Montana Rhapsody Pt. 02

"God, your cynical about this. Some baddies reform you know?"

"Oh right, but which ones, and for how long and who cares a toss about their victims?"

"You do have a point. It would appear the balance has tipped too much the other way. However, going back to the old days, how many suspected rustlers were hanged by lynch parties who got the wrong man?"

"Probably a few. Some could have been purchasers waiting to pay for the ill-gotten gains."

"Could we call an end to this and go to dinner in peace?"

Hal smiled and kissed Paris full on the lips and then said, "Absolutely."

"Come on you two," Merle laughed. Either join us for dinner or book into an upstairs room for an hour or two."

* * *

Talkative Alan sat beside driver Paris on the journey home; everyone else was asleep in the back.

"A truly great night," he said. "Never heard so many lies in my entire life tonight."

Paris said cowboys wouldn't lie, would they.

"Beer rather loosens the tongue and make one forget the cowboys' code."

Paris scoffed: "Talk of that code is bullshit, isn't it."

"Shhh you'll ruin our hallowed reputation of being angels on horseback."

Paris asked if Alan had ever met Merle Cooke before.

"Cowboys don't know accountants and lawyers but I know her by name and have heard she puts it around because she is often seen with various men."

"They're probably clients."

"That's what professional girls call their guys who pay them."

"I think Merle would be taking her higher paying clients to lunch as a business courtesy?"

Alan scratched under his armpit and asked what was the difference. It was just a level of service.

"Whatever you say Alan."

"She was so funny when speaking," Alan laughed. "I almost fell asleep in my chair when we were told what she'd be talking about. But as soon as she began speaking she had us rolling around in laughter. I loved the story about the guy who came in saying he'd need to take out a million dollar loan to pay his taxes that had rocketed through the roof. Then she discovered in his trial tax assessment on computer for the first time he'd forgotten to enter amounts with a dot between dollars and cents so was...what was it?"

"The architect of his own folly."

"Yeah. He goofed up big-time."

Paris said her favorite was the widow who was attempting to extract every cent from her husband's estate. He'd always filed his own tax returns so the widow came in with boxes and boxes of tax returns and asked Merle to go through them all, thirty-seven years of complete records. The widow was warned it would take hours and hours of work to check through everything and that would run into big money but the client signed an authority for the work to be done.

"Merle made me scream with laughter when she handed the widow a claim of overpaid taxes of $228.07 and an audit and claim filing bill for $3890. The woman apparently didn't raise an eyebrow at the size of the bill. She said, 'I knew I'd catch the smart-Alec out who always thought he was infallible in accuracy in book-keeping'."

"I didn't see anything funny in that," Alan said. "The poor woman finished on the wrong side of the ledger over that folly."

"That's true," Paris said deciding not to try to explain the deeper point to the story. She smiled thinking Alan had come away with a new word. Everyone could expect the word 'folly' to be included in comment over the next few days. Soon after her arrival she'd noticed Alan had picked up on several of her words and phrases and began using them, his favorite word being 'dumb cluck'.

* * *

Touring David Withers' ranch was an eye-opener and Lisa's bay was a lively one because she hadn't been ridden for quite sometime. Paris responded to the battle of wills, and won. It appeared Cola didn't have the heart to really try to throw her off.

"You can ride," David said admiringly.

"And you have great horses," Paris said, having noticed the obviously top breeding of his chestnut and its magnificent gait.

Paris knew it was little use making comparisons between the standard of equipment, size of the respective ranches and the number of hands engaged to change the setting she'd already decided for her book. One could keep on changing and anyway in a Romance, setting became just that, a setting, once the writer had the reader underway.

The 19-year-olds twins came racing over to greet Paris excitedly. They were lovely girls and before long Paris was quite taken by Bella who was more like her mom than Marcie. Bella was studying English literature and over lunch had said in class they had discussed Paris's arrival in Montana and the purpose of her stay.

"There seemed to be interest in studying an example of your work, but nothing came of it."

"Then I'll ask my publisher to send two boxes of my latest book to you at Carroll College with my compliments. If the tutor is not interested just give them out to your classmates. I also have a copy of my first draft of that book and then the final draft, both with editing marks and that may well interest your tutor. I'll ask my mom to hunt them out and send them to you."

