The gunshot outside had been a drunken miner celebrating nothing in particular, but it set the tone for Eli's first week in Silver Ridge.
Judge Holloway wasted no time. By dawn the next morning, he had Eli reviewing land disputes—most of them between the mining companies and the homesteaders clinging to scraps of dirt the corporations hadn't yet swallowed. The papers were a mess of forged deeds and vague promises, and Eli quickly realized why Holloway had wanted a lawyer. The law in Silver Ridge wasn't just ignored; it was *broken*, over and over, by men who knew no one would stop them.
### **The First Challenge**
On the third day, Holloway tossed a file onto Eli's desk. "Josiah Pike. Rancher. Claims the Silver Star Mining Company dynamited his well to drive him off his land."
Eli flipped through the papers. "Do we have proof?"
"Proof?" Holloway snorted. "Boy, out here, proof is what you can make stick."
So Eli rode out to the Pike homestead, a patch of dust and stubbornness on the edge of town. Josiah Pike was a wiry man in his fifties, his hands calloused from decades of work, his eyes hard with betrayal.
"They poisoned my cattle first," he told Eli, kicking at the dirt. "Then, when I didn't leave, they blew my well sky-high. Now I've got no water, no cattle, and no way to hold on."
Eli examined the wreckage—the shattered stone, the dry earth. It wasn't hard to see what had happened. But when he rode into town to confront the foreman of Silver Star, a hulking brute named Cade Varro, the man just smirked.
"Ain't our fault if some old man's well collapsed," Varro said, leaning against the saloon's porch post. "Maybe he should've dug it better."
Eli kept his voice steady. "There's dynamite residue in the rock."
Varro's grin didn't waver. "And who's gonna testify to that? You?"
That was the problem. No witnesses. Just a rancher's word against a company that owned half the town.
### **The First Lesson in Frontier Law**
Eli returned to Holloway's office, frustrated. "We can't prove it was them."
The judge exhaled a plume of cigar smoke. "You're thinking like an Eastern lawyer, Dawson. Out here, sometimes the law ain't about proof. It's about *leverage*."
"What leverage do we have?"
Holloway's smile was slow and dangerous. "Silver Star's got a shipment going out next week. If that don't make it to the railhead, their investors get nervous."
Eli stared. "You're suggesting we *rob* them?"
"I'm suggesting," Holloway said, "that sometimes justice needs a push."
### **The First Blood**
Eli didn't like it. But he liked the idea of letting Varro win even less.
So, three nights later, he found himself crouched in the rocks above the mining road, heart pounding, as a wagon laden with silver bars rumbled toward them. Beside him, Holloway checked his revolver.
"Remember," the judge muttered. "We ain't thieves. We're just… delaying things."
Then the shooting started.
It wasn't a clean ambush. The guards fired back, and Eli felt the hot whip of a bullet graze his arm before he even got a shot off. Holloway moved like a man half his age, dropping two men with precise shots to their legs—non-lethal, but enough to take them out of the fight.
When it was over, the silver was scattered in the dirt, the wagon's axle broken, and the guards groaning in the dust. Holloway tipped his hat to them. "Tell Varro the next shipment goes the same way unless he pays Josiah Pike for that well."
### **The First Real Enemy**
Word spread fast.
By morning, the whole town knew someone had struck back at Silver Star. Some folks whispered in approval; others eyed Eli with new wariness.
And then there was Cade Varro.
He found Eli outside the courthouse at noon, his face a thundercloud. "You got a death wish, lawyer?"
Eli didn't reach for the pistol at his hip—he still wasn't fast enough to win that fight. But he didn't back down either. "Just doing my job."
Varro leaned in, his breath reeking of whiskey and rot. "Your job's gonna get you buried."
Then he spat at Eli's feet and stalked off.
### **The First Ally**
That night, Eli sat in The Silver Flask, nursing a whiskey and rubbing the bandage on his arm. He hadn't expected the West to be this brutal. Or this *personal*.
"You look like a man who just realized he's in over his head."
The voice came from beside him. A woman in a dark blue dress, her hair pinned up, her eyes sharp. She didn't smile.
Eli frowned. "Do I know you?"
"Lena Reyes," she said. "I own the newspaper. Or what passes for one in this town."
Eli had seen the *Silver Ridge Ledger*—a single sheet of poorly printed gossip and mining updates. But Lena's gaze was anything but frivolous.
"You made a mistake today," she said.
"Which one?" Eli muttered.
"Thinking Varro's the real problem." She leaned closer. "Silver Star answers to a man named Roderick Bell. And Bell doesn't take kindly to interference."
Eli studied her. "Why tell me this?"
Lena's lips thinned. "Because I've been waiting for someone to fight back."
### **The First Realization**
Eli walked back to his rented room that night with a new understanding:
Silver Ridge wasn't just a lawless town. It was a *battlefield*.
And he'd just taken his first step onto it.