"I saw it when we first got here. Some of those rewards are serious money." Cole looked at Sani. "What do you think?" Sani considered it.
"I think it's risky, but so is everything else. And if we're careful, we might make it work." Cole sighed. "I'm going to regret this." "Probably," Lyra agreed.
"But let's do it anyway." They started small, tracking down a horse thief who'd stolen from a ranch outside town. The man wasn't dangerous, just desperate and stupid, and they brought him in without firing a shot. The sheriff paid them $20, and suddenly bounty hunting didn't seem like such a terrible idea. The next job was harder.
A man named Dutch Carver, wanted for armed robbery and assault, last seen heading toward the hills north of Gravel Springs. The bounty was $200, dead or alive, and the sheriff made it clear he didn't care which. They tracked Carver for three days, following signs through rocky terrain that would have lost a less experienced group. When they finally caught up to him, he was holed up in an abandoned miner shack, armed and paranoid. "Carver," Cole called out from behind cover.
"You're surrounded. Come out peaceful and nobody gets hurt." The answer was a gunshot that splintered the rock near Cole's head. "Guess we're doing this the hard way," Lyra muttered. The fight was short but intense.
Carver fired wildly, more desperate than skilled, and within minutes, Kaya had circled around to the back of the shack while Lyra kept him pinned down from the front. Sani and Cole moved in from the sides, tightening the noose until Carver had nowhere left to go. He surrendered with his hands up, cursing and spitting, but alive. They brought him back to Gravel Springs tied to his saddle, collected the bounty, and split it four ways. $200.
$50 each. It was more money than Cole had seen in months, and it was just the beginning. Over the next six months, they took on more jobs, building a reputation as reliable, efficient, and willing to go after targets other bounty hunters wouldn't touch. The work was dangerous, but they were good at it, and the money started piling up faster than any of them had expected.
They also started learning how to work together in ways that went beyond just survival. Kaya was the strategist, always thinking three steps ahead. Lyra was the risk-taker, willing to make the bold move when caution would have gotten them killed. Sani was the anchor, calm and steady even when everything was falling apart. And Cole was the one who held it all together, even when he didn't feel like he was doing anything at all.
They fought, of course. Arguments over tactics, over money, over whose turn it was to cook dinner. But the fights didn't break them anymore. They'd learned how to argue without destroying what they'd built. How to disagree and still trust each other when it mattered.
And slowly, imperceptibly, the thing they'd started in Stillwater Crossing began to feel real. One year after signing that document in the magistrate's office, they had enough money to buy land. Not much. Just 40 acres in the valley Cole had pointed to on the map, with a creek running through it and soil that looked like it might actually grow something. The previous owner had given up after a bad drought, and they got it cheap.
Standing on that land for the first time, looking out at the empty expanse that was now theirs, Cole felt something shift inside him. It wasn't joy, exactly. More like relief. Like he'd been holding his breath for ten years and could finally exhale. "Well?" Kaya asked, standing beside him.
"What do you think?" "I think we're insane." "That's not new." "I think this might actually work." Kaya smiled.
"That is new." They built the house themselves, working from dawn until dusk, learning as they went. The first attempt collapsed in a rainstorm. The second leaked so badly they might as well have been sleeping outside. The third held.
And they called it good enough. It wasn't much. Just four walls, a roof, and a stone fireplace that smoked if the wind blew wrong. But it was theirs. Built with their hands, paid for with their work, standing on land that belonged to them and nobody else.
Lyra carved their names into the doorframe the day they moved in. Cole Mercer. Kaya. Lyra. Sani.
Four names side by side, like they'd always belonged there. "Now what?" Sani asked. "Now we live," Cole said. And they did. It wasn't easy.
The land fought them every step of the way. Droughts, floods, animals that ate their crops before they could harvest. But they learned. They adapted. They survived.
Cole taught Lyra how to shoot better, how to track game when the hunting was scarce. Kaya and Sani started a garden that actually produced vegetables instead of just weeds. They bought chickens, then a cow, then a few horses they could breed and sell. The bounty work didn't stop entirely. They still took jobs when money got tight or when boredom set in.
But it was different now. It wasn't desperation. It was a choice. Two years in, a neighboring rancher tried to claim their water rights, saying the creek belonged to his property. Cole was ready to ride over there with a rifle.
Kaya talked him down, pointed out that violence would just bring the law into it, and they couldn't afford that kind of attention. Instead, they went to the county office, dug up the old surveys, and proved the creek was theirs. The rancher backed off grumbling, and Cole learned that not every problem needed to be solved with a gun. Three years in, Sani got sick. A fever that wouldn't break, chills that left her shaking so hard the bed rattled.