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"You haven't heard the revenue model."

"I heard bucking bulls."

"Bucking stock. Bulls are phase one."

Boone sat beside me, sorting clean syringes into a hard-sided case while he ate pie one-handed.

"No," he said.

Cash looked wounded. "You too?"

"Especially me."

A neighbor tore a biscuit in half. "You'll get yourself killed."

"I rode professionally for years."

"You got yourself injured professionally for years."

"That means I possess industry experience."

Three voices answered at once.

"No."

Cash ate a bite of pie, undisturbed. "You're all frightened by scale."

Ten minutes later, I heard him explaining the same plan to the clerk from Harmon's beside the water trough.

Cash did not believe in failed pitches. Only insufficiently trapped audiences.

I refilled paper cups with lemonade while Biscuit slept beneath the table, one eye open in case anybody dropped meat. The sun sat high and clean above the cottonwoods. Mud from early spring had hardened into rutted dirt. New grass showed bright along the ditch.

Boone's knee rested against mine beneath the table.

Not accidental.

Not concealed either.

I liked both parts.

Wyatt turned a page. "If we maintain the present calf price, secure the proposed refinance, and increase outside income without increasing labor costs beyond twelve percent, we improve our position."

Cash returned at exactly the wrong moment.

"I can improve it."

"No bulls," Wyatt said.

"I wasn't going to say bulls."

"You were."

"I was going to say strategic livestock entertainment assets."

Boone closed the syringe case.

"No."