Chapter Two
Cheyenne, Wyoming
“Jed, would you just stop and listen to me?!”
Jed was past the point of listening. All he could hear was the blood rushing between his ears as he vaulted over the pasture fence and stormed off toward the stables. He could barely catch his breath. He could barely think.
A firm hand caught his shoulder, forcefully spinning him back around.
Thomas looked furious, his face flushed red and his silver eyes flashing behind a pair of spectacles.
Years of deskwork had paled and slimmed his frame considerably, his once thickly-curled moustache frayed from constant fidgeting.
Jed, meanwhile, had grown muscular during his time spent in the sun, his dark hair cropped short, and his facial hair kept close to his skin.
His accent had thickened, toughened, and taken on a stone-like quality that forced their hired hands to listen.
If he wanted to, Jed could’ve taken his friend-no, the man’s, as Jed could no longer count him as a friend-arm and easily thrown him to the ground.
“There ain’t a thing you could say that’d change my mind, Thomas.”
Yet Jed remained in place. He had to; as angry as he was, a small part of him wanted to hear his friend out.
To be convinced that this whole ordeal was just one big misunderstanding.
Thomas must have known that as well, because his grip on Jed’s shoulder loosened considerably.
A faint smile caught his lips, and for a moment, Jed truly believed he’d simply overreacted.
He’d misheard, had just misunderstood what his friend had said.
“The Spades aren’t as bad as they seem, Jed.”
Well never mind. Jed grabbed Thomas’ hand and threw it aside, anger urging him to turn back toward the stables.
“J-Jed, wait!” Footsteps trailed after him, but that only spurred Jed to move faster. He felt the curious eyes of the ranch hands following him across the property, but he hardly felt the need to act in a professional manner. Not when Thomas clearly hadn’t been doing so for years.
Jed sped into the stable, charging past the first half-dozen stalls before coming to one holding a smokey grullo stallion. He’d barely managed to undo the latch before Thomas came stomping in, still shouting his excuses while Jed worked on the horse’s saddle.
“Jed, be reasonable!” Thomas snapped. “We’re not going to grow the business without fostering connections!”
Jed nearly dropped the saddle then and there. “Connections?! Thomas, them’s cattle thieves ye’re talking about! Ain’t the sort of ‘connections’ proper folk should be making!”
Thomas pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “Jed, they’re not ‘cattle thieves,’ they’re just opportunists. They see ranchers who have built far beyond their means and relieve them of their overflow.”
“That what yer new city friends call 'thieving' nowadays?”
Thomas’ irritable sigh only put Jed more on edge.
It was reminiscent of a father scolding his child for not understanding a simplistic fact of the world, but Jed was done living in Thomas’ world, done with blindly following someone with such backwards morals.
He set the saddle against his stallion, tightening the straps before moving on to the bridle.
“Jed.”
He carefully fit the bit into the stallion’s mouth before swinging his leg up and over the creature’s back.
“Jed, don’t ignore me!”
As commanding as Thomas tried to sound, even he wouldn’t stand in the way of a freshly-saddled horse.
Jed kicked the stall open and Thomas stumbled back, allowing him to ride out of the stall and back outside.
It wasn’t long before Jed and the stallion shifted from a canter to a gallop, and they cleared the property’s gate in one grand leap.
Soon the Gedney Ranch was behind him, leaving nothing but the main road to Cheyenne township ahead.
Wind pulled at his hat, and Jed let it slide down against his shoulders, dangling behind him as the stampede string chafed against his neck.
He reveled in the breeze that tangled his hair, and for the first in quite a while, Jed felt like his old self again.
***
It wasn’t long before the endless wilds of Wyoming became dotted with freshly-plowed farmlands.
Wooden barns began to transition to brickwork storefronts, and the open expanse of fields soon became the packed streets of “civilization,” or what seemed like it this far west. Jed eased his stallion to a trot upon entering the township proper, now sharing the crowded main road with wagons and passersby alike.
The occasional supply runs had made him at least somewhat familiar with the city’s layout, and he soon managed to maneuver himself toward the general land office.
At this point, his anger had cooled considerably, leaving a small and hollow space in his chest as realization turned into a sense of mourning.
