“Wheee!” Lily squealed as her little pony cantered beneath her!

  They had borrowed some horses after visiting the Sheriff and getting deputized!

  Now she had a big shiny silver star on her leather vest!

  She also had a wooden toy pistol in a holster on her belt!

  The Sheriff had offered her a gun, but her Mama said no…

  Lily kinda felt like they were missing out on the culture of the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas!

  Riding alongside her was her mother, sitting side saddle super elegantly!

  Sally was a natural!

  She had a big hat with a feather in it, and was mainly along for the ride. She was so good at riding, she was even carrying Mr. Cat!

  Annie Elmly had gone on ahead, and they were riding alongside a posse!

  That’s right, a posse! It was a group of locals deputized by the Sheriff to go out and dispense some Justice!

  At Lily’s insistence, they had said a prayer to Justitia before they set off!

  Meanwhile, at the secret hideout…

  Connie was playing with all the money they had stolen!

  Smack… smack… smack… fwwwippp…

  Stacks and stacks of cash!

  Bundles of it!

  Bands, even!

  She had a band in hand, smacking it, and then thumbing through the bills.

  Connie and Blyde had been rich for a while now, already.

  But they kept stealing!

  They just liked it!

  Well, Connie liked being rich and getting richer, more.

  Blyde was the real mastermind to their schemes and heists.

  And this was their biggest scheme yet!

  Sure, you could rob banks over and over and get cash that way.

  Easy peasy!

  They were faster horse riders than the sheriffs, and they always got away.

  But this was a truly devious scheme.

  Blyde sat in his chair, in their cave, the shadows from their cookfire deep on his face.

  He was twirling his mustache!

  For a while now, Connie and Blyde had been stealing free range cattle from all the ranchers in the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas.

  It was too easy!

  Ranchers marked their cattle, and just let em roam all over, eating the grass where they went.

  That was how they got the best tasting beef.

  But all you had to do was herd the cattle away in the middle of the night!

  At first, the price of beef had only gone up a little bit. But as they took more and more stolen cattle to the Gorge, where it was easy to pen them up, there were less and less cattle to slaughter, and the price of beef went up…

  Now it was sky high!

  Six times what it used to be!

  They controlled all the beef supply now!

  And while Blyde was a criminal mastermind…

  Connie was a master of disguise!

  She would put on a disguise, and sell a few cattle at a time, after scrubbing off the ranchers’ marks, and make a fortune!

  In the end, it was half stealing, and half a business scheme!

  Heheheh…

  She couldn’t help but chuckle, while Blyde continued twirling his mustache.

  The demand for beef in the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas was bottomless.

  The only reason the price wasn’t so high, was that the free market here was so powerful!

  The people worked super hard, and raised lots and lots of cattle, so that everyone had enough to eat!

  Normally, they even had enough to sell to other countries!

  Even though they weren’t as Great and Free as Texas…

  Their money was still good!

  But thanks to Connie and Blyde’s thievery and rustling, now there was barely enough steak for the Texans to eat, let alone export.

  And now…

  Blyde was planning to expand!

  He was going to finish rustling every last cattle, and then they were going to drive the herd even further out west, and start their own cattle export business, out in the Wild West!

  Everyone would pay a really high price for his cattle!

  And if anyone tried to raise their own cattle…

  Conne and Blyde would go and rustle them!

  It was a devious, evil plan to establish a monopoly!

  Nothing could stop them…

  It was mid-afternoon right now, but when night fell…

  They’d head out, and rustle up the last of the cattle on their way out West!

  It was just a matter of time, now…

  Meanwhile, the posse had arrived, and blocked off both ends of the gorge.

  There was a conspicuous loud mooing sound!

  “Well I’ll be…” one of the posse members said.

  “That sure sounds like our cattle!” said another.

  “Hold on, everybody, we gotta follow the script!” Lily said.

  Duke was helping her practice her lines!

  He was really getting into it, now!

  Poor Mac, and Rich, and Ray didn’t have much to do.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  They were playing the role of the audience!

  Mainly, this involved clapping and praising Lily when she got her lines right.

  She was really responsive to positive feedback!

  Finally, she was ready.

  The star of the show!

  Sally, nervous, found a fallen tree to sit on and was petting Mr. Cat.

  He was purring again!

  They were in a big clearing next to a cave, which had a hitching post and two super sleek, fast looking racehorses tied up to it.

  The horses whinnied, excited to watch the show!

  The horses, naturally, had no attachment to their villainous current owners.

  They’d been stolen, too!

  They were victims of circumstance…

  Anyway, Lily strode up to the mouth of the cave, while a couple members of the posse played some ominous, tension-building western music!

  “Alright, you varmints! We got you surrounded! Come on out with yer hands up!”

  “Good job, kid,” Duke said.

  Lily got her lines right!

  Her audience ghosts clapped their hands.

  “Oh shoot!” one of the varmints in the cave said, loudly.

  “Blyde, they said they got us surrounded!”

  “Hang on, Connie, didn’t that sound like some little kid?”

  Lily heard that, and…

  Went off script!

  “Hey!” she shouted. “I’m not some little kid! I’m eight years old, and I’m legally an adult!”

  “Eight year olds can’t be adults!” a woman’s voice yelled back from within the cave.

  “Nuh uh!” Lily retorted eloquently. “I’m emasticated!”

  “It’s ‘emancipated,’ dear!” Lily’s Mama called.

  “I mean, emancipated!”

  “Well, what do you want!”

  “Come out with yer hands up! Yer under arrest, and I’m taking you in!”

  Lily was back on the script!

  “Oh yeah? You and what army?” a man’s voice called.

  “I got a whole posse! The Sheriff made me a deputy! I’m an ally of Justice!”

