Journey Days of Henry McAlister
                                    CHAPTER TWENTYTWO
                               Chapter twenty-two-part two

     The sound of Henry banging on the rear door of the caboose died in the snow covered hillside, Henry banged on the door again and attempted to view inside, only to find that that small window had been boarded over from the inside.
     “Pierre, Pierre! Are you in there?” Henry shouted against the face of the wooden door, its peeling colors painted in ice. “We have to talk, we have an arrangement. I know you’re in there. Come out here!”
The wind was the only response he heard, as he stood on the caboose’s platform.
     “I know you’re in there, come out, we have a arrangement. You’ll have to do better than this if you want your money,” Henry shouted, kicking the door in disgust.
     Pierre sat in the darkened room rocking slowly in the old wooden chair, the last of his cigars between his teeth and a smile on his lips. He watched Henry’s shadow figure through the slats as Henry climbed down the small iron steps and disappear around the corner. The caboose’s small stove bubbled its heat into the room and Pierre stirred the boiling stew pot, freeing the meat from the bones. Pierre grabbed a boot from a pile of bloody clothes carpeted the floor, and tossed it into the belly of the stove, it crackled and hissed as it settled into the hot coals. Pierre laughed to himself and threw the last of his cigar in with it. ‘enough for three, if a man be of a mind’, he thought. His laughter filling the dark room.
     “Did you talk to Pierre?” Asked Katherine.
     “No! I know he was there I could see smoke coming from his chimney, and I thought I could smell something cooking. He’s a damn bastard, how long did he think that rabbit would last? Where’s my rifle?” Said Henry, his mind set on doing what he should have been doing all along, hunting.
     “What are going to do Henry?” Katherine said, frightened by Henry’s determined actions.
     “I’m going hunting, and I ain’t coming back until I get something for the both of us, I can’t just sit here and see you waste away like this, I should of…I should be out there hunting, we can’t survive on someone else’s promises.”
     “Henry please don’t go, it’s almost dark and you’ll freeze out there at night, or worse, with those wolves around.”
     “I can’t just sit here no more, it’s time for me to do something,” a dejected Henry said, plopping onto the bench, unable to look at Katherine.
     “Henry not tonight, please, wait until morning. I don’t think I could sleep if you were out there at night, please wait until morning.”
     Henry reached across the space between the bench and clasped Katherine’s hand. “All right, but from tonight on, we have to think of ourselves as…as being shipwrecked all alone on an island or something, just the two of us. We have to do whatever we have to from now on, We can’t rely on anybody but ourselves. No matter what it takes.”
     “Yes Henry, I understand, whatever we have to, to survive.”
                                                                       #
To be continued...