Mourning the relationship he thought he shared with Thomas, mourning a man he truly saw as his brother.
Years of belief had blinded him entirely, and Jed couldn’t help but feel disappointed in himself.
‘Pa would have a fit if he saw the nonsense I’ve gotten myself into,’ Jed thought as he hitched his stallion to a nearby post.
But that was all going to change. He was going to change, here and now, and it started with taking the first step forward.
In this case, that first step involved entering the land office.
With a deep breath, Jed entered the workplace with a renewed sense of purpose, his fury now shifting into a powerful sense of determination. He could do this. He would do this.
The building’s interior was a flurry of activity, filled with smartly-dressed folk maneuvering expertly between desks.
Ladies carrying stacks of documents, gentlemen typing away on fleets of typewriters; the air buzzed with a sense of purpose, a firm direction that Jed felt completely out of place amidst. Thomas was often the one who handled these sorts of affairs.
In fact, Thomas often handled everything that came off as too complicated for Jed.
He swallowed, briefly taken aback by it all.
“Oh! That is you, Jed!”
Jed immediately clung to the familiar voice, finding the source coming from the back rooms of the office.
It belonged to a man approaching the end of his fifties, his silvering facial hair far thicker than the wisps that sat atop his head.
A pair of massive spectacles magnified the stormy coloration of his eyes, and the earthy scent of tea seemed to follow him wherever he, rather slowly, went.
“Mr. Caldwell.” Jed sighed with relief.
The older man’s smile reminded Jed of the bristles of a broom turned upright. “Now you know I’ve insisted you call me ‘Edgar.’ We’ve known each other far too long to still be on such polite terms.” He paused, his thick brow furrowing with concern. “Gracious, Jed. Is everything alright?”
It distinctly was not. “Edgar, I gotta sell my shares of Gedney. Today, if we can manage.”
Edgar’s heavy glasses slid down the length of his nose. “Wh-what? Jed, that’s– What on earth for?”
He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Even if Thomas was working with shady folks, Jed couldn’t drag his name through the mud alongside them.
Not to Edgar. The man had been instrumental in getting their ranching business going, the only one among many who didn’t see two young twenty-somethings as too foolish and irresponsible to make their mark on the world.
No, Jed couldn’t do it. He knew he should…but he couldn’t.
“I…I had an epiphany, is all. Life ain’t as long as we think, and-” Jed paused, doing his best to reign in whatever emotion Edgar had caught on his face. “Well, I just wanted to get my own family up and going. Get enough funds fer me and Kathleen to get married, and not worry about work no more.”
Edgar’s expression immediately brightened. “Oh! Goodness, Jed, you had me worried for a moment there.” He gestured a wrinkled hand toward a row of office doors. “You go on and get settled in, alright? I just poured myself a cup of that new ‘green tea’, but you’re welcome to it.”
Jed felt his soul lighten considerably. “I don’t wanna take up time you ain’t got, Edgar.”
“Think nothing of it,” Edgar insisted. “My schedule is fairly free today. I just need to gather up some documents, and then we can take a look at your shares.”
As Edgar hobbled off, Jed wandered down the hallway full of doors, scanning the name plaques on the wall before finding his older companion’s.
Even though he knew the office was empty, Jed knocked lightly on the door, waited a beat, then proceeded to enter.
Though the general setup looked fairly uniform, every ounce of shelf space was dedicated to tea-related paraphernalia, ranging from hand-painted china sets to unopened boxes of exotic teas stacked neatly together.
An herbaceous scent hung heavily in the air, combining with the springtime warmth to create an incredibly calm atmosphere.
Jed took his time finding a chair, wondering if Edgar had been well-traveled in his youth, or simply had connections in faraway places.
Eventually, he took a seat and glanced around the desk, finding the aforementioned green tea steaming in a blue lace-patterned cup.
Jed couldn’t decide if it would be ruder to take the cup for his own, or refuse it altogether.
Before he could ponder the thought further, Edgar entered with a stack of papers. Jed watched as the older man slowly made his way behind his desk, using his free hand to gingerly push the cup Jed’s way.
Jed accepted it with a nod.