Chapter 2: Unwelcome Summons

Two days earlier:

Jesse Morgan felt the first snowflakes touch his face and melt. He had smelled the snow in the air last night, just before he went to bed. The morning air tasted of snow when he rolled out of bed at four thirty and now the promised snow had arrived. He smiled to himself as he walked toward the barn. Snowflakes touching a man's face seemed a personal thing to be enjoyed alone. He snorted as he thought of the looks he would get if he walked into the Buckhorn Bar and announced, "I love to feel snowflakes on my face." No, there were some thoughts best not shared with other men, not in Cowboy Country anyway.

In the predawn dark, it was difficult to see more than vague shadows once he left the house. He walked the short distance from the ranch house to the barn to milk the eight cows waiting outside for him to let them in. This mini dairy operation he ran on the side brought him a small but steady supply of much needed cash.

As he walked toward the cattle barn, false dawn gleamed faint red for a moment, showing faint streaks over the mountains to the east. It cast dim rose-colored reflections of light in the snow not quite bright enough to see by. Then it disappeared again and left the world in shadows and darkness. The cold wind made his face feel stiff. He was long used to the sensation. It was like an old acquaintance he became accustomed to over the years and didn't pay attention to anymore.

He opened the rear barn doors to let the milk cows inside. As they crowded and shoved at each other to enter their assigned stalls, he portioned out the large hand scoop of grain into each cow's feed box. Then, when the cows stuck their heads through the stanchions to eat, he locked them in tight, "Damn," he muttered to himself as he did every milking, "I need to get me a hired hand to help out around here. This old stuff is getting to be way too much for me." He let out a tired sigh, grabbed one of the waiting milk buckets and a milking stool to begin his twice-daily milking chore.

A short hour later the cows were released to return to the meadow behind the barn while Jesse continued to complete his first chores of the day. He poured the fresh milk into the separator in the milk room, turned it on and added more as the level in the bowl lowered. As the last few drops left the souut he carried the cream to the cool room. He took a portion of the skim milk to the three hundred fifty chickens in the hen house. The half dozen hogs he raised got the rest, mixed with commercial hog feed. Nothing was wasted. Jesse scalded the now empty milk buckets and hung them on pegs for the next milking in the evening.

"Well, damn," he exclaimed, as he walked out of the barn and into what seemed like a solid wall of falling snow. With an unerring sense of direction, he turned a sharp sixty degrees as he left the barn door and headed toward the house. If the wind had started to shift around he would have been in trouble. A shifting wind blew falling snow in ever changing directions and confused a person's sense of direction when caught out in it. If it had happened this time, Jesse would have had the choice to wait the storm out in the barn or use an anchor rope to get to the house.

Once up on the front porch of the small ranch house, he stomped the snow off his boots and opened the outside door to the enclosed entryway. He hung his heavy sheepskin jacket on a peg by the door and went on into the house proper. Out of habit he turned on the television as he made his way to the kitchen. He placed a heavy cast iron griddle on the propane gas range and lit the burner beneath it.

Jesse began to prepare his first lonely meal of the day. Everything was done in one seeming continuous motion. He placed a ham steak on the griddle and removed three eggs from the fridge. Each movement he made was controlled with meticulous precision.

"The most anal killer in captivity," Captain Ford called him in a joking way. Back in those days, Jesse was known as a man without emotion. Lurps and snipers could not afford the luxury of emotions.

The twenty cup coffee pot had begun to brew at four AM. He poured his first mug full and set it on the table. The eggs were fried on the griddle as soon as he removed the ham and placed on a plate. Two biscuits left over from supper the night before completed this first meal of the day. As he sat down at the kitchen table to eat, the television announcer informed him from the front room, "More snow is expected in the evening." He paused and laughed, "Well, that's what it says here on the paper in front of me. When I came to work this morning it was in what I would call blizzard conditions."

"No kidding," Jesse muttered into his eggs. He looked out the kitchen window at the solid white wall and shook his head as he continued to eat.

The phone jolted him out of his rumination. He stood and grabbed the extension off the kitchen wall. "Hello?"

A harsh voice on the other end asked, "Is Marie Ford there? Let me speak to her."

"Is this a trick question? Mary Ford is in heaven singing while Les Paul plays accompaniment. She died years ago, way before I was born." Jesse's face formed into a frown as he wondered who the nut on the line was.

"Listen, mother fucker, you get her skinny ass to the phone right now or you'll be next." The voice was raised to a yell.

"Any time you're ready, asshole, I am. I don't take even empty threats kindly." He hung up and returned to his meal. He had more pressing problems right then than some crazy fool on the phone.

