prime Longbrake steer and a 4H pig were roasting. It was a still, windless morning. A single cloud grazed lazily along the peaks. The only sounds were from car doors slamming as more guests arrived, pulling into the shorn hay meadow that served as a parking lot in the back, and occasional mewls from cattle in a distant holding corral.
Joe Pickett sat in the second row. He wore a jacket and tie, dark slacks, and polished black cowboy boots. He was in his midthirties, lean, medium height. His thirteen year old daughter, Sheridan, sat next to him in a new blue dress. She shone brightly, he thought; long blond hair still streaked with summer highlights, a touch of pink lipstick, open, attractive face, eyes that took in everything. She watched intently as her mother, Marybeth, and eight year old sister, Lucy, took part in the ceremony. Lucy was the flower girl, wearing white taffeta. Marybeth, the matron of honor, stood on a riser next to Dale Longbrake and the rest of the wedding party. The men wore black western cut tuxedos and black Stetsons.
Joe and his wife exchanged glances, and he could tell from her eyes that she was exasperated. Her mother, Missy Vankueren, was an experienced wedding planner, having been the featured bride in three previous ceremonies. Missy had been designing the event for over a year with the intensity and precision of a general implementing a major ground offensive, Joe thought, and she had enlisted a reluctant Marybeth as her second lieutenant. Endless discussions and phone calls had finally resulted in this day, which Marybeth had come to refer to as “Operation Massive Ranch Wedding.”
Joe nodded toward the mountains and whispered to Sheridan, “See that cloud?”
Sheridan looked. “Yes.”
“I would wager that by Wedding Five, Missy will have figured out how to get rid of it.”
“Dad!” she whispered fiercely. But the corners of her mouth tugged with a conspiratorial grin. He winked at her, and she rolled her eyes, turning back to the wedding that was about to begin.
There was a growing murmur as the bride appeared, on cue, beneath an arch of pink and white flowers. Joe and Sheridan rose to their feet with the rest of the crowd. Applause rippled from the front to the back as Missy appeared, glowing, wideeyed, looking demurely at the throng she had turned out.
“I can’t believe that’s my grandmother,” Sheridan said to Joe. “She looks . . .”
“Stunning,” Joe said, finishing the sentence for her.
Missy looked thirty, not sixty, he thought. She was a slim brunette, her face and hair perfect, her eyes glistening in a toolarge head that always looked great in photos. She held a bouquet of pink and white flowers against her shimmering plum dress.
Joe heard Bud Longbrake say, in a reverent tone of appreciation he usually reserved for great cutting horses or seed bulls: “There’s my girl.”
The reception was held behind the huge log home, under hundredyearold cottonwoods. A swing band from Billings played on a stage, and couples spun on a hardwood floor that had been moved to the ranch just for the occasion from a vacated midforties dance hall in Winchester. The floor was unique in that it was mounted on carriage springs and had been used for Saturday night dances when big bands used to stop over in Wyoming en route to real paying gigs on the east or west coasts.
Joe ushered Sheridan through the reception line, shaking hands. Bud Longbrake slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Welcome to the family.”
I’ve got a family, Joe thought.
Missy reached for Joe, and pulled his head down next to hers. He felt the bouquet she still clutched crush into his hair. “Never thought I’d pull this one off, did you?” she whispered.
Surprised, he pulled away. She grinned slyly at him, and despite himself, he grinned back. She was a substantial adversary, he thought. He’d hate to meet her in a dark alley.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Bud is a fine man.”
“Oh, I think I got the best of the deal,” Bud said, wrapping his arm around Missy’s slim waist.
“You did,” she said, flashing her wide smile.
And her name is already on the ranch deed, Joe thought. She owns half of everything we see as far as we can see it. She pulled it off, all right.
Marybeth was next, and had been carefully watching the exchange that took place a moment before.
“You look wonderful,” he said.
Thank God it’s over, she mouthed. He nodded back, agreeing with her.
“Welcome to the family,” Bud was telling Sheridan.
Joe shot him a look.
“Joe, are you sure she said that?” Marybeth asked later, as they sat at a table under the trees with their plates of appetizers. Joe had waited for Sheridan and Lucy to find their friends before he told Marybeth about her mother.
“I’m quoting.”
Marybeth shook her head, looking hard at Joe to see if he was joking. She obviously determined he wasn’t. “She’s something else, isn’t she?”
“Always has been,” Joe said. “What I can’t figure out is how you survived.”
Marybeth smiled and patted his hand. “Neither can I, at times.”
Joe sipped from a bottle of beer that had been offered to him from a stock tank full of ice.
“You two have a very strange relationship,” Marybeth said, looking across the lawn at her mother.
“I didn’t think we had one at all.”
Missy had never made a secret of the fact that she felt Marybeth had married beneath herself. Instead of the
