Cold Prairie

 

Lingering tendrils of smoke drifted up towards the cold morning sky. Gerald sleepily shivered and pulled his thin blanket up to his chin. He yawned. A thick cloud of dragon’s breath rose. He smacked his lips and rolled onto his right side. The prairie was cold, desolate in the new morning light. The grass covered in slightly frozen dew. It was soundless. 

Gerald rubbed his arms under the blanket but couldn’t get any warmer. He sat up on his bed roll and cursed the chill. He tossed the blanket back and he stood up. Bones cracking as he straightened himself out. He squinted at the rising sunlight as it broke through the gray morning. He rubbed the cold sleep from his eyes. He yawned again. Passed gas. Which startled his horse. 

“Sorry about that,” said Gerald, as he scratched at his scruffy chin. 

His horse nodded and neighed, clomped at the hard prairie. 

“I gotta get this fire going again,” said Gerald. 

He was able to find some small twigs and sticks but nothing significant to really get the fire going. He still had some wood from the old wagon he’d abandoned some ways back. He hadn’t wanted to use all that wood but it was too cold to be conservative. He’d been using the wagon planks as a makeshift bed, or at least something to lay on that wasn’t dirt or rocks. He pulled up his bed roll and broke the plank in two. He tossed them onto the dying embers of the small fire. 

Shortly a flame rose and Gerald held his hands over it. He rubbed them together and wondered if he’d ever get to have a cup of coffee again. He’d used the last of it two days ago. He shook his head and was ashamed at how he’d let this whole trip get so out of hand. From the gun fight in St. Louis, to the bandits, to the death of his traveling partner, his loss of the wagon, everything had gone so wrong. Now, he was in the middle of the prairie, freezing to death. 

His horse clomped at the ground again, looking for some morning feed. 

“Sorry old girl, I don’t have anything for you this morning. I hardly have anything for myself,” said Gerald. 

The horse lowered her head and snorted. 

The frigid wind whipped across the prairie, flickering the small flames into nearly extinguishing. Gerald poked at the burning boards with the toe of his boot. He could barely feel his toes inside. 

A few birds darted across the sky, high above Gerald. He was surprised to see any birds at this time of year. They circled and dove over his head, apparently searching for prey somewhere on the ground, somewhere in the vastness of the endless nothing that the prairie is. 

Gerald tucked his hands under his armpits and shuffled back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to stay warm and get some blood flowing. He knew he couldn’t last out here for long. It was a long ride back without proper winter clothes and provisions.  He didn’t want to die.  And yet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live either. His traveling companion of all these years, John Roberts, who died at the hands of those vicious bandits; his wife back home would be inconsolable. Gerald wasn’t sure he was brave enough to face her and tell sweet Mary that her husband was dead and buried in a shallow grave near some small town, too small to even have a name. He didn’t want to think about her face, scowling at him, for taking her husband away from her on some fool adventure. Gerald knew it was all part of the risk in the cartage business, but he’d never had to confront it himself, until now. 

The horse clomped again, impatiently. Knowing that it was time to get a move on. The sun was rising fast and daylight was wasting. 

“Just a little longer horse,” said Gerald, “Just a little longer to let the fire die down.” 

Gerald stood over the fire. He looked out over the ground, staring out into the morning.

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