Winter at Mustang Ridge Read online

  Given the way the other woman was rocking a pair of Wranglers that looked like they’d been made for her, along with a sweater that screamed “cashmere” and “European,” Jenny had a feeling that was an overstatement. “You don’t miss it?”

  “Miss what, the city? The pressure? The rush-rush-rush, and the feeling that my career hangs on every meeting, every concept?” Her teeth flashed. “Heck, yes, I miss it. Sometimes I miss it so much that I drive into Laramie just to breathe the exhaust and buy overpriced coffee from a cranky barista.”

  Jenny laughed. “Done that.” Though in her case it usually required a two-day trip on dirt roads and puddle jumpers, not just a few hours on the highway.

  “The trade-off is so worth it, though, to live in a place like this, raise my daughter here. And, honestly, could you see Foster in Boston?”

  Jenny thought about it, surprised that the answer wasn’t immediate and easy. “You know what? I have a feeling he’d do okay. He’s a smart guy. Adaptable, though he hides it behind that why are you in my space? scowl. At least he used to. Less so since he met you.”

  That got her a considering look. “It took me a while to see that part of him—he even offered to come back east with me, so we’d have a chance to see if we could make it work. In the end, though, there was more for me here than there was back home, so we stayed.” Shelby looked utterly at home in her skin and her space as she pulled a rolling desk chair up to the dining table and sat, tucking her feet underneath herself.

  “Boston’s loss, Three Ridge’s gain.”

  “You’re sweet to say so.”

  “Nope, and not just because I like you.” Pulling up another chair, Jenny plonked down beside her and dug into her computer bag. “Like I said on the phone, I love the idea of forming symbiotic relationships with local businesses, not just on the Web site, but in terms of merchandise and services. Got a suggestion there, by the way: Kitty Cosgrove over at Kitty’s Kountry Kitch. It’s actually way cooler than it sounds, and she buys local as much as possible. Not to mention that she used to work at the ranch and is going to give me an interview.”

  “Sweet. I’ll put her on the list.” Shelby rat-a-tatted the info into her laptop, typing blind while she watched Jenny hook up the secondary monitor, so they could both look at the on-screen images without bumping heads. “That’s quite a setup.”

  “Betsy? She’s only really portable in the loosest sense of the word, but she’s got a memory like a thousand elephants and refuses to crash, no matter what I do to her.” Jenny patted the computer, which was darn near indestructible in its military-grade ballistic housing. “I’ve got her baby sister for when I need to move fast, but for stuff like this, she’s my go-to girl.”

  “Any other thoughts on local vendors?”

  “Not off the top of my head, but I can ask my mom for suggestions. She’s the champion shopper in the family.” Fingers skimming the touchpad, she pulled up the first of the files she had collated for Shelby. “I figure you and Krista have the vendor stuff pretty much nailed down, anyway. Your concepts really rock, assuming your photog—me—can pull it off.”

  “I’m not worried. Krista showed me your work.”

  “Please, not Jungle Love.”

  Shelby chuckled. “I haven’t missed an episode since season two.”

  “You should be ashamed.”

  “It’s research. Pop culture, trends, that sort of thing.”

  “Suuure.”

  “Anyway. Krista showed me one of your documentaries, too. The one about U.S. doctors who went overseas to help out after that earthquake, and wound up triaging radiation workers at a failing nuke plant. . . . That was powerful stuff.”

  “I should probably say something like ‘it’s old, just a film-school project,’ but I won’t, because I’m still darn proud of it.”

  “You should be. Those images of the workers sleeping in stairwells between their shifts until the doctors and nurses pulled strings to get cots, along with supplies for the wounded . . . Well, it all stuck with me—that’s for sure.”

  Nostalgia tugged and Jenny found herself smiling. “Thanks.” She hesitated for a second before she opened up the first file, the one with the pictures from her last couple of visits. She wants pretty, not editorial, she told herself, and went ahead and spun the second monitor toward Shelby.

  “You’re wel—” Shelby’s jaw dropped. “Ohmigosh. You took all these?”

