At about 4PM, Jesse decided it was time to go, so he locked up the cabin after he grabbed the cookie tin off of the table and his old denim jacket and his hat. A light rain pelted the soil on the walk down to the driveway and his pickup, and the smell of fir and rain and dirt melded into a waft of mountain verdancy. The cabin was old but it had been in the family for years, at one time his grandma and grandpa’s place before they moved into town to raise kids. His parent’s summered in it. When he was old enough, after his second year in the local college, he asked them if he could stay in it and use it full time. It was a place to live, but it was also 22 acres of good land for penning cattle, and it had a good sized garage he aimed at emptying and turning into a shop. His folks obliged their only boy.

He watched one of the eagles from nearby Blue’s Peak wheel a high arc over the valley below him, a thin black wisp against the gray bank of clouds, an adult coming from or going to work. Mouths to feed, I reckon, he thought.

He opened the passenger door on the ’74 Ford and placed the cookie tin on the floorboard, and then wrapped it with a green towel that was laying on the seat. His truck was clean and comfortable, like a second home, which it was when he went up in the back country to check on fences or to hunt, until a few days out mussed it up. He always cleaned it well when he came back home. He liked his stuff neat, as best as possible, when it wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do.

The air was brisk and cool, as it had been since he woke up that morning, and he had thought early, this is a ripe good day for cleaning things. when the clouds stayed high and heavy early afternoon, he knew it was the right time.

He closed the passenger side door and went around and hopped in behind the steering wheel and turned the key and the truck grumbled to life. He closed his door, looked up at the cabin, then at the sky, then at the mirror and the driveway behind him within it.

“Well, let’s get this over with” he spoke, and then he put the vehicle in gear and turned his truck around, circling through the patch of crushed clover to his right to point down toward the valley and State Road 7.

“Right, Ruby?”, he said to the can.