FIVE DOLLARS AND A ROAD HOME
The Auction Block
Bob Miller walked into town that morning to buy salt, seed, and a new shovel.
He walked out having spent five dollars to free a woman he had never met.
The difference between those two things was a single moment.
A moment when a man's conscience became louder than the laughter of a crowd.
It was late August in the Texas frontier, and the sun had already turned the streets of Red Creek into a furnace by the time Bob rode in.
Red Creek was not much of a town.
There was a general store with warped boards, a blacksmith shop that smelled of coal and hot iron, a saloon with swinging doors that never quite closed, a church with a bell that had not worked properly in three years, and a small stockyard at the eastern edge where traders brought horses, cattle, and, on rare occasions, people.
Bob had lived fifteen miles north of town for nearly nine years.
He was thirty-six, broad-shouldered, quiet, and permanently sunburned around the neck. His brown hair was usually hidden beneath a battered hat, and a pale scar ran from his left eyebrow to the edge of his cheek.
Nobody in Red Creek knew much about where he had come from.
Bob preferred it that way.
He owned a modest spread called Miller's Creek Ranch, though calling it a ranch was generous. There were thirty-seven cattle, twelve horses, a chicken coop that leaned to one side, and a house that had been repaired so many times that Bob sometimes wondered whether any piece of the original structure remained.
His wife had died six years earlier.
His son had died two years after that.
Since then, Bob had lived mostly for the land.
The land did not ask questions.
It did not judge him.
It simply needed water, work, and patience.
That morning, he had three things on his list.
Salt.
Seed.
A shovel.
Nothing more.
He tied his horse outside the general store and walked in.
"Morning, Bob."
"Morning."
"Need coffee?"
"No."
"Beans?"
"Got beans."
"Bullets?"
"Got bullets."
The storekeeper, Samuel Pike, smiled.
"Then what brings you into civilization?"
"Shovel."
Samuel laughed.
"You broke another?"
"The handle did."
"You know they make those things from wood."
"Apparently bad wood."
Samuel reached beneath the counter and brought out a new shovel.
Bob tested the handle.
"How much?"
"One dollar."
Bob grunted.
"Highway robbery."
"Everything costs more when the harvest is poor."
Bob paid him.
He bought seed, salt, lamp oil, and a small sack of flour.
He was about to leave when shouting erupted outside.
At first Bob ignored it.
Red Creek was always noisy.
But then he heard a man's voice yell:
"Five dollars! Strong hands! Good worker! Who wants her?"
Bob stopped.
The store became strangely quiet.
Samuel Pike looked toward the door.
"Don't," he said.
Bob frowned.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever you're thinking."
"I'm not thinking anything."
Samuel's expression said he did not believe him.
"Bob, there are men out there you don't want trouble with."
"Who's being sold?"
Samuel hesitated.
"A woman."
Bob looked at him.
"A woman?"
"Apache."
The word settled between them.
Bob had heard stories about the Apache his entire life.
Some were true.
Most were not.
He had seen Apache people before, but never under circumstances like this.
He stepped outside.
A crowd had gathered around a rough wooden platform near the stockyard.
There were perhaps fifty men.
Cowboys.
Traders.
Farmers.
Drunks.
Men who had come because they needed something.
Men who had come because they wanted to watch.
And standing on the platform was a young woman with her wrists tied behind her back.
She looked perhaps twenty-three.
Her dark hair hung in tangled strands around her face.
Dust covered her cheeks.
Her clothing was torn and stained from travel.
A strip of rawhide cut into the skin around her wrists.
The trader standing beside her was a thick-necked man named Silas Boone.
Bob knew him.
Everybody did.
Boone bought stolen horses, sold cattle without asking too many questions, and occasionally transported people across the border for men who paid well.