Page 11 of Calder Country

THE PLANE TAXIED TO A STOP, ITS ENGINE STILL CHURNING. STANDING with Britta behind the row of vehicles, Mason watched his tall son race onto the field to meet it.

“Joseph, stop!” Britta shouted. “Wait for me!” But her voice failed to carry over the sound of the engine. Whatever she’d meant to do, Joseph clearly had a different plan in mind.

Mason sensed Britta’s dilemma. Joseph was well ahead of her, determined to get his plane ride before his aunt could go first and decide to stop him. Now he was holding up his hands, pointing to the double stamp as evidence that he’d already paid. Ruby was climbing down from the front cockpit to give him her place. At least, this time, her father would be at the controls, although there was still no guarantee that the plane was safe.

But there was more to Britta’s situation. If she were to interfere now, and insist on taking the first flight, Joseph would be left on the ground with his estranged father—a man she had every reason to distrust.

“The boy will be all right, Britta,” Mason said. “The man’s a good pilot. I took a chance, flying with his daughter, but her father’s had plenty of experience.”

Britta’s posture was rigid, her jaw set. Her determined look reminded Mason of her father, the late Big Lars Anderson, who’d had every reason to hate him.

“I can’t stop Joseph from getting his plane ride,” she said. “But you’ve done our family enough harm. You’re not to be here when he comes back. I mean what I said—if you care about that boy, you’ll leave him alone.”

“I understand,” Mason said, and he did. “All I really wanted was to see my son. Now that I have, I’ll be content to mind my own business.”

“You have no right to call him your son,” Britta said. “Now get into your automobile and leave.”

“As soon as I know he’s safe,” Mason said.

Joseph had donned the goggles and helmet and climbed into the plane’s forward cockpit. Ruby checked his seat belt, jumped down from the wing, and made a hand sign to her father. Moments later, the biplane was headed back to the foot of the landing strip. On the near side of the field, Ruby had spread the parachute over the dry grass and begun preparing it to be packed.

Feeling the tension in his own body, Mason watched the biplane as it turned into the light wind. Droning like an angry wasp, it headed over the ground, gaining speed until the wheels left the earth. As it gained height, mounting the sky, Mason took a deep breath of relief.

He had promised to leave. But he would watch from his auto until the plane was safely on the ground again. Only then would he turn for home to resolve the issue of his mother and the missing money.

* * *

As the plane banked and leveled off, Joseph filled his gaze with the infinite blue above him and the land below—the toylike town and the patchwork of fields and pastures, rising to the scrub-dotted foothills and the forested peaks beyond. He’d expected to be nervous, even scared. But all he felt was a joyous bursting sensation in his chest. This was like magic—better than magic because it was real. He was flying.

The flight was a short one. As the plane banked again to head back to the landing strip, it passed over the Dollarhide family ranch and sawmill. Joseph could see the sprawling house on the bluff, the yellowed pastures spreading below, where red-and-white Herefords grazed on the dry stubble and drank from the cattle tanks that had to be filled almost daily from the dwindling creek that flowed out of the canyon. Blake, who was Joseph’s father in every way but one, had voiced fears that the cattle might have to be sold off early. But as long as the animals continued to put on weight—which would determine their sale price—they would likely remain until fall, when they’d be rounded up, sold, and shipped off to feed lots in places like Chicago.

At the foot of the bluff, the sawmill complex spread like a yellow fungus. Clouds of sawdust drifted above the open sheds where the big rotating blades shrieked as they cut the logs into slabs and boards. Heavy wagons, carrying logs and orders of cut boards, rumbled along the roads. Since the closure of the lumber mill in Miles City, the Dollarhides had cornered the local market on wood for the postwar building boom. The mill, which employed more than half the men of Blue Moon, had made Blake Dollarhide a modest fortune.

Joseph hated the sawmill. He hated the dust, the noise, and the demands it had always made on his father’s time. Most of all, he hated the idea that one day it would be his to manage. The prospect that awaited him was like a looming prison sentence.

And it wasn’t as if he could wait for Blake to pass on or retire. His father was already involving him in the work, teaching him every step of the process that turned rough logs to smooth, straight boards for building—the ordering, hauling, and stacking; the different types and grades of wood, and the sawyer’s craft that would ensure the measurement of every cut.

Once—and only once—had Joseph dared to suggest that running the sawmill might not be the life he would choose. Blake had put him down angrily. “This isn’t about you, Joseph. This is about your responsibility to take care of our family. It’s about building on the legacy that your grandfather began. Now, no more of this foolish talk. Get to work.”

Joseph hadn’t told Blake about the air show, and especially not about the plane ride. There was always the chance that Aunt Britta would give him away. But as the plane descended, the earth below growing closer and larger, Joseph knew that whatever punishment he might have earned, he would never regret what he’d done. He had found his soul—and nothing was going to keep him from returning to the sky.

There was something else Joseph had decided not to mention. He had recognized the man he’d glimpsed talking with his aunt. His father, Mason Dollarhide, was out of prison and back in Blue Moon.

Not that it should matter. Five years ago, Mason had hired Joseph and his friends to help with his illegal booze deliveries, guiding the trucks and unloading crates of Canadian liquor. The danger and the pocket money had provided a heady lure for three fourteen-year-old boys. But for Joseph, getting to know the glamorous father he’d never met had been an even more compelling draw. The adventure had ended when federal agents showed up. The boys had narrowly escaped arrest; and their friend, Chase Calder, who’d come to warn them away, had been shot and barely survived.

Joseph had concluded that a man who’d risk his own son, as well as the safety of the other boys, was no father of his. He’d visited Mason for the last time in jail and told the man he wanted nothing more to do with him—ever.

Now Mason was back—like a swashbuckling pirate from a Hollywood movie. Joseph had barely glimpsed the man, but his instincts told him that prison hadn’t changed his father. Not that it mattered. He was through with Mason—for good.

* * *

Britta was waiting when Joseph climbed out of the cockpit. Dropping to the ground, he stripped off the helmet and goggles. One look at the radiant grin on his face told her everything she needed to know. This was trouble—the kind of trouble that would need to be handled with kid gloves.

“You promised to wait for me, Joseph,” she said.

The glow faded a little as he handed off the helmet and goggles and walked toward her. “Forgive me, Aunt Britta. You’d stepped out of sight. I saw my chance, and I was afraid of losing it. I could say that I’m sorry, but that would be a lie. It was wonderful.”

“I understand. But I almost wish I didn’t.”

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