Chapter 1: Everest

Present Day
Everest, Montana

Travis Scott, in a single fluid motion, rolled upright on the bed ending with him sitting on the edge of the bed and his feet planted lightly but firmly on the floor. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and looked around, but as he expected, he was alone in the bedroom. He had known he would be. Janice had gotten up earlier, leaving him as she showered and made coffee. Still, he had lain there for five minutes, eyes shut, while he listened to the creaks of the floorboards, pinpointing where she was and what she was doing.

Janice Northcott chose that moment to return to her bedroom, carrying a pair of mismatched coffee mugs. “Well, don’t you look cute! You expecting me to join you or something?” Janice was wearing a long denim button-front skirt, unbuttoned to the knees, and a crisp white blouse with an open denim vest over it. Travis, on the other hand, was still dressed the way they had gone to bed the night before, naked. Janice had slept that way also, though Travis knew she normally went to sleep in a t-shirt and running shorts. He always slept naked.

Travis smiled at her. “If that’s an offer, I wouldn’t turn it down. You might want me to brush my teeth first.”

“Tempting, but not so practical. Somebody kept me up all night doing unspeakable things for hours on end! I don’t have the strength or the time. I need to open the shop,” she replied.

“Unspeakable, huh?” he snorted. “You seemed to be doing an awful lot of speaking last night, mostly along the lines of ‘Don’t stop!’ and ‘Do that again!’”

Janice blushed. “Hush! It must have been all the alcohol you plied me with.”

“Right,” he drawled out slowly.

“Do you want coffee or not?”

He smiled and stood up. “Absolutely.”

Janice handed him the cup, and as he moved away to grab his bag, she goosed his butt. “Maybe I can close the shop early this afternoon,” she teased.

Travis just smiled and began sipping his coffee. Janice left him to clean up and dress. First things first. He grabbed the gym bag from the floor beside her dresser and put it on the bed. He had packed it before coming into town, with several changes of clothes and his toilet kit. He grabbed the kit and headed for the bathroom.

Looking in the mirror on the medicine cabinet door, he briefly considered the face staring back. For the most part, it was plain and unremarkable. Travis Scott was five-foot ten-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds. He had light brown hair with just a hint of gray at the temples, and light blue eyes. His nose was straight, his jaw was square, his cheekbones were average, and he was clean-shaven, though he definitely needed a shave. His beard was perhaps the most noticeable thing about him. He had a heavy beard and often had to shave twice a day. If he let it grow, he’d have a beard in a week.

Ten minutes later, the coffee mug was empty, and Travis was showered and shaved. He returned to the bedroom and grabbed his gym bag, pulling out some underwear, a red flannel shirt, and a pair of khakis. Five minutes later he was down the short hallway to Janice’s kitchenette, pouring himself another mug of coffee. He could hear Janice moving around down below, preparing to open shop for the day.

Janice Northcott lived on the second floor of what had once been a Victorian-style home just west of Everest on Route 91. The first floor was her store, Pins&Needles, which sold an odd mix of Victorian-style dresses and touristy kitsch. Being just down the road from Everest State College meant she had a steady stream of flaky liberal types among the parents and tourists. It also meant she could hire one or two college-age coeds to work in the store as needed. Janice had bought the store five years before and remodeled the second floor into an apartment; she lived upstairs and worked downstairs.

Two Years Ago
Everest, Montana

Travis walked into the store, not because he had need for either Victorian dresses or tourist crap, but because the gas station across the street had suffered a cooler malfunction and they didn’t have any cold Coke. He had been pointed across the street, with the advice, ‘She’s pretty old, but she’s got a cooler for soda and a freezer for ice cream, too!’

Travis had crossed the street, expecting to find the original owner from the 1800s running the place, and was pleasantly surprised when he found that the ‘old lady’ looked like she was in her early thirties. It was an age that looked good on her. The laugh lines gave her some character that the teenager working behind the counter was lacking. She was trim, medium height, with frosted blonde hair that was shoulder length, bright blue eyes, and she had a figure that she didn’t need to be ashamed of.

“Hi!” she had greeted him. “Looking for soda or ice cream?”

“Good guess,” he had responded.

She laughed brightly. “No guess. I saw you walk over from the Quik-Stop, and you’re just the latest today. Their cooling system goes out about once a month. That and the fact that you don’t look like you need any pins or needles.”

