Deadman’s Trace was a town the desert had already half-claimed. Once a roaring gold camp where fortunes were made and lost in a single drunken night, it now clung to life along a single rutted street of sun-bleached false-front buildings, their paint peeled and their windows cracked. The mines had played out years ago, leaving behind empty shafts, a boot-hill crowded with unmarked graves, and a silence that pressed down harder than the midday heat. A lone windmill creaked in the distance, the saloon never closed, and the only law that still mattered was the one worn on Sheriff Douglass’s vest. Out here, where the mesas stood like broken teeth against the burning sky, men came for second chances and often left in pine boxes. The name had been a warning once. Now it was simply the truth.