"Oh how wonderful," breathed Bella. "This is unbelievable."

"Have you written anything about fashion?"

"No, sorry Marcie. I guess you get the usual catalogues sent here but I have subscriptions to a French and an Italian catalogue and have one copy of the Italian one and two of the French ones over at Harrop ranch which you are welcome to have."

Marcie became instantly animated and rushed over and kissed Paris. "That's wonderful -- our horses need a long ride. May Bella and I ride over and see you tomorrow?"

"Yes, come for lunch. Oh bring a backpack or a saddle bag as the books are heavy."

Lisa said, "I didn't know you were interested in fashion, Marcie."

"You never asked mom."

"Oh dear, well my interest in it is low. I knew having you two meet Paris would be productive. She's so lively, isn't she? All the men around here like her and perhaps not for the reasons you may think. As your father says, she'd a woman who knows how to talk to men."

* * *

Paris had her characters sorted out and reclining in the dining room, being on the sunny side of the house and it being a cloudless day, reviewed her progress to day, running everything through her mind.

- - - -

The bachelor rancher, Billy Jamieson was wealthy, having inherited his father's ranch with 1300 cow-calf pairs and the ranch had been in the family for six generations. It had two rivers flowing through it and some of Montana's best valley land slicing between mountain ranges. William Jamieson the Third was lean, handsome and tough and smiled in a way that could leave women breathless but he was also arrogant and treated women arrogantly including his mother Amelia and female staff. He treated his ranch hands cruelly and few stayed long until an eruption occurred following the arrival of a distant relative from Scotland, Skye Kelly McNaught.

Billy's mom resisted strongly at Skye being allowed to stay, 'another mouth to feed' but Skye with icy eyes with the richness of the best blue sky that a Montana summer can turn up, a female warrior's heart and unbelievable strength, knocked Billy straight out of his boots. He was captivated for the first time in his life by a female other than a horse.

Skye had arrived on the doorstep at midnight in the middle of a snowstorm, pulling Billy from his bed just after midnight with her thunderous knocking. She announced to the half-asleep rancher that she was his second cousin from inland of Aberdeen and had papers to prove it. She kissed him fully on the mouth, turned and handed him her backpack of essentials.

Billy looked at her annoyed but she stared him down so he asked how had she got there during an impassable snowstorm. She replied her SUV was up to its windows in a snowdrift ten miles away. So she'd gone quietly into a neighbor's ranch and saddled up the biggest horse she could find and rode it here.

Skye jerked her thumb to her right and said the horse was okay but exhausted. She told Billy he'd better get him stabled after rubbing him down and give him a good feed of mixed grain pellets and alfalfa hay.

Billy looked outside and to his horror found himself looking at Stan Galloway's eleven-year-old $220,000 foundation breeding stallion. He returned to his bedroom half an hour later to find Skye asleep in his bed.

Shivering with cold because he'd dressed inadequately to go over to the barn he lifted the heavy bedding covers and discovered he was looking at Skye's bare ass. Tentatively he crawled in beside her praying she wouldn't wake and demand sex from him. He slipped into sleep relieved his prayer had been answered.

Skye soon had systems at the homestead turned upside side and Billie's mom was her staunch sidekick. On the second day of her visit Skye and Amelia had Billy bailed up demanding that he stopped thumping and kicking his ranch hands including the ramrod.

Billy refused.

Skye said she'd lay charges of assault against him and take the cases in court as private prosecutions.

Billy just laughed and said no court in the entire west would convict him.

Skye then verbally hit Billy where it hurt, saying she'd tell the men he'd slept with her the previous night but because of his penis constantly malfunctioned is was a useless organ for any woman.

Billy turned whiter than the snow outside and capitulated.

- - - -

Well, that was basically the start to the story, stripped of essentials of course. With four draft chapters done and corrected before the end of April Paris sent them off to New York and continued writing, socializing and wooing and being wooed and sporadically working on the ranch but most of that time she and Annie just rode the fence lines, making repairs. By then Annie was proudly riding Prairie Queen. The two women had become very close and Paris was very aware that Annie now played the role of adopted older sister to her as well as to Hal.

