The crowd slowly drifted away.<\/p>\n
The cowboy and the young woman walked in silence beneath the fading sunset.<\/p>\n
After a long while, she finally spoke.<\/p>\n
“You still haven’t told me your name.”<\/p>\n
He glanced toward the distant mountains.<\/p>\n
“Jed.”<\/p>\n
She nodded softly.<\/p>\n
“I’m Claire.”<\/p>\n
Before another word could be spoken\u2014<\/p>\n
a rifle cracked through the evening air.<\/p>\n
The bullet struck the dirt beside their feet.<\/p>\n
Both turned instantly.<\/p>\n
Five riders appeared on the ridge.<\/p>\n
The man at their front smiled coldly.<\/p>\n
“You paid for the girl…”<\/p>\n
He slowly drew his revolver.<\/p>\n
“…but you stole my property.”<\/p>\n
The cowboy stepped in front of Claire without hesitation.<\/p>\n
His hand settled on his holster.<\/p>\n
“This ends here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The crowd slowly drifted away. The cowboy and the young woman walked in silence beneath the fading sunset. After a long while, she finally spoke. “You still haven’t told me your name.” He glanced toward the distant mountains. “Jed.” She nodded softly. “I’m Claire.” Before another word could be spoken\u2014 a rifle cracked through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8884","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\/8884","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=8884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}