Table of Contents

  Dance With Me

  A Recipe for Love

  Saving Grace

  Dance With Me

  By B.J. Daniels

  Copyright 2011 B.J. Daniels

  Smashwords Edition

  The sun was just brushing the tops of the Castle Mountains as Game Warden Tanner McKnight drove past the Garrett Ranch and headed up Castle Peak Road.

  He watched smoke curl up from the ranch chimney and rise steel-gray against the fresh snowfall and he wondered if the lady of the house was up already this cold Sunday morning.

  Just the thought of Betty Lou Garrett set his pride to stinging again. He wasn’t in the habit of making a fool of himself, but last night at the dance he’d done just that.

  Pressing his boot to the gas pedal, he sent his pickup speeding on by the ranch. The last thing he wanted to do was run into Betty Lou this morning. Some things weren’t a good idea on an empty stomach.

  * * * *

  Betty Lou didn’t notice Tanner drive by. She had company. She stood with her back to the fireplace, her fingers looped into the pockets of her jeans, as she sized up the man before her.

  Buck Cooper was foreman of the Lone Pine Ranch just south of the Garrett’s ranch. Once, the summer she turned 16, he’d worked as a hired hand on the Garrett Ranch. He’d been 19 at the time and had had a full dark beard and wavy brown hair. The day her father, Pete Garrett, had hired him, she’d thought Buck was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

  She’d daydreamed about what it would be like to kiss him. Her kissing experience had been limited to the boy down the road when she was 12. She’d never kissed a real man, especially one with a beard.

  One day before summer ended, she and Buck were in the barn. She’d been giving him a hard time, teasing him about something and suddenly he’d grabbed her and kissed her.

  His beard had tickled her nose and she’d giggled. Buck had shoved her away and stomped off mad, saying she was just a kid. She’d watched him go, confused and wondering what she’d done wrong. Soon after that, the season was over and Buck had gone to another ranch.

  It had been 10 years since he’d set foot on the Garrett Ranch. Buck’s hairline had receded and so had his chin since he was now clean-shavin’. And now he was suggesting she sell out to him and move into town.

  “Now that Pete’s gone, I just thought….” Buck spun the brim of his dirty Western hat nervously in his fingers. Everyone in the county knew Pete Garrett had died six months ago, leaving the ranch to her. She’d expected the vultures sooner.

  Betty Lou fixed her gaze on his face and frowned. Buck continued to turn his hat and stare at the large silver belt buckle she’d won at the rode last summer.

  “What made you think I would want to sell out?” she finally asked.

  Buck shook his head. “Why wouldn’t you? There’s nothing keeping a pretty little cowgirl like you out here now that you don’t have a man to run the ranch.”

  Pretty little cowgirl? She smiled. In the first place, she considered herself a rancher, not a cowgirl and she wasn’t all that little. And pretty? Once when she was in third grade, a sixth grade boy had called her pretty and she’d punched him in the face and made his nose bleed.

  Pretty had always sounded like a weakness to her, like a woman couldn’t be pretty and smart at the same time.

  Now she poked the edge of the rug with the toe of her boot and tried to seriously consider Buck’s offer.

  “I’d give you a fair price for the place, you know that,” Buck added, still eyeing her belt buckle.

  “I don’t know, Buck,” she said finally. “Give me some time to think about it.”

  He smiled. “That’d be right nice of you.” She’d once heard Buck tell her father that he’d rather tangle with a mama grizzly than Betty Lou when she was riled. She supposed that was the reason he hadn’t tried to romance her and get the ranch by marrying her.

  Instead, he was suggesting buying it outright. She wouldn’t have fallen for any sweet talk, but it would have been nice if he had at least tried.

  She knew Buck was seeing Sara Walker, one of Betty Lou’s former classmates, and that Buck had helped Sara get the sheriff’s dispatcher job. Sara was the type of woman who batted her eyes, pretended to be helpless and talked like a baby – the kind of woman men seemed to find so attractive.

  Men. Betty Lou had realized a long time ago that she had a way with them. They just stayed clear of her.

  * * * *

  Tanner slowed the pickup to a crawl as he wound his way up an old logging road and through the dense pines. The snowy mountain air blew in through the open pickup cab window, but he didn’t dare roll it up. Hunting season didn’t open for another week and yet he could have sworn he’d just heard a shot.

  He pulled the pickup over and climbed out. Not far from what was known as castle rocks, he saw the blood. He wasn’t surprised to find elk tracks and a pair of size-large men’s boot prints in the fresh snow along with the a trail of bright red drops of blood.

  What he didn’t expect to find was the mountain lion track.

  Tanner shook his head, trying to figure who was stalking whom. More than likely, the poacher had wounded the elk and was tracking it.

  The mountain lion had probably joined in the hunt and was now tracking both the wounded elk and the hunter, without the hunter realizing he was being stalked.

  Any way Tanner figured it, it looked like trouble.

  For a moment, he considered calling for backup since game wardens were also considered fair game sometimes. After seven years with the Montana Fish and Game Department and a reputation as one of the toughest wardens in three counties, he seldom needed help.