  Up in heaven, Justitia nodded!

  “Oh, really? Well, how about we pay you to turn around and forget you ever found us?”

  Lily gasped.

  “That would be wrong!”

  Connie and Blyde laughed from within the cave.

  “You don’t get it, kid, even if you are an emancipated adult. The world revolves around money! If you have enough money, you can get away with anything!”

  “N-no, that’s not right…” Lily argued back, but she stuttered!

  The villains kinda had a point!

  Money was important…

  She had learned that, over the last few months.

  Up in heaven, Justitia bit her handkerchief!

  “No, they’re trying to tempt Lily!”

  “Listen kid, we’ll give you money, and you forget you saw us, and everyone goes home happy, understand?”

  Lily bit her lip.

  The posse was currently blocking the exits to the Gorge.

  They couldn’t hear this conversation over the mooing!

  “N-no, you can’t bribe me!” Lily yelled.

  She was a good girl!

  She was an ally of justice!

  She was a sheriff’s deputy cowgirl of justice!

  But her heart was wavering!

  She needed money really badly!

  The man called out. “Look, kid, we’ll give you five hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money! More than a kid like you could ever make doing chores. You take that money and scram.”

  Silence fell for a moment.

  Even the cows stopped mooing.

  The horses watched eagerly.

  Lily’s face went expressionless.

  “Huh?” she said, flatly.

  So cheap!

  They thought she was so cheap!

  “Five hundred dollars? That’s it?” she stated.

  “W-what do you mean?” the woman’s voice called out from within the cave.

  “You brat, five hundred dollars is a lot of money! You don’t know the value of a dollar!”

  A vein bulged on Lily’s forehead.

  “Lily knows the value of a dollar!” she yelled back at the cattle rustlers. “Lily worked really hard! Lily did chores every day! Lily opened four restaurants! Lily flipped burgers, and fried french fries, and stirred lemonade!”

  The man’s voice in the cave…

  Snorted!

  He was looking down on Lily!

  “You may have done chores, I’ll grant you that, but you don’t understand anything… Once we control all the cattle, we’ll have more money than anybody! Fine, if five hundred dollars isn’t enough, name your price!”

  He was trying to negotiate!

  But Lily was too mad to put on her business thinking cap!

  She was wearing the shiny silver star of Justice today!

  “Before the price of beef went up, Lily was making over six hundred dollars a day from her restaurants! You varmints messed that up! And I need to make money to pay for my Papa’s medical bills! And it’s not just me, everyone is unhappy because of what you’re doing! Not just the ranchers you stole from, but everyone in the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas who eats steak for three meals a day, and everyone else who buys beef! You’re being really mean! You’re being evil!”

  “Fine, you were making six hundred dollars a day? We’ll give you six thousand dollars to let us go.”

  Lily put her hands on her hips.

  “Sixty.”

  “...huh?”

  “Lily said, sixty! You know what that is? Sixty thousand dollars! That’s how much Lily’s Papa’s medical bills are!”

  Two gasps came out of the cave.

  “Sixty thousand dollars in medical bills?”

  “Now that’s evil!”

  Even the villains were shocked!

  But, negotiations had broken down!

  Sure, Connie and Blyde might have had that much money on them!

  But they weren’t going to pay that much to get away!

  “Stick ‘em up!”

  Lily’s Mama gasped from her seat.

  Mr. Cat hissed.

  Connie and Blyde emerged, wearing cowboy outfits, with their six-shooters drawn and pointed at Lily!

  Ghostly Duke narrowed his eyes.

  The audience ghosts gasped too!

  “That’s outrageous!”

  “How can they point guns at a cute little cowgirl like that?!”

  Connie and Blyde were bad guys!

  “Put your hands up, little lady, and nobody gets hurt.”

  Lily’s hand stayed low, next to her toy pistol. She glared at them.

  “So that’s what varmints look like…” she said.

  More ominous western music played.

  “I mean it, girl! Put your hands up!” Connie yelled, and Blyde cocked back the hammer on his revolver with a click.

  And then…

  Pew! Ping! Kapew!

  Gunfire!

  The guns were shot right out of Connie and Blyde’s hands!

  And…

  Mr. Cat leapt for them!

  “No, Mr. Cat! Are you kidding me?” Lily’s Mama yelled. “Drop it, let it go! What is wrong with you?!”

  “Meow!” Mr. Cat screamed.

  But Lily was still mad, and laser focused on the villains in front of her!

  “Are ya feeling lucky, punks?” she asked, menacingly!

  Blyde tried to take a step…

  Pew!

  And then froze.

  “I’ve got the finest sharpshooter in the West on my side. It’s time to give up!” Lily declared.

  “You don’t mean…” Connie said.

  “That’s right, Annie Elmly!”

  Blyde spat.

  “Darn it all… We were so close. We nearly got away with it! If only it weren’t for that meddling little girl and her enormous debt…”

  In the meantime, Lily’s Mama got the guns away from Mr. Cat, who was very sulky about it!

  Blyde and Connie put their hands up, and with Annie keeping them in her sights, Lily tied them up, following Duke’s instructions!

  “You both are under arrest for cattle rustling, and a bunch of other crimes!” Lily declared.

  And with that, Connie and Blyde’s crime spree was over!

  The posse rounded up the cattle from the gorge, and herded them back towards Dustin, where their proper owners could pick them up.

  Lily was a hero!

  Altogether, two hundred head of cattle were saved.

  That wasn’t even close to all of them, though.

  A lot of them had been sold!

  The money from the illegal sales was recovered from the bandit hideout, and would be used to compensate the victims.

  That evening, Lily, her Mama, Mr. Cat, and Annie Elmly headed to the capitol building to meet with the President of the Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas, Davy Sprocket, to collect their reward!