The Town

The snow began to fall shortly after he broke camp. At first it fell gently, the flakes large. Then the wind blew in from the northwest, turning the snow to pellets stinging his face.

The trail, such as it was, a track of matted down prairie grass cut by the few wagon wheels that had passed over it, disappeared underneath the snow. Neither his mare nor he could make any sense of it except for continuing to head straight into the wind and blowing snow, the direction towards the next town.

His horse sensed the town first from the scent of the stable and the horse bedded there. The fierceness of the wind and snow blinded him. He entered the small town before he recognized it was there.

He rode to a building whose sign said, "Clem's Stable."

“Two bits for the horse, two bits for oats, and two bits if you want to bed down here too,” Clem, the stable keeper, said.

Clem's sour smell and his unkempt black beard made him feel at home.

“I’ll bed the horse and take the oats,” he said.

He unsaddled his horse, put his pistol in his saddle bag, and paid the man.

He walked into the street. The cold evening wind cut him. The saloon and hotel lay across the street from the stable.

Two men stood at the bar when he entered the saloon. One man, short and squat, reeked of buffalo. The man may not have bathed in the past year. The other man, merely a boy after he looked at him closely, was tall and thin and wore his pistol like a gunfighter.

The thin man instinctively searched him to see if he was wearing a gun. He walked to the bar as if he did not notice the thin man’s glance.

“I’d like a room and a glass of whiskey too,” he said to the bartender.

Later, in his room, he, slightly drunk from the whiskey, still chilled from his ordeal, the ride all day into the teeth of the first winter storm, lay on his straw pallet, listened to the wind blowing through the cracks in the walls, and wondered if the storm would end tonight, then, before falling asleep, he wondered when he would end.