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One Year Previous

I’d spent most of my twenty-eight years on this earth as a drifting cowpoke, starting in Texas at the age of sixteen, following the herds north to the Kansas railheads. Since then I had cowboyed from Texas west to the Arizona Territory, then north to the Dakotas and Montana, with jobs just about everywhere in between. Just plain fiddlefooted, I’d stay in one place for a time, then move on. I’d finally wound up working for the Diamond M in Wyoming.

The Diamond M was a huge operation, big even by Wyoming standards. It sat south of the Bighorn Mountains, east of Wind River Canyon and the Owl Creek Range. Its range spread all the way from Badwater Creek to the South Fork of the Powder River. Besides being mighty good grazing land, the Diamond M took in some of the prettiest scenery in the West. I had been working there for six months, as long as I’d ever stayed in one place. Now, in early September, I was seriously considering remaining through the winter.

However, right now I was sick of the whole place. I’d been assigned one of the most distasteful tasks a cowboy could have, aside from digging postholes. I’d been sent to check and repair miles of fenceline along Badwater Creek, from its headwaters south for thirty miles. While I would ordinarily welcome the solitude of such a job, after two weeks of mending fence I just wanted to get back to the Diamond M’s headquarters, then head for town and blow off some steam. But with sunset coming on, all I had to look forward to was yet another night sleeping on the hard ground, the only warmth to ward off the autumn chill that of a sagebrush fire.

“C’mon, Laramie, let’s find a spot to hole up for the night,” I told my paint gelding. Rather than using one of the horses from my assigned string, I’d taken Laramie, my personal mount. At this point I even envied that horse. He’d spent a good part of the last two weeks loafing and grazing while I stretched and patched wire and straightened fence posts.

It took me until well after dusk to find the spot I wanted, a hollow which would shelter me from the almost constant north wind. That wind had been blowing just about every day since I’d left the ranch headquarters, and truthfully it was making me a bit jumpy. For the past two days it had been gradually increasing in speed, the gusts becoming more intense. I didn’t want to spend another night out in the open, but on those desolate high plains

I didn’t have much choice. At least the hollow would provide a bit of protection from that chilling wind.

I unsaddled Laramie, let him drink from the small waterhole in the center of the hollow, then rubbed him down and picketed him to graze. Once he was settled, I gathered sagebrush for my fire, made my bacon, biscuits, beans, and coffee, then quickly downed my supper.

After cleaning the frying pan and tin eating utensils, I lingered over a final smoke and cup of coffee, watching the sky as it faded from indigo to black, and the countless stars pinpricking its inky curtain. A dim light on the eastern horizon promised the nearly full moon would soon be rising. The wind was moaning overhead, but down here in this hollow it was merely a light breeze.

I drained the last of my coffee and stubbed out my cigarette. This night promised to be even chillier than the last several, so I collected more sagebrush and tossed it on the fire.

I walked over to Laramie, scratched his ears, bade him goodnight, then checked his picket rope. Satisfied he was secured for the night, I retrieved my blankets and spread them out. I pulled off my hat, boots, and gunbelt, slid under the blankets, and soon fell asleep.