The cowboy wrapped his cloak around her shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you tell me who did this?\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’ll come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
A distant rumble rolled across the prairie.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t thunder.<\/p>\n
It was horses.<\/p>\n
The cowboy looked toward the ridge.<\/p>\n
Five riders appeared through the blowing dust.<\/p>\n
The leader pointed straight at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe belongs to us!\u201d<\/p>\n
The cowboy slowly helped the woman behind him.<\/p>\n
She clutched the back of his coat, struggling to stay on her feet.<\/p>\n
His hand rested on the grip of his revolver.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe belongs to no one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The riders kept coming.<\/p>\n
The wind howled harder.<\/p>\n
Rain began to fall.<\/p>\n
The woman whispered through trembling lips.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
He never looked away from the men approaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already made my choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first horse stopped only yards away.<\/p>\n
The cowboy stepped forward into the storm.<\/p>\n
Because the woman they had abandoned to die…<\/p>\n
was no longer standing alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The cowboy wrapped his cloak around her shoulders. \u201cCan you tell me who did this?\u201d The woman closed her eyes. \u201cThey’ll come back.\u201d A distant rumble rolled across the prairie. It wasn’t thunder. It was horses. The cowboy looked toward the ridge. Five riders appeared through the blowing dust. The leader pointed straight at them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9064","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\/9064","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=9064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}