Chapter Text
"Would you like a cold drink, ma'am?"
And that's how Tommy Nolan came into her life.
Barbara Crider squinted up into the shy, smiling face of the young man who was timidly handing her a cold soda. Does someone like this actually exist, anymore? she wondered. Probably someone from a local ranch, judging by his cowboy gear. The Levis, plaid shirt, and Stetson that he held in his other hand looked authentic on him.
"I would, if you'll stop calling me 'ma'am,'" she replied.
He blushed, and she thought, 'Wow!'
Barbara and the other summer workers at the National Park had driven out the east entrance of Yellowstone to Cody, Wyoming, to see the Buffalo Bill Museum and to soak up western flavor. Real life cowboys walked the streets awkwardly, and the college kids wished it was rodeo week in Cody so they could see a real bang-up western show.
But Barbara was more than drawn to the young cowboy who shyly bought her a bottle of cold cola. Something about Tommy told her he was what she’d been seeking. So after they drank their colas with her co-workers, she whispered to Tommy where she could be found in Yellowstone, in case he was interested in continuing their discussion.
Turned out, he was. And as they walked around Yellowstone, they decided to get friendlier. Early that afternoon Barbara tossed her battered suitcase into the back of Tommy’s beat-up pickup truck and escaped Yellowstone. That job had just been a stopgap for her, anyway. And she was ready to move on.
They bounced out the north entrance of Yellowstone Park and spent the next fifty miles talking and getting acquainted well. Just outside of Livingston, they stopped at a motel and really got acquainted. Tommy was clumsy, but adequate and gentlemanly.
The next morning, he asked her to ride along with him for a spell. She accepted. Why not? She had nowhere else to go, and the job at Yellowstone was in the past now. Besides, she kind of liked Tommy and wouldn’t mind being with him for awhile. She could do a whole lot worse, and Barbara figured she might have found someone who could temporarily shelter her.
They drove north and a little east, branched onto gravel and then dirt roads, and finally turned into a weather-beaten ranch.
“Well, there it is,” Tommy said proudly. “Home.”
Half a dozen squat buildings huddled dismally on the prairie. Barbara recognized a barn and a ranch house. Other buildings could be a hen house and implement shed. Maybe some of the other buildings were simply just there and had outlived their original purpose. Maybe they simply housed junk and debris from other lifetimes. Without realizing it, Barbara had hit on the truth. Buildings, like people, outlive their usefulness and assume other identities or simply rot down.
A lot of the buildings could stand a paint job. She took a second look and realized that she had been generous. It had been years since any of these wind-scoured buildings had felt a paintbrush.
But the buildings were here for a purpose, the same as the people who owned them. They were here for work, not for beauty. But there was also a certain beauty in that harshness, Barbara decided.
A man’s domain, a man’s pride. Acres of nothing, with cattle hopefully grazing somewhere. Barbara could feel the presence of women who had dried up and died in this forlorn country. But for now it was a sanctuary for her. Here was somewhere to breathe and rest up, if only for a little while.
“Lewis and Clark National Forest is around us to the west. Bits and pieces of it crop up everywhere. We run cattle up in it.”
“We?”
“Me and uncle Ray. You’ll be meeting him soon, most likely. Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”
‘Something’ turned out to be the hayloft in the old barn. Seems Tommy had always dreamed of taking a girl up to the loft with him. Barbara could see no harm in it. In fact there was something a little thrilling about doing ‘it’ outside, yet hidden.
And there wasn’t any harm until a voice interrupted their interlude.
They hadn’t bothered with removing their shirts, but they were naked from the waist down. When Barbara heard the throat clearing, she grabbed for her jeans.
“Don’t bother, missy. Yours isn’t the first bare pussy I’ve ever seen. Praise the Lord, it won’t be my last. But it sure is a mighty pretty one, at that.”
Barbara whirled in open mouthed shock and had an impression of a scrawny cowboy squinting through tobacco smoke.
“Uncle Ray--”
“And the way the kid’s pumping over you, it’s the first real piece of pussy he’s ever handled.”
Barbara was wild with indignation, but part of her wanted to laugh out loud. It was a ridiculous situation. And Tommy had been reduced to a red-faced child.
