She’d been the daughter of Samuel Bennett, who ran a modest freight line through the Wyoming Territory, hauling goods between towns that smelled of pine sap and iron and ambitions too big for their own bones. Clara kept her father’s books, learned to measure flour without wasting it, and read borrowed novels by lamplight when the house was quiet. Eli—only five—still believed the world was mostly kind.
Then fever came like a thief with clean hands.
It took her father first. Then it took the last breath of their stability. Debt collectors arrived before the ground on her father’s grave had even settled. They spoke politely while strangers carried the Bennetts’ chairs, their cooking pot, their blankets, their mother’s old hairbrush, out the door.
And now the town that had once nodded hello to Samuel Bennett was deciding Clara and Eli’s worth in dollars.
Eli’s fingers dug into her skirt. His voice, small as a moth, fluttered against her hip.
“Clara…?”
She lowered her hand to his shoulder, squeezed once. A signal. A promise.
I’m here. I’m still here.
The auctioneer was thin and sharp-faced, with a voice like rusted metal dragged across stone.
“Healthy young woman! Twenty years old! Can cook, clean, mend. Comes with the boy—strong for his age, worth the extra mouth if you put him to work early. Fine stock, gentlemen. Raised proper before the fever took the man.”
