Nathan's Big Sky Read online

  Ama might have been smiling as she passed him carrying a large plastic container filled with sausage meat. It didn’t look as if her sausage meat came from neat little Styrofoam trays covered in plastic wrap either.

  Once the rest of the eggs were clean, he began cracking them into the bowl. “How many?”

  “A dozen eggs should do.”

  From that scant clue as to how many they were feeding, he began building a waffle mix. She didn’t tell him where things were, leaving him to discover that milk was in the steel jug in the dairy fridge, and which cupboard held the baking powder and flour. When he didn’t have enough flour, she pointed him toward another door.

  “Oh... My.” This time he could feel her smiling at his back, though he didn’t turn to see.

  The door led to a pantry that could feed an army. There were walls of staples. Lidded plastic buckets on the floor were labeled: rice, lentils, red beans, black beans, and more. There was an entire wall of shelves dedicated to canned goods. Not canned like from a store, but canned like the glass jars that cost him ten or fifteen dollars apiece at Dean and DeLuca’s in SoHo. Asparagus, beans, corn…the whole alphabet of vegetables was represented. Jam jars nudged up against quarts of cherries and tomatoes—maybe he’d died and gone to heaven. A massive chest freezer was packed solid with bags of frozen fruit. Another with cuts of meat wrapped in brown butcher paper.

  It was so overwhelming that he had to look at the empty container in his hands to remember what he’d come in to find. Flour. Right. He dipped a couple of scoops from a fifty-pound bag into the container and wandered back into the kitchen completely dazed.

  Ama had taken over the waffle mixing. His delay would have put the meal out of sync if she hadn’t.

  Rather than switching back, he handed off the flour and took over the sausage. She’d made patties and dropped them on the griddle. He knocked off a cooked bit and tasted it. Pork, heavy on the salt and light on the pepper.

  Nathan ducked back into the pantry and grabbed an onion and a jar of roasted red peppers in oil. He diced both down quickly and got them running on the griddle. Thyme and a shot of Tabasco. More pepper, but no more salt. Soon the kitchen was thick with the smell of good sausage, fresh butter sizzling on the griddle, and hot waffles.

  People started coming into the kitchen through the back door. They brought a wash of cold air and the smell of dry grass and sunshine in with them. Wow. He wasn’t first up, he was last. Minutes past sunrise and they’d all been outside working. That explained the two pots of coffee that had been going.

  As each person came in, Nathan dropped an extra egg on the hot grill. Another taste of pepper-onion mix, then he added a touch more hot sauce and a pinch of tarragon.

  No one spoke to him—they’d all know who he was by this point—but he could hear them chatting about the morning’s work. Horses, farm equipment he’d never heard of, and cabins under construction—a lot of discussion on that last point. But he was too busy cooking to let it be more than a wash over him.

  Ama began handing him plates with a trio of giant waffles on each. Big appetites here.

  With a broad spatula, he dropped a sausage patty beside the waffles, smothered it with the onion-pepper mix, slipped an over-easy egg on top of it, then handed off the plate. Finally, no one arrived to take the next plate.

  In confusion he slipped out of the zone and discovered that he had no more eggs to serve either—the last one was crowned over the sausage on the plate he was holding.

  He turned and everyone was sitting at the kitchen table. They all had plates before them and were busy dressing the waffles with butter and syrup.

  The transition was always hard, but this one was stranger than most. He generally made a point of cooking the staff meal himself. Before the day’s dinner service began, he would serve everyone a plate, and himself last. They always ate together before the night’s mayhem began. Even Chef Guevarre, despite all of his control freak madness, always sat and ate with the crew—though he’d never cooked for them as that would be a “waste of his time and talent.”

  But this was no table with hungover chefs, predatory sous chefs, and waitresses dressed far more to please with their bodies than their personalities.

  Mac and Ama sat at either end. Six others sat scattered along the length. A striking redhead was leaning in to tease a guy with brown hair down to his collar. There was a huge guy with a buzz cut and paired steel hooks sticking out of one cuff, a sharp contrast to his other big powerful hand of flesh and blood. Two of the men, both sandy blond and rancher solid—and alike enough to be twins—rounded out the crowd.

