Welcome at Henderson's Ranch Read online

  Welcome at Henderson’s Ranch

  M. L. Buchman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

  Nathan’s Big Sky (excerpt)

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

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  Chapter 1

  Dateline: August 15, Henderson’s Ranch, Bloody Nowhere, Montana

  Colleen McMurphy could write this article in her sleep, with her keyboard tied behind her back, and…

  “The wife and I had such a splendid time there. You simply must go and write us an article about it.” For some reason Larry always went old-school English whenever he got excited—which coming from her Puerto Rican boss who lived in Seattle seemed to be almost normal for Colleen’s life.

  He, of course, was too busy being Mr. Hotshot Editor to write it himself. That and he couldn’t write his way out of a martini glass. He was one of the best editors she’d ever worked for—and as a freelancer that had included a suckload of them—but his twelve-year-old daughter could write new material better than he could. Hillary was named for Sir Edmund of Mt. Everest fame and just might follow her namesake at the rate she was being amazing. She was a precocious little twerp who was so delightful that she made Colleen feel grossly inadequate half the time and totally charmed the other three-quarters.

  So, off to Montana it was. Magazine feature article—she was on it.

  The most recent in a cascade of ever-shrinking planes banged onto the runway in Great Falls, Montana clicking all Colleen’s vertebrae together with a whip-like snap that surprisingly failed to paralyze her. A Japan Airlines 747 had lofted her from the family home in Tokyo to LAX. The smallest 737 ever made hopped her up to Salt Lake, and a wing-flapping 18-seater express fluttered as hopelessly as a just-fledged swallow to Great Falls. If there’d been another plane that was any smaller, they were going to have to put her in a bento box.

  But finally she was here in…major sigh…Nowhere, Montana.

  She’d used this job as an excuse to cut the two-week trip home in half. Two weeks! With her family? What had she been thinking? She was going to have a serious talk with her sense of filial duty before it dragged her from Seattle back to Japan again.

  Outside the miniature plane’s windows the airport stretched away pancake-flat and dusty. Four whole jetways, the place was smaller than a bento box. But their plane didn’t pull up to any of them—because it was too short to reach. Instead, it stopped near the terminal and the copilot dropped the door open, filling the cabin with the familiar bite of spent engine fumes and slowing propeller roar. She’d spent the whole final flight glaring out at the spinning blades directly outside her window, waiting for one to break off, punch through the window, and slice her in two like one of Larry’s martini olives.

  “Enough!” she told herself so loudly that it made the fat-boy businessman—who’d made the near-fatal mistake of trying to chat her up across the tiny aisle—jump in alarm. Twenty hours and nine minutes in flight didn’t usually make her this grouchy. Her parents did though.

  “Why did you change your name?” Because everyone in America would laugh their faces off calling her Kurva—for the Hokkaido mulberry tree you conceived me under, much too much information by the way. It especially doesn’t translate so well for a girl who is Japanese flat. Besides there isn’t an American alive who can say Baisotei properly. Kurva Baisotei was not a moneymaking byline.

  Then, not “When are you going to get married?” but rather “Why do you not give us grandchildren like your sister?” My sister has three. How insatiable are you as grandparents?

  “Why do you not return home?” Because you live here.

  “Ma’am?” Fat-boy was waiting for her to get out of her seat first. Maybe because he needed the full width of the tiny plane, or maybe he was just being nice. She was about to step back on American soil—even if it was Montana—so she gave him the benefit of the doubt and offered a “Thanks” with a smile that hopefully he didn’t read as encouraging.

  The air outside the airport smelled strange. It definitely wasn’t Seattle, which had an evergreen scent that wrapped itself around you like a warm, though often damp, welcome home. Her best girl Ruth Ann always met her when she landed from trips to Japan to drag her to their favorite dive, the J&M in Pioneer Square, and make sure that she got safely drunk within an hour of landing. It was doubly strange to arrive somewhere else without Ruth Ann’s patiently sympathetic ear.

  Montana was dry and, despite the warm afternoon, somehow crisp. In Seattle there were a gazillion things sharing the air with her: Douglas firs, seagulls, dogs playing in the park, ferry boats—the list went on and on. Here it tasted more rarified. More…special.

  Also high on the special list was the guy leaning comfortably on a helicopter with “Henderson’s Ranch” emblazoned down the side like it had been branded there with a flaming iron. He already had one beaming couple beside him with Los Angeles cowboy written all over their Gucci. He towered above them: six-two of dark tan, right-out-of-a-romance-novel square jaw, and mirrored shades for a touch of mystery. His t-shirt was tight and his jeans weren’t bad either. And—crap!—ring on his finger. Fantasy cowboys weren’t supposed to have rings on their fingers, but she wasn’t going to complain about this piece of the Montana scenery just because of the “Back Off” sign.

  Another couple joined them. First-timers by their lost look.

  “Hi!” He even had a nice deep voice to go with that big frame. “I’m Mark Henderson. Climb on aboard,” and he was helping the two couples into the back seats.

