Asking Cooter about anything that the old man wasn’t ready to talk about was an exercise in futility. Still, Kre made the attempts every now and again if just to see if the older man would let something slip about his life before ranching.
Stepping up to the gate, Kre tripped the latch and heard the familiar ring of a bell from near the front door. The door opened as Kre approached and Kre stamped the dirt from his boots before stepping inside. “Evening Mr. Cootsman,” Kre called out to the seemingly empty house.
“I keep on telling you lad,” came a gruff and weary voice, “call me Terry.” Terry Cootsman was a large man, both in height and in width. “If you have to, you can even use that asinine nickname that those people use.” He waved a hand that was holding a glass filled with an amber liquid in the vague direction of the town.
“I… uh… nickname?”
“Lad,” Terry sighed, “you lie as well as you play Tehynji. Speaking of which.” He set a pair of drinks down on a table alongside the rolled-up piece of leather that held the contents of the game and then sat down in the chair closest to the fire and waved for Kre to sit as well. Kre’s drink was likely fresh apple juice in a poorly shaped clay mug, while Cooter always drank something far stronger from a proper glass.
After taking his seat, Kre unraveled the leather game board and slid the newly revealed stone pieces to their respective sides. There was no color to differentiate the pieces, just an understanding that each player got an equal number of each type of piece. There wasn’t a specific spot on the leather map for the pieces either, each player was free to place the various pieces anywhere in their quarter of the map.
Once the pieces had been doled out, Kre set to shuffling the small square cards while Cooter sipped at his drink. Six cards went to each player to start and the remainder were set to one side. “Your choice,” Cooter offered to Kre. He always gave free the opportunity to decide whether to place the first piece or not. Though the first player to place a piece was also able to redraw any one of their cards, as a way of compensating them for making the first placement, Kre never found it to be any more advantageous in his games against Cooter.
“Go ahead,” Kre sighed, mentally preparing himself for the impending loss. Cooter wasted no time and set his first piece down on the board, face down. He slid a card underneath it and drew a new one to replace it. They alternated in this way for about five minutes, with Cooter confidently placing each piece and each card without hesitation while Kre took slightly longer for each placement. Cooter opted to trade a card at the very end of the placement phase and the game began.
As they shuffled the pieces back and forth, sometimes flipping tiles and revealing and replacing cards when two pieces came into conflict, Cooter asked Kre about the next week’s worth of work to be done at the Nevynar ranch.