He finished his meal, then placed the dishes in the dishwasher. Back on went his parka. When he struggled through the blowing snow out to the horse barn he got an uneasy feeling.

Then the power went out just as he opened the door to the one stall infirmary. He heard a nervous snuffling and hoofs shifting on the straw covered concrete floor. "Easy, Frank, I'm here," he told the unseen horse in a low, calming voice. The horse gave a soft whicker, his acceptance all was okay.

Jesse fumbled his way along the wall to his left and felt around until his fingers touched the Coleman lamp hanging there for such an emergency. An exact twenty strokes of the small pressure pump and one Bic lighter click was all it took. The white-hot glare of the gasoline lantern illuminated the infirmary and cast sharp shadows in the corners of the room.

He hung the lantern back on its peg. The horse snorted his restlessness. Jesse checked the leg injury where the big animal got tangled in a strand of broken barbwire. "All right, you're good as new. Go join your friends." He removed the halter from the horse's head and opened the side door. The horse had to be urged to leave the warm comfort of the small infirmary.

Jesse returned to the now darkened house. He walked through the interior to the enclosed back porch. The generator started on the first try. As soon as it began to run smooth, Jesse threw the switch to start the emergency lighting system. The outbuildings were lit by low wattage bulbs.

The big man looked around. "Hell, I'm bored," he told himself. "I need to hire me a female cowboy, one with big tits." He thought a minutes, then changed his mind, as he added, "Nah, with my luck she'd turn out to be one of those militant type lesbians and I'd get my balls cut off the first time I tried to feel her up."

Jesse snorted a short laugh at his own joke and went to the hen house. The flock of Polish chickens kwarked and clucked at his intrusion. He made certain the flock had plenty of scratch and water. The small string of dim sixty-watt bulbs gave enough light and a little heat to break some of the chill in the coop and keep the chickens' water from freezing over.

Jesse grunted to himself as he straightened up, looked around at the chickens huddled together on the perches and said, "To hell with it." He hurried into the milk room in the barn, grabbed up a small bucket of skim milk and returned to the chicken house. He poured it into a waiting dispenser and barred the door behind him as he left.

Jesse strode toward the machinery shed, went inside and dragged his big snow mobile back out. He pointed it toward Walden and started the engine. He let the engine warm up for one minute then hopped on. He rode up the hill cross country to the road, turned left and followed alongside it toward Walden.

Jesse stayed in the bar pit even though the snow on the road was more than deep enough to drive on. He figured there was always a chance of some idiot to come blasting down the road, drunk or stoned on his way to Steamboat Springs. A minute later Jesse's precaution proved itself to be a good one. An old powder blue Jeep Laredo came blasting up the road toward him. The driver drove too much too fast for the road conditions.

"I'll see that son of a bitch nose down in the snow when I come back by here going home," he muttered to himself. "Stupid fool." He concentrated on his driving.

The trip to town took almost an hour after he started out from the ranch. He was chilled by the time he pulled up in front of the Buckhorn Bar and Cafe. Inside the bar kerosene lamps hung at strategic places to give the interior of the place not quite adequate illumination. He got off the snowmobile and went inside. "Ed," he called to the bar tender as he stomped the snow off his boots. "When are you going to break down and get yourself a generator for these outages? Hell, even my chickens live better than you do."

"If I owned a big ranch like you instead of this little outhouse of a bar I'd buy two damned generators," he answered in a gruff voice as he shoved a glass of beer in front of Jesse when he sat down.

"What brings you into town in the middle of the week?" Ed looked more like an actor playing the part of an old time cowboy bartender than the actual owner of the place. Five feet ten inches tall, the bald man with the drooping handle bar mustache was perfect to play the role of an "authentic looking" cowboy type bartender in any western movie. After a stint in Bosnia, shooting at whomever he thought might shoot at him, he came to Walden and bought out the bar. Within a year it seemed to the locals he had always lived there.

"I'm bored. I got cabin fever. In a couple of days I'll start to feed the stock. As it stands, right now they can still graze through the snow. Every one of the repairs have been caught up, so all I got to do right now is milk, gather eggs and eat. I'm so damned antsy I am about to start an argument with myself." He shucked out of his coat as he began to warm up after his cold ride into town.

"Jesse, you need to get married or get laid or both. You live out there on that ranch like a hermit, you don't ever party or chase women and I know you're straight. You just aren't geared to go it alone. Get yourself a woman."

"Hell, I'd do that but all I meet in here are coeds up from the university over in Laramie who come in here to slum and get laid. Or there are the bored tourists from Steamboat who come over here to go slumming and get laid." He snorted his disgust, "Hell, the last time I was in here two high school girls from Laramie wanted to double up on me."