The Mountain Man: Sample Read, Adam Lewis LaValley [free romance novels TXT] 📗

I believe we are on the right path. Just beyond this path is a road that will lead us to town.” He took a deep breath – frozen air streaming out of his nose and mouth. “Whew! Going to be nice to relax inside a nice, warm house. Can get you fixed up as well. Hopefully you will not lose that leg.”
A groan emanated from Washer as the two continued the final trek. His leg pained him, but all would soon be well. Wafting smoke from chimneys greeted and welcomed them – along with the delicious smell of cooking meats, bustling noise of the streets, and the fervor of laughing children. Thomas did not spend much time in these parts; but when he did, he always felt warmness spread through his heart.

Chapter 5

Three days later

“I am sorry Thomas…it seems our business is being run down. It is good to have you back, and I am more than immensely satisfied to see you well…My heart beats for joy at your return. But there is nothing more to do. Not even the furs you have now will compensate for all this company has now lost. However…you have worked hard…” The balding man looked away, off into some distance – an unparalleled distraught emotion wafting through his entire body. He dug his hands deep into his pockets to uncover a measly amount of money. Ten grime-covered coins were all that lay in one hand. It was not even enough to afford food for a week.
Thomas stared numbly at the currency, too dumbstruck to even utter a response. It was an anomaly. And so, the mountain had finally crumbled – victim to years of constant battering and implosion; forced to break apart and never form anew.
“If there is anything I can do–” he said startlingly, his face lit up like an injured animal – “I mean this is a job I need, sir. There is no question about it! How will I make my year’s earnings? This…this money will not be enough! This is insanity. Even the Rendezvous will not be for months, and it cannot be expected that I will be able to survive on the little food I already have!”
The balding man clasped his hands behind his back and sighed. He closed his eyes, depressed and suddenly alone in this his last days of business. His opportunity for making a grand wealth for his future children was over.
“What of the others?” Thomas demanded in a desperate tone. Anger suddenly seethed through him; thick grey smoke might as well have wiggled from his ears and escaped through the cracks in the ceiling. When his boss did not respond, the mountain man snapped like a log. “Well, I have to say: this is going to destroy me definitely, Mr. Burris. This business has supplied me with all I needed to get through the days and months; and with no family I am now a poor, distant man.”
“I am sorry…Thomas, you have served us well for all these years. If you are a man of opportu-nity, then I know you will find some way to compen-sate. I wish you good luck in life, and…may God bless us all.”
The mountain man grunted, terribly annoyed, and started to take his leave; he grimaced then, as if struck palpably by this comment. “Mr. Burris, if it is all the same to you…we may need more than just God’s will in this.” With that, he burst out the wooden doorway and set off to think alone, fumigating over such a simplistic, irrelevant event that made a total turn in his living. His life was literally over. How could it come to be this way? Well, he thought affectionately to himself, this is what happens to us frontiersmen; thrown away and never to be used again, similarly to the stagnant waste that littered the sides of the streets.
Townsfolk scuttled by, assuming their everyday business. Men stretched themselves to their fullest heights and bore canes in their glove-gnarled hands. Light-rimmed beaver head-ware stole the fashion of all other appearances, meant only for the most abundant and intrusive entrepreneurs; aristocrats that thought themselves better and more qualified than the everyday workingman. A few eyed the mountain man with a snot-nosed configuration, as if he were the lowest of the low.
The lowest of the low? And who, in their right’s mind, would forget how the damned fur hats they wore were obtained? Pelts did not grow on trees. They were caught manually with dangerous traps that had to be checked constantly. Never before did he get this kind of attention. He felt as if the whole world was now against him.
He returned to his small cottage on the outside of town, which lay next to a withering pond that captured the beauty of all surroundings; the home was a meager, lopsided cabin with three moderate windows and a crude door. The roof was peaked, though the area would not catch much rain. Luckily, it was all surrounded by hulking trees; otherwise, he would be the scorn of log construction.
