Chapter 4 - The Retreat and the Relocation
By 2:00 p.m., the federal agents had taped their official notices to the grand gates of the Pembroke estate. The black Suburbans pulled away, leaving a thick cloud of dust that hung in the cold mountain air like gunsmoke.
I didn't go back to the house I had shared with Wesley for the past two years.
While the Pembrokes were still arguing in their living room, I had a commercial moving truck parked outside our cottage on the eastern ridge. Four of my father's trusted ranch hands—men who had served under him in the cavalry before coming to work the cattle in Texas—were already loading my personal belongings, my books, and June’s nursery furniture into the back of the rig.
Wesley arrived just as they were carrying out the wooden rocking chair his father had given us for the baby.
"Nora!" he yelled, running up the gravel path, his face red with exertion and panic. "What are you doing? You're taking my daughter! You can't just leave! We're married!"
"We were married, Wesley," I said, standing on the porch of the cottage, my Army uniform still crisp, though I had removed my service cap. "But a marriage is a mutual defense treaty. The moment your mother held up that collar and you stood silent, you violated the first article of that treaty. You left your ally on the field of battle."
"I was shocked!" he pleaded, his hands reaching for mine, but my father’s head wrangler, a six-foot-four Texan named Caleb, stepped between us, his massive hand resting casually on the brass buckle of his gun belt. "Nora, please. We can go to counseling. We can move away from Montana. We can go back to Texas, near your dad's place. Just don't do this. Don't take June."
"June is going to grow up in a place where people know her value, Wesley," I said, looking down at the baby, who was awake now, her dark, curious eyes looking up at the pine trees. "She is going to grow up on the Ellis ranch, where the only thing we put collars on are the working dogs who actually earn their keep. You can have your lawyers call mine. But if I see you or your mother within five hundred yards of my daughter, I will use every federal resource at my disposal to ensure your bail is revoked."
"Bail?" Wesley whispered, his face turning a sickly white. "They haven't arrested us yet."
"They will," I said, stepping down from the porch. "Agent Vance is filing the formal indictments at the federal courthouse in Billings at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. I suggest you find a very good criminal defense attorney, Wesley. Because your father’s corporate lawyers aren't going to be able to save you from a timber-theft charge."
May you like
I walked to my truck—a heavy, four-wheel-drive diesel that my father had bought me when I finished my command training. I buckled June into her state-of-the-art car seat, climbed into the cab, and started the engine.
As I pulled out of the driveway, I looked in the rearview mirror. Wesley was standing in the gravel, a small, isolated figure surrounded by the vast, empty beauty of the Montana mountains, looking like a man who had finally realized that the gold leaf on his family's name was nothing but a thin coat of paint over rotten wood.
