T.R. had the habit, always surprising to Rufus, of shooting him a text message—usually swine- or drone-related—every couple of weeks. Most of these were just links or pictures. Rufus did not dare to suppose that this made him in any way special. He had sort of assembled the picture in his mind that he might be one of several hundred people in T.R.’s mental Rolodex who would occasionally be so favored, and that T.R. probably sent out dozens of such messages on every occasion when he got a snatch of time on the throne or whatever. Rufus was pretty sure that to send a whole lot of messages back the other way would get him blocked, or even fired. So he mostly kept his mouth shut. But a decent respect for another man’s property did place him under an obligation to document Bildad, so he fired off a couple of pictures detailing the brands, as well as a few more intended to convey the general idea that the animal was safe and well cared for at the marble mine. T.R. seemed pleased by that out of all proportion to the actual monetary value of one stray horse. Rufus remembered their conversation about the importance of having good people on the property who could make decisions and manage things, and he reckoned that this was an example of that, and that, to the extent T.R. ever thought of him at all, it was now in a favorable light.