The Bull Riders' Lost Princess

one behind, until the road climbed into a hollow where a wh

am said. "Nobody lives h

opened before t

without her. She had gone thin. Silver ran through the hair at her temples. But her spine was

vender and woodsmoke, and her mother's hands moving over her

iam whispered. "Yo

here,

e too

one to

then she was cryin

toast. A gray tom with a torn ear too

ing coffee with a hand that would no

, sit

front of Hannah and kept h

't you co

e out small. It

hen the men started dying, I kept thinkin

dn't

hen your fa

ddy betrayed everything he ever claimed to stand for. The honor, the loyalty, all of it, a

till. "Betrayed. W

found the

gainst the saucer

birthday. Pages about Tommy, ab

to

One hand pressed flat to her chest, and when she looked a

of those pages. Not

ma, what

ore to them

ndow e

on top of her, coffee cups shattering above. Outside, engines screamed. A man

n," Maria

ith a pistol in his hand. His eyes swept the kitchen, found them

ready speaking into the radio on his shoulder. "Dutch, the barn.

Copy.

s obeyed on the first word, like water running

d like, she thought, and

Basemen

did n

he gunfire, and it was there. But beneath it was something sharp

quietly Hannah barely caught it, "they'll ask

is tak

n't und

" Hannah gripped h

s the fields, and there was only rain dripping from

pistol. "Gone. Holloway took a graze to the arm.

were

His jaw flexed. "Doesn'

sat on the porch steps in a blanket that

eek?" sh

have tried to get inside twice. Jackson's, three times. Not to ki

ques

ers died fighting over her. Both men need to hear it was for something.

ch w

hey wanted. If Mariam says it was her fault, the old men stay clea

e of anything she had done. She was one because she was alive, and because two gr

o them, she thought

en door

scrubbed and gray. She looked at G

withou

ghter with the care of someone much older, and her

e died. It has your name on it, and only your name." She

hy