  Handsome guy who flies a helicopter. Sweet! Maybe Montana wasn’t going to be so bad. Ruth Ann was gonna be wicked jealous. She snapped a photo of him just for that purpose.

  “Looks like you’re up front with me, beautiful,” he aimed a lethal smile directly at her.

  She returned the smile, feeling pleased. Then lost it when she realized the implications.

  Two happy couples in the back.

  Handsome married dude in the front.

  And that’s when the background research she’d done on their website finally made a horrible kind of sense. Weddings this. Couples that. Family horseback rides the other. Larry should have sent Colleen’s perfect sister’s family, not her.

  She was a single Japanese chick, with an Irish name she’d taken from the old TV show China Beach. (She’d always liked the main character—strong woman back when that wasn’t a very popular thing to be.)

  Be strong now!

  She was going to a couples’ paradise. This was going to be worse than the parental purgatory.

  She’d be pleasant. Polite.

  And as soon as she got home, Larry was a dead man.

  Chapter 2

  Dateline: Day Two, Henderson’s Ranch, Montana Front Range

  Montana greets visitors who fly in with the dullest landscape imaginable. Rulers are tested here for an accurate straight edge by laying them on the ground.

  But fifty miles to the west, the Rocky Mountains soar aloft, forcing the eye to constantly scan upward to the bluest sky imaginable. Henderson’s Ranch lies nestled in the softly rolling country at the base of these majestic peaks.

  A night’s sleep and Colleen felt much more human this morning, even if she couldn’t make sense of what lay o
utside her cabin window. To the south and east, the land stretched so far away that she felt as if she was perched atop an infinite cliff and at the least misstep might tumble down forever. A person could get vertigo here just sitting still.

  To the west, the mountains punched aloft in bold, jagged strokes with little of the softness that Washington’s forests provided to Seattle’s peaks.

  There was a wildness that confronted her every time she looked at these mountains. Her inner city Tokyo childhood, her rebellious escape to the community of fifty-thousand students at the University of Washington, Seattle’s million people—none of it prepared her for this stark emptiness.

  Here along the Front Range, aside from a few dozen guests and another dozen ranch hands, there might not be a soul for twenty miles. It felt like a thousand.

  Down the slope, a tall woman stepped out of the back door of the main lodge and rang a giant steel triangle just like in an Old West movie: clangety-clangety-clangety-clang.

  Families and couples streamed out of the other cabins and headed downhill toward the massive two-story log cabin structure that looked like one of those Depression-era lodges. Huge, powerful, unmoving.

  A quick survey showed that she was the only singleton—if she didn’t count kids, and even they seemed to come in packs. Almost everyone was dressed in K-Mart Western, or some designer version that looked no more likely.

  There were breakfast fixings in her cabin, and she was tempted to retreat there, but she was here to write a travelogue article. For that she had to experience the experience.

  She was last down the trail to the big house. The guests were all guided along the wrap-around porch to the front entrance into the big dining room she’d seen on last night’s welcome tour. Thirty people could eat communal style at the long table.

  However, a few others were coming around to the kitchen door. They were dressed far more casually, and far more authentically. Cowboy boots, dusty jeans, a variety of hats—some battered cowboy, some baseball-cap redneck. The women were dressed much the same.

  Not really paying attention to what her feet were doing, she fell in with the ranch hands and found herself in a massive and beautiful kitchen. The hands were making use of one of the sinks before gathering at a smaller version of the big communal table out front.

  “Mornin’, Colleen. Not up for our ‘Happy Couples’ breakfast?” Mark the pilot greeted her with an understanding smile, reading her too easily.

  Time to gear up the pleasant-reporter face.

  He wasn’t any less handsome this morning, but a stunning blonde kissed him on the cheek as she topped up his coffee, confirming that the ring wasn’t just for show.

  “Not so much, if that’s okay.”

  “Take a seat. Dad’s this one, Mom’s the other end, when she bothers to sit down. The rest are up for grabs.”

  She took a seat almost, but not quite, at the middle of the table on the far side. It gave her the best view of what was going on and would let her hear most of the conversations without being the center of them. No one so much as blinked an eye as she joined them. A pretty redhead gave her a South California, “Hey!” Her husband was more the quiet-nod type.

  Another long blonde gave her a very authentic sounding, “Howdy!” just as the male cook (with a Brooklyn-tinged “Hello and welcome”) came and set a plate in front of the blonde, then kissed her on top of the head.

  Shit! She was in Couplandia here as well. Finally some more guys came in until there was a fair balance of single men. More what she’d expected.

  Her goal of keeping track of the conversations went out the window in the first ten seconds. They were talking about the day to come and what they knew about the guests, but doing it in a handful of simultaneous discussions: “Most of this lot we won’t get out of the corral for a couple days.” “Did you see that absolute babe from England? Never saw a woman sit a horse so purty. She’ll ride far and hard.” His companion—alike enough to be his twin—gave him a knowing smile that was all about the woman and not so much about how she sat.

