For Eight Dollars You Can Have My Wife,” the Drunk Gambler Laughed in the Saloon — The Quiet Rancher Slapped Coins on the Table, Took Her Hand, and Turned a Cruel Joke into a Deal Nobody Expected Him to Honor

By the time the gambler shouted the words, the Copper Spur Saloon was loud enough that only a few people heard him clearly.

But the ones who did fell silent fast.

“Eight dollars!” he crowed, staggering back from the poker table. “You hear me? For eight lousy dollars you can have my wife. I’ll throw in her trunk of dresses if you pay cash!”

Cards paused mid-air. The piano player’s hands hovered over the keys. The night air that had been filled with laughter and bad jokes thinned out into a hard, brittle quiet.

At the bar, a rancher in a sweat-darkened hat set his drink down, slow and steady.

Cole Maddox didn’t talk much in town.

He came in twice a month for supplies and mail, drank one glass of whiskey that probably cost more than it was worth, and left before the fights started. Folks knew he ran cattle north of the river, that he had a good herd and a better reputation.

They also knew he didn’t like noise.

Right now, the gambler was a walking pile of it.

“Sit down, Clay,” the dealer muttered. “You’re scaring the cards.”

Clay Turner, who’d scraped together just enough charm and luck to be dangerous, swayed on his feet and slammed both hands down on the table.

“I ain’t joking,” he slurred. “Eight dollars and she’s yours. She eats little. Works hard. Complains—well, that part’s free!”

One of the ranch hands snorted.

“Aw, come on, Clay,” he called. “Don’t drag your woman into your losing streak.”

“Woman?” Clay snorted. “She’s an anchor. I got big plans. Need capital. Partner don’t want to invest, I sell what I got.”

At a small table near the back wall, Maria—owner of the saloon, watchful as a hawk—stiffened where she was drying glasses. Her jaw tightened.

“Clay,” she called sharply. “You shut your fool mouth or drink water the rest of the night.”

He turned toward her, bottle in one hand, vest misbuttoned, eyes too bright.

“You’ll cut me off?” he demanded. “For making a business offer?”

Maria’s gaze went past him, toward the staircase leading up to the small rooms where people rented privacy by the hour or the night.

A woman stood halfway down.

She had one hand on the banister, fingers white where they gripped the wood. Her dress was simple, dark blue, worn at the hem. Light from the lamps below etched her face in gold and shadow—strong cheekbones, dark eyes, the kind of features that might have looked soft if they hadn’t been tightened against something that hurt.

Jessa Turner.

Clay’s wife.

She’d been upstairs helping Maria’s sister change linens. Maria had insisted on paying her for the extra work when she realized Clay’s job at the livery never filled more than his bottle.

Now, she stood frozen, halfway on the stairs and halfway in a life she’d never really chosen.

“Clay,” she said quietly. “That’s enough.”

He swung around, squinting up at her.

“Look, gents!” he shouted, grinning too wide. “The merchandise speaks! Eight dollars, Jessa. Think what we could do with eight dollars.”

Her jaw flexed.

Eight dollars could buy a winter’s worth of flour and beans. A decent coat. A train ticket far from this dust-baked town.

But not like this.

“Put the bottle down,” she said. “You’re drunk.”

He laughed.

“I’m ambitious,” he replied. “There’s a difference.”

Across the room, cards were being stacked quietly. Men pushed back from tables, some to get away, some to get closer. A few were already smirking, half-curious how far Clay Turner would take this.

“Eight dollars,” Clay repeated, thumping his bottle on the table in time with the words. “Who’s man enough to pay?”

Nobody moved.

Nobody laughed either.

It was one thing to make dark jokes about selling a man’s soul for a bottle.

It was another to offer his wife like she was a mule.

Clay’s gaze swept the room.

“Thought so,” he sneered. “Cowards, the lot of you. You’ll throw money at a card game but not at a sure thing? Jessa’s strong. Knows how to keep a house. Ain’t bad to look at if you squint. Eight dollars is a bargain.”

Jessa’s face flushed—not with shame, but with something colder.

Maria started around the bar, shotgun under her hand.

“Clay Turner,” she snapped. “You apologize to that woman right now or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” Clay jeered. “Kick me out? I’ll take my business elsewhere. There’s other saloons. Other tables. Other—”

He didn’t finish.

Because Cole Maddox stood.

He did it without drama.

