After three weeks of nearly non-stop pacing by the colt, Tug finally decided maybe the best thing to do was to get the colt over to Jessie King and get him started on his training. Now that the youngster was feeling better, physically, Tug just assumed he was going a little stircrazy from being cooped up and not having anything to do, and getting him to a new place and new challenges might be just the thing to snap him out of his worry. After talking the idea over with Tom and Terri, Tom agreed with Tug’s assessment and made the call to Jessie to set up a day they could bring the colt over.

As it turned out, the day the colt was to be delivered was the same day Henry had put the finishing touches on the three-week project he had been involved in since his exhaustive night in the desert. As promised, Chad had saved the two-and-a-half miles of fencing that needed to get done in the back of the ranch property for Henry, and with his face having been so badly bruised and cut from the beating he took in the parking lot of the bar, nobody thought it prudent for the guests to see him for a while.

While Chad was hoping the fencing project, a demeaning job for someone with Henry’s skills, would be enough to get Henry to want to quit, for Henry the project had just the opposite effect. Getting out on his own and away from the ranch, people, and even more importantly, away from town where liquor was easily accessible, was just what he needed. In fact, while it would have been easy for Henry to make the four-mile ride from the fence he was working on back to the ranch at the end of every day, he chose to take a couple packhorses loaded with supplies, and he stayed by himself for the three weeks it took to repair the fence.

Admittedly, he wasn’t able to get much work done the first five days he was out. His body had to suffer the very painful, but necessary detoxification process it needed to go through to rid itself of the poisons Henry had been pumping into it for the past seventeen years. By the time he had ridden out to the fence the day after his time in the desert, his symptoms had already started.

Without having any alcohol to drink for nearly ten hours, his head began to ache and his stomach turned sour. A day after not drinking, he craved alcohol so badly he thought about trying to ride his horse all the way to town to get some. After two days of not drinking, hallucinations began to develop. They started innocently enough with him seeing rabbits and squirrels where there weren’t any. Over time they started turning more dramatic and frightening, with him seeing snakes, bears and at one point even a dragon. He also began hearing sounds that weren’t there and detecting odd smells, both of which he would spend hours during the day searching out the source he would never find. Three days after quitting, mild convulsions and seizures began to occur, along with migraine headaches, vomiting, and sweating while he was cold and shivering when he was hot. By the fourth day, Henry shook uncontrollably, and was unable to stand or even crawl because of it. He felt as though ants were crawling over his skin, he retched uncontrollably and his nose bled as if it had been broken. Finally, he lost control of all bodily functions and at one time even felt as though he was having a heart attack. But by day five, his body had once again begun to stabilize, and for the first time in years, he fell into a quiet and peaceful sleep that lasted nearly sixteen hours.