  The screen showed thirty-five miniature versions of the high-res pictures she had selected. They ranged from long-range field-and-mountain landscapes that were ooh-ahh pretty but—at least to Jenny—ultimately boring, all the way to more interesting—and less advertising-relevant—close-ups of leaves and birds, and a few action shots of the herds that gave Mustang Ridge its name.

  Arrayed together like that, she had to admit they were pretty darn impressive.

  “Yep, over the last few years. It’s a habit, something I don’t always realize I’m doing. You know how some people have tics and twitches? Well, I take pictures.”

  Shelby practically glowed. “They’re yours, free and clear? We can use them?”

  “Yes, and duh. That’s why I’m showing them to you.” But her reaction was more than flattering. “I took this batch for my own entertainment, so they may not be geared in the direction you’re going. I’ll come back this summer to get some guest interviews, and can get some additional stills then. Unless that’s going to be too late?”

  “We’ll be changing things up every few months, keeping it fresh, so I’m sure we’ll take you up on that. For a first pass, though, these are perfect. Better than I had even dared hope, and my hopes were pretty high after hearing Krista sing your praises.”

  “Don’t get too excited until you’ve seen the rest of it.” Jenny paused. “Strike that. Feel free to get excited, but at the same time don’t be afraid to tell me where I’m hitting the mark and where I’m missing it.”

  They went through the winter photos together, with lots of “what if we . . .” and “do you think it would work to . . .” and both of them taking notes on their computers.

  Then it was time for the videos.

  Jenny’s pulse bumped with a combination of nerves and excitement as she cued up the first of Big Skye’s videos. “Now, I know Krista said just interviews, but I spiced it up with some stuff from our archives—aka, the attic. Feel free to tell me it’s too much.” Please don’t tell me it’s too much.

  “If your photos are anything to go by, I’m going to love it.”

  In a perfect world, they would’ve been in a screening room where Jenny could’ve killed the lights, not just to improve the picture, but also so she wouldn’t have the option of darting nervous looks over at Shelby, trying to judge her reaction as the video began with a black screen and the soft strum of a lone guitar. Then the black warmed to a sepia-toned image of a man and a woman posed stiffly together, a dollar photograph from back when a dollar might be a cowboy’s wages for the whole week.

  After a moment, Big Skye’s voice said, “In 1869, two years after the Union Pacific Railroad came through Wyoming, a railroader-turned-gold prospector named Jonah Skye won five hundred head of cattle and some money in a poker game. His wife, Mary—tired of moving around and living on the fringes—pressured him to cash in his gold and build her a proper home in a valley they knew of, near a little town that didn’t even have a name yet. A year later, they drove a hundred head down to the railhead, where they were fattened up and shipped for slaughter. Two years later, it was five hundred head. By year five, when this picture was taken, the cowboys of Mustang Ridge Ranch were running several thousand head and making good money. More, Jonah and Mary had added a son to the family, little James Skye.”

  The picture dissolved to Big Skye’s image, and darned if you couldn’t see Jonah Skye in the shape of his face. “My name is Arthur Skye, and I’m James’s four-times great-grandson. Mustang Ridge Ranch is, and always will be, my family’s legacy.”


  The narration paused and the background guitar strum came up over a montage of the oldest pictures Jenny had managed to find. Most of them were posed shots of family members, but there were a few candid photos of caballeros wearing batwing chaps and knotted neck rags, and cowboys on horseback amid huge herds, looking like their upper bodies were floating above the backs of the cows.

  Then the screen went dark again, the music paused, and the simple title came up: Mustang Ridge: The Early Years.

  Into the brief silence, Shelby said softly, “You’re flipping brilliant.”

  “We can change the title, or whatever you want. This is just a first pass at—”

  “Shut up. You’re messing with my moment.”

  Jenny leaned back, let out a long, slow breath, and let the video play out.

