by Slim
Randles
Steve finished the ride up the mountain on
Ol’ Snort and just sat there in the saddle, looking at his cabin for several
minutes. Each board had been personally nailed in place, and the epicenter of
his delight, of course, was the turret. After stabling Snort and feeding him,
Steve went in, built a fire in the Home Comfort range’s firebox, and then went
up into the turret for a look at … well, everything.
Down the long, timbered ridges to the valley
below, and off to the hills on the other side of Lewis Creek, it was all there.
Up here there were no worries about doctoring cattle or helping cows to calve.
If a corral board fell down, well … okay. The other guys could handle it. When he
and Snort came up here, all that temporarily went away.
Steve climbed down and put the coffee pot on,
swept up some wind-borne dust that had invaded the place, and then went up the
ladder again, this time with a cup of coffee.
The light of the late sun shining on Miller
Pond, just out of town there, turned first a glassy brass, then a deeper purple
as the world prepared to rest. The lights in the town appeared and he looked
down and smiled. Behind each of those lights was a friend of his. In anyone’s book,
that’s a smiling situation.
It wasn’t easy finding this hole-up spot.
He’d had a bunch of false starts before finding it. It’s never easy. The real
estate sales piranhas don’t like to deal with them because – if it’s a real
hole-up spot – there’s no money in it. Basically, if lots of people want it, it
can’t be a hole-up spot.
Steve considered writing a book once, but he
didn’t like words, so he revised that plan. He thought of painting a picture
once, too, but the result looked worse than what’s on the wall at Parent’s
Night in the second grade. His twelve chords on the guitar didn’t lend itself
to becoming a composer, either.
But these were the kinds of things a guy can
do in a hole-up spot.
He smiled as he sipped his coffee in his
turret, in his cabin on his hole-up spot, with his horse, Ol’ Snort, happily
munching his supper out in his stable. If he ever decided to become artistic in
any way, he now had the perfect place to do it. But sometimes it’s enough just
being a good cowboy and sipping coffee and smiling at the world.
---------
Brought
to you by the national award-winning book A
Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right. Read a free sample at
www.slimrandles.com.
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