Now, this story could easily be chalked up to first night nerves. Me, alone, on 5000 acres of country I had never seen, starting a job I’d never done before, in a place I’d never been. But know this, reader. I may not know what I saw, but I know what I feel when cold wind blows and ice creeps on frozen glass. I know that old adage that goes “it ain’t the cold that’ll kill ya, it’s when the chill gets in that’ll do it.” And I tell you this friend, on a cold winters night where even the moon stays away and the inky black is only broken by the white of that silent frozen earth, it’s not just the chill you need to keep out.
I arrived in Anderson, Montana on May 22nd, without much but what my Kia SUV could carry and an invitation from a guy named Ed for a ranch hand posting for the summer. About 15 miles outside of town I met Ed, a man tougher than old boot leather and twice as serious at a fishing pull-off of the Yellowstone River. From there we traced the 9-mile stretch of gravel track from the Highway 89 to the front gates of Jackson Basin Ranch, built into a narrow holler between two rocky hills above a 60-foot gully. It was snowing, not uncommon for this elevation but a total surprise to me, a kid from Virginia where winter decided it had had enough the moment March hit. It was light but steady, and as we trundled along between huge pasture and acres of sagebrush the gravel road below our tires got harder and harder to see. Eventually I was just filling in Ed’s Chevys tire tracks as we meandered through the thickening silent white.
After a time, we pulled into the small gravel drive for Atz’s Cabin, so named for the man the ranch was bought from, whose daddy and daddy’s daddy had been Montanan’s since before Montana was Montana. After settling my things and giving me the tour of the whopping 3 room building Ed turned to me with one final instruction. You see every window in cabin was missing something: curtains or blinds of any kind. Now, it gets right dark that far away from civilization and I didn’t reckon I’d be in the cabin much during the day where it would be a problem, but nonetheless Ed gestured to the small cord powered candles that were in each window, the kind of thing you see in a housewives New England home ‘round Christmas.
“Now, while there’s snow on the ground son make sure these stay lit in the windows at night, ya’hear?” Ed told me, in a voice like gravel under offroad tires. “Why’s that?” I asked. Ed, not used to being someone who has to explain himself, particularly to an outsider, hesitated. Despite his seriousness about his job, he had still had a twinkle in his eye, like underneath the tough iron and leather exterior he was a good-natured man, when we had first met that morning. That twinkle was gone in that moment.
A moment later he blinked: “Mountain Lions.” He said, shortly. “Keeps them away.” And with a look like the muzzle of a freshly fired 12 gauge prompted me to accept that’s all he wanted to share about that. I took him at his word, seemed like a reasonable worry out here, and we finished getting me settled. Ed took his leave from there, and he left me alone to the cold and the quiet.
Now it was getting to late afternoon already and I had brought some food up with me from town so there was no reason for me to leave, so I set to relaxing. The cabin was quaint, no bigger or smaller than I needed, with a kitchen/living room, upstairs loft where the beds were, and a small bathroom. An upper and lower porch gave views clear across the southern part of the ranch, not that there was all that to see. The snow was coming down harder now, and though the next week promised warmer weather to wipe it up quick, It still left a blanket on the trees and fields around me.
About an hour passed before the sun dipped below the Bridger Mountains to the west, and suddenly the small holler the cabin was fixed in got very dark, very quickly. The overcast sky kept none of the suns last whispers alive, so when it was gone there was nothing left but the silent paddings of falling snow and the inky black of a sky I couldn’t see. I set to switching the candles on like Ed had said, and one by one the windows of the cabin cast dull orange light on the snow directly outside. It was full dark out now, the kind of dark that you get lost in if you stare too long.
Flipping one of the candles in the kitchen on, I noticed in the pressed snow outside a depression, a break in the otherwise placid white. Looking closer through the dim light, it looked like… a footprint. No print from a cat or a heavy leather sole no this was… a bare footprint. Just one of them, just inside where the silent white and dull orange met. Suddenly, it was very cold. I turned around quickly, thinking it was just some foolishness in my head, and I headed up the stairs to light the candles in the bedroom. First, I turned on the ones by the porch, at the top of the stairs. Then I turned to my bed and the windows there.
In the blackness of the winter’s night, by the window above where my head was to lay that very night, was a shape. I could never have made it out but for two pinpricks vaguely lighting its silhouette, like fireflies, burning a small, dull red against the voided black of the snowy night. Quick as that, the pinpricks stayed for a moment before flashing away, so quick I wondered if I’d actually seen it. Carried by running feet I hadn’t told to go I grabbed for the candle and clicked it on, the dim light almost emanating its own warmth against the cold that had grabbed my spine. Then, there was a knock on the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Like the frozen night had forgotten this cabin had walls the very blood in my body froze stiff. A second later another knock rang through like the sharp bark of a good hound.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I crept to the stairs. I crept down to the kitchen. I crept, slow and tense to the cabin door. Every few steps this devils treble would ring out.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Whose there now! Ed?” I found myself shouting. It was deathly quiet, like the snow outside had gone and froze the world solid, sight and sound and light and warmth with it. The knocking stopped. Like my guest felt satisfied in summoning me. Waiting to be beckoned in, like something that needed to be. I stood, feet from the door. My heart was racing like a critters, but my breath was stuck so deep in my chest I dared not stir the silence with more of it. Then there I saw it, a tiny detail that may have been my salvation that night. There barely seen by the dull orange glow of the cabin lights was the light switch for the porch. I had missed those. Quick as I’ve ever been I stuck my hand out to flip the switch, and the sharp orange of the light flashed under the doorway.
The whole, frozen world continued to stand still. I took my second breath in twice as many minutes and called out again for my guest. My voice rang in my ears like the noise wasn’t welcome in the air around me. Another minute. More silence. Almost not thinking I reached for the door handle, some blood rushing back in to wash away that frigid fear. The door swung open, on its own in the cold air.
The snow had piled a good 4-5 inches on the balcony of the porch, but it being covered it hadn’t managed to pile up on the deck itself. Just a dusting of snow, like a Christmas cookie laid on those old deck boards, so thin you could almost make out the crystals in the ice. Except the two bare footprints right in front of my door. Ten toes in the snow not 12 inches from where the heavy wood door now swung lazily in the cold air. No steps to. No steps from. It wasn’t the cold that had got me now, and I don’t think what did was from the night air neither. A chill started creeping down my back like cold, cold water, locking me up and drawing my eyes to the inky dark beyond the dull glow of the porches light. Individual flakes of falling snow flashed in the light for a moment, then vanish in the dark. Dozens of them, like fireflies, or embers from a dying fire. Sometimes pairs of them would flash. Most of them were moving, lazily falling to the ground. But many of them were not. Arrayed just beyond the dim salvation coming from a simple 60-watt light bulb, dozens of pairs of ember-like pinpricks of light punctured the cold, dark air. Every one, it seemed, fixed on me.
Whenever people come across a bear or a moose or a coyote or some other critter wandering through their town you always get the ones up in arms about “what’s that doing here? This ain’t their home!” But I bet you a good bit if you could look into the mind of that animal you’d see “well hell this here’s always been my home, not my fault you moved into it.” I reckon that idea ain’t just the truth for critters or natives. This is old country, very old country, with very old things who were here first in it. And when the moon goes dark and the skies get quiet and a chill grips the earth like old iron, well maybe that’s just the time to pay the new neighbor a visit.