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.
