The room they entered was obviously the most-used space in the house, a combination living room and family room. A large stone fireplace, with a pile of split oak logs laid ready for a fire behind the mesh fire screen, showed by smoke-blackened traces on the thick oak mantel above that it was not just ornamental. The only object on the mantel was a framed photo of a good-looking couple on their wedding day, both wearing wide smiles, and Laura guessed correctly that these were Monty's parents, killed in that tragic accident years ago. She could see where Monty's good looks came from, and she felt a pang of sorrow for his loss.
Above the fireplace was a gun rack with several spaces, but only one gun hung there. To each side of that were mounted heads, a buck deer with a huge rack of antlers, and a massive wild boar with mouth menacingly open and long, razor-sharp tusks curling from both upper and lower jaws. Laura guessed, from the quality of furnishings in the room, that those trophies were the contributions of the men folk, while the rest had been selected by Monty's mother. The furniture was Western-style, inviting one to sink into the leather sofa and armchairs, both dark brown on the rear but well-worn to a light tan on the seats and back. A coffee table of pine, stained a medium brown, was large enough to serve both armchairs and the long sofa. It, too looked inviting, and gave the impression that the host wouldn't really mind if someone, relaxing after a hard day's work, rested his or her cowboy boots on that table. A half-dozen magazines were loosely stacked in the middle of the table. As Laura passed the table, she glanced at the titles of the magazines she was able to see, and was surprised at the range of subjects. But she knew instinctively that these magazines were actually read by Monty, not solely placed there to impress, like those in some of her friends' houses. This was one more thing that confirmed her opinion of this man she'd met by mere chance of seat assignments at the Cow Palace. He was unlike any preconceived notion of what a cowboy was like, and unlike the men she was familiar with back home.
As they moved through the house, Ranny herding them along, Laura could see that their captor was not impressed by the house. Laura, on the other hand, spent some of her leisure time perusing magazines devoted to interior design, and had admired some of the featured houses with a Western theme: log houses in Aspen, several houses in Montana owned by movie stars, and the like. She appreciated the way this house had been decorated and the furniture selected, but she also sensed that it was Monty's mother who had been responsible, and that not much had changed since her death. The house had a definite feeling of being one inhabited by a single man, without a woman's touch.