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—Chapter One —

Jefferson Kirk stood in the middle of Dry Creek Road. Neither the road nor the creek was dry. Water lapped lightly against Kirk’s cowboy boots. The swollen mountain stream had toppled a juniper bush covered with clumps of purple berries from the eroded stream bank. Lodged against the upper opening of the metal culvert, the juniper prevented most of the usually small stream from flowing under the roadway. Water backed up above the culvert and spilled out onto the graveled surface of the road.

“Too thick to drink and too thin to plow,” said Kirk as he tossed a stone into the middle of the chocolate colored torrent.

“It's definitely going to get worse before it gets better,” said John Sharp adding another two feet to his 6'5” frame by stepping onto a large boulder by the side of the road. Sharp pushed back the brim of his felt cowboy hat. He raised a calloused hand to his forehead and shaded his eyes. The rancher scanned the promontories of the Big Belt Mountains.

The stark white snowfields glistened in the bright sunlight. Snow-covered peaks were not uncommon in the Big Belts but this was the first of June. A heavy winter snowfall and a long cold spring had left the snowpack at a record level. Water from the melting snow trickled down the steep slopes and coulees filling every tributary as this accumulated precipitation wound its way toward the Missouri River.

“If it gets hot or rains, this road's history,” said Sharp. The concern resonated in his voice.

“Reminds me of the spring during my first year of law school,” said Kirk. “I came home on a break in May and we tried driving into the high country but had to turn back because of the snow drifts. When it finally turned hot, Dry Creek Canyon was wall-to-wall water.”

“It could happen again, only worse,” said Sharp glumly. “This just isn't the year to have the hundred-year flood.”

The two men were dressed alike. Both wore denim jackets and faded jeans with ornate silver belt buckles adorning tooled leather belts. Kirk’s new white straw cowboy hat contrasted with Sharp’s weathered black felt hat. Both men were tall and lean. Side by side, it was readily apparent that John Sharp was a few inches taller and slightly broader in the shoulders and more heavily muscled than Jefferson Kirk, but from a distance one could easily be mistaken for the other with the cowboy hats being the only distinguishing feature.

Sharp stepped from the boulder and mounted his roan gelding.

The Sharp family had trailed cattle from the winter range in the Missouri River Valley to the high pastures of the Big Belt Mountains since the 1860s. This year differed only in that John Sharp had organized a “City Slickers” type of recreational cattle drive. Ten people had answered his advertisement and agreed to come to Montana. Each guest had paid almost two-thousand dollars to share in the adventure of an authentic Montana cattle drive.

Hunched over his kitchen table on many long winter nights, John Sharp had meticulously planned every detail of the cattle drive from the precise tonnage of horse hay to the number of porta potties necessary to accommodate the guests. He had scrutinized the route and itinerary a thousand times himself. He had also challenged Jefferson Kirk, the district attorney for Headwaters County, to find any flaws in the cattle drive plans.

Kirk and Sharp had grown up on adjoining ranches. As youths, they had been constant companions hiking and exploring the ravines and canyons of the Big Belt Mountains. They had ridden and roped together at the yearly roundups and brandings. They had hunted and fished every stream and mountain in the area. They had been basketball teammates in high school and on town teams thereafter.

The Sharp Ranch had purchased all but forty acres of the original Kirk homestead on the death of Jefferson Kirk's father. Kirk had reluctantly agreed to take time away from his legal duties to assist his friend with the inaugural cattle drive enterprise.

The two men had spent countless hours debating how tough or easy to make each day of the drive. They wanted to challenge the guests but not make the event so physically demanding as to make it a miserable experience. They also sought to create a schedule that would assure that the cattle drive participants would have time to fly fish, hike and just kick back and relax in Montana’s great outdoors.

Their final detailed plan appeared workable and had seemingly allowed for every conceivable contingency. The unavailability of Dry Creek Road was one variable that neither man had considered. The cattle could follow the route without the benefit of the road itself, but the trailers containing the porta potties, cook wagon and guests’ gear needed to use the road to reach the tent camps where they would stay as they moved the cattle east through the Big Belt Mountains.

Kirk whistled for his dog Jake and then mounted his own palomino.

“What are you going to do if the road goes?”

“I don't rightly know,” said Sharp. “We can't cancel the drive. The guests will be arriving at the Bozeman airport at noon tomorrow. We'll have to improvise.”

“I still don't believe I agreed to help you wrangle a bunch of dudes.”

“They're guests, not dudes,” reminded Sharp.

“Whatever.”

“Besides, helping women mount their horses and teaching them to fly fish doesn't sound like really tough duty to me,” said Sharp.

“They'll probably all be fat or ugly,” said Kirk.

“Or both,” said Sharp.

“You’re right. Those two traits aren’t mutually exclusive. I’ll probably have to hang a pork chop around their necks just to get Jake here to play with ‘em.”

“I guarantee there'll be at least one gorgeous one,” said Sharp.

“What makes you say that?”

“The law of averages; there are seven women and three men. That's a good ratio. One of the women is bound to be good looking.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Besides I’m the one who studied law and I don’t recall any statute or constitutional guarantees about good looking women.”

Kirk kicked the palomino into a lope and headed up the coulee in the direction of the Sharp Ranch.