Until one morning, in a dusty corner of the American Southwest, when a woman in a faded Marine jacket raised her hand. She didn’t ask its price. She just asked its name. 

The morning air in Red Willow was already warm, dry as ash, and heavy with the smell of rust and coffee that had been boiling too long. The auction yard looked the same as it always did: dust blowing in lazy spirals, red dirt caked on boots and fence rails, the sun glaring hard enough to bleach the color out of everything it touched. Out past the town limits, the flat land ran on for miles, the kind of high desert you could find in West Texas or eastern New Mexico, where highway signs were few and pickup trucks outnumbered people.

The loudspeaker crackled to life, its old voice struggling against the wind.

“Red Willow Auction Yard. Horses. Cattle. Honest deals.”

The words drifted through the air, half promise, half lie.

Men leaned on rails, their hats pulled low, shirts damp with sweat. They spoke of dry seasons and stubborn wells, of hay prices climbing higher than reason, and of a creature no one wanted to talk about too long.

“That white one’s back,” a man muttered, spitting into the dust.

“You mean the albino? Thought they shot that bastard last year.”

“No, someone brought him in again. Lot fourteen, I think. You’ll hear it soon enough.”

Their laughter was low, uneasy. The smell of oiled leather mingled with that faint metallic taste that came before trouble.

The sun climbed higher, turning the auction yard into a shallow bowl of heat and noise. Horses shifted restlessly in the pens, iron gates clanking under impatient hooves. From the auction block came the voice of Clint Harrove, the man who’d been calling bids in Red Willow for twenty years, his drawl stretched by habit and dust.

“Two hundred. Two-fifty. Thank you, sir. Three hundred to the man in the brown hat. Sold.”

Each sale landed with a smack of a gavel and the shuffle of boots. Money changed hands. Halters changed hands. And no one looked twice at the horses that left. Because here in Red Willow, miracles didn’t exist. Weight did. Feed costs did. Everything else was wind and wishful thinking.

In Red Willow, no one believed in miracles, only in the price per pound.

When Clint stepped back to the microphone, the crowd already knew what was coming. His voice took on a note that wasn’t in the others, a little thinner, a little sharper.