###1899. The mountain air cuts like a knife, but it’s not the cold that chills our blood—it’s the weight of the future bearing down on us. The East has become too tight, suffocating; civilized, some say, tamed by men in clean suits, pockets full of dirty gold and iron laws that protect only their own. They push us toward the edge of the map, where the earth still bleeds wild, trapped between the sword of modernity and the wall of extinction. The newspapers call us monsters, relics of a violent past that must be eradicated, and perhaps they are right, but we won't go down without a fight.
Dutch says we just need one more big score, one last show of blind faith, and then we can disappear forever to a place where no one knows our names. But as I look at the dying campfires, reflected in the tired eyes of the boys, I see only shadows of men and women who refuse to accept the truth: the Wild West is breathing its last. The law is hot on our heels, the old ways are closing, and money no longer buys the freedom we once breathed. In the end, we are nothing but ghosts riding at full gallop toward an inevitable twilight.
