Hastings Bastings

He breathed deep. Deep, warm, humid air, rich with the musk of a thousand heads (of cattle). Life giving, life changing, money on hooves, change jangling on their belled collars. A town where cattle outnumbered cowboys four to one: Hastings, NE. A sleepy cul de sac of Americana, as forgettable as a kernel on a cab. A fortune ready for the making.

And all it needed was this man, lets call him Jeb Whidycker. A man who saw potential in the mundane. You saw a diamond in the ruff, he took the ruff and turned it into a line of fine ruff-based menswares. Unorthodox businessman, the kind who they say will never make it. The kind of man who does anyways, then spends his retirement years pontificating on how men much like himself will never make it.

The first 3 herds had come quick. Everyone wants to move to Lincoln. The men who talk about land in terms of "My father, my father's father" all seem to secretly want work that will put a bit less sweat on the brow. A little less strain on the back. They'd have plenty of time to regret uprooting their family to become a man-page-boy at 45 years old. Already, his sweet herd was all Jed's.

But McGregorson was a pain in the ass. McGregorson prided himself on being a pain in the ass. Farmer swearing up and down that his crops grew better because of his measly group of heifers grazing the soil between plantings. Unequably false, Jeb knew this. Agribusiness 101 students knew this. McGregorson did too, he was playing it for the sheer hell of the jab, leering gaptooth smile on his fache from years of brushing with corn syrup.

The simplest businessmen think money will get them anything. Throw enough of out and any man has his price. Or he might think incentivizing is his golden tool, irresistable to all. Jeb was not simple, unless it was in his benefit to be. There was no rule that McGregorson had to say yes.

No rules at all in business, save those written by the victor. Jeb knew there was no rules, nothing to stop him from pulling his high polished 54 caliber deasert eagle from under the remnants of him Jimmy John lunch and *click*ing the safety off. Nothing save good taste stopping him from pointing that deagle at the temple of Mcgregorson's nearest sow and giving a look that spoke volumes. Volumes of dramatic ultimatums that many an unlucky farmer had heard leveled at him. By the banks. By his help. By his wife. And now by this stranger from out east.

Another heard, another dozen cattle loading slowly into the offwhite trailer. Oh, the things a man can do when holds a cattleopoly. Every last one of the lumering Bessies, Bo's and Peggy Sues, milk cows by the hundred.  Methane odor hit his nose, and Jeb turned away and smiled. There are fortunes to be made everywhere (even here) he thought, you just have to know where to look.