“No, not hardly.” Travis smiled. “I hate to tell you, but the clerk over there implied you were as old as your building.”

Janice had rolled her eyes at that. “Let me guess, young kid, bad acne, looks like he’s still in kindergarten?”

“You know him?”

“That’s Bobby Guilfoyle. He’s in middle school. I think anybody over sixteen is ancient to him. Want to watch me go over and whack him with my cane?”

Travis had laughed at that. “Just promise me that when you leave here you’ll run over his toes with your wheelchair.”

The pretty shopkeeper giggled at that. “What can I get you?” she asked, leading him to the cooler.

Present Day
Everest, Montana

There was something about Janice Northcott that intrigued Travis from that first meeting, and it was several hours before he headed back to his Jeep, with the promise of a date the following weekend. That had been just under two years ago. Since then he had learned a fair bit about her. Janice was thirty-seven, had been married twice and divorced twice, and though she didn’t have any children, she had about a dozen nieces and nephews who she doted on. Most of them lived in Florida and California, so every December she would shut down the store for a month and spend the holidays visiting them.

Travis finished his second cup of coffee and headed down the back stairs. There he ran into Traci Woods, an impossibly young girl with too many earrings in her ears for his taste, and another through her left eyebrow. Janice had told him it was ‘just a fad’ but it wasn’t a fad he cared for. Still, she was a pleasant enough young lady, working part-time to help with her college bills. She held up a pair of linen outfits. “Do these go in dresses or skirts?” she asked.

He snorted and shook his head. “Whatever I tell you will be wrong, and then the boss will yell at both of us.”

She smiled and shook her head. “You’re no help, Mister Scott, no help at all!” With that she turned around and went in search of Janice. Travis followed, though not out of any burning desire to learn about the dress-versus-skirt issue. “Janice? Dresses or skirts?”

Janice pointed the girl in the right direction, and then turned to Travis. “I need to go into town. Want to come along?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“My printer died, and I need to pick up a new one. Staples is right on 91, and if I can’t find one there, I can run to Office Depot or someplace else.”

Travis nodded and followed her out the door, but then changed his mind. “Hold on a second. You’ll never fit it in the back seat of your car. Let me run back in and get my keys. We can put it in the back of my truck.”

“Oh.” Janice looked at her Honda Civic and nodded in agreement. Travis drove around in a Chevy Silverado. “What about if it rains?”

“The forecast is bright and sunny. Worse comes to worst, I can throw a tarp over it.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

It took three stops to find a printer and copier combination she liked, and before heading back, they stopped at a small barbecue place on 91 for lunch. It was only after lunch that a problem occurred. Travis paid the bill, but then excused himself to use the rest room, while Janice headed back outside to get in the truck. By the time Travis made it outside, Janice was being braced by a trio of redneck ranch hands. All three looked fairly rough around the edges, and despite the relatively early hour, it was pretty obvious they had already been into a few beers too many.

The largest was several inches taller than Travis, and also at least twenty pounds heavier. He was wearing a denim shirt that had seen better days and had the logo of the Wobbly L Ranch. He leered down at Janice and said, “What the problem, baby? Come on, let’s have lunch!” His friends made some rude remarks and whistled.

“Thanks, but I just had lunch,” she replied. She tried to sidle past them but found herself boxed in under the overhead porch. She looked around, trying to escape, and began backing up towards the front door.

Travis tapped the drunk’s right shoulder from behind, and when he turned to the right, Travis slipped to his left and put himself between the cowboy and Janice. “Time to go,” he told her.

The drunk twisted back around. “Hey, who are you? I was talking to her!”

“Sorry, we need to go.”

“You ain’t going nowhere!”

Travis sighed and rolled his eyes. “Not looking for any trouble, friend. Have a nice lunch.” He stepped back, forcing Janice also to step away. This also forced the other two cowboys away, giving them a path to exit.

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?” demanded the drunken cowboy. He grabbed for Travis, but Travis simply side-stepped him and kept moving backwards.

“Go get in the truck,” Travis quietly told her. He felt Janice moving backwards, and the looks on the others’ eyes told him she was moving away.

