The Brothers Culver, Part I

Fielding Culver stepped off the west-bound train, and gazed up on the towering Front Range, it was a cool morn, eighteen sixty-nine, he’d been sent out west, his brother to find. He set up in a hotel in Green Springs, put away all his travel gear and things, then went down to a saloon to ask around, his brother Ethan was well known, he found. A rancher by the name of Spencer Glynn said he’d seen Ethan up in the peaks hunting, gave Fielding directions to his last place, fFelding thanked the man and set on his way. He followed a small, rock-choked canyon stream, the walls and scraggle-pines right out of a dream, at the end rose up a tall, foreboding peak, the was the one of which Spencer did speak. He rode up through thin forest and parkland, about half way up vast mountain meadow spanned, carefully he picked his way through large stone, up here he wasn’t that sure which way to go. A rifle shot then rang out from the west, he turned his horse that way, and his heals pressed. As he went a herd of elk came scrambling, Fielding turned away, and watched them passing. Continuing on his way he soon found a dead elk lying flat on rocky ground, besides him, at work with the butchering, Fielding saw his brother, dressed in buckskins. Ethan glanced up, gawked at him in surprise, Fielding had never before seen wider eyes, said Ethan,”Of all things I thought I’d see, I did not expect you looking down on me!” Fielding said simply,”I need to talk to you.” said Ethan,”Get down first, we’ve got work to do.” As Fielding climber down to the still-warm kill, Ethan said,”Go on then, say our father’s fill.” Fielding frowned. “He sent me to bring you home. Age is catching up, he can’t do it on is own. He has a job waiting for when you come, he’s leaving the whole bank to his three sons.” Said Ethan,”Henry can run dad’s concerns, there is no real need for me to return, Besides, old Chicago smells rather rank, and I’d go mad working inside a bank.” With that Ethan spoke of the issue no more, regardless of how much Fielding implored, until he said,”Is this to be our end? This wayward path you’ll continue to wend?” Ethan smiled,”No, we have much to do. We have to move this elk, there’s plenty for two! Between our horses we’ll carry much meat, let me get my roan, and a path we’ll beat.” And so the two rode back down through the woods, out of the canyon, to rangeland quite good, to a cabin built by the Rockies edge, where Ethan prepared his brother a bed. CONCLUDES IN II.