  For the next eight and a half minutes—she just hadn’t been able to keep it to five—her gramps told them about the cattle rustlers of the Keyhole Canyon gang, and how the interconnected MRR of the ranch’s brand was designed to be almost impossible to alter. He recounted fortunes won and lost with the draw of a card or a gun, and how the cattle business had boomed as the population exploded. Always, though, the stories came back to family, and how when you lived in the middle of nowhere, it was family that counted.

  Even though she had seen it a zillion times already, Jenny’s throat still lumped up when the clip finished with Big Skye looking into the camera like it was an old friend, and saying, “Throughout our history, the men and women of Mustang Ridge have always been a family, whether by blood or by heart. We stand by each other, and we stand for the land and the creatures entrusted to us. I think—I hope—that Jonah and Mary would be proud of the family we’ve made here.”

  His face stayed on the screen for a beat, and then dissolved to a picture of his younger self astride a bay gelding, wearing batwing chaps and a wide-brimmed hat as he rode off along the fence line and into the setting sun.

  Slowly, the guitar faded out. Then, the image did, too.

  When the screen went to credits, Jenny hit a button and froze things.

  There was a three-count of silence. And then Shelby, still staring at her monitor, said, “Oh. My. God. Where were you when I had huge budgets to work with?”

  “Belize, probably. I guess that means you like it.”

  Shelby turned to her, eyes shining with more than just appreciation. “Perfect. That was absolutely perfect. And . . . I can’t believe you got your grandfather to do this. He hates the dude ranch thing!”

  “He loves being on camera more.”

  “Krista never said.”

  “She might not have known how deep his camera whoreness goes.”

  Shelby belly laughed. “You did not just call your grandfather a whore.”

  “If you tell anybody, I’ll deny it. Or, better yet, I’ll say you said it.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  They grinned at each other like a couple of fools, and then Jenny said, “You want to see the other one?”

  “You did two of them? Already?”

  “And a vanity piece for my mom.”

  “Is she still—” Shelby’s phone rang, interrupting. She checked the ID and frowned. “It’s Lizzie’s school.”

  While she took the call, Jenny rose and went to the dining room windows.

  Rex leaped up and followed, excited. Are we doing something cool?

  “I’m just having a look-see, buddy.”

  The windows were marked out with a huge rectangle of painter’s tape that went all the way to the floor, suggesting that they were slated to become French doors in the near future. The view was a doozy: a tractor shed on one side and a falling-down barn on the other, with snow draping the buildings like it had been put there on purpose to turn them from dilapidated to picturesque. But that wasn’t what caught Jenny’s attention so much as the leaden gray of the horizon, and how she couldn’t see the mountains anymore.

  “They’re letting the kids out early,” Shelby said, coming to join her at the window. “The bus is on its way. I guess the storm is moving faster than the forecasters thought.”

  Well, darn. Jenny scowled at the sky. “No fair. I’ve got a date tonight.”

  “I’m thinking that’s going to need a rain check. Or would that be a snow check?”

  “It’s annoying, that’s what it is.” Jenny sighed. “Either way, I should probably hit the road. I’ll leave you with a flash drive that has most of what I just showed you on it. If you change your mind on any of it—”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good to hear. Okay, so if you have any more ideas on how I can contribute, or suggestions for the interviews, you’ve got my numbers and my email. Meanwhile, I’ll do the additional interviews we talked about. We can meet again in a week or two, if you like.”

  “Absolutely. And I was thinking we should get together outside of work stuff and have a couple of drinks or a meal and a movie, or something. Do a girls’ night.”

  The invite brought a flush of pleasure. “I’d like that. I haven’t been out since I’ve been back.”

  “Not big on hooking up with old friends for a round of remember whens?”

  “Not many old friends, at least not that I’ve kept in touch with.” None, really. “The kids who left after high school are long gone, and the ones who stayed or came back after college have their own friends and families to hang with. When I try to add myself on without Krista there to run interference, everybody gets weird and awkward, like they don’t know what to say.”

  “You’re a celebrity.”

  “More like an escapee.”

