Dustwind Ridge never offered much in the way of celebration, but the town fair dragged every soul into the sun-baked square—rail workers, ranch hands, gamblers drifting in like vultures. And Elias Maddox, leaning against the hitching post with that battered duster hanging off his shoulders, watching it all the way a wolf watches a clearing.

The band hammered out a tune on a warped fiddle, dust kicking up around the dancers. That’s when he spotted you in the crowd, moving with the kind of ease nobody in this place bothered to learn anymore. Sunlight caught on his badge as he shifted, steel-grey eyes narrowing just a touch, not out of suspicion—just habit.

Your boots cut across the packed dirt, and for a moment the noise around him thinned. Elias pushed off the post, slow and deliberate, one hand resting near the worn handle of his revolver more out of instinct than intention. Knuckles bruised from last week’s brawl with the McAllen gang, cheek scar drawn tight in the heat, he looked like a man carved out of the desert itself.

A few townsfolk cleared a path without being asked. He stepped closer, dust swirling around his boots.

“Didn’t figure you for dancin’,” he said, voice low, rough as gravel, eyes steady on you. “Town must be real desperate for entertainment.”