The saloon doors swung open.<\/p>\n
An older sheriff stepped inside, a folded warrant clutched in his hand.<\/p>\n
“Stop the auction.”<\/p>\n
The room fell silent.<\/p>\n
The auctioneer lowered his gavel with an annoyed glare.<\/p>\n
“She’s already sold.”<\/p>\n
The sheriff shook his head.<\/p>\n
“No… she’s a witness.”<\/p>\n
A murmur swept through the crowd.<\/p>\n
The rugged stranger stepped onto the platform and cut the ropes from the woman’s wrists.<\/p>\n
Then, with careful hands, he lifted the burlap hood.<\/p>\n
The woman blinked against the light.<\/p>\n
Tears filled her eyes.<\/p>\n
“You came.”<\/p>\n
The stranger stared at her for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Then his voice turned cold.<\/p>\n
“Tell them your name.”<\/p>\n
She swallowed hard.<\/p>\n
“My name is Abigail…”<\/p>\n
“…and the man who sold me murdered my husband.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The saloon doors swung open. An older sheriff stepped inside, a folded warrant clutched in his hand. “Stop the auction.” The room fell silent. The auctioneer lowered his gavel with an annoyed glare. “She’s already sold.” The sheriff shook his head. “No… she’s a witness.” A murmur swept through the crowd. The rugged stranger stepped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}