Chapter 2
Galen
As Galen waited for the prison van to show up on a fine Monday afternoon, he thought, not for the first time, how very different Farthingdale Valley was from Farthingdale Guest Ranch.
On the guest ranch, you could see for miles. If you stood in the right place, you could see all the way to Montana. It was gorgeous. The people were friendly, the customers, all rich, were fairly down-to-earth. The work was straightforward.
The valley, on the other hand, rather than being at the top of a hill that sloped down into a glassy river, was tucked in a scoop of land, thick with trees. It was currently populated with four team leads and a bunch of ex-cons who were obviously taking the easy way out by doing their parole in a situation which wouldn’t ask very much of them. They’d skate by, living off handouts. Lazy freeloaders.
When Galen had left his father’s farm two years prior, he’d made a home for himself at the guest ranch, working through two summer seasons. In the winters, he’d gone home to help his dad with the bees and the goats and the fields and, come spring, mulching and tending in preparation for going back to the ranch. All in all, a good life.
But, the summer before, in the middle of a typical week tending horses, hauling hay, helping guests, Galen’s dad, Earl Parnell, had passed away.
For Earl, it had been a gentle going in a hospice facility in Cheyenne. There, due to complications from a summer pneumonia, brought on by who knew what—working in the rain or a kid with a cold at the local McDonalds, or some germ—he’d passed away.
Galen had held his dad’s hand all the while. He’d signed papers, then signedmorepapers. He drank bitter cups of coffee from the machine at the hospice until a kindly attendant showed him how to work the machine.
That coffee had been milky and sweet, like a kiss from an angel. Which didn’t stem Galen’s tears, nor his grief.
At least his dad had not been in pain. Instead, he’d been tended to night and day by the hospice workers, angels in soft blue and pink uniforms, cheerful sweaters. Galen would be forever grateful to them.
He’d be forever grateful to Leland Tate, as well, who ran Farthingdale Ranch, a hideaway-getaway for rich folks who wanted to play at being cowboys.
Galen was a mere ranch hand, but Leland had given Galen two full weeks offwithpay, and held his job for him until his return. The offer of funds, a no-interest loan, if Galen wanted it. Time and patience and understanding. More time off if he needed it.
Which would have been nice, but once his father was buried in Iron Mountain Cemetery, there wasn’t anything Galen wanted more than to be distracted by work.
Even with his job at the ranch, he struggled with the mountain of medical debt and the small stack of regular farm bills that needed to be paid.
He sold the goats, a small herd of soft eared does and one billy. Then he used that money to hire a guy to harvest the lavender, then the money from lavender sales to put out ads for someone to rent the farm the following summer.
He even made a deal with a Colorado-based beekeeper, Jared Keating, to come and harvest the honey. They split the proceeds from that, fifty-fifty, and made an agreement for the following fall.
Over the winter, Galen had spent most of his time at the old farm table, elbows on the red-and-white checked oil tablecloth, chin in his hands, watching the snow fall as he looked out the large windows at the white landscape. Swamped in grief and memories, he felt like an old man, rather than a twenty-eight year old with his whole life ahead of him.
His dad’s passing had left a jagged hole in his life, his soul. With his head tangled with all he needed to do, the fear that he wouldn’t ever live up to being as good a man as his dad had been grew into an almost insurmountable pain that stabbed at his heart.
He’d looked at his finances. Then looked at them again.
He needed new tires for his truck. The medical debt from his father’s treatment and passing needed paying off. He wasn’t sure about the taxes that needed paying, as his dad had always taken care of that, but Galen was sure the bill would come due at some point.
All the while, he wondered if he should take up his father’s life, that of running the farm. Which was certainly too much for one person, though the thought of leaving it behind stabbed at him until his heart was bleeding.
He found a young couple to rent the place for the summer. When they showed up with their two-year-old in the spring, they had cheerful smiles and hundred-dollar apron smocks. They talked of making bread by hand and how they were going totake photos and videos for their Instagram account, and how wonderful everything was.
With handshakes and a verbal agreement about what needed paying attention to—the gate, the irrigation system, the shed door, the screen door—Galen headed back to the guest ranch, expecting to get back to his regularly scheduled summer life. Horses and guests and hay. Eating in the large but inviting dining hall. Watching the sunsets over Iron Mountain, which loomed in the west, ever present, always watching.
The snag came when Leland Tate, forman of Farthingdale Guest Ranch, wanted Galen to be a team lead in his newly launched Fresh Start Program.
The program used ex-cons as labor to develop the valley into a first class, high-dollar retreat. The ex-cons, in return, were able to do their parole and learn life skills along the way.
Galen knew about the program, which had been an experiment the summer before. Leland had assigned Jasper, the guest ranch’s blacksmith, the task of taking charge of an ex-con by the name of Ellis. Jasper had, in essence, become Ellis’ parole officer, with the goal of teaching Ellis how to be a blacksmith.
As to how successful that had been, the proof was in the valley program, already underway. But, in spite of Galen’s personal opinion that the whole thing was a bad and enabling setup, the grapevine had it that the valley program was bringing in more tax dollars for the valley and the ranch than even Leland had foretold.
The valley was to the south of the ranch, a long green swath of land with a deep blue lake at the bottom of it. The only way you could get there was to climb to the top of the wind-swept hill above the ranch, and then go down a very steep road that was all switchbacks.
Galen had never been to the valley, but he’d gone along the road that was parallel to the valley, on his way to the hospital, and then hospice, in Cheyenne.
