The auction was being held in the back room of a saloon that wore respectability like a borrowed coat. From the street, the sign said THE GILDED HORN in flaking gold paint, but inside it smelled like sour beer, damp wool, and the metallic tang of desperation. Smoke hung beneath the ceiling beams so thick it turned lamplight into a jaundiced fog. Men packed shoulder-to-shoulder, miners with coal dust in their creases, cattle hands with split knuckles, drifters whose eyes had learned to look through people instead of at them.
And on a makeshift wooden stage usually reserved for dance girls and cheap jokes, four sisters stood as the night’s entertainment.
Not for music.
For sale.
Their uncle, Virgil Rusk, hovered beside them like a stain that wouldn’t wash out. He had the kind of face that looked perpetually startled by consequences, the skin around his mouth cracked from whiskey and bad choices. He kept wiping his forehead with a rag that had once been white, as if he could scrub away what he was doing.
“Gentlemen,” Virgil said, voice thin and trembling, the word gentlemen coming out like a lie. “I present to you… the finest help a man could ask for. My brother’s daughters. Hard workers. Clean. Obedient.”
A low wave of laughter rolled across the room.
They weren’t looking at them for cleaning skills.
