Chapter 3

After a time, I turn onto a smaller road and my insides seize so much I stop. I pat Ned again, but he shakes his head in a horse nod. “Get on with it,” he’s saying, so I do.

The ranch is set in a wide valley and has grown in my absence. Corrals greet me, as do the horses in them. Curious, some come to watch me and Ned pass. These corrals weren’t here before. The only ones then were off behind the barn.

The house looks the same, long and low, roughhewn with a good covered porch. Jack and I had fucked out there on many a night, as we had on other spots. He’d been up for it anytime, anywhere.

The barn looks new. Not at all the one I recall. Had the old one been torn down or maybe burned? The bunkhouse is the same, though the roof looks new. There’s a good garden to one side of the house. That was Jim’s doing because he liked to cook and had said, “a man needs more than meat.” Appears that Jack had kept it up.