The snow was a blanket of white linen across the mountains and hills outside his window, starched white and crisp by the continual fall of soft white flakes. The house was warm from the fire in the wood stove. He had tinkered with it for an hour, adjusting the flu and the air until the iron glowed a gentle red around the chimney pipe, and the heat radiated off it in hard waves. The road looked impassable to the house, of that he was sure. Even if he chained up all four tires on his old tired dodge pickup, he didn't think he would make it down to the road, and then it was 20 miles out of the mountains to the foothills, and the radio said the snow was white out conditions there.
The wind gusted against the small house and he could feel the trickle of air through the panes of glass as the hungry cold leached the warmth from his home. She would not make it. He accepted this, and the line of his shoulders arched down and inward as his soul suffered and cringed within him. They had planned it for months. Countless phone calls and meetings in a ghost land of bits and bites. She had made it to the airport in Denver, but no further, and now even the phone was dead. He wondered what she would think of this weather compared to the luxurious warmth of her native state of Texas. The feel of her in his mind was so real it filled him with an ache, and he pressed a hand against the biter cold of the window. The heat from his fingers and palm fogged the window as the cold burned his bare skin. When his hand fell to his side it remained on the glass as an etching of despair. Each finger outlined in the delicate crystal patterns the ice that had formed.
He turned away from the window and the gray light of the storm, his body moving with slow deliberateness. His frame was tall and lean from many years of hard work, but the lines from sun and wind in his face were kind. Though there was a weight on him now, invisible yet bowing him down toward the earth. He moved to the small kitchen and the warmth of the oven. The smell of the roasting bird made his mouth water and his stomach growl. It was not a big bird, but too much for one person he thought. He reached for the hot mitts on the stone tiled counter he had tiled with rocks he had found on his land. The tray and bird slid from its warm womb to the waiting counter top, golden and hot. Defiantly too big a bird he thought again shaking his head.
A high shrill sound cut faintly to his ears, he knew it like he knew the creak of the house and the rattle of the mudroom door. It was Gingers neigh. She would sound it when she was coming home up the long road to her friends in the barn and pens, and all the horses would salute her back. She was his favorite, and she knew it. She was the queen, the matriarch of the corral. He walked back to the window where earlier he had kept his silent vigil, and looked out into the dim afternoon light and swirling snow.
Several of the horses had come from the shelter of the barn and stood in the small paddock beside it, their heads and ears lifted looking down the road. Ginger stood at the farthest end, neck craned over the poles as she let out a whinny again. He turned his eyes to the road that wound across the long meadow and disappeared into the trees before dropping down into the valley below. The snow caused the trees to drift in and out of focus like a white curtain pulled temporarily over a stage. The trees were almost black against the dim light, and he stared for several minutes before he could make out the shape of a rider on horseback coming down the road. Only the fact that both horse and rider were covered in snow afforded enough contrast to see them against the black forest beyond. 'Who the hell could that be?' He thought as he watched the slow progression to the house. 'Hope it is not the McIntyre's boy coming to get help, maybe something's happened to the old man.'
He walked to the mudroom dressing in his coverall and boots his mind racing. The McIntyre's were his closest neighbors and had to ask him for help before, since they were old and raising their grandson alone. He pulled the blaze orange hunting cap over his ears and grabbed the light gloves he wore even in the winter, pulling them on in stiff jerks. The weariness fell from his frame and his body became tense, coiled for action. It was a posture so natural to him that his form relayed purpose in it's every move. His actions were precise and powerful.
The cold hit him like an icy blast furnace and the snow blinded his eyes as he pulled the door open. The wind fought him for the door and the warmth inside as he pulled it too. He walked toward the barn glancing down at the figure slowly drawing nearer. He would need to throw down some more straw in the open box. Ginger and the other mares came in through the half open door into the pen on one side of the barn that gave the horses some shelter, but yet gave them the freedom to come and go as the pleased. He rarely penned his animals unless necessary, and this was perhaps a reflection of his own need for freedom. The straw was a bit musty as he threw it down, but it would do. He pulled down the heavy horse blanket and set a large pot of water on the gas burner to warm for the horse to drink. Both horse and rider would be damn near frozen riding in this storm, have to be a damn fool or desperate to go out in this storm he thought.
He walked back out through the side door the wind and snow freezing his eyelashes together. The rider was close now, the snow up to the horses knees, the ice coated around it's muzzle. It wasn't the boy he realized with a shock, it was an adult, and the horse was not Rose. The rider dismounted slow and stiffly as he grabbed the bridle. The hackamore was covered with a ball of ice over the gray geldings nose, and his legs were shaking from the cold. The rider was much shorter then he and so completely bundled he could not see his face. He pointed to the rider and gestured to him to go in the house knowing any words would be lost in the roar of the wind. The rider hesitated a minute and nodded stumbling toward the house and the warm stove within.
The man led the gray into the barn and tied him to the hitching post. The girth strap and synch were frozen over so badly he had to cut the straps to get the saddle off. Attached to it were two pack bags, like saddlebags but larger for carrying camping equipment. The gray began to shake the minute the saddle was off, and the man mixed some oats into the hot water and made gruel the animal happily drank as he cleaned the ice from him and laced the heavy blanket onto him. He looked like the gray from the Peterson's place down by the road, but that was almost 10 miles. The geldings shaking had stopped by the time he was licking the gruel bucket clean, and his hooves had been cleaned of ice and rocks. He turned him into the open box and put some hay in the hay net before heading for the house.
