Montana Sky

“Beau’s selling out and moving down with his boy to Scottsdale.”
    “Is he?” Willa’s attention snapped back. High Springs had excellent pastureland.
    “Done made him a deal with one of those developers.” Ham laid his tongue over the paper, spat lightly. Whether it was a comment on developers or tobacco in his mouth, Willa couldn’t have said. “Going to break it up, put in some cussed dude ranch resort and raise frigging buffalo.”
    “The deal’s already made?”
    “Said it was, paid him three times what the land’s worth for ranching. Goddamn city jackals.”
    “Well, that’s that. We’d never match the price.” She blew out a breath, rubbed her hands over her face, then lowered them as another idea came to her. “What about his equipment, his cattle, horses?”
    “I’m getting to it.”
    Ham blew out smoke, watched it drift to the ceiling. Willa imagined cities being built, leveled, new stars being born, novas.
    “He’s got a new baler. Barely three seasons old. Wood sure would like to have it. Don’t think much of his string of horses, but he’s a good cattleman, Beau is.” He paused, smoked some more. Oaks grew from acorns. “Told him I thought you’d pay two-fifty a head for what he had on the feedlot. He didn’t seem insulted by it.”
    “How many head?”
    “About two hundred, good Hereford beef.”
    “All right. Make the deal.”
    “All right. There’s more.” Ham tapped his cigarette out, settled back. The fire was warm, the chair soft. “Beau’s got two hands. One’s a college boy he just signed on last year out of Bozeman. One of those animal husbandry fellas. Beau says he’s got highfalutin ideas but he’s smart as a whip. Knows to beat all about crossbreeding and embryo transplants. The other’s Ned Tucker, known him ten years easy. Good cowboy, steady worker.”
    “Hire them,” Willa said into the next pause. “At whatever wage they were getting at High Springs.”
    “Told Beau I figured that. He liked the idea. Feels warm toward Ned. Wants him to be settled at a good spread.” He started to rise, then settled back again. “I got something else to say.”
    Her brow raised. “So say it.”
    “Maybe you think I can’t handle my job no more.”
    Now it was shock, plain and simple, on her face. “Why would I think that? Why would you think that?”
    “Seems to me you’re doing your work and half of mine besides, with a little of everybody else’s tossed in. If you ain’t in here going over your papers, then you’re out ridingfence, checking pasture, looking at the equipment, doctoring cows.”
    “I’m operator now, and you know damn well I couldn’t run this place without you.”
    “Maybe I do.” But it had been an opening and had gotten her full attention. “And maybe I been asking myself what the hell you’re trying to prove to a dead man.”
    She opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Hell you don’t.” Anger hastened his words and brought him out of the chair. “You think I don’t see, I don’t know. You think somebody who tanned your hide when you needed it and bandaged your hurts don’t know what’s inside your head? You listen to me, girl,’ cause you’re too big and mean for me to turn over my knee like I used to. You can beat yourself into the ground from here to the Second Coming and it don’t mean a damn to Jack Mercy.”
    “It’s my ranch now,” she said evenly. “Or a third of it is.”
    He nodded, pleased to hear the echo of resentment in her tone. “Yeah, and he slapped you with that too, just like he slapped you all your life. He didn’t do what was right for you, what was fitting. Now, maybe I think more of those two girls than I did when they first came around, but that ain’t the point. He did what he did to you ’cause he could, that’s all. And he brought in overseers from outside Mercy.”
    Even as her temper simmered to the surface, she realized something she’d overlooked. “It should have been you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Ham. It never even occurred to me. It should have been you supervising the ranch through this year. I should have thought of that before, and realized how insulting it was.”
    Insulting it was, but insults—some insults—he could live with. “I ain’t asking you to think of it. And I ain’t particularly insulted. It was just like him.”
    “Yeah.” She sighed once. “It was just like him.”
    “I