And part of Barbara wanted to crow with delight. Here was a man. The first real man she’d met in a long time.
“Tommy, suppose you and your friend get dressed and come on down to the house. We’ll drink coffee and make introductions, and then you can take her to your bedroom the way a sensible man would do. Don’t you know she could get wood splinters in her butt carrying on like that up here?”
Barbara’s eyes flashed with laughter and her awareness of him. She was sure Uncle Ray saw her amusement and reaction to his maleness, because his eyes sparkled with interest of her as she took a good look at him.
The cowboy was nearing middle-age, probably just in his prime, but still tough enough to take on the young bucks. His ugly face looked like it’d been stepped on by a cow or two in his time, and probably had been. A cigarette dangled from his insolent, surly lips. Hands hung like claws on either side of his gaunt hips, and Barbara had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t wearing six-shooters. Dusty jeans followed the curve of his bow legs, and all the denim seemed to hide from Barbara’s view was knobby knees and sex organs.
But Barbara knew they were there. Every fiber of his tough frame testified to that fact. Here was a Man.
A curious man, a frightening man, but a man nonetheless. A man Barbara knew she’d never forget.
Ray was putting the coffee pot on the wood burning stove when Barbara and Tommy entered the ranch house. Barbara squirmed, pulled a piece of straw out of her jeans, and grinned self-consciously at Tommy who blushed.
“Sit down, kids. Seems Tommy’s had a whole lot more interesting weekend than I’ve had. I just lost a month’s pay in a card game down in Bozeman and a little sleep in a cat house in White Sulfur Springs. All in all, typical weekend off the ranch.“ He gave Barbara a sharp look. “Where’d he find you, Sis?”
“Cody. He rescued me from Yellowstone.”
“You’ll probably wish a hundred times you were back there. Ain’t much goes on around here, unless you’re planning on spending a lot of time in the hayloft. That’ll be okay for awhile, but Tommy here has chores to do, too. He can‘t be humping you all the time.”
“I’ll leave him a little energy for chores,” Barbara retorted crisply. Uncle Ray seemed to be exaggerating on purpose. A warning to her, maybe?
Sharing Tommy’s room was not so bad since Barbara had so few belongings and Tommy was rarely there, except at night. Barbara found that cowboys awoke early and worked late. They were often in the elements and ate sporadically. Seeing ranching firsthand took a lot of the glamour out of it. The movies had ranch life all wrong. It was a lot of long hours and hard work. And the cowboys themselves were often coarse and crude and what she grimly called ‘elemental.’ They had few niceties in their lives and asked for none.
Barbara would’ve felt trapped if the land itself hadn’t fascinated her. The rolling prairies, the mountains in the distant, and the clear air all stirred her romantic daydreams. The movie portrayal of the independent mountain man and the rugged cowboy peopled her thoughts. But the reality of ranching was often harsh and unforgiving. If she’d been living in a retirement cottage instead of a working ranch, she could’ve been more comfortable.
As it was, the drudgery of the ranch work was not doled out to her. Tommy and Ray were accustomed to fending for themselves, and a few meals from Barbara showed them that they better keep the old arrangement. Barbara cooked, but not ranch style. She liked to use fresh fruits and vegetables and to fix tossed salads. The men liked fried beefsteak and milk gravy over fried potatoes. That kind of food nearly sickened Barbara. Besides, she didn’t need that many calories.
Although Barbara had been attracted to Ray the day they met, they spent little time together. He practically went out of his way to avoid her, so anytime that he favored her with a few words was extraordinary. She didn’t know, though, if attention from him was to be appreciated or not.
“What’s on your schedule for today, missy?” Ray asked as he cleared the table of dishes.
Barbara had told them that her name was Amy Lindell, but he seemed to take some pride in calling her by the demeaning term of ‘missy.’
Amy dragged deeply on her cigarette, let the smoke out quickly, and shrugged. “Soak up some local color, I guess.”
“You can do that right over here at the dishpan.”
Amy glared at him.
“It won’t hurt you to help out a little around here. Do you cook anything besides what you‘ve already tried to feed us?”
She smirked.
“You know if you can’t, that ain’t no sin,” he said quietly. “Not wanting to try to learn is another matter.”
