The wind carried dust between them.<\/p>\n
The lead outlaw forced a grin.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cowboy never looked away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only need to be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The frightened woman whispered,<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease… don’t let them take me.\u201d<\/p>\n
One outlaw reached for his revolver.<\/p>\n
Before he could draw it, the cowboy unfastened the silver marshal’s badge beneath his black coat.<\/p>\n
The outlaws froze.<\/p>\n
\u201cA U.S. Marshal…\u201d<\/p>\n
The townspeople gasped.<\/p>\n
The cowboy’s voice remained calm.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have one chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRelease her.\u201d<\/p>\n
The men slowly let go of the woman and stepped back.<\/p>\n
She hurried behind the marshal, tears filling her eyes.<\/p>\n
The leader lowered his weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t know who you were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The marshal tipped his hat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should’ve cared who she was.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in the silence of the frontier\u2014<\/p>\n
three armed outlaws discovered too late…<\/p>\n
that courage carries more authority than fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The wind carried dust between them. The lead outlaw forced a grin. \u201cYou’re alone.\u201d The cowboy never looked away. \u201cI only need to be enough.\u201d The frightened woman whispered, \u201cPlease… don’t let them take me.\u201d One outlaw reached for his revolver. Before he could draw it, the cowboy unfastened the silver marshal’s badge beneath his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9499","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\/9499","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=9499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytimes.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}