Harland glanced toward the front window, where a crowd was beginning to gather in the square. His face tightened.
“You picked a bad day to come to town,” Harland murmured.
Elias’s attention sharpened. Outside, voices layered and strained. A nervous kind of excitement.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Harland’s hand stilled on the pelts. “Auction.”
Elias frowned. “Livestock?”
Harland’s eyes flashed, then dropped. “Not cattle.”
The words landed wrong. Elias turned his head toward the window.
A platform had been raised in the square. Townspeople stood in a loose ring around it, shoulders hunched, hands shoved deep into pockets. The air held that particular stillness a community wears when it has decided to watch something awful and pretend it’s not choosing cowardice.
And on the platform were three small figures.