* * *

Two days later when Paris was holding horses while Tom inspected their feet and attended to any problems, Annie came rushing over with the phone.

"It's New York, the woman is frantic to speak to you."

"Hello mom?"

"It's Ruby you idiot. Urgent, urgent. Please send me more chapters."

"Go to hell."

"Pardon me?"

"Stop the bullshit. You heard, we have a perfectly good line."

"Paris, I'm ordering you to send me more chapters."

"Listen Ruby, you have received four chapters by the end of April instead of the schedule of July."

"I know, I know. But this is going to be a sizzling book. We've had a meeting, we are going for a July launch and billing it as this summer's hottest romance."

"Well, you go ahead but my schedule remains unchanged. I return to New York by the end of September with the final few chapters."

"Sorry Paris, but you are over-ruled. You have our $50,000 er $25,000. We want our book earlier than planned because of er technical reasons."

"Go to hell Ruby."

"Paris what is this? You have always been so malleable... I mean co-operative."

The suddenly in-demand writer blew steam. "No listen to me Ruby do you want me to come to New York and kick you ass and have me return your twenty-five grand and find another publisher or will you go to your boss and say we're keeping to original schedule. Oh, and I suggest you read our contract."

Ruby began crying. "Paris, what's happened to you? You sound so tough, so awesome. I'll lose my job over this. Top management won't tolerate being opposed by middle management."

Ruby was told to calm down.

"Guess why Montana doesn't have sales tax darling? It's because we do things differently here. I'm not Darling of the Day and never will be but I'm making influential friends and if I say to these people New York is attempting to ride roughshod over me in the publication of my Montana romance, guess what the reaction will be? Not a lynching, but if I call for donations to fight your company's decision to break its contract with me and refuse to allow any other publisher to legally accept my manuscript then I promise you I'll have the funds to take action all the way to the Supreme Court."

Ruby was crying again. "I'll tell my bosses but it will be my final act here."

"Bullshit Ruby. Tell them I have a new condition: Ruby Street must supervise the handling of my book through all the processes from editing to the launching in Billings, Montana. I'll email I'll confirm everything and why I'm so upset by their impossible demand. Keep cool, confident and sounding as if you are in control Ruby."

Two days later Ruby called Paris.

"I was under extreme pressure but I refused to buckle. The executive committee failed to get a majority decision because of voting abstentions so the president called in the chairman who was angry that some people in the company were trying to renege on a contract. He also couldn't understand why somebody was pushing for a switch to a summer release and I've learned he ruled that if the book was expected to be hot, the earlier decision to catch the Christmas market was spot on."

"Oh, I'm very pleased for you Ruby. You ended up handling everything so well."

Ruby burst into tears. "I've just come back from the executive editor's office. I've been given a fat pay increase on the decision of the editorial executive committee for being the most successful editor fostering of emerging writers in the past two years. I don't deserve it."

"Of course you do, Ruby, and congratulations. Look, why don't you come over and be my guest for the first weekend in May. It's a weekend of celebrations with a big shindig on Saturday night because from Monday onwards the ranches begin taking stock to summer pastures up in the mountains. Bring a girlfriend if you wish. No one around here seems to take much notice of people who behave a little differently. You two hold hands or arms while in public and probably none of the randy guys will make a play for either of you and in all probability the females won't stone you in the street. I'll email the invitation and advise what inward flights would suit us to pick you up."

"That sounds lovely, Paris. I think I would come but on my own."

"Nonsense. Give your girlfriend a big thrill. You'll both love it here."

"You know she's my boss."

"So what? All they'll be interested in out here is if you can cook and if you can ride a horse and if you speak English. And that's it."

"You make it sound desirable."

"Good one Ruby. I'll meet you two at the airport."

Ruby and Paris exchanged emails and it was agreed because the visitors wished to drive through some of the state Paris would meet them over at Billings. The twins asked if they could go with her and Paris agreed. Hal said he was too busy to be going sightseeing but insisted Paris drive his newer seven-seat SUV.