No chair-scrape, no glass-slam.

Just one smooth motion, tall frame unfolding like a rope quietly being pulled taut.

The room’s attention shifted to him as naturally as dust to a boot.

He walked over to the poker table, spurs clicking softly on the floorboards.

Clay squinted up at him.

“Maddox,” he said, words slurring a different way now. “You wanna buy in? Table’s hot. My luck’s about to turn.”

Cole looked down at him, then over at Jessa.

Their eyes met for the first time that night.

Up close, she saw that his eyes were gray, not blue, and that they held the kind of steadiness you only got by spending a lot of time with animals bigger than yourself and weather wilder than your plans.

He looked away after a heartbeat.

Back at Clay.

“You said eight dollars,” Cole said.

Clay grinned.

“That’s right,” he said. “Eight dollars. Cash or gold. Eight for the woman, I mean. Card games extra.”

Cole reached into his pocket.

The room held its breath.

He pulled out a worn leather roll, untied it, and shook eight silver dollars into his palm.

They clinked together—solid, bright, more real than the shouting around them.

He set them down on the table.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” he counted, voice flat. “Eight dollars.”

Jessa’s breath caught.

Maria froze mid-step.

“Cole,” she said warningly. “Don’t you—”

But he was already looking at the gambler.

“You said for eight dollars I can have your wife,” Cole said. “That right?”

The corner of Clay’s mouth curled.

He thought he was winning.

“You got ears, don’t you?” he scoffed. “I’m a man of my word. Eight dollars. She’s yours. I’ll even throw in her Bible if you want something to soften you up.”

A couple of the drunker men guffawed.

Cole’s jaw flexed once.

He turned, slow as a door on rusty hinges, and looked back up at Jessa on the stairs.

“What do you say?” he asked.

She blinked.

“What?” she breathed.

“This offer,” he said. “You part of it?”

Clay laughed loud enough to make the rafters shiver.

“She’s my wife,” he said. “I make the deals. She cooks the beans. That’s how it works.”

Cole didn’t look at him.

He kept his gaze on Jessa.

“I don’t buy stock a man doesn’t own outright,” he said. “You say yes or no, Mrs. Turner.”

The formal address—Mrs. Turner—landed like something delicate in a room full of broken glass.

Her fingers tightened on the banister.

She thought of a year of marriage that had been a long string of promises Clay never kept and debts he always did. Of his charm that had curdled into mean jokes the minute she’d moved from “pretty new thing” to “woman with opinions.”

She thought of how he’d slapped her once, months back, when she’d suggested he come to church sober.

She thought of how no one had seen it but her.

Eight dollars sat on the scarred table below, small and bright and utterly strange.

She also thought of Cole Maddox.

The way he’d come into town quiet, year after year, hat tipped respectfully to whoever he passed, never raising his voice, never raising his hand.

It was reckless, maybe, to trust what you’d only seen at a distance.

But what she’d seen of Clay up close had nearly broken her.

Jessa lifted her chin.

“If you put eight dollars down for me like I’m a horse,” she said, voice steady, “it won’t change the fact I’m married in the eyes of God and law.”

Clay snorted.

“Listen to her,” he said. “Still clutchin’ at church while we move on to business.”

She ignored him.

“You pay eight dollars,” she said to Cole, “you’re not buying me. You’re buying my way out.”

A murmur rippled through the room.

Cole’s eyes sharpened.

“Your way out,” he repeated.

She nodded.

“You get me away from this man tonight,” she said. “You give me a place to sleep that isn’t his. Tomorrow, you ride me to the circuit judge in Holcomb. I’ll tell him everything, and he can decide if this…farce is grounds enough to end the marriage. You give me that, and those eight dollars will be the only thing Clay Turner ever got out of me he didn’t take.”

Clay’s face reddened.

“Divorce?” he spat. “You think some judge is gonna listen to you? You’re nobody, Jessa.”

She looked at him, and for the first time in months, there was no fear in her eyes. Only a sad sort of pity.

“I might be nobody,” she said. “Or I might just be a woman who’s done with being sold by the pound.”

Maria finally found her voice.

“Jessa,” she said. “You sure you want to go through with this? Judges talk, but towns talk louder. They’ll call you every name they know and invent a few new ones.”

“They already have,” Jessa said softly. “Behind my back. To my face. I’m tired of bending my life around their words.”

She looked back at Cole.