“You know so much!”
“Not really. I just know you can’t take pride in yourself if you have nothing to take pride in. Now, if you want to learn, we’re willing to show you how. In the meantime, I can show you how to wash dishes.”
“I know how to do that much!” she stated as she jumped to her feet and pushed past him. She dived her hands into the dishwater and sent suds flying.
“Maybe you just better start with dish drying for now,” he said softly. “Otherwise, you’ll have to take some lessons in mopping up the floor.”
She glared at him, but took the dishtowel he handed to her.
Ray Nolan drew deeply on his cigarette, expelled the smoke, and squinted at his nephew through the curling trail of cigarette smoke from his fingers. “How long are you planning on keeping that gal here?”
Tommy looked up from the lariat that he was braiding. “As long as she wants to stay, I guess.”
“Do you have any kind of understanding with her?”
Tommy flashed his big grin. “Just that we deserve to take as much pleasure from each other that we can get.”
Ray frowned. “I thought I taught you to respect women better than that.”
Tommy straightened the braiding and tested it, then he glanced up at Ray. “There are women, and then there are women. I’m not being disrespectful, Uncle Ray. Amy and I both know that ours is a short term relationship. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to get hurt. She’ll go her way one of these days. We‘ll both have a beautiful memory and no regrets.” He winked. “And no strings, either.”
Ray shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll never understand this modern generation!”
Tommy tossed the rope aside “It’s the Eighties, Uncle Ray! A new spirit is in the country, and Youth is coming into its own.”
“It still doesn’t make sense the way she’s running around the way she is,” Ray grumbled. “She must not think very much of herself.”
“She just has a different way of looking about things than you do. That doesn’t make her bad, just different. Look, someday I’ll get married. But right now I’m going to have some fun. I don’t care. Amy doesn’t care. Why should you care?”
“I guess I feel like I should be calling someone to task for your behavior. If she was my niece I’d be doing a whole lot more than talking.”
“She’s a free spirit, Uncle Ray.” He grinned. “At least you’ve got her doing some of the cooking.”
Ray sighed. “If you can call it that. But everyone has to start somewhere, I guess. Just so our stomachs hold out until she learns.”
“I think no one’s ever taken the time to show her household chores.”
“No one’s ever made her accountable before, you mean.”
“No one’s ever cared enough before to help her,” Tommy said gently. “You’re probably more of a parent to her than anyone’s ever been. She said her parents never paid her much attention.”
Ray frowned. “That’s a shame. Nobody should be treated that way.”
Tommy grinned. “I have a feeling she won’t be as long as she’s here.”
“She’ll pull her own weight, or leave!”
Tommy was puzzled. “Why do you want to act like such a hard ass about her?”
“Some people just need to be treated that way,” Ray growled. “Nobody’s ever set limits for her, but by golly, I will! And she’ll follow my rules, or get out! Ain’t nobody stopping her from hitting the road.”
“Maybe she can’t. I don’t know why, but I feel like she needs us as a sanctuary.”
Ray hooted. “She needs nobody! That gal has no heart! She doesn’t know how to love! She’s a ball buster, boy! And I won’t let her hurt you.”
“I’ll be careful, Uncle Ray. I won’t fall in love with her. She’s not the type for that. She’s a Sometimes Girl, and they’re as permanent as the blowing sand. She asks for nothing and takes nothing. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
“Just don’t seem right,” Ray grumbled, but dropped the subject.
One day Amy drove Ray’s pickup out into the prairie to bring some cold lunch to Ray and Tommy who’d been working on the range since sun-up.
Amy got out of the truck with determination. She WOULD made friends with Ray today. Then life on the ranch would be a lot easier on everybody. “Where’s Tommy?” she asked as she pulled the picnic hamper out of the pickup.
Ray pulled down the tailgate. “Ain’t here yet.” He began rummaging around in the basket. “Did you remember the salt and pepper?”
Amy cringed. “I brought them, but I should’ve given your stomach a break and left them back at the house.’
“You watch your tummy, missy, and I’ll watch mine.” He bit down on a chicken leg and washed it down with strong coffee. “You got the chicken fried up real good,“ he commented.
“Why, thank you,“ she said, amazed by the sudden praise.
