Chapter 3

“Do you ladies have anything that you need to do today?” I asked them after outlining what I had planned for the day.

“We should repair our clothes before we wash them,” Laura told me. “That is if you have anything here to repair clothing with,” she added. I grinned at her in reply before answering.

“My friends and I are rather hard on our clothes, and we keep on hand most of the things that you will require to mend your clothing,” I assured her. “Will you require long to do that?” I added. “It would be better to replenish the water containers after you are finished with washing your clothing.”

“It shouldn’t require too long. There are just a few rips in our jeans and blouses,” Laura told me.

“I’ll get the sewing kit and you can do the repairs while I bring in more firewood for the stove,” I told them before going to get the sewing kit from the cabinets where the supplies were kept. The women pulled their clothes off the line where they had been drying overnight and began examining the tears in them.

“You may want to sit on the bed to do that, as there will be a draft from the open firewood door while I bring the firewood in,” I told them.

“Yes, we can do that,”Laura agreed, as they examined the sewing kit. There were plenty of needles and pins but only a limited selection of thread colors although there were plenty of spools of thread. There was also some spare material left from various shirts and pants that had been too far gone to be repaired.

“This will do nicely,” Lesia told me as they moved everything over to the bed and sat there to begin their work.

I donned my heavy coat and opened the firewood door on the north side of the cabin. It was a bit of a squeeze for me to get through the small opening, but I made it and started moving firewood inside. The stacks of wood were now covered with snow that needed to be removed before being taken inside, and I needed to retrieve my heavy waterproof gloves to do the work.

I also moved what I had already passed inside to the open area between the stove and the wall that served as the fire break. The heat from the stove would dry out the firewood and the vapor from the process would add humidity to the air in the cabin. I eventually moved in a large quantity of firewood since we had no idea how long the storm would last and this worried me. There were plenty of canned food items and flour on hand but little meat, and I am a meat eater and require large quantities of it.

The last thing that I did was to empty the ash pan before rebuilding the fire in the stove, and then I emptied the ash bucket outside near the vehicle. After returning through the firewood door, I made sure that it was tightly closed. The cabin had cooled down considerably while it was open, and I opened the damper on the stove all of the way to warm the cabin up again quickly. I also filled one of the five gallon buckets with hot water from the stove’s reservoir so the women could wash their clothes. I used water from the tank in the bath area to refill the reservoir. It was quite cold out now as the temperature had fallen further overnight, and I hoped that the well hadn’t frozen.

“What kind of soap do you have for washing the clothes?” Laura asked after I had removed my outdoor clothing.

“There is only the regular soap for bathing. We don’t usually wash clothes here. We wait until we return home,” I told her to a disappointed look.

“That will have to do then,” she said. I moved the bucket of reasonably hot water over to the bathing area so they could use it to wash their clothes. While they did that, I got out all of the large containers to put water in since I wasn’t sure about the well.

Lesia soon began bringing wet clothes out to hang on the line to dry. This would also add humidity to the air in the cabin. She was too short to reach the line, and I moved over to help her.

“Let me give you a hand,” I said, as I moved up behind her and took a pair of jeans from her hands to hang on the line. Lesia released them and then backed up to snuggle up against me and then rubbed herself against me. What had happened to the frightened little girl of last night, I wondered, but enjoyed it immensely, and put my hands around her waist to draw her even tighter against me before leaning down to kiss her hair. She started to purr like a kitten from this treatment.

“Lesia!” we heard after a minute or so from the bathing area.

“Coming!” she answered as I released her with a smile, and she hurried back. Laura brought out the next things to be hung up, but she was more business-like and didn’t tarry. The laundry was soon finished and hung to dry. It was time to bring water in, and I donned my heavy coat and gloves again.

“I will bring the buckets of water to the firewood door and set them inside. You then empty them into the various containers that I have set out, and into the reservoirs in the cabin before returning the empty buckets back to the firewood door. When everything is full, I will bring in the buckets full also,” I told them and set the three five gallon buckets outside to take them to the well.

To my surprise, the well was still free of ice, and I was able to fill the buckets without a problem. I would fill a bucket and pass it through the firewood door and then go to fill another bucket. I returned with the empty one to refill it. It required a number of trips to fill all of the various containers, but we finally finished and I returned to the cabin. It was still snowing lightly, but the wind had died down considerably.

Once I had warmed up and fed the stove again, it was time to consider other things.

“What shall we make to eat today?” I asked the women.

“What do you have on hand?” Laura asked.

“There are plenty of canned goods, but only a small ham. It has a preservation spell on it and will only require heating up as it has been cooked already,” I informed them.

“Ham sandwiches, yes!” Lesia said in a delighted voice.

“And fried ham with vegetables for dinner,” Laura said after her.

“We can do both of those, but the ham isn’t all that large and won’t last long, maybe two days or so,” I told them.

“Is that all of the meat you have?” Laura asked.

“Yes, we usually cook what we have taken while hunting when we come up here,” I told them but didn’t explain what else usually happened.

“Oh!” the women replied, not knowing what else to say.

“Perhaps the storm will be over soon,” I said to reassure them, but wasn’t so sure of that.

On removing the preservation spell from the ham, I cut off some slices and warmed them up. We made sandwiches using some of the biscuits from this morning. The sandwiches were very tasty. I placed the remainder of the ham in a metal pot with a lid and placed it by the firewood door, which was the coolest place in the cabin.

