ham, Billy.” She dismounted, walked over to the two-gallon jug in the bed of the rig, and poured herself a cup of icy water.
    “Ham says this ain’t hot, Will.” Sweating cheerfully, Billy strung wire. “He says he recollects when it was so hot it fried eggs still in their shells.”
    She smiled at that. “I expect he does. You get as old as Ham here, you’ve seen everything twice.” She took off her hat, wiped an arm over her brow. She didn’t like Ham’s color. The red flush that stained his face looked hot enough to explode. But she knew to tread carefully.
    Pouring two cups, she walked over, held them out. “Hot work. Take a break.”
    “Be done soon,” Ham said, but his breath was puffing.
    “You got to keep the fluid in. You told me that often enough that I have to take it as truth.” She all but shoved the cup into his hand. “You boys take your salt tablets?”
    “Sure we did.” Billy gulped the water down, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
    “Ham, I’m going to finish here with Billy. You take Moon back for me.”
    “What the hell for?” His eyes were running from squinting into the sun. Under his soaked shirt, his heart pounded like a hammer on an anvil. But he finished any job he started. “I said we’re about done here.”
    “That’s fine, then. I need you to take Moon back and get me those stock reports. I’m falling behind, and I want to catch up on them tonight.”
    “You know where the damn reports are.”
    “And I need them.”