Montana Sky

dancing with me sometime, Will.”
    It was an old joke, and cleared more tension. Willa Mercy didn’t dance. “And maybe you’ll lose the seventy back to him tonight.” She wiped sweat off her forehead and kept her voice causal. “This guy from Three Rocks?”
    “J C. He’s okay.”
    “Did he have any news from over there?”
    “Not much.” As Jim worked he recalled that J C had been more interested in the workings of Mercy. “He said how John Conner’s girl broke things off, and John got himself shit-faced drunk and passed out in the toilet.”
    It was easier now, and again routine. Old gossip, familiar names. “Sissy breaks up with Conner every other week, and he always gets shit-faced.”
    “Just so you know things are as usual.”
    They grinned at each other, two people hunkered down in blood and manure with the cool breeze blowing the stink everywhere. “Twenty says he’ll buy her a bauble and she’ll take him back by Monday.”
    “No bet. I ain’t no greenhorn.”
    They worked together for another twenty minutes,communicating with grunts and hand signals. When they paused long enough to cool dry throats, Jim shifted his feet. “Will, Pickles didn’t mean to ride you, either. He’s missing the old man is all. Pickles had a powerful respect for him.”
    “I know.” She ignored the nagging ache in her heart as she squinted her eyes. The line of dust coming down the road meant Billy was back. She thought she’d go hunt down Pickles, soothe his ruffled feathers, and give him the tractor to repair. “Go on and get your dinner, Jim.”
    “My favorite words.”
    She took her own meal with her, climbing into the cab of her Land Rover and eating the roast beef sandwich one-handed as she negotiated the dirt road, crisscrossed with tire tracks and hoofprints. The path cut through pastures, toward hillocks, then rose, and gave her a breathless view of autumn color.
    It was passing its peak, she mused, going soft as it faded and leaves were stripped from the trees. But she could hear a meadowlark’s high, insistent call as she left the window down to the play of the wind. It should have soothed her, that familiar music. She wanted it to soothe her, and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t.
    With a careful eye she studied the fencing she passed, satisfied that it was, for now, in good repair. Cattle grazed placidly, a cow occasionally raised its head to stare with marked disinterest at the passing rig and driver.
    To the west the sky was growing dark and bad-tempered, casting shadow and eerie light on the peaks. She imagined there’d be snow in the mountains and rain here in the valley before evening. God knew they could use the rain, she thought, but she had little hope it would be the slow, serene soaker that the land would absorb. Likely as not, it would come in hard, brittle drops that would batter the crops and bounce like bullets off the ground.
    Already she yearned to hear it pound on the roof like angry fists, to be alone with that violent sound and her own thoughts for a few hours. And to look out her window, she thought, at a wall of mean rain that masked everything and everyone.
    Maybe it was the coming storm that was making her so restless, so edgy, she thought, as she caught herself checking her rearview mirror for the fourth time. Or maybe she was just annoyed that she’d come across evidence of the fence crew and not the crew themselves.
    No rig, no sound of hammer, no men walking the fence line in the distance. Nothing but road and land and hills rising into a bruised sky.
    She felt too alone. And that made no sense to her. She liked being alone on her own land. Even now she was longing for time by herself with no one asking her questions, demanding answers, or listing complaints.
    But the nerves remained, jumping like trout in her stomach, crawling over the back of her neck like busy ants. She found herself reaching behind her, laying her fingers on the stock of the shotgun in her gun rack. Then, very deliberately, stopping the rig and stepping out to scan the land for signs of life.
     
    I T WAS RISKY . HE KNEW IT WAS RISKY . BUT HE HAD A TASTE for it now and couldn’t stop himself. He thought he’d chosen his time and place well enough. There was a storm brewing, and the fence crew had finished in this section. He imagined they were back at the ranch yard by now, hunting up their dinner.
    It didn’t give him much of a window, but he knew how to make the best of it.