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.”
Nell had heard stories. Everybody had.
Silas Hart owned a ranch the locals called Black Mesa, a stretch of hard country where the ground rose into jagged ridges and the wind never stopped arguing. They said he’d built his fences like a man fortifying a kingdom. They said he had a graveyard behind his barn and a heart built from iron nails. They said he’d lost his wife and little girl five years back to winter fever and had never spoken a kind word since. They said once, when a drifter beat a horse, Silas Hart put the drifter down and left him for the crows.
Silas walked through the crowd, and the crowd parted like water that didn’t want to touch him. His spurs rang out, each step an unhurried decision.
He stopped ten feet from the stage.
His gaze went past the girls, past the auctioneer, past every man who’d been laughing.
It landed on Virgil Rusk.