“Well?” she asked. “You that kind of brave? Or were you just tired of hearing him talk?”

A flicker of something like reluctant respect moved across his face.

He picked up the coins.

Then, deliberately, he turned to Clay and shoved the eight dollars hard into the other man’s hand.

Clay fumbled, one coin bouncing to the floor.

“There,” Cole said. “Debt settled. You got your eight dollars. You don’t got your wife.”

He turned to Jessa and took off his hat.

“Ma’am,” he said. “If you still want that ride, my wagon leaves at sunup. I’ll sleep in the barn tonight. You can have my room at the boarding house. And tomorrow, I’ll haul you and whatever you own to Holcomb and stand there while you tell the judge why you want out. If he says no, I’ll bring you back. If he says yes, I’ll drop you wherever you say you’re going and that’ll be that.”

He said it like he was offering to move a cow, not rearrange two people’s lives.

But the room understood the weight of it.

Clay gaped.

“You can’t just take her,” he sputtered. “She’s my—”

“Property?” Cole asked, voice suddenly sharp. “Those eight dollars in your hand, that’s property. That heifer out back with the bad hoof, that’s property. That woman on the stairs? She gets to choose.”

Clay looked around wildly.

“You all just gonna let him do this?” he demanded. “He’s stealin’ my wife right out from under me!”

No one answered.

Some looked away.

Some stared.

None stepped forward.

Maria moved to the foot of the stairs, shotgun held easy but ready.

“Jessa?” she said. “You want to go upstairs and pack, honey, I’ll stand right here.”

Jessa’s hand shook on the banister.

Then she straightened.

“I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she said.

Her voice didn’t shake at all.

---

The boarding house room was small and clean, with a narrow bed and a cracked basin.

Cole set his saddlebag on the chair and stepped back.

“I’ll sleep in the hayloft,” he said. “Door locks from the inside. I’ll tell Mrs. Avery you’re under my protection. She won’t argue, long as you don’t track mud on her floor.”

Jessa stood just inside the threshold, trunk in hand.

“He’s not going to…come here?” she asked, hating how small the question sounded.

“Clay?” Cole shook his head. “Maria’ll see to it he sleeps it off in her storeroom. If he tries to pull you out of this house tomorrow without your say-so, he’ll have to get through me. And Maria. And probably half the town. They like a show.”

She managed a ghost of a smile.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “Stand between me and him. You’ve already done more than any man has.”

“You did the hard part,” Cole replied. “You said yes to leaving. All I did was pay the price of silence and break it.”

He tipped his hat, set it on the trunk, then nodded once and withdrew, pulling the door shut behind him.

Jessa stood alone in the little room, heart pounding.

For the first time since she’d left her father’s house to marry Clay, she was in a space that no one had claimed before her.

She sat on the bed and let herself shake.

Not from fear.

From the sense that something had come loose around her ribs that she hadn’t realized had been clenched.

---

Sunrise painted the sky in streaks of pink and gold.

Cole hitched his team to the wagon in the cool morning air, breath pluming from the horses’ nostrils.

He was checking the harness when he heard footsteps.

Jessa approached in a simple gray dress, her trunk balanced on one shoulder, hair braided tight. There were shadows under her eyes, but her jaw was set.

“You sure?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Clay?” she asked.

“Tried to come knocking,” Cole said. “Maria and her shotgun convinced him otherwise. He’s sleeping it off in the jail now. Sheriff said he’d hold him ‘til we’re well on the road.”

“Sheriff’s all right with this?” she asked.

“He’s all right with a woman not getting dragged home against her will,” Cole said. “Rest of it’s between you and the circuit judge.”

She hefted the trunk into the back of the wagon before he could offer to help.

He raised an eyebrow.

“You wrestle a few more of those, you can hire out as a freight hand,” he said.

“Freight don’t talk back as much as ranch hands,” she replied. “Might be an improvement.”

He almost smiled.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

He helped her up onto the seat, climbed up beside her, and flicked the reins.

The wagon rolled out of town under more eyes than a stranger might have noticed.

Some were curious.

Some were disapproving.

A few, mostly women lingering on porches with laundry baskets in their arms, were quietly approving in ways they didn’t dare show.

---

The road to Holcomb was rough in places, smooth in others. Mesquite and scrub dotted the land, and the sky stretched wide and indifferent overhead.

For the first hour, they rode in silence.

