I look at him over the roof of the truck. "We're buying horse feed and fence posts, Beckett."
"Vendor relationships matter at every scale."
I get in the truck.
He gets in the truck.
We drive the twenty minutes into Silver Ridge with the windows down because the morning is still cool enough to earn it. Beckett asks questions the whole way, which I expected, and they're actually better questions than I anticipated, which I didn't.
He wants to know about the feed supplier relationships, how long we've worked with each vendor, whether we've had any supply issues in the past year. He's taking actual notes on his phone.
I answer honestly because the questions deserve it.
What I don't tell him is that Silver Ridge operates on something that goes beyond vendor relationships and efficiency metrics. It operates on history, handshakes, and the kind of trust that gets built over years of showing up and being straight with people. You can't spreadsheet your way into that.
He's going to find that out shortly.
We pull into Silver Ridge just as the town is properly waking up. The feed store won't open for another ten minutes so I take the long way down Main Street. Beckett goes quiet, looking out the window at the storefronts and the people and the particular unhurried morning energy of a small Texas town that has been exactly itself for a very long time.
"It's a real town," he says, like he's surprised.
"What did you expect?"
He considers that for a second. "I don't know. Something smaller. More self-conscious about being small."
I look out at Main Street. "Silver Ridge doesn't have anything to prove to anybody."
He nods slowly. "No," he says. "I can see that."
Ridge Line Feed and Tack smells like hay and leather and something underneath both of those things that I can only describe as time. It's been here since before I was born.
The floors are worn wood, the shelves are packed tight, and every inch of the place has been arranged by Earl Bishop according to a system that makes complete sense to anyone who has spent their life around ranching and no sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn't.
Earl is behind the counter when we walk in. He's seventy-four years old, built like a fence post, and has the particular stillness of a man who has seen everything and stopped being surprised by most of it.
He looks at me. Then he looks at Beckett. Then he looks back at me with one eyebrow raised approximately two millimeters, which from Earl is the equivalent of a full theatrical reaction.
"Laney," he says.
"Earl. This is Beckett Wilder. He bought Silver Mesa."
Earl looks at Beckett with the slow, unhurried assessment of a man who is very good at reading people and has absolutely no interest in pretending otherwise. Beckett meets it without flinching, which I give him reluctant credit for.
"You're the one who flooded the east field," Earl says.
Beckett blinks. "News travels fast."
"This is Silver Ridge." Earl pulls out his order book. "News doesn't travel. It's just already everywhere." He sets the book on the counter and looks at Beckett over the top of it. "What do you know about ranching, son?"
There is a pause that lasts exactly long enough to be honest.
"I'm learning," Beckett says.
Earl writes something in his book. "At least you didn't say you read some books."
I look very carefully at a display of saddle blankets to my left.
I am absolutely not rescuing him from this conversation.
