Still, Henry liked the big red horse, and it was him that Henry chose, along with the dun gelding Dave had been beating, to take to the line shack at the far eastern end of the ranch where Henry would be spending most of the next six months. Working the “line” on a ranch in the winter has traditionally always been a very solitary job. In the late 1800’s, there had been a boom of gigantic cattle ranches that had sprung up all over the west and southwest. Millionaires from back east or overseas often owned these outfits, and the ranch held millions of cattle on hundreds of thousands of acres. Because these ranches were so vast, outposts, or line shacks, had been built at the farthest reaches of the ranch property, at sometimes anywhere from twenty- to one-hundred-mile increments and usually one, sometimes two, cowboys would be stationed in each one to keep watch on the fence lines, the ranch’s livestock and also to watch for rustlers or predators. While many men thrived on the solitude living in a line shack provided, many more ended up going crazy, some even to the point of committing suicide.

The line shack on the eastern edge of Sam Mitchell’s property was indeed solitary, but it also wasn’t too far from the main ranch. By horseback, leading a pack string and an extra horse, which is how Henry got there, it was a nine-hour ride. By truck, it only took three hours. The shack itself had electricity—sometimes—and running water in the form of a hand pump by the sink. Filling a metal bucket and placing it on the woodstove in the middle of the one room shack would produce the hot water needed to wash either clothes or himself. Henry also had a two-way radio in which he could contact the ranch in case of an emergency, or in case they needed to contact him, as well as a weather radio—both of which ran on batteries.

The original road that led to the shack would have cut four hours off the ride to get there. Unfortunately, the hundred-year-old bridge of rough-hewn lumber that crossed the twelve-foot-wide, steep-banked creek at the half-way point between the ranch and the shack had been washed away during the massive rainstorm two summers earlier. It had yet to be replaced, and as a result, both Henry, as well as the truck that delivered the hay and grain for his horses for the winter, needed to take a five-mile detour to the south where the next closest bridge was.

Henry had packed enough supplies to last a minimum of thirty days. Someone from the ranch would head out to the shack to resupply him at the end of every month. If the weather was fair, and they had a little down time back at the home place, one of the cowboys would bring a pack string out with the supplies he needed. If the weather wasn’t fair, or everyone was too busy, the supplies would be brought to him by truck. Either way, he would never go more than thirty days without fresh stocks.