  But a storm was rolling in. He eyed the clouds for a moment, then reached in the pickup for his radio and stopped. If he waited for backup to arrive, he feared he would lose the poacher. Not to mention the mountain lion might catch up with the unsuspecting poacher before he could arrest him.

  He put the radio back and grabbed his heavy coat. What was a little snowstorm anyway?

  The trail of blood and tracks led Tanner off the side of the mountain and under the ledge of rock that gave the mountain its name, Castle Peak.

  From the distance, it looked like the walls of a castle. Up close, it was large shelves of steep granite. He skirted the rock wall following a natural animal trail beneath the rocks for more than a half mile. The blood drops were getting larger and closer together.

  Suddenly the boot tracks made a quick turn down the mountainside. Tanner stepped to the edge of the rock ledge and stared down at where the hunter’s tracks had gone. The tracks looked as if the man had been running.

  Tanner turned back to the blood trail only to find it ended not five feet from where the boot tracks had departed. An animal losing as much blood as this had been didn’t just stop bleeding.

  He stepped back, pulled off his Western hat and scratched his head. He couldn’t figure it. The only tracks that continued around the mountain were the elk’s. What was going on?

  Realization came just an instant before a drop of blood splattered down on his forehead. In that same instant, he glanced up to find the mountain lion crouched on the ledge directly above him.

  She screamed, her cry shattering the snowy silence and chilling his blood. In that awful second, he realized that he’d had it wrong. The mountain lion had been wounded by the hunter – not the elk.

  Before he could react, the cat sprang. The blow hit him in the chest, driving him backward, and hurling them both over the side of the mountain. They went down hard, falling together over the rock wall down into the darkness of the snowy pines.

  Through the pain and the terror, Tanner realized he’d lost his rifle. He fought to get his pistol from his holster, knowing the wounded cat would kill him if he didn’t kill her first. They tumbled and finally collided with the trunk of a large pine. Tanner cried out in pain as his ribs connected with the tree.

  The cat let out a cry and stumbled back and fell, weak from the rifle wound in her side and the collision with the tree. Fighting the pain, he fumbled his pistol out of the holster as the mountain lion awkwardly got to her feet. In the blink of her golden eyes, the cat pounced.

  Tanner squeezed the trigger. The explosive report of the shot echoed off the rocks above them as the cat came crashing down onto him. At first all he could do was gasp for breath. The cat had knocked all the air out of him, but he quickly realized that was the least of his problems. He’d lost his rifle and he was hurt and bleeding.

  He struggled to roll the dead cat off his body and pull himself up against the base of the tree. His right shoulder, where the mountain lion had hit him, felt as if it had been torn off. But it was his left leg that was the real problem. His wool pants clung to his left thigh in a wet, sticky patch of dark blood.

  Under the shadow of the large pine tree, he pulled his bandanna out of his coat pocket and tied it around the gaping wound as best he could. He was in trouble. The storm was moving in. He could smell snow on the air and the temperature around him was dropping quickly. There was no way he was going to be able to get himself out of here. He needed help and soon.

  Picking up his pistol resting in the pine needles and snow beside him, he fired three shots in quickly succession, praying silently that someone would hear his distress call.

  * * * *

  Some Sunday mornings, Betty Lou drove into town for church services. Most Sundays though, she just saddled up Grey Spirit, the horse her father had given her for her
twenty-first birthday, and rode up into the foothills of Castle Peak.

  In the mountains she found the peace she never found perched on a church pew. After Buck’s visit, she had a lot of thinking to do, so she headed for the barn. Halfway there, she heard the shots.

  She stopped to listen, trying to pinpoint where the shots had come from, then hurried to the tack room, grabbed her saddlebags and ran back to the house. As she threw medical supplies, matches and a thin wool blanket into the pack, she wished there were other ranchers close by. Maybe she didn’t belong out here alone – just as Buck had said.

  Picking up the phone, she called the sheriff’s office. Sara Walker answered on the third ring and Betty Lou wondered if Buck was there distracting her.

  “Looks like someone’s in trouble up on Castle Peak,” she told Sara. “I’m riding up there now. Send me some help.”

  “But both deputies have gone with Sheriff Hunter over to Circleville. There’s some trouble over there. I’m not at liberty to say what. But I’ll try to raise ‘em.”

  “You do that,” Betty Lou said and hung up. As she picked up the saddlebags, she knew she was on her own. No reason to call either of the ranchers down the road. Both would be at church with their wives this morning.

  On the way out the door, she grabbed her rifle and a box of cartridges.

  * * * *

  Shivering, Tanner pulled his coat around him and waited. He had another half dozen bullets. He reloaded the pistol, his fingers trembling from the cold and pain. He’d lost a lot of blood, was fighting not only the pain but the cold. If he didn’t bleed to death, he feared he’d fall asleep and die from hypothermia.

  He would lose body heat and at some point, he wouldn’t care because he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. Lost hunters had been found dead without their coats as if they’d thought they were too hot and had taken them off. All he could hope was that someone found soon. He knew he was hoping a lot.

