Part 1: Opening

The little girl collapsed in front of the cowboy’s cabin just before sunset.

Her shoes were torn. Her dress was covered in dust, and her small hands trembled as she clutched a photograph against her chest.

The cowboy, Samuel Hayes, had been splitting firewood when he heard the faint sound of someone crying.

He dropped his axe and rushed toward the porch.

“Sweetheart, what happened to you?”

The girl struggled to stand.

“Are you Mr. Hayes?”

Samuel nodded.

She held out the photograph.

“Are you the man who loved this woman?”

The question struck him harder than any bullet.

Samuel stared at the picture.

It showed a young woman with dark hair, gentle eyes, and a familiar smile. She was standing beside a wooden fence, wearing the blue dress she had worn on the day they married.

His wife.

Elizabeth.

The woman who had died six years earlier.

Samuel’s fingers began to shake.

“Where did you get this?”

The girl looked down at her dusty shoes.

“My mother gave it to me.”

Samuel crouched in front of her.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“Anna.”

He waited.

The girl swallowed.

“She told me that if anything happened to her, I had to find you. She said you were the only man who could tell me the truth about my family.”

Samuel felt the world tilt beneath his feet.

Elizabeth had never mentioned a daughter.

Not once.

He looked at the child more carefully. She couldn’t have been older than eight. Her dark hair fell across her forehead, and her eyes were filled with the kind of exhaustion no child should ever have to carry.

“Where do you live, Anna?”

“Near Dry Creek.”

Samuel went still.

Dry Creek was nearly thirty miles away.

“You walked all the way here?”

She nodded.

“It took me two days. I slept in a church one night, and a farmer gave me some bread yesterday.”

Samuel lifted her gently and carried her inside.

He gave her water, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and placed a plate of food before her. But the girl barely touched it.

Instead, she kept looking at the photograph.

“Mr. Hayes,” she whispered, “my mother said you would recognize the necklace.”

Samuel turned the photograph over.

For the first time, he noticed the small silver necklace around Elizabeth’s neck. He had given it to her on their wedding anniversary.

But there was something else.

A tiny inscription had been scratched into the back of the photograph.

“If Anna finds you, tell her what happened the night I disappeared.”

Samuel’s face drained of color.

His wife hadn’t died six years ago.

At least, not in the way he had been told.

He turned toward the little girl.

“Anna, who told you your mother was dead?”

The child began to cry.

“Nobody, sir. She’s alive.”

Samuel froze.

Anna reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

“She’s locked in a place outside Dry Creek. The men who took her said they would never let her come home.”

Samuel unfolded the paper.

There were only three lines written in a familiar handwriting.

Samuel,

I am sorry I kept the truth from you.

The man who told you I was dead is coming for our daughter next.

Outside, a horse suddenly neighed.

Samuel looked through the window.

Three armed riders had stopped at the edge of his property.

And the man leading them was the same sheriff who had attended Elizabeth’s funeral.