Montana Territory, was a place where the wind could sand the softness off a man’s face, and where a person’s worth was often measured the way folks measured beef: by muscle, by silence, by how little they complained when the cold bit down.
On nights like that one, a human life could be priced lower than a decent saddle.
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.
