After a week that wrung him out like a wet saddle blanket—contracts to sign, investors calling from glass towers in New York, and the roar of another rodeo crowd—Ryder Hayes sat in the narrow hush of an airplane cabin, his forehead leaned against the cool oval of glass. Below him stretched the patchwork quilt of Tennessee and Kentucky—green valleys stitched with brown ridges, the land rising and falling like a worn-out bronc finally given its rest. The drone of the engines pressed steady ...