  Colleen stayed focused on her meal and her article. The food was incredibly good despite how basic a hash brown-and-ham scramble with a biscuit buried in gravy sounded. Article ideas were perking up as she enjoyed the camaraderie around the table. These people liked each other. Liked working together. And whatever else they were saying about the guests, none of it was bitter or caustic. She’d expected some derision of “city cowboys” but nothing even remotely like that came up in any of the several threads she was able to follow.

  She wondered what they’d be saying about her behind her back.

  “I like the way you listen.”

  It took her a moment to rewind the comment because it was only the last word that actually caught her attention. She finally traced it (nearly accentless) to the man across the table. He wasn’t a big man—Colleen had an absolute weak spot for big men, who thankfully often had a weak spot for petite Japanese women—but he had a nice smile so she wouldn’t hold his normalness of height and build against him.

  “Uh-huh,” her cordial-meter was still running below normal, but then no one was supposed to see through her pleasant-reporter face. She really needed another mug of tea.

  “Heard you just arrived from Japan. Family there?”

  “Uh-huh,” her cordial-meter bottomed out. That was a reminder that she didn’t need.

  “Apparently the wrong question.”

  “Uh-huh,” she dialed up her emphatic-sarcasm mode to full.

  “Do you ride?”

  Her first temptation was to go to “uh-uh” but she already was being subverbal far beyond her norm. Besides, it was the easiest response. Like writing, the easiest word (the first word she thought of) was rarely the most precise or evocative one. Good writing required avoiding the obvious while still telling the story—whether it encapsulated what it was like to work on the Boeing manufacturing line like her last article or the current purgatory of Couplandia.

  Her interlocuter (yes! her vocabulary was finally coming back online) looked like a nice enough guy. Cowboy lean with a pleasant smile. She supposed that she’d have to ride a horse to get the full “Henderson’s Ranch” experience and a private lesson sounded far better than shaming herself in public.

  “Not yet,” she added a smile which she knew was one of her strengths. The guy returned with a powerful one of his own.

  It was only then that she noticed Mr. Handsome-with-a-ring Henderson rolling his eyes at her—at least that’s what she assumed he was doing behind his ever-present shades.

  Okay, maybe she could have been a little more subtle. But he said he liked the way she listened—one of the skills she was most proud of. That bit of insightfulness was going to earn him a lot of leeway.

  Chapter 3

  Dateline, Day Four—

  Colleen turned on a light against the fading day and flipped back through her notes again. Where had Day Three gone? Where had Day Two gone for that matter?

  She finally found Day Two.

  Mac Henderson, technically Mark Henderson, Sr. and almost as handsome as his son, had been thrilled to have her on the ranch. Apparently she was their first journalist, so their resort had a lot riding on making her happy—though he acted as if he was simply glad she was here, not several million readers AAA magazine would be sending this out to. Which was sweet of him to pretend.

  On Day Two, he’d toured her about: cabins, yurts, cooking classes, weaving classes, horseback riding, even a military dog trainer named Stan—a big, gruff man with a hook prosthetic on one arm who only spoke to his dogs.

  As the day had progressed, Mac had grown more and more excited about showing her around his ranch until he was as wound up as one of Stan’s puppies. A former Navy SEAL in his sixties who almost wriggled with delight. She’d always thought SEALs were supposed to be broody and stoic, but Mac was a thoroughly pleasant guy who clearly loved this land with a passion.

  What she’d found truly unbelievable
was the amount of work it took to run the place, and Mac made sure that she had a chance to meet and chat with every person of the staff. The redhead who ran the barn was so voluble that Colleen couldn’t have gotten down one word in ten no matter how fast she took notes—and she was fast. Her husband, the ranch manager, was laconic to the point where Colleen wondered if people catnapped between his sentences.

  It took her a while to catch on that he was teasing her with it.

  Day Two afternoon: Mark’s wife Emily took her on a solo helicopter flight over the ranch that was stunning in both its expansiveness and its variety. The softly rolling landscape around the buildings gave way to rugged prairie, patches of pine forest, and even waterfalls along a small river that ran down out of the hills. A group of horses out at a remote fishing cabin revealed that at least some riders had made it past the corral.

  The cook wasn’t a cook at all—he was a dropout New York chef…one she’d actually heard of.

  She was getting why Larry and his family had gone nuts over the place, but that didn’t explain what had happened to her notes. She was sure she taken more of them.

  Day Three’s notes were definitely not here. Then she remembered…

  Raymond Esterling, her Day One breakfast companion.

  Who liked the way she listened.

  That’s what had happened to Day Three.

  …and most of Day Four.

  Colleen sat down abruptly on the bed in her small cabin. She ran a hand over the bedspread: Cheyenne weaving done by the owner’s wife. She was one of those tall, majestic Native American women that never actually existed in real life. The blanket’s geometric reds and golds were as warm as the campfire they’d all sat around while burgers were cooked over open flame on a heavy iron grill earlier this evening—some of the best beef she’d ever tasted.