“The skin’s on it, and feathers ain’t. And you had the grease good and hot when you dropped the battered pieces in. That sealed the moisture in and helped it to cook.“
It sealed the fat in, too, but she didn’t say anything. Not when he was praising her the way he was.
Then he went and ruined it.
“Just shows what good teaching can do for you.“
She bristled. “Maybe I’m just a good student.“
For some reason, he grinned. “Just checking. Yep. Nothing wrong with your bite. You’re still as feisty as an old sitting hen that‘s been tossed off her nest.“
“Maybe I have to be,“ she challenged.
That amused him, but angered her.
“What?!”
“Just wondering if Tommy knows what kind of a hellcat he hauled home.”
“I think that’s what kind of a woman it takes out here. Sweet, little shrinking violets would shrivel up and die in a week.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Oh? That’s the first time that you’ve agreed with me.”
“It’s the first time you’re said something smart.”
“It is not!”
“Alright. How about something that sounds smart?”
“You mean, something that agrees with your way of thinking.”
He grinned. “Now you’re catching on.”
“There’s fresh fruit in the basket,” she said as she watched him digging around in the basket’s contents.
“I’ll save it for you, Missy. This is what I’m looking for. Glad you remembered to include the important stuff.“ He grabbed a biscuit, twisted it apart, and placed two hunks of crisply fried fatback between the halves. He saw Amy cringe again and he grinned at her. “This will put hair on your chest.”
“No, thanks. That really doesn’t appeal to me as something I’d want."
He snorted with laughter, then went back to his chewing.
She glared at him. "I’m more worried about what that bacon will do to your heart.”
“My daddy died at eighty and he ate this stuff just like this almost every day of his life. What’s the use of living if you can’t enjoy it?” He studied her as he chewed.
She wiped wind-tossed hair out of her face. “What are you looking at?”
“I haven’t figured you out, Missy, but I’m working on it.”
“I’m Tommy’s girlfriend. That’s all that should concern you.”
A grin play alongside his greasy mouth, but a knowing look crackled in his eyes.
Amy turned away in frustration and sought a new topic. “Were there Indians around here?”
“There were Indians all over the United States until the white men decided that they wanted the Indian land and practically wiped them off the face of the Earth.”
She glared back at him. “I know all that. I’ve studied history. And, yes, it was an atrocity. I was just curious what tribes were around here.” She looked into the distance. “It’s so beautiful around here. And it has such a holy feel about it. I figured that this land must have been sacred to somebody at some time other than now.”
He stared at her. How in the hell had she picked that up?
“It was sacred. Very sacred.”
She looked at him because his voice sounded different. It wasn’t mocking anymore.
“Then there were indigenous people who loved it.”
“Yeah.“ Ray wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “Blackfeet. Mostly Blackfeet. They still live on the reservations nearby.”
“I hear that the Indians have a bad life now. Is that true?”
He chose another piece of chicken. “It’s no bed of roses for them.”
“People should always have hope. Otherwise, living would be hard to do.”
He glanced up. “I didn’t say they didn’t have hope. After all, they still have Lakota.”
“Lakota? Who is that?”
“A legend, mostly. It’s actually the name of an Indian tribe, part of the Dakota nation. But to some people, Lakota is a free spirit riding bareback across the plains. Some say she was wronged by a white man and bore him a child he wouldn’t claim. She was a pretty, young thing, indignant about her people losing their ancient homeland to white settlers when she was brought down by her own personal tragedy. She was on fire with the idealism of youth about the injustice served to her peoples when she died. Some say she still rides the prairie on moonlit nights to rally her tribesmen. When she thinks her cause is particularly important, she is said to ride buck naked.”
“Naked?”
“As the day she was born. I say she’d be damnation sore afterwards, and it’d be a bad waste of good pussy. The horse wouldn’t even be aware of what was going on his back.”
Amy blushed. “I don’t appreciate that kind of talk.”
He gazed at her levelly. “Just checking to see if you have any standards at all. Guess you do.”
“Yes, I do! Just because I’m here with Tommy doesn’t make me a slut!”
