Wild-Wild-West

The young man paused for a minute, looking up at the sky.  It was lead gray and gave off little light and promised even more snow.  It was a lonely looking place where they were wintered, the small wooden-walled enclosure they called a fort standing alone, and beyond it, gray shrouded mountains barely visible in the distance because of the weather, a line of  cottonwoods reaching up their naked arms down by the river, and not much else. Everything else was blanketed in snow. Except for the fort and its cabin and  outbuildings, there was no other sign of mankind; even the tracks around the cabin, outside