“Do I hear fifty dollars for the lot?” Pender barked, and slammed the gavel down like he was tenderizing meat. “Fifty!” shouted a toothless prospector near the front. “Need a cook and a warmer!” The crowd erupted, the laughter sharp and hungry. Nell felt bile climb her throat. She did what she’d done all week: swallowed it, then swallowed the fear behind it, then stood taller anyway because Lottie was watching her, and Lottie believed her big sister could hold the world together by force of will alone.
Virgil didn’t look at them. He stared at the whiskey bottle on the bar like it was the only honest thing in the room.
“Seventy!” called out a man in a suit too clean for Montana, a brothel owner from farther north. His smile was expensive and empty. “Seventy for the lot.” The numbers began climbing, dirty and fast, voices tossing bids like stones. Nell watched her sisters’ lives become arithmetic.
June leaned forward, mouth close to Nell’s ear. “If they separate us,” she whispered, “I run. And I come back. And I kill Virgil.”
“Hush,” Nell hissed through clenched teeth, though her heart agreed with every word. “Stay behind me.”
The price rose. One hundred. One fifty. Two hundred. The brothel man kept lifting his hand with calm certainty, as if he was buying furniture. At three hundred, Virgil looked giddy, cheeks flushing with relief. He was already spending money that smelled like betrayal.
Pender lifted his gavel, ready to end it. Then the saloon’s batwing doors didn’t swing open. They were kicked. The hinges rattled. The piano stuttered into silence. Even the men mid-laugh froze, their amusement turning into something cautious and animal.
A shadow stretched across the smoke like a warning. A man stood in the doorway with rain on his shoulders and the faint scent of gun oil clinging to him like a second skin. He wore a long duster stained with badlands dust, hat pulled low enough to cut his face in half. Spurs gleamed at his boots, heavy silver that rang a slow, deliberate rhythm as he stepped inside. He didn’t look around. He didn’t need to. His presence did the looking for him.
Someone muttered, like saying it too loud might summon a curse. “Silas Hart.”
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