It took the big drunk longer to figure out than the others. “Hey! Fuck you!” He took a wild left-handed roundhouse swing at Travis, who simply shook his head as he backed away, dodging the blow. That didn’t stop the fight though, since the follow-up was an equally wild right-hand punch. Half smiling to himself, Travis stepped backwards, forcing the drunk to lean forward to try and connect. Travis moved his head back, and at the same time used his right foot to nudge a cigarette butt receptacle from near the doorway in between them. Off balance, the drunk tripped over the receptacle and fell into the window on the front of the restaurant, breaking it and falling inside.

Travis looked over at the other two, now staring in shock as their friend yelled in pain. “I think you’d better call 9-1-1, guys. I think your buddy needs to go to the emergency room.” With that he backed away and went to his truck.

Janice had already climbed inside and locked the doors, but she unlocked them as Travis calmly approached. “What happened?”

“He tripped and fell. Looks like he’s going to need a few stitches.”

“You didn’t...”

“Hey, I’m a lover, not a fighter! I just backed away. Ready to go?” He smiled at her and started the truck up, smoothly putting it into gear before she even had a chance to reply.

“Travis, you didn’t have to do anything. I could have handled him myself,” she replied. “It’s not like we’ve never had drunken cowboys in Everest before. The place was practically built by them!”

Travis snorted and laughed. “That is so very true! Seriously, though, I never touched the guy. He simply fell over his own feet.

She gave him a suspicious ‘Hmmmppphhh!’, but then smiled and shrugged. “Well, you can make it up to my sense of pride by hooking up the printer.”

“Your sense of pride? Is that short for you don’t know how to install a printer?”

Janice smiled at him. “Well, I was planning on taking the rest of the afternoon off to reward you for hooking it up, but if you don’t want to help...”

He glanced over at her and then turned back towards the road. “Just exactly what kind of reward did you have in mind?” Janice didn’t answer, but simply put her left hand on his right knee and squeezed.

The drive back to the store, and the installation and testing of the printer, took a bit under an hour, after which Janice led Travis back to the upstairs apartment. Considerably more time was spent in the reward process, after which Janice got dressed and went back down to the store to help close up the shop, while Travis dozed contentedly. They were already planning on dinner at the Painted Pony, an upscale steak house with a nightclub in the back. Travis thought the place was too snooty and gentrified, a place for the cowboy-wannabes in town, with lots of Native American kitsch that originally hailed from China. Still, Janice liked it, so he acquiesced.

Travis did admit, though not to Janice, that the coeds looked awfully cute in their fake Western clothes. That made it tolerable to him, and Janice made it enjoyable. They got there about eight and headed first to the ‘Longhorn Bar’ along the back wall. That was just more bullshit, as far as he was concerned; longhorn cattle were from Texas and had never traveled as far north as Montana. He mentioned it to Janice. She had looked at him curiously and said, “Never?”

Travis shook his head. “The conquistadores brought them over from Spain back when they discovered Mexico, and they got loose. They pretty much stick to Texas and Oklahoma. Never heard of them in the Plains States or the Rockies. Not saying it couldn’t have happened, but they aren’t locals.”

Janice looked at the painting of a longhorn over the bar. “Well, they’re cute.”

Travis made a wry smile at her as he glanced at the painting. A one-ton bull with horns six foot across did not strike him as anything remotely resembling ‘cute’. “I’m not so concerned about cute. I’m more interested in delicious. We are in a steak house, remember.”

She grinned and nodded in agreement.

After dinner, which both agreed had been brought about courtesy of a happy cow, they moved to the club in the back. “Weeknights they do karaoke back here. Ever done that?” she asked him.

“That would require motivation and reward far beyond anything you are prepared to offer,” he countered.

Janice laughed. “How do you know what kind of rewards I’m prepared to offer?”

“Let’s just say that any woman that depraved is not a woman I want to be seen in public with!”

Janice just continued to laugh at him.

A steady stream of people began filtering into the club. The band for the night was a local band; if they did well in Everest they might graduate to the big city of Bozeman. Janice said, “You might not sing, but I know you dance.”

“Again, a debatable proposition, but at least I can hide in the crowd,” he replied. Janice grabbed his hand and led him out onto the dance floor.

It was late when the trouble started. Travis noticed it first, spotting some familiar faces in the crowd, drinking heavily over at the bar. Janice had wanted to go back out and dance some more, but seeing the faces, Travis demurred. “Maybe later, babe, but I think we should sit things out for a bit.”