This job at the Lazy K, a horse ranch instead of a cattle ranch, might just be the catalyst he’d need to turn things around. But first, he’d need to land the job. He was going to make an honest effort, or so he told himself, to do what he could to make a good first impression. That meant clean clothes, clean-shaven, and not smelling like he’d just crawled out of a whiskey bottle. So far, so good.

Staring up at the gate of the Lazy K later that morning, however, Henry was thinking life was playing some kind of cruel trick on him. That was when he found out the Lazy K wasn’t just a horse ranch, as he had been led to believe, or perhaps as he had led himself to believe. The sign above the driveway he was staring at read: Lazy K Guest Ranch, Established 1979. Welcome.

In the entire world there may not have been any job more demeaning for a real working cowboy than to end up “packing dudes” on a guest ranch. In fact, in Henry’s book, packing dudes was even worse than being a sheepherder, which he had already considered doing out of sheer desperation, but then came to his senses at the last minute. Had Henry not made what now looked like a very poor decision back in town just an hour or so before, he would have turned his truck around right then and there and drove off. But the decision to buy a quart of whiskey instead of a couple gallons of gas for his truck sealed his fate. Henry looked at the gas gauge on the truck, which read E, then back up at the sign, then back at the gauge. He reached down and tapped the gauge to see if it would move, but it didn’t. With so little gas it was clear he had gone as far as he was going to go, and the only way back to town now would be to walk or hitchhike, and neither prospect seemed terribly appealing to him.

Henry sat for a very long time before finally slipping the old truck in gear and driving through the gate. He hated the prospect of getting this job. But he hated the prospect of not getting it even more. As much as he didn’t want to work on a dude ranch, he also understood he was just about out of options, and all the way up the driveway he was trying to convince himself that working there might not be that bad.

After a half mile Henry came to a large open area surrounded by the ranch’s main set of buildings. To the right was a dining room and next to it appeared to be an office. To the left was a small gift shop and set back away from the main buildings and down a little hill was a bunkhouse. Not far from it were a set of square and round corrals, some with horses in them, some without, and nearby those was an open-sided barn full of hay, a large tack room and the mounting area for dudes to get on the horses. Set off from the corrals and barn and up on a little hill were the cabins that housed the dudes, a small dormitory for staff, and just past those was a modest two story house that appeared to have been built in the early nineteen hundreds. It was in very good repair, and looked as if someone had been looking after it. It had two well-used hitch rails standing nearby, one in front near the porch and one on the east side. The owner’s place, Henry concluded.