Jessup set his boots on the asphalt outside the driver’s door. Because he never drove in boots he shucked off his tennis shoes with the opposite foot and left them in the floorboard. Instead of immediately slipping his boots on he straddled the boots—heels on the roadway—and let the cool pre-dawn air dry his sweaty socks.
His red hovertible sloshed a little on soft shocks as he finally tugged on the custom made Bluchers and stood to his full height. Jessup ducked through doorways to avoid injury. He tossed his Eskimo Joe’s ball cap into the backseat and went around to the front to get his cowboy hat from the trunk: a no-name 3X black felt.
The road he stood on, the fence that trailed it, and the gate that hung across the road from him were the only evidence that anyone but Jessup had ever been to this exact spot on the Earth. Of course he wasn’t alone in having been here, but this morning it felt that way. Initially he hoped that as the new owner of the 517 square miles of Colorado ranchland he’d be able to rename the place but it quickly became clear looking through the four different deeds dating back to an 18-something land grant no one had bothered to try and it would be a waste of effort for him to do otherwise.
This former Space Station III Chaplain and co-founder of the Orbital Commission for Morals and Decency was the chagrinned owner of the famous Rocking Cock Ranch.
Day 361