It was a dark night with only glimpses of stars between slow-moving clouds.
“It’s sure-enough gonna rain, maybe even storm,” Jasper Dunn mumbled to himself as he scurried through the woods to Granny Hawkins’s cabin. He shouldn’t have left his own place tonight, he thought. But after spending all week thinking about Jassy, and how he wanted her to make her home with him, he knew he had to clean up that pigsty he was living in.
The condition of his home was the reason he was hurrying along to Granny’s. She had raised his little Jassy. She would know what was lacking in his old cabin, things that would please his daughter.
Money was no problem. He had saved what he’d earned over the years. Except for buying some grub, the rest of his earnings had been placed in a copper boiler and buried in the cellar beneath his cabin. No one knew its whereabouts except Granny. She knew where it was to go at his death.
Jasper walked up the rocky, narrow path to Granny’s cabin. He stepped up on the small porch and rapped twice on the door after wiping his feet on the rug that had been put there for that purpose.
“Come in, Jasper,” Granny’s voice called out.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked.
“I knew it was you because you are the only one who wipes his feet before entering my kitchen. Besides, I knew you’d show up here sooner or later.”
“How did you know that?” Jasper watched Granny pour him a cup of coffee.
The old lady grinned as she poured herself a cup. “Gossip rides a fast horse,” she said. “You saved little Jassy from a life of hell. How did she take to you? She probably thought you were a wolf man, with all that bushy hair and tangled beard on your face.”
Jasper shook his head. “She wasn’t a bit scared of me. She gave me the sweetest smile you’d ever want to see.”
“Jassy says she don’t know what actually happened to Spencer after you shot him,” Granny said.
“I threw his body over the bluff,” Jasper said. “Ain’t nobody gonna find him down there or connect his death with me.”
“Well, that’s a blessing,” Granny said. “Now if I could scare off the other mountain men, I wouldn’t think twice about bringing her back up here on the mountain. I sure have missed that little gal while she’s been stayin’ at the post. She’s real good about comin’ to visit, but it’s just not the same.”
“Granny, I want Jassy to live with me. She belongs with me.”
“And about time, too,” the old woman said. A resigned look came into her eyes. “I’m getting up in years. I’ve been worrying about Jassy. She has no one but you when I am gone. I asked Dylan Quade to keep an eye on her while she’s visitin’ Rachel, but he’s off on a trail drive now.”
An angry light jumped into Jasper’s eyes. “I don’t want him or anybody else taking care of my little girl,” he said curtly, giving the table a rap of his fist. “I intend to take care of her now that Spencer can’t link me to that holdup.”
“Well, my old friend,” Granny said, her eyes twinkling. “You’ve got to do some housecleaning, not to mention getting yourself in shape. You’ve got to trim your hair and beard first off.”
“I was thinking about going down to the barber in Jackson Hole tomorrow,” Jasper said with a shamefaced grin.
“I’m glad to hear that. What about your cabin? The last time I saw it, it didn’t look fit to raise a young daughter in.”
“I know it.” Jasper looked down at the floor. “I was wonderin’ if you’d help me purty’ it up some after I clear out all the junk that has accumulated over the years.”
The doubtful look that came into Granny’s eyes said she doubted it was possible to purty the place up at all. But her voice was gentle when she said, “I’d be happy to, Jasper. I’ll be up to your place tomorrow and see just what-all you need. I’m so glad Jassy will finally know her father.”
“I don’t know how to thank you for everything, Granny. Pansy would be so proud of the way our little girl turned out. When I saw Jassy at the schoolhouse, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Jasper said, emotion roughening his voice. With that, he slipped out the door. He looked up at the sky. It was a sullen gray and would rain most anytime. In another hour it would be daylight. He’d better hurry on home. Anyway, he was eager to get started on cleaning out the cabin.
As he approached his sturdily built cabin, the wolf he had found as a cub and tamed came bounding off the porch to greet him. “You’re hungry, I know.” He roughed up the black hair on the big body and finely shaped head.
Jasper started to push open the door to walk inside as he had done for years. He paused when a thought hit him. There would be no more tracking mud into his home. He unlaced his boots and carried them inside the cabin. They would get a good cleaning after he had his breakfast.
Twenty minutes later he was eating a breakfast of fried salt pork and fried potatoes, plus a chunk of sourdough, all cooked over the small fireplace. I’ve got to buy a wood stove, he thought. Jassy might burn herself cooking over an open fire.
When he finished his meal, he gathered up everything he had used and tossed it all into a wooden tub at the end of the table. As there came to him a crackle of china ware, he frowned. That was something else he had to stop doing. In fact, he thought, he would most likely have to buy all new dishes and some glasses. It wouldn’t hurt to buy some new frying pans and stew pots, too.
Jasper stood up from the table and looked around, wondering where he should begin shoveling out the dirt and trash.
He decided that the kitchen was the most logical place to start. The two bedrooms could be last. No one ever saw them.
With the first load of trash Jasper carried outside, it began to sprinkle a misty rain. He paid no attention to it as he lugged broken pieces of furniture, scraps of stiff, dried-out fur, and pieces of raggedy clothing. There were five pairs of boots, the laces missing, the soles broken and the toes with big holes in them.
And still waiting to be carried out to the scrap heap were broken snowshoes, sleds with broken runners and old harnesses from the mules he had owned over the years.
When he had carried all the useless things ouside and swept a small mountain of dirt into the fireplace so he could shovel it out, he couldn’t believe how big the room looked.
Jasper was thinking how hungry he was when his old mule started braying in the corral behind the barn. “No wonder we’re both hungry,” he muttered. “It’s way past time for our supper.”
When he had led the mule into the barn and wiped him down with burlap bags, he fed him and Spencer’s bony horse a bag of ground corn, then coaxed his ten chickens into their coop with a special chicken food he’d bought at the mercantile. He sloughed back through the mud puddles to the cabin. He stopped just in time not to tramp mud on the kitchen floor. He hadn’t mopped it yet, but still he didn’t want to clean up more dirt than necessary. He stood in the doorway and unlaced his boots, then kicked them off and set them outside the door. He would clean them tonight in front of the fire.
He grinned wryly. To stop tracking mud into the house was only one bad habit he had to correct. He couldn’t wait for Granny to see how much he’d accomplished.