Jessa watched the land slip by, mind racing faster than the horses.

“You ever been married, Mr. Maddox?” she asked at last.

“Cole,” he said. “Mr. Maddox makes me sound like I should know which fork to use. And no. Never found anyone eager to tie themselves to someone who smells like cows half the time.”

“You smell more like dust and coffee,” she said before thinking.

He huffed a quiet laugh.

“You say that like it’s a compliment,” he replied.

“Compared to whiskey and bragging?” she said. “It is.”

He shot her a sideways look.

“You sure you don’t want to just run your own place?” he asked. “Could make a killing teaching folks the difference.”

Her face sobered.

“Funny thing about leaving,” she said. “You don’t always know where you’re going after. You just know you can’t stay.”

He nodded.

“That the plan?” he asked. “Judge stamps the paper and you get on a train someplace else?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I stay. Work. Save. Maybe I go east, work in a hotel. Maybe west. I don’t know yet.”

“Clay won’t like it,” Cole said.

She shrugged.

“He also doesn’t like sober days and honest work,” she replied. “His preferences aren’t top of my list anymore.”

They rode on.

The sun climbed.

Around midday, they stopped by a dry creek bed where a trickle of water still clung stubbornly to the rocks.

Cole watered the horses and handed Jessa a strip of jerky and a biscuit he’d wrapped in cloth.

“You baked this?” she asked, examining the biscuit suspiciously.

“Might be a strong word,” he said. “I put flour, lard, and cussin’ in a bowl and this came out.”

She bit into it, chewed, and nodded.

“Could use salt,” she said. “But I’ve had worse.”

“Clay’s cooking?” he ventured.

She shook her head.

“Clay didn’t cook,” she said. “Or clean. Or mend. He gambled. He drank. Sometimes he slept. The rest was my job.”

“And now?” Cole asked.

“And now,” she said slowly, “I find out what else there is besides keeping ahead of a man’s temper.”

He watched her for a moment.

“You’re not afraid?” he asked.

She looked up at the wide sky, then back at him.

“I’m terrified,” she said simply. “But I’m more afraid of going back.”

He nodded once.

“Then we keep going,” he said.

---

Holcomb wasn’t much bigger than their town, but it had two things Copper Spur didn’t: a circuit judge with cleaner robes and a courthouse where the dust didn’t reach the rafters.

Judge Avery was a tired-eyed man with ink stains on his fingers and a line between his brows that suggested he’d spent a lot of years listening to people lie to him.

He looked at Jessa over his spectacles.

“You understand,” he said, “that the law doesn’t take divorce lightly, Mrs. Turner.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

“You also understand,” he went on, “that by asking for this, you risk your reputation. Some will say you broke vows you should’ve kept. Others will say you’re trying to game the system. Either way, it won’t be easy.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she repeated.

He tapped his pen against the paper.

“And you still want to proceed,” he said.

She met his gaze.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

Cole sat on the bench behind her, hands resting on his knees. He said nothing unless spoken to. He’d told her outside the door, “This is your fight. I’m just here so you don’t have to walk into the room alone.”

Now, he watched her back.

The way her shoulders rose and fell on each breath.

The way her hands stayed still in her lap, no tremble.

“Very well,” Judge Avery said. “Tell me why.”

She told him.

Not everything.

But enough.

About Clay’s gambling, the money lost and the lies told. About the promises broken. About the slap. About the night in the saloon when he’d treated her like a thing to be traded for coins and laughs.

The judge’s mouth tightened.

He asked questions. Clarified details. Wrote notes in a cramped, hurried hand.

“And you, Mr. Maddox?” he asked finally, turning his gaze to Cole. “You paid this…eight dollars?”

“Yes, sir,” Cole said.

“Why?” Avery asked.

Cole hesitated.

“Because I was angry,” he said honestly. “Angry at him. At the way men laughed. At how easy it was for him to put a price on something he didn’t own. I wanted him to shut up.”

“That all?” the judge pressed.

“And because she asked,” Cole added. “For a ride. For help. I had more dollars than sense in that moment, maybe. But I don’t regret it.”

“You have no claim over her?” Avery asked.

“No, sir,” Cole said. “I don’t want one. If you sign those papers, she gets to pick her path. I go back to my herd. We both sleep better.”

Judge Avery studied them both.

