The Lady Bounty Hunter

Jennie tried the door.  It opened easily without a sound.  She looked around the room  slowly.  No one in there.

The cabin had a dirt and big flat rock floor, the back wall was covered with different kinds of skins.  The strange thing was there were tracks on the floor that looked like a burro had walked from the buffalo skin on the back wall straight out the door.  Someone had tried to dust them out, but you could still faintly see them.  Jennie moved further into the cabin moving lightly as possible trying not to make a sound. She eased the buffalo skin to the side to find that the cabin was built in front of a cave.

A short tunnel led into a big room with another tunnel going on into the mountain.  Hay and grain filled a portion of the big room.

Jennie decided the place was too well kept to be an outlaw hideout.  They wouldn’t keep it this clean, or try to brush out the tracks on the floor.  Outlaws and renegades just weren’t neat housekeepers.

Jennie went out and got her horses to put them inside the cave.  Being Indian ponies they had never been inside a building before, and they didn''t like going in the cabin door.  After some work, she finally succeeded.  She looked around the cabin and found that there wasn''t much food left there.  Whoever had been here must have gone for more food, or they weren''t coming back.  Jennie hoped they weren''t coming back.  Not soon anyway.  She had about decided to eat what there was and go hunting for meat in the morning, but she found some more supplies in the cave.

***

She kept her rifle handy all the time she was fixing something to eat.  She had finished eating and was cleaning the table, when a voice from behind her said, "Well, hello there.”

She hadn''t even heard the door open.  Grabbing her rifle, Jennie spun to one side and dropped on one knee.  She brought the gun to firing position and had the trigger half way back.

"Ho!  Little lady,” shouted the big man standing in the door, “I mean you no harm.  But I live here."

Not saying anything and without changing positions, Jennie looked him over cautiously.  Even though he lived out here in the mountains, he didn’t look like a hunter or trapper.  Jennie had seen and smelled some of the trappers that had come to trade with the Indians back in camp, and this one was clean and had a beard that was neatly trimmed. He wasn’t a drinking man because his eyes were clear and gray and looked as if they never missed anything.  He carried a rifle but no side arms, but just because he carried a rifle didn’t make him a bad man.  Everyone out here had to have some kind of protection or they would soon be dead.  He just didn’t look like and outlaw.  Jennie didn’t know why, but she decided to trust him.

He was probably about the same age as her father, or the age he would be if her father was still alive.  This brought a lump to her throat as she thought back.  It had been about three years since her parents had been killed.  It seemed like a long time, but she still had nightmares about it.

The man in the doorway went on talking slowly.  He set his rifle against the wall and backed away from it.  "I can see where a pretty young lady like yourself might be a little nervous out in these hills all alone.  Which brings up a couple more questions.  Like, where in the heck did you come from and how did you get here ?  I know we don’t normally ask another rider questions like that, but you’ll have to admit, you aren’t the normal rider I see pass by here.  But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.  It could be none of my business.”