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I had to hand dig my way through six-foot drifts down to the shop to get out my tractor so I could clear the ranch road yesterday-then I had to do it again today. I've got one of those old 8N tractors from 1948 when they thought that a front dump able to hold twice as much as a handheld snow shovel was quite the achievement.

I'd like to talk to those guys.

I struggled up to the house and collapsed on the porch, my furry Russian hat pushing down over my eyes in a dramatic interpretation of 'portrait of the artist as dead rancher'. My wife came out and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee, and I replied that I preferred to die de-caffeinated.

It's been a long winter, and to use the terms of the local paper The Buffalo Bulletin, the current storm "all but shut down the town and made life miserable for everyone". My romance with the American West, and life in general was creeping toward ebb. I stumbled in the house, tacking against the wind, peeled off my Carhartt, my wool muffler, my Sorels, and slumped down in front of the computer to answer emails.

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All right, it's true. I'm starting The Dark Horse (release date, May 28) tour in France this year with a trip to Paris and then to the literary soiree in Saint-Malo, a walled city in Brittany on the edge of the English Channel. The French edition of The Cold Dish, published by Oliver Gallmeister of Editions Gallmeister, will have its debut, and I figure this trip to Europe might be a little better than my last one.

One of the most embarrassing moments in my life actually took place in France-- Chamonix, to be exact. I was climbing a handful of mountains in Switzerland, Italy, and France on a bottle of wine and four baloney sandwiches a day. I was sitting in a sunny little café with my future wife (although we were not engaged at the time) and a climbing buddy, when I spotted a startlingly beautiful young woman walking down the sidewalk. I gave her a glance. Keep in mind I was young and single at this time. I swilled a gulp of wine and gave her another glance. She approached the table, stopped, and placed a perfectly formed elbow on the railing separating us, looked me in the eye from very close proximity, and spoke in a sultry voice, "Bonjour."

I'm not really sure what happened at that point, because my Scotch-Irish brain blew a number of breakers. Judy tells me I turned a bright shade of crimson and sputtered a few words of a language neither French nor English. The young woman, surmising that I was an idiot, stood and walked on.

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In my attempts to keep you abreast of the latest developments in forensic history, or in the re-telling thereof, it would appear that even if George Armstrong Custer had ridden into the valley of the Little Big Horn with a million troopers, they would've still fallen to defeat at the hands of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors who had been bathed in 'an invisible ray' that rendered each of them impervious to Misters Remington and Colt.

No, really.

According to Weekly World News the self-appointed 'World's Only Reliable News', and Dr. Angela Day Brewer, these protective rays left 'mysterious ultraviolet scars' in the earth of the famed 1876 battle. "These scars can only be seen through special infrared scopes." Or if you spend a few hours up at the Parkman Bar with a couple of my Cheyenne and Crow buddies getting your beer-goggles on.

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A note from Craig Johnson:

All right, so I got enough responses not only to this year's short story but also to the intro, in which I mentioned the skunks, that I'm relaying that story as a New Year bonus. There seemed to be an unkindly curiosity, and I'm beginning to wonder about my readership and what Abraham Lincoln referred to as ‘the kinder angels of our natures' . . . .

Bonus Story:

 I was getting grain out of the bins in my tack shed just last week when I discerned a familiar noxious smell wafting up from under the floor. Never having dealt with skunks before, I called up game and fish and asked the nice lady on the phone what, other than a double-ought dose of lead, my options were. "We've got a trap we can loan you."

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Read a short story by Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire mysteries:

Another Man's Moccasins	Kindness Goes Unpunished	Death without Company	The Cold Dish

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First of all, let me apologize for taking up all of your inboxes with Post-its this month (and last month, too), but I wanted to let those of you who live in the Northwest know where I'll be--this is the last of the in between ones, I promise...back on schedule in August. . .

I'm taking my motorcycle (since it gets about 103 miles-to-the-gallon) through the great northwest on the last part of my book tour.

My fascination with all things two-wheeled began when my father brought home an old Indian Scout motorcycle which was distributed in fourteen peach baskets. He set about putting it all back together while my brother and I watched. We knew better than to ask how it had come apart, especially in front of our mother. I remember how we all stood on the safety of the porch in anticipation as Dad fired her up with one heroic kick, and then how we watched in horror as it took him up the hillside behind our house and into a grove of saplings and weeds that forever after became known as the crash-pad.

Later, after adjusting the clutch and tempering a sticky carburetor linkage, the old man persuaded Mom to get on the back for a ride, but later that morning he returned at full throttle into the crash-pad without her. Without comment, he left the Indian laying on the hill, smoldering, and departed in the trusty Dodge. An hour later he returned with my mother, who was also not in a talkative mood. Evidently, the Indian had broken down and my mother had had to push-start my father who couldn't stop and had turned around at speed to yell that he'd be back later to pick her up.

That was not a happy day.

I don't think my wife would've gone for it, either.

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We used to have a Fourth of July baseball game at the ranch, before Viking/Penguin started touring me in June. We played hardball in the pasture behind our house, and I covered the windows and skylights with wooden shutters to protect the glass from the many wayward foul balls. We finally had to shut the game down, but by the time we did, we were averaging a crowd of more than 150 people. Everybody played-from seven to seventy-and there was an unstated agreement between the catchers that we would drop the third strike on every child under thirteen, so it took about an hour to bat around the line-up.

Most of us played in our cowboy hats and boots, and we sported shorts and legs that hadn't seen the light of day since Casey Tibbs had been a toddler. During one game, when I was catching and had Buck Brannaman at the plate I signaled the twenty-year-old American Legion pitcher we had on the mound for a fastball-Buck is the original Horse Whisperer and a natural athlete, so I thought he could take the heat. The pitcher looked in at my one extended finger; the first time I'd given the sign all day. The kid shrugged, pulled one from way back in the wheel house, and unloaded. Fortunately, I had the glove in the right spot, because there wasn't much time to move. I figure it was in the low nineties. Buck, who hadn't moved the bat from his shoulder, turned to look down at me and ask, "What the hell was that?"