Eli Bauer had always believed in the honesty of land. If you put in the hours—fed it, tilled it, spoke to it even when no one was around—it would repay you in kind. He wasn’t the sort of man who needed much to be happy.
A strong cup of coffee, a clean pair of boots, and a stretch of blue sky over his fields—that was enough. He lived just outside of town, on a patch of farmland passed down from his grandfather, who’d once farmed the land with nothing but a mule and his own grit.