It'd always been a pain to ford, from the first day he'd met her. He'd had to take every caution and precaution, steel nerves and drive metal against wood into the mud, like yelling to a team as the waves whipped higher. But, just as with horses when the wind comes up, fear set in with Jack's presence in his life so that when that valley gorge grew to a long, sloping riverbed through torrential downpour and the coursing, endless wind, Ennis stopped trying. The water rose, the flood-plain filled, and the widening water filled everything that had been between him and Alma, but at least Ennis could let his overworked team rest on the nearest, fallow bank.