Re: Chapter 9: Fort Griffin and The Flat
Looks pretty much like I remember it bein', Jake thought to himself as he surveyed the southern approaches to town from where he had halted Ghost. It had been somewhere between six months and a year since he had been through here on Wells Fargo business, and at first glance he didn't see any changes that jumped out at him, at least not any that were visible from his present vantage point.
Although it had warmed up a little now that the sun was pretty high in the sky, the January wind was still bitterly cold, and Jake pulled his head down into the collar of his heavy winter coat, like a turtle. He had hoped to make town the previous evening, but he hadn't made it by dark-fall, and the footing had been too treacherous on the slushy, iced-over road to risk injuring Ghost by pushing on in the dark.
Making camp last night alongside the trail had been no picnic -- since the flat plains had not offered any cover, the frigid wind seemed to take delight in sneaking its icy, bone-chilling drafts inside his coat. Jake couldn't remember being that cold since one of the winters in northern Virginia during the war. He had been much younger, then, of course, but his uniform had been threadbare and ragged after years of war, and he could still remember his bare feet leaving bloody marks in the snow.
"Hard times, Ghost -- hard times," he muttered under his breath as he thought back on those days that were still fresh in his memory, patting the neck of the big dappled-gray stallion that he rode. Ghost had cost him a pretty penny, but he had needed a horse once he was no longer riding guard on company stage-coaches, and he had decided not to stint on his mount. Old Ben Franklin probably hadn't been talking about horses when he coined the phrase "Penny wise, pound foolish," but Jake figured that the boot fit.
Jake could recall a few places from his previous stopovers in The Flat -- Shannsey's saloon, and the Occidental Hotel, which he remembered as being impressively clean. First things first, though -- he needed to find a livery stable for Ghost, which was something that he had not had to deal with on his previous trips to this place, since he had ridden in on company coaches.
"Reckon we may as well mosey on in," Jake muttered aloud to Ghost, lightly flicking the reins to nudge the horse into a walk. Truth be told, Jake was looking forward to putting a wall between him and that sonuvabitchin' winter wind. Eatin's somebody else's cookin' for a change an' enjoyin' a little store-bought whiskey don't sound too shabby, neither, he thought to himself.
Then, too, there was the matter of trying to find a job. Damn that stick-up-his-ass Jeremiah Wilson. He had to know that it warn't my fault that that damn-fool, fancy-pants card-sharp tried to shoot it out with his holdout gun against a hard case's scatter-gun, and ended up as worm-food. You'd think that a gamblin' man would have to have a better grasp of the odds than that.
OOC: As near as I can tell, per Msg. #268, above, it is mid-morning (10:30 to 11:00 a.m.), or thereaboutish. I have written Jake's post based on that assumption. I'll be happy to edit if that is not the case. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 02:50, Sun 11 Dec 2011.