  “Okay, I get it. You’re out of the local scene. Their loss, my gain.” She held out Jenny’s coat. “Next week?”

  “Would it be okay if I invite another newbie along?” she asked, thinking of Michelle.

  “The more, the merrier. How does Wednesday sound?”

  “Great, assuming we’re dug out by then.”

  “Don’t even joke about it.” Shelby made a face. “It’s my first winter out here, and I’m told we’ve been lucky so far.”

  Jenny shouldered her bag. “Did the school say when the snow is supposed to start?”

  “Sorry, no. It’s an automated system. Want me to call Foster and see how things look up on Mustang Ridge?”

  “That’s okay. Even if it’s started dusting a little by the time I hit the high country, the Jeep can handle it.” She leaned in and gave Shelby a half-hug with her free arm. “Great to meet you, totally yes to girls’ night, and I’m out of here. Come on, Rex!”

  “Go!” Shelby waved them through the door, then called, “Do you want me to call the ranch and let them know you’re on your way?”

  “Yes, please! ‘Bye!”

  Foster was just pulling in as Jenny pulled out, and he gave her a thumbs-up that she took to mean that the roads were okay. Still, she kept the pedal down and the speedometer up as she headed for home, hoping to beat the snow.

  18

  “Here’s the last of today’s charts,” Ruth announced, as she bustled into Nick’s office. “I’ll put them away, and then I’m going to boogie. The snow is piling up fast.”

  He looked up from his notes. “Leave ’em. I’ll do the filing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’re the one who has to drive home, so scram already. Drive safe and text me when you get there.”

  She gave him a fond smile. “Yes, dear.” She headed for the door, but turned back to say. “Sorry about your date.”

  “Me, too.” He was itching to see Jenny again, and she wasn’t going to be in Wyoming forever. “Hopefully this storm won’t sock us in for too long.”

  She shot a dubious look over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t count on it.” Then she brightened. “Lucky for you, we live in a brave new world of technology. You can have a Skype date.”

  “My nose looks huge on Skype.”

  “So put your computer on a couple of books to get the
camera looking down at you,” she said like that should’ve been obvious. “A glass of wine, a couple of candles, some music in the background and voila! Instant romance. Or you could stream the same movie, sync it up, and watch it together.”

  “True.” But after four days of phone calls that could have—and a few times had—lasted for hours, he wanted some one-on-one time, up close and personal.

  “I know it’s not the same,” she said with a wink. “But you can still have fun if you get creative. Ask me how I know.”

  I’d really rather not. “I thought you were boogy-ing?”

  She laughed and left.

  Twenty minutes later, as he was finishing up in the office, tucking away the last of the files, her text came through: Home safe. Stay warm. C u Mnday.

  “Ah, Ruth.” He shook his head. “I suppose I should be grateful you don’t use text-speak in the office.” Cheesepuff jumped off his desk, landed with an audible thud, and walked over to the door, tail flicking. “What, you want to go outside, too?” Nick dumped his lab coat and followed the cat to the waiting area, giving a low whistle at the wall of white outside. “That would be a no on going outside, then.” Having grown up a few hours south of Three Ridges, he’d thought he had known what to expect around here. Half a winter at this elevation, though, had taught him different. Up on the ridgelines, the storms came in fast, hit hard, and stayed put. “Okay, upstairs it is. How does popcorn and some Bond sound to you?”

  As he followed the cat up the stairs, he composed a message to Jenny. Done for the day, but socked in. You home safe? He debated turning it into text speak for a laugh, but couldn’t bring himself to mangle the English language like that.

  He didn’t get an answer right away, but they were in the Land of Dead Zones, after all. He figured he’d give it a half hour, then make a couple of calls. Not to stalk her, so much as to make sure she’d made it home okay from Shelby’s. Grinning at the prospect of her giving him the “I’ve been handling myself for a long time, Buster, so don’t think you’re going to do it for me” attitude that he had glimpsed a few times before, he snagged his popcorn out of the microwave, grabbed a soda, and headed for the couch. “Come on, cat, let’s have some guy time.”