Page 41 of Famous for a Living

I yelp and leap toward him. “I thought they hibernated,” I say breathlessly, all but huddled at his feet.

Zaiah chuckles, a warm, breathy chuckle as he finishes zipping up the backpack and stands. I realize I’m standing far too close for medium-level acquaintances but can’t budge.

“Brumate, and yes. They bunker down during the coldest months. Slow, but not sleeping. A lot of times that means finding their way into cabins. Mice follow the food. Snakes follow the mice. Especially the ones with kitchens.”

“As in ours?” I say through a sharp intake of breath. That’s it. I’m never going to sleep again. “Those snakes do that in ours? And mice? And snakes?” I circle back to the most important point. “In ours?”

“Well, not typically a venomous one like what we’ve got here.” He taps the backpack on the floor with his boot. “Usually it’s just a bull snake or a gopher. But a prairie rattlesnake like this one? This is the biggest skin I’ve seen. Kevin’s going to be thrilled.” He looks down. “How are your feet?”

It’s hard to register his question, as the words keep replaying in my mind.

Venomous snakes.

Venomous snakes that are four feet long.

Venomous snakes that like to worm their way into my cabin while I sleep.

What did he say?

Right.

My boots. I look down. I momentarily forgot how numb I am. “Cold.”

For the next twenty minutes Zaiah stokes the wet firewood until it crackles, and all the while I stand behind him, rooted to the spot. I’m not sitting in this room. In fact, I’m not going to sit in any building in Montana ever again.

Eventually, Zaiah turns to me as though he can hear my thoughts. As if I might as well have declared aloud, “I was absolutely unaware of this snake situation, and from here on out, I’m not touching anything.”

There’s a flicker of a smile beneath the beard.

“Prairie rattlers don’t bother you unless you provoke them. So unless your name is Jax Lilly, you have nothing to worry about. Or, of course, unless they seek you out for body heat in the middle of the night.”

I think I just vomited a little in my throat.

With great effort I clear it and force myself to change the topic.

“So what’s the history with these cabins?” I lift my camera phone back up to resume picture taking. The angle is crap—I’m shooting too far away from the beds for anything decent—but there’s no way I’ll let myself be more than five inches away from Zaiah and his fire. “And where is the road?”

“There is no road. Cades Peak was built in 1946. They logged the trees on-site for building. Hikers start at the base of the mountain. It’s Cades Peak Trail, 14.2 miles to this top. Where we started from the office was the shortcut. Just a little over two miles.”

Two? It felt like twenty.

No road.

No trucks. So he wasn’t intentionally trying to make my life miserable after all.

“So people hike up here? To spend the night?” I couldn’t help it. Maybe it’s the smell of dark, rotting wood, or the chicken wire over the window making the place feel like a prison, or, who can forget, the killer rattler likely coiled up somewhere in this room, but there’s a tiny bit of a “But why?” in my tone.

Ripples form on Zaiah’s forehead. He turns back toward the fire and throws a log in. A moment later he lifts his gaze to a crude wooden plaque above the door, featuring the words:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more . . .