  The pain in his leg fired his imagination. Several times he sensed a mountain lion crouched in the shelter of the nearby trees. He would turn, his pistol ready, only to find the snow glittering in the gray light and nothing in the darkness but shadows.

  Once he thought he heard music. Country music. And he imagined Betty Lou Garrett leaning against the wall of the Spring Creek Community Center, her Western-brimmed hat pulled down so he could barely see the blue of her eyes.

  He recalled how the beat of the music and the three beers he’d had at Charlie’s Bar and Café last night had made him want to dance. That was last night. Now, he tipped his Stetson, the way he always did to the ladies, and walked over to Betty Lou and suggested they dance.

  Unlike last night, she said, “You bet.”

  He pulled her into his arms and two-stepped her out onto the dance floor. Her hair ran like liquid gold from under her hat and settled around her shoulders. He let his fingers slip from her shoulder to touch her hair. Angel hair.

  Tanner pulled her closer, breathing in the sweet scent of her. She felt warm in his arms and he closed his eyes as they swayed with the music.

  * * * *

  Where the foothills met the tall pines of the mountain, Betty Lou pulled her rifle from its scabbard, fired three quick shots and waited. Grey Spirit snorted and stomped his hooves in the snow, his breath coming out frosty white

  She watched the storm envelop the top of Castle Peak and knew time was running out. Answer the signal, she whispered.

  * * * *

  At first Tanner couldn’t believe he’d heard shots over the loud country music that had been playing in his head. Opening his eyes, it took him a moment to realize there was no sweet-selling woman in his arms. No music. He was alone on the side of the mountain.

  He pulled his pistol and returned the gunfire. Then he lay back. Three bullets left. As he battled the cold, the pain and the seductive whisper of sleep, he told himself he wouldn’t give up. The memory of the dream he’d just had haunted him.

  He wasn’t dying without first having at least one dance with Betty Lou Garrett.

  His toes had gone numb in his boots. He had to stay awake. He knew if he was going to die, the hypothermia would get him before the blood loss. That’s if a grizzly didn’t find him first.

  That was a pleasant thought.

  He had to keep his mind working. He started reciting the multiplication tables.

  * * * *

  When Betty Lou reached the band of rock that circled the peak, snow had begun to fall around her. Fortunately, it hadn’t covered the tracks. She climbed down from her horse and inspected the tracks. Two men’s. One elk’s. And one mountain lion’s.

  She stared into the darkness ahead, wondering who and what she would find, then taking her rifle from the scabbard and Grey Spirit’s reins, she followed the trail before the falling snow could cover it.

  * * * *

  Tanner was multiplying nine times nine when he found himself dancing with Betty Lou again. What he liked best about dancing with her, he decided, was that she didn’t try to make small talk. She moved to the music the way he’d seen her ride at the rodeo, smooth and self-assured.

  He nuzzled into the softness of her neck as another slow dance began and the lights dimmed. He was finally getting warm, in fact, hot, but he barely noticed. If he had, he would have known he was dying.

  * * * *

  The trail petered out. Betty Lou raised her rifle and fired three shots. She stood in the falling snow listening. All she heard was a cold silence that had settled around her. Minutes ticked by. Nothing.

  She reloaded and fired again. In the silence that followed, she thought she heard a faint moaning sound. It seemed to be coming from the darkness of the pines below her.

  Through the blur of white snowflakes, she saw something move beneath a large old pine tree yards below the trail. Then she thought she heard what sounded like humming.

  Ground tying Grey Spirit, she dropped her reins and, rifle in hand, stepped off the trail to slide part way down the mountainside.

  She hadn’t gone far when she froze. A man’s leg protruded from under a snow-covered branch. Next to him laid a dead mountain lion.

  Kneeling down so she could see under the snow-laden branches of the huge pine, she expected to find the man as dead as the mountain lion next to him.

  What she didn’t expect to find was Tanner McKnight under the tree grinning at her. Tanner McKnight, the freckled-faced boy she’d punched in third grade for calling her pretty and the handsome cowboy she’d turned down at the dance last night.

  She swore softly under her breath, then went back for Grey Spirit and the saddlebags.

  * * * *

  Tanner blinked a couple of times at the woman bandaging his leg and grinned again. He knew he was dreaming but it was a nice dream. She looked just like Betty Lou Garrett.

  That’s when he knew he must be dead.

  “Hi, pretty lady,” he said, hoping they were going to dance again if only in another of his dreams. He tried to get up to ask her to dance.

  “Stay put,” she ordered as she wrapped a blanket around him.

  “Too hot,” he whispered, trying to push the hot, itchy wool away.

  She slapped his hand and gave him a dirty look. Now that was a look he recognized. Maybe he wasn’t dreaming.

  “Betty Lou Garrett, I’ll be damned.” He lay back against the tree trunk and grinned. “I thought you said you wouldn’t dance with an arrogant, son of a--.”

  “This isn’t a dance,” she interrupted.

  “—like me,” he finished. He tried his best to charm her while she cut several limbs and built a makeshift split for his wounded leg. He babbled and shivered, joked and tried dozing off again.