  Ama patted the spot by her side and he slid into it gratefully.

  He picked up a fork, then set it back down when he noticed no one else was eating. They were all looking at Mac.

  Mac’s glance traveled around the table, stopping on each of them. Nathan found that his own was doing the same. The big hard guy with the hooks to his right, Ama to his left.

  No one spoke. No one closed their eyes or mumbled prayers. There were looks and smiles and nods around the table.

  It lasted only a second or so, a few moments of acknowledging that these were the people whom they were breaking bread with. Before it could get weird or uncomfortable, Mac declared “Hooyah!” from the other end of the table with some kind of military call. It rippled like a wave around the table and then they began eating and talking all at once.

  Nathan sat a moment longer appreciating the feel of the moment. He wished he’d thought to do something like that at his restaurant. If he ever spoke to his buddy Estevan again, he’d have to suggest it.

  Nathan was the last to pick up his fork.

  “Wow!” the redhead exclaimed. “That’s some seriously good sausage. You can cook for me anytime. I’m Chelsea, by the way. I married-in last spring,” she hooked a thumb at the man beside her. “Doug was just too good a package to leave on the shelf. He can even kinda cook, which is good because I’m totally hopeless despite my mom being a cook for a whole bunch of Oregon firefighters ever since before I can remember. Doug is the ranch foreman and never speaks.”

  “Sure I do. I just can’t ever seem to get a word in edgewise. It’s Stan who never speaks.”

  “Give me a reason to,” the big guy with the hooks for a hand grunted out. He looked rough, but not angry. More like the guy you wanted on your side in a brawl.

  “He only talks to his dogs,” Chelsea explained.

  “At least they listen,” Stan shot back.

  “You know Mac and Ama, of course,” she continued the introductions as if Stan hadn’t spoken at all. Maybe he spoke plenty and she just never heard him. Or maybe she was teasing him.

  As to Mac and Ama, not at all and barely. But as it was obvious there was no stopping the speeding train of Chelsea, he simply nodded. The big guy at the head of the table offered him a wink as she turned to the last occupants of the table.

  “These two we call Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They aren’t twins, they only look that way.”

  “I’m Dee. He’s Dum,” the not-twins said in practiced unison, aiming a forkful of waffle at each other.

  “Actually I’m Fred and he’s George,” one said.

  “Can’t be,” Nathan was getting the hang of their conversation.

  “Why not?” the other asked.

  “First, are either of you magical?”

  “Like a fairy? Sure, Dum is. Magical like a giant? You’re talking to the main man.” Even though he was slightly the shorter of the two.

  “Your hair isn’t red.”

  “Depends on the day of the week.”

  Nathan couldn’t help but laugh. He’d wager that the two of them never gave a straight answer to anything.

  “Maybe you’re the twins from The Parent Trap. Then you could both be impersonated by a young Lindsay Lohan.” His suggestion started them off on using little-girl voices.

  The rest of the meal carried on the same way. They teased him some about
his sports car. Dee and Dum, whose actual names he still wasn’t sure of, wanted to take it for a spin.

  “Found these still in the ignition,” Doug reached into a pocket and tossed him the keys.

  Nathan must have been even more out of it than he’d thought to do that. Very not city of him.

  “I moved it into one of the garages, what with the storm coming in tonight. Stacked your gear inside the front door.” His smile said he might have taken it for a quick spin on the way. Chelsea’s smile confirmed that he had and she’d been along to enjoy the ride.

  If this was New York, he’d be ticked that someone had taken liberties with his Miata. Here it didn’t seem such a big deal. “Careful, there’s no spare. I had a flat about a mile from here last night when I nearly plowed into a sky-tall cow from the underworld named Lucy. I thought I was a goner until an angel on a horse rescued me. Where’s the nearest station to get that fixed?”

  “Choteau.”

