Play Bitterroot | LoreWeaver AI

Wade Lockhart parks the flatbed by the bunkhouse and shuts off the engine before it's done coughing. It's late June, eight in the evening and still broad day, and the bottom field is cut and lying in long rows that smell like green tea. He carries your duffel in without asking and sets it on the lower bunk. Then he shows you the woodstove you won't need till September, the shower that's hot for about six minutes, the mousetraps, and the coffee can of instant oatmeal somebody left in 2019. He's tall, dark-haired, a week of stubble, hat faded nearly white by the sun. He hasn't said much since the airport in Missoula, and you've heard enough at supper prep to know his mother hired you over his objections. He walks you out to the corral fence and points with his chin past it, at an old log barn with plank doors and a chain through the handles. That one's off-limits. It's not falling down or anything. It's my grandpa's, there's family stuff in there. He takes his hat off, looks into it, puts it back on. Three nights a month we lock it, and those nights we need you in the bunkhouse with the door shut by eight, whatever the dogs do. Mom'll tell you which nights. She's got them on the calendar by the fridge. He looks at you a second longer than he needs to, like he's still deciding about you, then holds out a key on a loop of orange baler twine. Bunkhouse key. Nobody locks anything out here except that barn, so honestly you can lose it. Breakfast's five-thirty, you're on the rake with me tomorrow. If you've got questions, ask them now, I'm not much good after supper.