Part 1 Most towns in the New Mexico Territory had a sheriff, or at least a man who owned a badge and knew how to polish it when elections came...
Part 1 The girl was standing. That was what stopped him. Not the wagon with its cracked sideboards and mud-caked wheels. Not the five armed men lounging around it in...
Part 1 My father opened the ledger before he opened his mouth. That was how I knew the answer would be no. The study in my parents’ house in Bozeman...
Part 1 Emily Warren paid for her own birthday dinner because she had learned years ago that if she wanted something to happen without strings, she had to pay for...
Part 1 He fired me over a cup of coffee. That was the official reason, anyway. A dark splash across a white designer shirt. A gray silk tie ruined. A...
Part 1 The morning Alina handed me the divorce papers, the house still smelled faintly of lilies from her uncle’s funeral. They were everywhere, those flowers. Wilting in crystal vases...
Part 1 The town council meeting was held on the fifth day of December in the year 1888, and I remember the date not because anyone wrote it down for...
Part 1 The letter came on a gray October morning when the air felt like metal and the clouds sat so low over the Colorado mountains that the peaks looked...
Part 1 The wind came down out of the northern mountains before dawn, soft at first, slipping through the pine boughs like breath through clenched teeth. It moved over the...
Part 1 The morning Imogene Rasmussen lost her house, the tea in her hand went cold before she could take a second sip. She stood on the brick sidewalk in...