I’m really not sure why I did it, but I was young at the time.

I rode into town after being paid. We all did. Anyone who spent so much time on the trail had a tendency to want some time in the company of the opposite sex.

And, while you were waiting for said company, you might as well loosen up a bit. Most of the brothels were upstairs of a saloon, so it was only natural to spend some time in both areas.

I was generally known as Cookie, which was not a problem as I did the cooking for our boys.

I’m a little older than most of them, except the trail boss who’s known only as Stumpy. It’s kinda strange, him being the boss, as somewhere in the past he’d lost his right leg. The legend is he had a run-in with a rattlesnake at some point. Nobody seems to know the true story but him and one other person, and Stumpy isn’t telling anyone who that is.

Stupid me, I’m not great at telling stories. I kinda get things out of order in the way I tell them.

Let’s go back to that time back when Austin was Boss.

I'd also like to thank Melanie in helping me get this posted!

As was usual, she was lonely, especially on this day, as it was Christmas Eve. She got up and went to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, and instead of creamer, she poured a bit of eggnog in with the brew. She considered something stronger, but even though only she would know, she wasn’t yet of the legal drinking age, and it wasn’t like she had any alcohol on hand.

She put the nog back in her fridge, then returned to her recliner.

She lived in an apartment that wasn’t lavish by any means. She needed to save as much money as she could, so whatever was left each month after basic necessities was put into a savings account. Once it was large enough, it would fund her needed surgery.

As she sipped the coffee, she thought about the events that had brought her to the present. Her mother had played around a lot in high school and she kept it up as she went to college. She had been the stereotypical proud cheerleader, who felt no one but the football team was worth her time.

Usually.

It was colder than he had expected, the sleet steadily hardening into snow, but Ken had endured worse. There was a hedgerow running between two of the fields which he thought might work for the night, and part of it looked to be hazel, or at least something with similar leaves, which the shrub had clung to despite the nastiness of the late Autumn and Winter. It had all looked so simple when he was little, the Boy Scout books almost rhapsodising about hatchets and straight staffs as a ridge pole, but walking around with an axe these days would get him lifted by the plod in no time.