Page 5 of Challenged By the Mountain Man

Chapter 2 - Griffin

She doesn't leave.

I watch from the window as the sun comes up, coffee in hand, and there's still smoke rising from her chimney. Thin and inconsistent. She clearly doesn't know what she's doing with the fire, but it's there.

I lied about the bear.

There's no bear that comes through here. There used to be, years ago, but it moved on to better territory. I said it to scare her. To make her think twice about staying in a cabin with no power and a cracked window and god knows what else wrong with it.

I wanted her to leave.

She didn't.

Bear, my dog, huffs from his spot by the stove and looks at me like he knows exactly what I'm thinking.

"Don't start," I tell him.

He puts his head back down on his paws, but his eyes stay on me. Judging.

I drain the coffee and set the mug in the sink. The cabin is warm, the fire from last night still giving off heat. I built this place with my own hands eight years ago when I first came up here. Every log, every nail, every inch of it designed to keep the world out and me in.

For eight years, it worked.

Then someone rented the cabin half a mile down the road, and now there's a woman with docile eyes and a sharp mouth who looked at me yesterday like she was deciding whether I was a threat or just an asshole.

Probably landed on both.

I pull on my boots and my jacket. Bear gets up immediately, tail wagging, ready for the morning routine. We step outside into air so cold it stings, the kind of October morning that reminds you winter's coming whether you're ready or not.

The woods are still. Quiet. The way they're supposed to be.

I take the path that leads east, away from her cabin, deeper into the trees. Bear trots ahead, nose to the ground, doing his own form of patrol. This is what we do every morning: check the traps, survey the land, make sure nothing's changed that shouldn't have.

It's simple. Predictable.

I can handle predictable.

By the time we loop back an hour later, I've checked three traps: two empty, one with a rabbit I'll clean later, and confirmed that the woods are exactly as I left them yesterday.

Except they're not.

Because when I come up over the ridge that gives me a clear view of the access road, there's her car bumping its way down the mountain toward Wildwood.

She's going to town.

I watch until the car disappears around the bend, then I turn and head back to the cabin.

It's none of my business what she does.

None of my business if she stays or goes.

I've got work to do.

The rabbit takes twenty minutes to clean and another ten to hang. I've got a smoker out back that I built the second year I was here, and I prep it now, getting it ready for tomorrow. Waste nothing. Use everything. That's how you survive up here.

Bear watches me work, then wanders over to his water bowl and drinks noisily.

"You need something to do," I tell him.