But then he met Jessie and all that began to change. She had somehow brought him back from the brink, having done nothing more than being herself. She had been loving, kind and supportive, and had shown him that there was much more to life than climbing in and out of a bottle everyday. It was being around her that had shown Henry that his life was not a throwaway, and that in many ways, it was only just beginning. Henry could see very clearly now that the man who would have drank himself to death only a year ago no longer existed. Sitting in that shack under what seemed like a mountain of snow, a very different Henry was emerging. One who not only didn’t want to die but who wanted to embrace life and live it to the fullest. And he wanted to start right away.

In desperation he told himself, as he stared into the endless white that swirled and danced just outside his window, that as soon as the storm broke he was going to pack up his belongings and head back to Jessie just as fast as he could make it. But the stockman in him wouldn’t let him go, and as soon as the storm did break, he was on his horse heading out to check the cattle.

A small herd of thirty heifers had passed through Henry’s area and were caught out in the open when the storm hit. They had turned their backsides to the wind, put their heads down and kept walking until they came to the eastern-most fence line. There, they turned south and kept walking until they came to the corner where the eastern fence and the southern fence came together. It was there they stopped. Bunched up in the corner, and with heads low to keep out of the weather, they were soon covered under a heavy blanket of snow that the relentless northern winds pushed over them. Within hours, all thirty suffocated to death, and being held in a standing position within the drift, were frozen stiff where they stood.

It was a surreal sight that Henry came across at the far reaches of the area that was his responsibility. Bright, trackless white covered the land and reached all the way to the horizon where it abruptly ended. Above was a sky so blue it hurt his eyes. Grouped in front of him, thirty head of red-and-white heifers stood like statues in the snow, their heads low, literally frozen in time. The coyotes, foxes, magpies and crows hadn’t found them yet. But they would. He pulled his heavy woolen coat up tight around him to keep the cold breeze from running down the back of his neck, then turned and rode away.

Henry had heard of cattle doing such a thing, but he had never seen it before. For a brief moment he had blamed himself for the heifers dying. If only he had been able to get out during the storm and get them out of the corner; if only he had seen them before the storm hit and pushed them to the shelter of the canyon where the rest of the herd had no doubt holed up. But then he realized the reality of the situation. Had he gone out during the storm he more than likely would have died himself, along with his horse, both likely frozen to death or just like the cattle, suffocated in the snow. Losses like these were part of the cattle business, and he knew it. But he still didn’t like it.