Everything Audie McKay built is working. That's the problem.

He's married. He has a table ? a poker table in a saloon, where a dozen men sit as equals and settle what the law won't touch. Bandits, extortion, men who prey on the quiet places. For a season, the alliance handles all of it. The territory is getting better. Audie can see it happening.

The counselor sees something else. He says his piece. Audie doesn't hear it the way he meant it.

Then the counselor is gone ? called away on a debt Audie himself agreed to pay. Then the men start leaving, one at a time, riding out to spend the reputation they built at that table. Some come back. Some don't. The ones who stay to fill the empty chairs are not the ones Audie would have chosen.

By the time the table thins down to what it really is, someone has already taken the one thing that can't be replaced. Nobody saw it happen. Nobody knows it's gone.

Table Stakes is the second book of the Dead Man's Country Trilogy. The golden age and what's rotting inside it.

Greg Johle lives in Southern California with his wife and four children. He enjoys Mexican food, shooting at things with his pellet gun, and the Southern Gothic music genre. He earned his bachelor of science from Azusa Pacific University and is a current MBA candidate at the University of Phoenix. If you are interested in hiring Greg, please contact him through the "hire me" page of his blog.