Chapter 2 – Chapter 2
Jeremiah Carlin rode out of Hayden and turned up toward the south end of the Slater Creek valley, which dropped down between ranges of the Rockies from Wyoming territory into the new state of Colorado. He was headed due north rather than northwest to his cattle ranch on the Elkhead River. He'd spend another Christmas and New Year's up at his mountain cabin near Antelope Gap pass on the western range. The ranch hands thought that was where he headed off to from the ranch, but he still had needs, so he'd come down to Hayden first.
Two years. Time for him to be alone up at the cabin. The hands could take care of the ranch. He wouldn't be fit to be around until early January. This would be the third Christmas since he'd lost Seth—at Christmas. One of those freak accidents that is easy to have on a cattle ranch. Jeremiah had been completely unprepared for it. He was twenty years older than Seth. He should have been set for life. He was the one who should have gone first.
And he couldn't even mourn properly at the ranch. He couldn't have owned up to what Seth meant to him. Some of the ranch hands—the cook, Clyde, certainly—had known. But it wasn't something that anyone could talk about in the open. Many of the men did it; they just didn't talk about it. He couldn't mourn Seth in the open.
It had been Clyde's suggestion that first Christmas—spoken softly and with great care—that Jeremiah go on up to the cabin for the rest of the season. He could let loose there, or withdraw into himself. Anything. Anything that came naturally to him. He usually only used the cabin in the spring and fall—to hunt from. It too easily could get snowed in in the winter. And in the summer he was busy with the cattle drive up into Nebraska, to the stockyards in Omaha.
But snowed in was maybe a good thing the way he was feeling. Clyde had been right. He needed to be alone in that season. And withdrawal, just laying under blankets and watching the fire—and putting away the liquor. Hoping it put away the ache as well. That's what had worked, as well as anything could, these last two years.
The horse snorted, bringing him back into the present as they approached the narrow southern passage into Slater Creek valley. He sniffed the breeze. Snow. It would be snowing up in the mountains soon. Down here too, probably. Good.
He got to the cabin as twilight was licking its way down the eastern slope of the western range. He could still see up into Antelope Gap, but there were snow clouds hovering over the western side of that. It would snow before morning here at the cabin.
He put Becky in her stall in the small barn and made sure she had enough to eat and drink to last for days. When they had a big snowfall up here, it would get real serious. There would be days he couldn't make it as far as the barn.
Opening up the cabin then, he left the shutters on the two windows and started up a fire in the fireplace before unbundling. It was just the one room, with a fireplace at one end, a window and door on the front, with a porch along the front of the cabin. A window on the opposite end from the fireplace. A door off the back. That just led down a narrow corridor to the outhouse. After that first winter up here, Jeremiah had learned the hard way that he needed a clear path to the outhouse. So, he could say that his cabin was fancier than most up here.
Cupboards along the back wall. Two overstuffed chairs at the fireplace, Seth's untouched in the last two years. A small, rectangular table, with four straight-back mismatched chairs, in the middle of the room, between the doors on the front and back, and the double bed at the end opposite the fireplace. There was a grizzly bear rug in front of the fireplace between the two chairs there and a braided rug between the table and the bed. He'd once had a single bed. When he had found Seth, one of the first things he'd done here and at the ranch was put in double beds. It had only been here, though, that they could be free to fuck without restraint. Seth had been a yeller when fucking with abandon. And Jeremiah had a cock that made him want to yell.
With the fire going good, Jeremiah stripped off a couple of layers of clothing and cooked beans and a slab of fatback over the fire, with a coffee pot sitting directly in the fire. He ate alone, hunched over the table, trying not to think any thoughts at all, but with Seth—and his times with Seth, here, sitting by the fire, and over there on the bed—drifting in and out of his mind. That wasn't a reason not to be here, though. It would be the same down at the ranch. But down there, it would be the men being in the Christmas spirit—or trying to. Jeremiah wasn't so selfish as to be down there, all glum and mournful, and keeping the men from getting into the spirit.
He hadn't unshuttered the windows on purpose. It wasn't just to keep the heat in. It also was to keep the world out. Being alone, in the silence, that was all he could take in this season. He did, though, hear the wind and a shushing noise through the chinks in the log cabin walls. He went over and opened the door. It had started to snow, but was still in a tentative state of getting that done.
Good, he thought. He closed the door, went over to the bed, crawled in, still dressed—he'd had a bath down in Hayden that would hold him over for several days—turned his face to the wall, pulled the comforter over him, and laid there for an hour before sleeping, thinking of the good times he and Seth had had in this bed.