"But she stays outside." Elias stopped. The air in the store grew thick. "Excuse me?" "I said the Indian stays outside.
I have decent women coming in here. I will not have a savage standing next to them." Elias felt the familiar rage uncoiling in his gut, the same rage he had felt at the auction. "She is my wife." "Mercer, she stands where I stand."
Mercer sneered. "I do not care what piece of paper you bought. She waits outside, or you take your business elsewhere." Elias took a step forward, his hand curling into a fist. But before he could move, the door behind them opened.
Two cowboys sauntered in. Elias recognized them, drift riders who worked for Clay Harlan, the cattle baron. They smelled of sweat and whiskey. One of them, a man with yellow teeth and a lazy eye, looked at Naya and laughed. "Well, look here, the happy couple."
He walked around Naya, looking her up and down with exaggerated scrutiny. "You got ripped off, Ward," the cowboy said. "I heard about this one. She is barren, dried up. That is why the tribe let her go.
She is used goods, empty as a dry canteen." The other cowboy laughed. "Not worth the $20. You cannot breed a mule, Ward. Everybody knows that."
The words hung in the air, cruel and precise. Naya flinched. It was a small movement, a slight recoil of her shoulders. But to Elias, it looked like she had been whipped. Elias moved.
He did not think. He crossed the distance between them in two strides. He grabbed the cowboy by the front of his duster and shoved him backward. The man slammed into a display of tinned peaches, the cans crashing to the floor with a sound like thunder. "Shut your mouth," Elias snarled, his voice trembling with a violence he had tried to bury.
The cowboy scrambled up, his hand going to the knife at his belt. Elias stood his ground, his hand hovering over his Colt. "Draw it," Elias whispered. "Give me a reason." The room froze.
Mercer was pale behind the counter. The cowboy looked at Elias's eyes and saw death waiting there. He hesitated. "Get out," Elias said, "before I forget that I am trying to be a civilized man." The cowboy spat on the floor, muttered a curse, and backed out of the door, his companion following close behind.
Elias turned to Mercer. "The flour," he said, his voice ice cold. "And the nails. Now." They rode back to the ranch in silence.