Page 2 of Challenged By the Mountain Man

Half a mile.

I can see thin and gray smoke rising through the trees in that direction, from a chimney probably.

Someone's home.

I hesitate for maybe ten seconds, weighing my options. I can sit here and wait for the property owner to call me back, if they call me back, or I can walk up the road and ask the neighbor if they know what's going on.

I grab my jacket from the car, lock the cabin out of sheer habit even though there's nothing inside worth stealing, and start walking.

The road is barely a road. It's more like a suggestion of where vehicles might go if they're brave enough. Gravel and dirt, rutted from rain and use, winding up through pines that block out half the sky.

It's quiet up here. Not the kind of quiet I'm used to in town, where there's always a car in the distance or someone's TV bleeding through an apartment wall. This is real quiet. The kind that makes you aware of your own breathing.

I haven't been this alone in weeks.

It should feel good.

It doesn't.

I keep walking.

The trees start to thin, and then I see it: a cabin, much sturdier than mine, with smoke curling from a stone chimney. There's a small garden plot to one side, a shed that looks hand-built, a truck parked near the porch that's seen some years but is clearly still running. Solar panels line the roof, and there's a neatness to the whole place that suggests someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm halfway across the clearing when the door opens.

A man steps out onto the porch.

A massive man.

He's tall, taller than anyone I've seen in recent memory, and broad in a way that makes the doorway behind him look like it was built too small. Dark beard, thick and slightly unkempt. A flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing forearms that look like they've done actual labor. His face is weathered, and there's a scar running down one side of his neck that disappears under his collar.

His eyes are blue. Pale, ice-blue, and currently locked on me with an expression that can only be described as deeply unimpressed.

"You're the neighbor," I say.

It's not a question.

"You're the tourist," he says.

It's definitely an insult.

We stare at each other.

He doesn't move from the porch. I don't move from where I stopped, about ten feet away. There's a dog behind him now: huge, shaggy, with the kind of face that would be friendly if the man holding the door wasn't radiating *go away* like it's a superpower.

"I'm renting the cabin down the road," I say, keeping my voice even. "The one that apparently doesn't have electricity despite the listing claiming it does."

"Not my problem."

"I didn't say it was."

"Then why are you here?"

I cross my arms. "Because the property owner isn't answering, and I thought maybe the neighbor…" I let the word hang there, pointed. "might know if there's a trick to getting the power working. Or if there's a breaker somewhere. Or literally anything useful."

He leans one shoulder against the doorframe, and the movement is so casual it's almost insulting. "There's no trick. There's no power."

"The listing—"