She Was Auctioned With Tears in Her Eyes, Until a Cowboy Said “Now You’ll Only Know Joy”

Chapter 2

The crowd turned back to the tall stranger, waiting to see what a man who had already spent fifteen hundred dollars would do with his pride. The stranger did not move. He only reached into the pocket of his leather vest and drew out a small pouch that swung from his fingers like a pendulum, heavy with the particular weight of coin that means something.

“Three thousand,” he said.

The silence that followed had a texture to it. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman’s sharp intake of breath. Somewhere closer, the whiskey man’s angry sputtering. Ella could feel the exact moment the auctioneer’s greed snapped into place—a gavel hovering, a mouth opening to call the final words.

“Three thousand, going once. Going twice. Sold—to the gentleman in the back.”

The rope went slack in a way Ella had not allowed herself to imagine. The auctioneer came down off his block, counted the coin with fingers that shook from greed rather than shame, and pressed the end of her rope into the stranger’s hand like a receipt.

She still could not see his face. The hat shadowed everything but the line of his jaw, dark with several days of stubble.

Then he did something that made her flinch so hard she nearly fell off the platform.

He drew a knife.