After refilling the oil lamps following lunch, there wasn’t a lot to do for the remainder of the day. We listened to the battery powered radio for a time. There was a lot of talk on the local Rock Springs country music station about the storm and conditions in various locations. Most of it didn’t sound like the storm was as bad in other places as it was here, and I wondered about that. It helped pass the time, but also got me to wondering, how we were going to leave here?

While I had a heavy winter coat and had definitely needed it when bringing in the firewood and the water, the women didn’t have coats – winter or otherwise. The four wheel drive vehicle had a heater, but they would still need coats – large warm coats. Where or how to get them was the question.

After a little thought, the answer occurred to me. It was so obvious that I almost overlooked it. I have always been interested in the fur trappers and mountain men of the west and knew that they often made or purchased coats or capotes, as they were termed, made from thick wool blankets. We had plenty of blankets on hand, so the materials wouldn’t be the problem. We would need a good bit of heavy thread to sew them together, but I thought that we had enough, as there was a large spool of heavy threat that we had used for previous repairs.

Even though I had purchased a very fancy pattern for one several years before I had made mine, I had never used it. A friend had shown me how to make the simpler version that I wound up making. It consisted of just a back piece, two front pieces, and two tube sleeves. A couple of squares of material were added, that were folded on the diagonal to form gussets and were used to connect the body of the coat and the sleeves. There were a couple of more gussets sewn in where the front and back connected at the shoulders and then a double thickness of material for the collar was sewn on. There was also a short cape over the shoulders to add a little extra warmth in that area. I had also seen some made with hoods. I decided that now was the best time to start on this project, as it would take time to complete.

“Ladies, you are going to require coats when we leave here. I have no coats for you, but we can make some for both of you out of some blankets,” I told them once the decision had been made.

“We never made anything like that,” Laura said.

“I have made one in the past and believe that I remember how to do it. However, before we start cutting up blankets, I suggest that we begin by tailoring the shirts that you are wearing,” I told them.

“How would we do that?” Lesia asked, quietly.

“By cutting a piece out of the back of the shirt and collar, and then sewing the two halves back together. You can also shorten the sleeves,” I told them. It turned out that we needed to remove an eight inch width of material from the back of my shirts. They fit the women much better once they were sewn back together. The removed material, when folded in half and the edges sewn together, made an excellent sash for holding the front of the shirt, which wasn’t altered, closed. The cutoff sleeves made a nice pair of hand warmers when the ends were sewn together.

The coats were modeled after the shirts, but were made a bit larger to go over all of their other clothes. They came down half way between the women’s knees and their feet. I needed to show them the stitch to use and help them at times in addition to doing some of the sewing. I helped with the preparation of the sleeves while they worked on the bodies of the coats. Everything was sewn together inside out so all of the seams would be on the inside. A regular-size blanket provided plenty of material for a coat for each of them. It would have required a larger blanket or more than one regular-size one to make a coat for me. The music on the radio helped make the work pass more easily.

We stopped for dinner and to keep the stove going. The women fried a number of slices of the ham, and opened and heated some of the canned vegetables. I had cleaned out the ashes and added more wood to the stove before they began. The ham was reduced to half its original size by the time we finished dinner, and I was still hungry for more meat. I would need to do something about that soon, like tonight, I decided.

Following the cleaning of the dishes and cookware, we did some additional work on the capotes before preparing for bed. I had some extra unused tooth-brushes, and we all did our teeth and flossed before heading for bed. There wasn’t much the women could do for their hair as all that I had was a comb, but they combed each other’s hair for a time. I added more wood to the stove before I blew out the oil lamp near the stove and then removed and folded my clothes on the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. The women were sleeping in their modified shirts and their panties. I just slept in my underwear.

Once everyone was ready and the women were on the bed, I turned out the oil lamp over the table and made my way to the bed. We were all sleeping under my large blanket tonight, and the women had insisted on sleeping on either side of me. This would complicate getting up during the night, but I had little choice in the matter as both of them wanted to sleep next to me.

Initially, both women cuddled up against me with their heads on my shoulders. They certainly did feel good there, and we spent some time hugging, kissing, and rubbing against each other before they went to sleep. It appeared that they didn’t require sex tonight, just a little attention. When I could hear their soft even breathing, I went to sleep also, but set my internal clock to wake me around three in the morning.

I awoke in a dark cabin. The women had both rolled over in their sleep and were still breathing softly. Lifting the blanket slightly and sitting up, I then scooted up against the pillow and the headboard. I pulled my right leg up first to get it out from under the blanket and placed it on top of the blanket before doing the same with my left leg. I sat there for several minutes listening to see if the movement had disturbed the women.

Satisfied that they were still asleep, I reached over top of Lesia’s head on my right, and moved my body over top of her and lowered myself to the floor in a standing position. I quickly dressed in the dark, but didn’t put my shoes on yet. I removed the flashlight from the drawer of the nightstand by the bed, collected my shoes and coat and moved over to the stove.

It was in need of more firewood, and I took the time to load more wood into it. I would deal with the ashes later, as that was a noisy operation. I retrieved a large butcher knife and a skinning knife from a drawer in the storage cabinets and added them to the things that I was taking with me. After putting on my shoes and coat, I moved to the firewood door, opened it quickly, and moved outside. There was a hook and eye that would keep the door closed while I was gone but would not lock the door.