Six months after the Ghost fell, Obie Trask is still at the Callahan place.
He never meant to stay. The fence needed mending. The boy needed teaching. Winter came, then thaw, and somehow the days stacked into a life measured by rails driven straight, powder measured careful, and meals taken at a table that was no longer empty. Maeve asks no promises. Finn asks for everything. Obie gives what a longhunter can—work, silence, and the hard lessons that keep a man alive.
Then the trader brings word from the settlement.
Zebulon Griggs is drinking on credit and talking too loud. Old grudges. Old blood. The story of the cat and the quiet man who claimed the kill. Two strangers at the post listen with interest. By the time Obie rides in for powder and salt, the talk has already traveled farther than any of them meant.
Horse tracks appear outside the fence line. A rider watches from the ridge. The homestead that had begun to feel like ground worth holding suddenly feels like ground worth taking.
Obie does what he has always done: he reads the sign, sets the angles, and prepares the place to answer back. Maeve loads without being asked. Finn learns the difference between cover and hiding, between a shot that holds a window and a shot that chases ghosts. When the debt Griggs sold finally comes due, it arrives in the dark with knives, empty pistols, and men who believe a widow’s cabin is easier work than a longhunter’s trail.
Holding ground costs more than killing a cat.
Some prices are paid in blood. Some are paid in the quiet decision to stay when the road still calls. And some are paid by a boy who learns, too young, what it means to fire the shot that keeps the people behind him alive.
Gritty, unflinching, and steeped in the hard arithmetic of the frontier, The Price of Staying continues the story of a man who once hunted alone—and the people who made the cost of leaving higher than the cost of remaining.
Genre: Western
He never meant to stay. The fence needed mending. The boy needed teaching. Winter came, then thaw, and somehow the days stacked into a life measured by rails driven straight, powder measured careful, and meals taken at a table that was no longer empty. Maeve asks no promises. Finn asks for everything. Obie gives what a longhunter can—work, silence, and the hard lessons that keep a man alive.
Then the trader brings word from the settlement.
Zebulon Griggs is drinking on credit and talking too loud. Old grudges. Old blood. The story of the cat and the quiet man who claimed the kill. Two strangers at the post listen with interest. By the time Obie rides in for powder and salt, the talk has already traveled farther than any of them meant.
Horse tracks appear outside the fence line. A rider watches from the ridge. The homestead that had begun to feel like ground worth holding suddenly feels like ground worth taking.
Obie does what he has always done: he reads the sign, sets the angles, and prepares the place to answer back. Maeve loads without being asked. Finn learns the difference between cover and hiding, between a shot that holds a window and a shot that chases ghosts. When the debt Griggs sold finally comes due, it arrives in the dark with knives, empty pistols, and men who believe a widow’s cabin is easier work than a longhunter’s trail.
Holding ground costs more than killing a cat.
Some prices are paid in blood. Some are paid in the quiet decision to stay when the road still calls. And some are paid by a boy who learns, too young, what it means to fire the shot that keeps the people behind him alive.
Gritty, unflinching, and steeped in the hard arithmetic of the frontier, The Price of Staying continues the story of a man who once hunted alone—and the people who made the cost of leaving higher than the cost of remaining.
Genre: Western
Used availability for C Wayne Winkle's The Price Of Staying