It was still dark when Paris drove into their nearest big town of Bozeman with Bella and Marcie where they had breakfast before driving to Billings just over 120 miles east to meet Ruby and her boss-girlfriend Thelma DeLuca. The early start was to give Paris and the twins time look at the shops in Billings. She bought herself a racy blue outfit to wear to the dance on the evening of the spring festival and she also outfitted the girls to their choice of dress.

"Oh god, mom will have a fit seeing me in this," Marcie said, looking down to her quite daringly exposed tops of her boobs.

"Just tell her it's fashion," said Bella. "She'll be a sucker for that."

Bella's choice was even cut lower, at both ends.

Paris and Marcie looked at Bella preening herself in front of the mirrors.

"God doesn't she look beautiful," Paris breathed, not being rude to the other twin.

"Yes, we both look similar and have similar shapes but Bella has poise and an inane sense of style."

Paris took Marcie's hand and squeezed it. "That was truly a lovely thing to hear from you. I'm most impressed with you Marcie."

Paris's hand was squeezed before being dropped.

Paris was aware that she'd favored the more flamboyant Bella but that view had readjusted due to Marcie's sweet character. She decided to try to avoid thinking and certainly showing favoritism. She though she would add rancher twins to her novel and expose their differences.

At the airport the three were dressed similar in jeans, checked shirts, high-topped boots and fleeced-lined jackets that were open in the heated terminal.

"There they are," Paris said just as Ruby spotted them and screamed "P-a-r-i-s!" allowing an elderly woman to say to Ruby, "You are disoriented dear. Paris is in Texas."

Well that was true.

"Ohmigod, look at you," Ruby said, eyeing Paris. "You are my epitome of a rancher."

"Yeah, one who mucks out the stables," Paris laughed and saw the twins look at her obviously impressed by her modesty or correctness.

"Ohmigod, I knew you'd have lovely daughters Paris," Ruby said, looking at the twins.

They looked nervous until Paris said, "Don't mind Ruby. She's on cocaine or perhaps she has humor and is a bit excited."

The introductions were made.

It was the first time Paris had met Thelma DeLuca and the forty-eight-year old masculine-looking woman with great lips and cascading auburn hair kissed Paris and said warmly, "Thank you for making this happen. God we'll have to update that promo photo we use of you. You look much better than that."

"Paris has become more beautiful since she'd been out here," Ruby said.

"Paris is beautiful," the twins said in unison.

Paris froze for a second, aghast that Thelma might ask were Paris and the twins in a relationship but the moment sped by, with Thelma telling the twins that was a nice thing to say.

"Bella and Marcie are daughters of our nearest neighbor and there's not many younger females around us for them so I'm center of attraction and I love it because it makes me feel young."

"Oh just next door, how convenient Thelma said. She looked surprised when Bella said she supposed a six-mile horse-ride and having to open ten gates and being the shortest route was considered next door she suppose technically Miss DeLuca's comment was correct.

"Oh Bella, how lacking in vision that was of me. I was not thinking about being in the country, Big Sky Country in fact. Would you girls please call me Thelma."

The twins directed Paris on a quick tour of Billings.

The two visitors wanted to look at stores but looking at the vehicle's clock Paris said, "We should go now. Alice said it would begin snowing again around 4:00 and it will be after dark before we get home. It will be at least three hours before we get to Bozeman under these conditions and then we'll have almost another hour and a half to get to the ranch."

"Gawd, I really have no idea of distances by road," Thelma said and Ruby said lack of road travel experience meant she found it the same.

The twins looked at them curiously so Ruby said, "When we wish to go out of Manhattan more than a hundred miles away we go by air."

"So you folk relay weather information between you, like this Alice woman, rather that listen to radio weather reporting?"

Paris didn't know how to reply to Thelma but Bella said, "Why would you do that when you have Alice? She's an Indian cook and housekeeper at the ranch where you're staying. She is more accurate that professional forecasters but of course none of us really believe she can be that. But we also know rarely is she wrong."

"Paris?"

"Get used to the idea Thelma. She is clairvoyant but don't waste your time talking to Alice about it. She'll deny everything and I think I know why. She is protecting herself against being asked where treasured rings are lost, when will cattle sale prices peak and who will be the next state governor."

"Good heavens."