“In some territories,” he said slowly, “I’d be inclined to send you both away. Tell you to work it out. Tell you marriage is sacred and to endure a cross is noble.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“But I have seen too many women crushed under crosses men carved themselves,” he continued. “And too many men who think ‘forsaking all others’ doesn’t include forsaking cards and bottles.”

He picked up his pen.

“You’ve grounds,” he said. “Public degradation. Neglect. Gambling, if I believe the saloon keeper’s letter. I can’t unwrite the vows you took. But I can write something that says the law won’t hold you down while you try to stand.”

He signed.

For a second, the scratch of pen on paper was louder than anything else in the room.

Then he sanded the ink, blew gently, and handed one copy to Jessa.

“You’re free in the eyes of this court,” he said. “What the eyes of this town think is their own affair. Walk straight, work hard, and eventually they’ll get bored and gossip about someone else.”

Her fingers closed around the paper.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Live like it was worth the asking.”

---

The ride back to Copper Spur was quieter.

Not in the tense way of the morning before.

In the way of people who had stepped off something high and were still surprised to find solid ground under their boots.

Jessa folded the decree and tucked it into the bodice of her dress, close to her heart.

“So,” Cole said as the wagon wheels hummed over hard-packed earth. “Where to now?”

She’d been turning the question over like a coin.

“Maria said I could help at the saloon,” she said. “Not upstairs. In the kitchen. In the books. She’s been wanting someone to keep track of deliveries. I’m good with numbers. Clay never let me do more than stretch his wages, but my father taught me sums.”

“Maria’s a good woman,” Cole said. “Mean with a broom. Fair with a ledger.”

“I thought of going farther,” Jessa admitted. “New place. New people. No one knowing I was ever Mrs. Turner. But… running takes money. And I’m tired of being tired.”

He nodded.

“Nothing wrong with building a new life in an old place,” he said. “If anyone says otherwise, send ‘em to me. I’ll let my bull lecture them on minding their own business.”

She laughed, surprised and bright.

“Your bull gives lectures?” she asked.

“Mostly with his horns,” he replied. “But the point gets across.”

They fell into a more comfortable quiet after that.

As the town came into view, her stomach twisted.

“Clay’ll be out by now,” she said. “You think he’ll try anything?”

“Maybe,” Cole said. “Maybe not. He’s a coward, but even cowards get ideas when they’re humiliated. You want me to walk you to the saloon?”

She hesitated.

“I don’t want to hide behind you forever,” she said. “But… I’d appreciate it this once.”

“That ain’t hiding,” Cole said. “That’s walking with someone who knows what it’s like to be outnumbered. There’s a difference.”

They rolled into Copper Spur.

People stopped.

Stared.

Talk spread faster than dust.

By the time the wagon pulled up in front of the saloon, Clay Turner was already in the street, hair disheveled, shirt half-tucked, eyes bloodshot.

He staggered toward them.

“Think you’re funny?” he snarled at Cole. “Buying my wife like a sack of beans and dragging her across the territory? You think some ink on paper changes what she is?”

Jessa’s hand tightened on the edge of the wagon seat.

Cole didn’t reach for his gun.

He kept his hands loose on the reins.

“What she is now,” Cole said calmly, “is not your concern.”

Clay spat at the ground.

“She’ll come crawlin’ back,” he sneered. “They always do. No one else’ll have her once they know she’s a cast-off. She’s worth eight dollars to you. She’s worth nothing to anybody else.”

Jessa climbed down from the wagon before Cole could offer a hand.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Clay,” she said.

He whirled on her.

“You got some nerve,” he growled. “Standing there behind him like you’re something new.”

She stepped forward.

“At your table,” she said, voice carrying in the hush, “you offered me for eight dollars without asking. At that courthouse, I asked for myself. That’s the difference.”

She pulled the folded decree from her dress and held it up.

“This says I belong to no one unless I choose it,” she said. “That includes you.”

He snatched for the paper.

She stepped back.

“You tear this, I’ll get another,” she said. “You hit me, you’ll do more than sleep in a cell. Sheriff made that real clear this morning.”

Clay looked around.

Faces stared back.

Some smirking.

Some hard.

Some unexpectedly supportive.

He saw no allies.

Just a man alone with eight silver dollars that suddenly felt very small and very stupid in his pocket.

He glared at Cole.

“You think you’re better than me?” he spat.

“No,” Cole said. “I think I made different choices.”

