As far as Henry was concerned, it was going to take more than a would-be dime-store cowboy to run him off a job that even on his worst day he could do with his eyes closed. That simply wasn’t going to happen. Almost as soon as he met Chad, Henry had unconsciously resolved to stay at the ranch no matter how demeaning the job, how miserable the conditions got or how many hours he had to work, just so Chad wouldn’t be able to best him. In short, Chad had unwittingly done something for Henry that no amount of drinking, altercations with “talkers,” arguments with surly bartenders, or the loss of one good job after another had been able to do. He had brought out the fight in him.

At the end of Henry’s first week, Jessie approached him as he was entering the dining room to get his breakfast and handed him a hundred dollar bill.

“Ma’am?” Henry questioned, looking at the bill.

“It’s your first week’s pay,” she smiled. “You’ve been doing a good job and I thought maybe you could use it. I heard your truck is out of gas.”

“Yes ma’am, it is.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Jessie smiled. “You can get a couple gallons out of the bulk tank, back by the maintenance shed, to get you to town. Once you get to town you can fill up.”

“Why, thank you, ma’am,” Henry nodded. “I appreciate it.”

“All right then,” Jessie nodded. “Have a good day, Mr. McBride.” With that she turned and headed for the door. She stopped short and turned back. “You will come back, right?”

“Ma’am?”

“You aren’t going to take the money and run off, are you, like some of the fellas who worked here?”

“No Ma’am,” he said simply. “I won’t run off.”

CHAPTER 17

During his first week at the ranch, with his whiskey supply running low and everything that had been going on, Henry’s urge to drink had been slowly dissipating. By the time he’d gotten to town, he had told himself he didn’t really need to be drinking anymore, and even though he had a little money, he was going to stay out of the bars and the liquor stores. In fact, he found it pretty easy to stay out of the bar, as there seemed to only be one in town and the parking lot was full. But he found it a little harder to stay out of the liquor store. As if drawn like a magnet, Henry found he couldn’t keep himself from going in the first one he passed—a little mom-and-pop place just as he came into town. He bought a fifth of Windsor, a Canadian Whiskey, that the older woman behind the counter stuffed in a plain brown paper sack before giving him change from a twenty.

He told himself he just wanted to have a little on hand, which was why he only bought a fifth instead of a quart, and that he’d only have a mouthful at a time. He filled his truck with gas, and on the way back to the ranch, with the bottle seemingly calling to him from its place on the seat beside him, he pulled off the road and into the desert. He had the bottle drained in less than an hour, then went back to the same store where the same woman was behind the counter and bought himself a quart of the same whiskey, figuring he couldn’t have too much of a good thing.