Chapter Four:
The weeks passed by slowly. Most mornings, Lou was up and working before the sun. Whenever Jimmy joined her to begin the day's task, she kept her head down and didn't acknowledge his presence.
They began the process of restoring the old station, together and yet entirely alone. They worked side by side, often for hours at a time. Restringing a busted fence line, hauling debris out of the barn, setting new fence posts. He let her decide the order of things, joining in on whatever task she had chosen for the day.
As she had promised, Lou pretended as if he wasn't even there. And they never spoke. He had never felt so alone in his life, even in the times when he had been really and truly alone.
Occasionally, when they were working on some task or other, they would brush shoulders or her hand would graze across his. In those moments, he would feel his blood race with a shot of electricity. But Lou would always withdraw from him immediately, as if his touch was physically painful, and find a way to remove herself from his presence.
She also kept the bunkhouse door firmly barred against him, and it hurt him to think that she might have done so partly out of fear of him as well as anger. As a result, he spent the long evening hours after dark huddled in Teaspoon's old tack room. The small cast iron stove was good for little other than warding off the most intrusive chill in the air and perhaps warming a pot of coffee, so he was forced to resort to hardtack and jerky for almost every meal. Those staples of his Express days had been something he was happy to leave behind, and most days he felt his stomach actively revolt.
About a week after he arrived, he had ridden into town to post a letter to Teaspoon and Rachel. He hadn't been sure how to break the news about Kid or even if it was his place to do so. In the end, he had decided to keep it as brief as possible. He told them only of Kid's passing and his plans to stay with Lou for the foreseeable future. He promised he would write again when he had more to share.
There was no easy way to pass along such news, and he didn't relish the pain he knew it would cause. His only comfort was that they would not have to receive the letter alone and could cope with their grief together. He hadn't written them again in the weeks since. He had nothing he cared to share.
Progress on the station was slow, but he was beginning to see the fruits of their labors. The station was gradually becoming functional again. Lou had never spoken of her plans for the place, but Jimmy assumed that she had hopes of making it into a working horse ranch. It had been her and Kid's dream before the war. Before everything had gone wrong. He had often heard them speaking of it in hushed tones from their shared bunk. Intimate, private moments that he knew did not include him, but he couldn't seem to keep himself from listening. He had so envied their connection, their closeness.
Now, even as the station transformed slowly around them, he and Lou found themselves locked in a battle of wills. A stalemate of sorts. And there were many moments in those first weeks when Jimmy almost quit and walked away. But his own stubbornness won out every time, and he refused to let her claim the victory.