He tipped his hat to Jessa.

“Ma’am,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

“You will?” she asked, startled.

“If you’re workin’ Maria’s books, I’ll have to,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta explain to her why my tab looks the way it does.”

He clicked his tongue, nudged the horses, and rolled the wagon away, dust puffing up under the wheels.

Mr. Avery from the general store stepped up beside Maria, who’d come out onto the saloon porch with her sleeves rolled up, eyes narrowed.

“You alright, girl?” Maria called.

Jessa took a breath.

Felt it go all the way down this time.

“Yes,” she said.

It was the first time in a long time she’d said it and meant it.

---

In the weeks that followed, Copper Spur found other things to gossip about.

At first, Jessa was the main topic. Some called her bold. Some called her worse. Some said Cole and she were secretly married already. Others said he’d hightailed it out of town to avoid getting tangled in her reputation.

He hadn’t.

Twice a month, like always, Cole came in for supplies and mail.

Now he also brought ledger books.

“Maria says you’re magic with numbers,” he’d say, setting the worn volumes on the saloon’s back table. “I’m real good at counting cows. Less good at counting what they cost.”

Jessa would roll her sleeves up and go through his accounts, pencil scratching.

“You bought twenty-five pounds of feed more than you needed last month,” she’d say. “If you stop letting Toby have ‘extras’ for the horses that don’t exist, you’ll save enough in three months to buy a new harness.”

He’d nod, thoughtful.

“Mind if I tell him you said it?” he’d ask.

“Tell him the numbers said it,” she’d reply. “Less likely to argue with those.”

They fell into an easy rhythm.

She worked mornings at the saloon, afternoons sometimes helping at the small town school with the children who needed extra sums. Evenings, she went back to the little room at Mrs. Avery’s boarding house, the decree folded carefully under her pillow until she no longer needed to touch it to believe it.

Clay left town after a while.

Headed east, people said.

Looking for a place that didn’t know his name.

Or the price he’d once put on a woman’s life.

As for the eight dollars, folks still joked about it.

At first cruelly.

Then, gradually, with a different edge.

“Eight dollars for a wife who’ll stand up in a courtroom and speak her mind?” Maria said one night as she wiped down the bar. “Boys, you wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of wealth.”

Laughter rolled, warmer this time.

Cole, at his usual end of the counter, just smiled into his glass.

One night, months after the decree, as the sun bled gold over the hills, he walked Jessa home from the saloon.

“I’m headed out to roundup next week,” he said. “Be gone a while.”

She nodded.

“Stay clear of snakes and bad deals,” she said. “I hear both are thick out there.”

He chuckled.

“At least out there,” he said, “snakes don’t pretend to be anything else.”

They walked in silence for a few paces.

At Mrs. Avery’s porch, he paused.

“You ever think about leaving?” he asked quietly. “Still?”

She looked up at the sky.

“I think about the train sometimes,” she admitted. “About what it’d be like to step onto something that moves fast and not be the one doing the pulling.”

He waited.

“But then I think,” she added, “about kids at the school who come with no lunch and how their faces light up when I slip them a biscuit. About Maria tossing me the keys and saying, ‘Lock up, I trust you.’ About ledger books that start to make sense. And…about a rancher who brings his numbers to my table and doesn’t bring any strings.”

She looked at him.

“For now,” she said, “I like it here. That might change. If it does, I’ll go. On my terms, this time.”

He nodded.

“That’s about the best answer I’ve heard,” he said.

She smiled.

“And you?” she asked. “You ever think of getting yourself a wife for more than eight dollars?”

He scratched the back of his neck.

“Thought about it,” he said. “Figure if I ever do, I’d like it to be with someone who walks beside me because she wants to, not because I put coins on a table.”

She held his gaze a heartbeat longer.

“Good,” she said softly. “You’re already ahead of most men.”

He tipped his hat.

“Night, Jessa,” he said.

“Night, Cole,” she replied.

He walked away, footsteps steady.

She watched him go, then went inside, the door closing on the day.

Somewhere in a drawer, eight dollars sat folded into a piece of paper with her name on it, reminder of how small a man had tried to make her life.

Outside, under a sky that didn’t care what bargains men shouted in noisy saloons, a rancher rode home, not with a wife he’d bought, but with the quiet satisfaction of knowing he’d spent his money on something better:

Giving someone a chance to buy herself back.

THE END