  Thirty miles to the nearest gas station? Where was he?

  “But I can patch the tire for you if it’s just a puncture. Not a chance I have a spare of the right size lying around for something that small.”

  Nathan didn’t know how to answer that. Full or flat he knew. Puncture vs…what? He hoped for the former and just nodded his thanks to Doug.

  “Lucy spooked you off the road?” Chelsea had a bright, merry laugh so he played it up. The saga of the mighty horns and the nostrils streaming with fire in the evening light. When he got to the part about the angel on the black-and-white horse, they all nodded.

  “That’d be Julie up on her Clarence,” Dee said.

  “She loves that painted horse,” Dum replied with a sad sigh that said he’d found no luck with its rider.

  “Really loves that horse,” Dee’s sigh said that he too had failed there.

  At least he now had her first name.

  Thankfully no one pushed him about why he was here. There were some things he wasn’t ready to explain to anyone, not even himself. Or how long he’d be staying, which was awfully polite of them—especially as he had nowhere else to go.

  Instead the talk turned to the plans for the spring.

  Apparently the cowgirl’s ranch had cows, thousands of head of them. Mac and Ama had a horse ranch. They were a guest ranch, so fixing up and expanding the cabins before “the season” started really was a big priority.

  “You have any carpentry skills?” Mac asked, then sighed when Nathan merely shook his head. “This spread lay dormant for years. Been a load of work knocking it into shape. Last year was the first we actually turned a profit. A whole lot of it is in hay. Still lease about a third of it as grazing land to Nils Larson across the road.”

  Larson. Julie Larson. Now he had both her names—though Nathan wasn’t sure why he cared or what good it would do him.

  There was also talk about a celebration dinner tonight. Before he even finished helping with the cleanup, Ama began cooking. She made it easy for him to pitch in.

  “How many are you expecting?” Nathan asked as she hauled a gigantic roast out of the meat fridge.

  Ama shrugged, “Most of the ranches hereabouts. It’s coming up spring. People are tired of staying in.” And that was pretty much all she had to say as they worked through the morning.

  Julie had been on a winning streak all afternoon, no sign of city boy. Not even his car. As a bonus, the two cousins who looked like twins, Devin and Drake, were nowhere about, though she almost had them trained into treating her like a person. And Patrick—who she couldn’t seem to train at all—was off on a supply run.

  It had just been her and Mac all afternoon. He’d named the five cabins for the local trees: Douglas, Lodgepole, Larch, Ponderosa, and Aspen. They went through each one making notes. Douglas would just be a matter of fixing some blown shingles, and Larch had a cracked window. A fresh coat of paint on all of the doors and trim would make them feel well maintained, but the wood siding was left weathered to give the rustic, Montana Ranch experience. Ponderosa was a much bigger job; it was the oldest cabin and the bathroom predated the dinosaur bones that Jack Horner became famous for unearthing at nearby Egg Mountain.

  Aspen was a little sweetheart of a cottage and had always been her favorite. It was off by itself a bit and sheltered by a small copse of aspen. It didn’t need much work to merely be ready for guests, but with a little attention it could be a real showpiece. If it was hers she’d— There was a pointless train of thought. If she didn’t get her business going she was going to be living on the Larson spread for the rest of her natural-born days.

  The first guest wasn’t booked for a month, so she had plenty of time to finish all this work herself. She’d fix up the easy ones right away so that Mac could take advantage if someone called in.

  “It’s the delay on the new cabins that worries me, Julie. I had twice the calls last season than I had the guest housing for.”

  Last fall they’d sited-in the plumbing and electrics, burying them deeply underground—well below the freeze and frost heave line. Mac had loved the excuse to give his backhoe a workout, but an early and hard storm had frozen the ground and stopped them before they could dig in the basements. That was a problem of a different scale. Their plans to start building atop the basements while the ground was still hard hadn’t been possible.