Ray blinked. “Now who talks dirty?” He tossed the stripped chicken bone away. “Glad to see that you have some principles, Missy. The rules have changed so much nowadays, it’s hard for this old cowboy to keep from getting dizzy.”
“Some rules don’t change, Mr. Nolan.”
He studied her, then rustled in the picnic basket. “You can call me ‘Ray.’ We aren’t too big on ceremony around here. It makes me feel old to be called ‘Mr. Nolan.’ And I’m betting you’re closer to my age than Tommy’s. I was just a teenager when I took over raising him. He graduated from high school last year. He has his whole life ahead of him. Don’t mess it up for him.”
“I have no intentions of hurting Tommy! He’s my friend!” She turned away and tried to calm her temper. The prairie with all of its empty vastness met her eyes, and she marveled at all of the peace in it. She lifted her eyes and studied the distant mountains. She listened as the wind sloughed across the waving prairie grasses, and she was calmed as she always was by nature. Whether she was on an ocean beach or here on the prairie, Amy drew strength from God’s creation.
“Is it always this lovely?” she asked as the wind blew her hair back from her face.
Ray glanced at her, then squinted at the distant mountains as he chewed another biscuit. “It’s being nice to you today. I’ve seen blizzards out here that have driven livestock crazy. Drought don’t do much for them, neither. But this is spring, and you’re getting to see a mighty pretty show. These wildflowers won’t stay long.” His eyes slid sideways toward her. “How about you, Missy? Are you planning to stay around here for long? I don’t want Tommy’s heart broken. And women like you are hard on cowboys.”
Amy stared at Ray. Was he talking about Tommy, or himself?
Hoof beats approached in the distance.
“Here comes Tommy now,” Amy mumbled and busied herself with the food.
“What you got there?” Ray asked one evening after supper. “Reading’s kind of hard to do in lamplight.”
“Just a book I found in the parlor,” Amy answered “It’s a cookbook, but it’s so old. The directions are nothing like today’s cooking methods.”
Ray twisted the book so he could see the cover. “That belonged to my grandmother. She brought it out with her as a bride when she left Indiana. She’d never laid eyes on my grandpa until their wedding day. She was one of those mail order brides.”
“Did they have a happy marriage?”
“They lived out here for forty-three years and raised five kids. I don’t know how happy they were, but they never split up. Don’t find too much of that kind of loyalty these days. Least little excuse and Pouf!, there goes the marriage.”
“Have your people always lived around here?”
“My great-grandfather came home to Virginia after the Civil War and found everything gone: home, family, land. He headed West and a few years later he wound up at Fort Laramie. Word of great mining around Virginia City and Helena spurred him to try to scoop up the riches for himself. He took out on the Bozeman Trail in 1870 with a bunch of roughnecks. Somewhere along the way, he got robbed and left for dead. He wandered for days and finally the Indians rescued him. Damned good thing it hadn’t been a few years later or a different bunch of Indians, or he’d been caught at the Little Big Horn and I wouldn’t be here. But the Indians were friendly and took him to a mountain man who nursed him back to health. The mountain man had a half-breed wife and a couple of daughters. My great-grandpa got to liking the older gal real well, and he forgot all about the mining camps further west.”
“So your family settled here several years before Custer’s Last Stand. Have they always been ranchers?”
“The sensible ones have. We’ve had our share of dreamers, too. Tommy and I don’t have many close relatives around, but there are some second and third cousins still living close. Old Josiah might be disappointed that his family’s so scattered.”
“Josiah?”
“My great-grandfather. The one that was in the Civil War. He had a son who went off to the gold mines further west. He was twenty years old, the last anyone ever heard of him.”
“How sad.”
“Yeah. If he’d wanted precious gems, he could’ve found them around here.”
“Really? What?”
“Well, there’s rubies and garnets up in the mountains. And if you look real careful, you might even find a sapphire.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Back in ‘96 a prospector up near Utica picked up a handful of what looked liked pretty blue pebbles out of a gopher hole. The pretty blue pebbles turned out to be sapphires.”
“Gosh!”
“Now, don’t go getting that gleam in your eyes. Remember that most blue rocks you find will be just that: blue rocks.”
“A girl can always hope, can’t she?”
“You’ll get more profit from that cookbook.”
Amy sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, mother.”