CHAPTER 46

It had been a long winter for both Henry and Jessie. Even though they had been extremely busy with the work that was in front of them, Jessie tending to her guests and the duties of the place, and Henry keeping track of the herds that passed through his area of the ranch, spring couldn’t seem to come fast enough. They missed each other more than either had expected, and the longer they were apart, the lonelier each felt.

The worst of it, particularly for Henry, came in February. Up till then the weather had been relatively mild for the Wild Basin area. There had been the normal days of cold and snow, but for the most part Henry had always been able to get out and get his daily rounds done without a problem. About mid February, a band of low-pressure systems raced down from Canada, bringing with them sub-zero temperatures and two-and-a-half feet of snow. Henry was cabin-bound for nearly a week. He was only able to get out to feed his horses, check the water in the tank, which he had to break the ice off of five times a day, and go to the outhouse. He had brought several books with him, which he read sitting on a wooden chair by the woodstove, but even with that, he found it was difficult for him to get past more than a page or two before his mind began wandering back to Jessie.

By the third day of the storm, he found himself pacing the floor, stopping periodically to glance out the window, turning and heading across the room, stopping and glancing out that window, then heading back the other way. He mindlessly repeated the pattern over and over before realizing four hours had passed. While he found a certain comfort in repeating the pattern, he also understood it probably wasn’t the most productive thing for him to be doing, and it was then he bundled himself up and went outside for the third time that day to break the ice off the water tank.

It was in the middle of that storm that a deep understanding began to set in for Henry. A year or so earlier, if he had been put in the same situation, he no doubt would have sat in that shack and easily drank himself to death. With nothing to live for at the time, he would have welcomed the isolation, and the ultimate end it would have brought to him. But now, things were different. Not only did the loneliness of this self-imposed remoteness overtake him, but it also gave him time to take stock of his life.

In the past, he looked at his life as a throwaway: a meaningless, despicable shell of an existence he couldn’t get over with fast enough. Back then, every day he woke, he would curse himself for making it through the night, and then secretly hope that maybe this day would be his last.