  “We need to get down deep and I don’t have time for that now,” Mac sat down in the clearing for the first cabin. They could probably dig now, there’d been enough warm weather. But even if they started today, it was too late. It would take a month of hard work to even get ready for the foundation pour; the cabins wouldn’t be done until the fall. And that was only if she could find enough crew to hire on during the busy summer season. While she’d welcome the steady work, it wasn’t going to help Mac at all.

  Julie sat beside him, the grass crunching slightly after the chilly night—the remainder of last night’s snow hadn’t melted yet—and looked out at the land. It was an ideal setting. The main house was perched on the south side of a broad rise, sheltered from the hard northerlies that slammed down off the Arctic and the Canadian plains in the winters. Below, in a protected swale: horse barns, shops, lodging for the hands, and the foreman’s house.

  The guest cabins were upslope from the main ranch house, circling the crest of the rise. They had commanding views in every direction, yet were close by the main house for meals and evening activities. This new cluster was to be on the next rise, another hundred yards away from the others. They’d be for those guests who wanted the extra feel of privacy.

  For a while they talked ideas back and forth.

  Forget the frost heave and let the cabins “float” on heavy footings with adjustable jacks? It meant more maintenance every year. Cut in just two basements this year? That would leave those two cabins feeling remote and lonely, rather than adventurous in a group. Nowadays, with instant reviews up on travel websites, the experience had to be perfect, right from the beginning.

  But for all his worry, Mac was easy with taking the time to just sit and chat about it. Her father would have mandated “get it done” and stomped down the slope, the same way he stomped down every obstacle that rose in his way. She didn’t like how much she was like him in that respect, but no matter how she looked at this problem, she couldn’t seem to bludgeon it into submission.

  “Something will come to us. We don’t have to solve this today.”

  “But—”

  “No, Julie,” Mac waved to encompass the landscape lying before them. “This isn’t some battle scenario. Nobody dies if we don’t solve it until tomorrow.”

  “Maybe not, but it feels that way. I’ve been thinking about this all winter. If we don’t solve it today, it could be next winter before we do.”

  “No, it doesn’t feel that way. Not really.”

  That’s when she remembered his background. He’d been a Navy SEAL for twenty years.

  And his son and daughter-in-law had spent nearly as long in the Arm
y, a lot of it in Special Operations.

  “You’re looking forward to them coming here to live, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “A father worries. Can’t tell his wife or kid, because it’s up to him to be the strong one. But trust me, he worries.”

  Julie wasn’t so sure about that. Her father might worry some, but it would be about his cows first, his male children second, or maybe third after his standing in the community. Her mother next, and then she was somewhere far down on the list of things Nils Larson worried about.

  “Yes, it will be good to have them home. Miss the grandkids, too. Having Mark and Emily fighting wildfires was bad. When they were in the Army before that, it was worse. I lost count of how many times they were shot down. Twice on national TV for Emily; once for Mark. Super hard to watch, I don’t mind admitting. At least to you. They will probably never tell me all the times it happened.”

  Julie looked out again at the view. The house and ranch buildings tucked safely below. The massive Front Range of the Rocky Mountains sweeping up out of the Great Plains in a grand gesture of towering rock. The fierce snow-covered mountains soared to the west and the limitless horizon of the grasslands to the east. Big cumulus were moving south out of Canada, one last snow or else a freezing rain. There wasn’t a rancher who wouldn’t prefer the snow—a chill rain killed animals far more quickly.

  “It’s such a beautiful place. I hope they love it here,” Mac’s voice was barely a whisper on the soft breeze.

  Julie heard the new worry in his voice and felt foolish for her own petty concerns. Mac and his family had risked everything for their country. Risked and made it through to the other side.

  What in the world had she ever done? Lived her entire life on a cattle ranch, scrabbling for the thin line that meant success each year and hating the struggle.

  Off in the far distance, she saw a tiny plume of dust out near the horizon. Someone on the road.

  “When are you expecting Mark and Emily?”

  “Any time now.”

  “Then I think you’d better head on down to greet them,” she pointed out the far-off blemish. A small cloud of dust rose way out along the line of the road in from Choteau.