It was not an enduring distance to walk; but this day, he felt as though it was as long and hard as his journey home from trapping and trading.
“Rien comme à la maison,” he muttered in his best French accent, entering the building with a gloomy mind and heart. Not even the morning mist and smell of wood calmed his mood…and usually, at times, he found it to be the best medicine. Instead, mustiness surrounded his beloved settlement, poisoning his soul.
“How is the leg?” he asked, not facing the fig-ure lying on the bed set across the side of the blocky room. With the flick of a wrist, flames appeared and enveloped the logs enclosed in the space of the fireplace. He then set off to create a cup of coffee.
A quick, expected groan shot out, and then the soft voice replied: “Better. Not good enough yet, but I am healing. The doctor saw me just hours ago, while you were doing activities in town.” He smirked painfully. “Says I might be able to keep my leg, as long as it stays clean and I do not move from bed.”
Thomas nodded quietly.
“You know,” the Englishman conveyed de-lightedly, leaning up from his position but still careful so as to not disrupt his wound, “I never thanked you for helping me out there. If not for you…I would have died in that frozen tundra, or else wandered for days-on-end on this bloody, blasted leg!”
The mountain man glanced back at him. “I did not find you. You found me.” Admiration and relief swept through him as he realized that this man would make it through. But he did not show it as an obscuring cloud of despair stormed upon him. I need money, he thought. And I need it fast.
“Mmm…coffee. Mind if I have a jolly cup?”
Once heated to a good level, his savior and host poured a steaming cup and handed it to him, warning that it was hot and to spill it would mean certain unbearable affliction, irritation, and torment. Lawrence responded with a rough chuckle and took a light sip. A literal bitter sweet joy could have been the only response.
Thomas, subsequently tired, leaned against a wall and held his hands out against the fire’s calefaction barrier. Maybe he could start a company of his own – trap all year and sell the furs as his own product. First things first, he would need food for many trips. Of course, he would also need a craftsman to make the extensive hats and clothing for him, and that would cost more than he had. Also, he would need…
“Hmm. You know, I am thinking about moving West. There is not much left for me to do here, in this rugged territory. The competition is going about highly, and there is no doubt a new man can no longer contend in such a fiery environment.” Lawrence sighed and gently lowered his cup. “It will go practically hard for me, now that I have no career and…do not know what else to do. Hopefully, I can settle down later in life.” He twisted the cup, observing its frame and design, increasingly wiry and needlessly trying to find something to converse. “Bloody hell.”
“You and I both,” Thomas muttered.
Lawrence’s expression changed from a childish, insistent lad to a deeply inquiring investigator; his groomed moustache made him look all the more inspiring: long, slender vines that reached for his thin lips. “Something has been edging at my side since the day I came upon you. If you do not mind, may I ask…?”
He raised his drink. “Go right ahead.”
“What is it like…living the life of a mountain man?”
A deep question – something the frontiersman had been asked thousands of times before. He did not like to answer it. So instead of a lengthy, intimate story or description, he replied briskly with the word he knew these types of people would understand:
“Hard.”
The Englishman shrugged: an agreeing motion. “I suppose you have met difficult times as well.”
Yes, he had. But he did not wish to explain it. He knew the young man could already detect the urgency in his mood; his immediate, dire search for a method. This man was a merchant, and…
Thomas set his coffee on a table, drew a pipe, and lit some fresh tobacco. A small wispy smoke ascended. Dumb luck and slow mind: He was a merchant

, and Thomas was blind to this the whole time.
The mountain man raised an intentional, innovative finger; an idea suddenly came to mind. It might seem absurd, stupid, and unethical at the moment…but this seemed like the perfect time to do such.
“Do not mean to sound desperate…but would you be able to do an old mountain man a favor? You are right. I have met hard times…But I have an idea that might be able to help us both.”

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