|
Short Stories & Tall Tales
CONTEMPORARY
WESTERN SHORT STORIES
Further Than It Looks
Richard Mark Glover
When the principle introduced me at the teacher’s meeting in the fourth week of the semester, he announced that I jogged during my lunch break. “Not jogging,” I said. “Sprints.” Up and down the football field, I wanted to explain, steeling myself for the afternoon classes full of teenagers whose meds were wearing thin. Geography was of no interest to them; Mozambique, the Andes, the Tibetan Plateau might as well have been rows in a corn field. Austin was a free-thinking college town but high school education had been redesigned to be more compatible with the weltanschauung of politicians from towns like Muleshoe, Perryton and Woodville. My classroom time was limited to teaching the small freshmen brain about creationism and passing state tests.
Read Full Story>>
Never Sell Your Saddle
Kerry Taylor
I’m trying to adjust to the fact that I sold my saddle the other day.
I put a lot of thought and work in that saddle. I found the best hardwood saddle tree with an old time slick fork, then I modified it to fit my horse and my posterior. With the best Herman Oak Leather, I cut and carved, stitched and laced, constructed and crafted what I saw as the perfect saddle. There had been many before that one. Some I had repaired too many times and sent off to where used
Read Full Story>>
Clayton and the Coyote
Kerry Taylor
Clayton Montgomery and his friend Joe Tallman were some very tired hunters as they rode down the rough dusty road toward the Montgomery ranch. “Clay’s Angus Ranch”, as most called it was west of Saddle String, Wyoming, at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. The sun was low and golden, and not as blinding as usual as Clay drove directly into it, toward home. Late in the fall of the year, the air is filled with Aspen leaves and dust, turning the evening aglow in shades of yellow.
Read Full Story>>
The Creek
R.Howard Trembly
When I was a young child of nine, we lived in a small hollow in the woods called Alderwood Manner, in the state of Washington
The house we lived in was small for a family of five children, my oldest sister had already married and moved away, leaving my older brother to fend for the rest of us kids, while my mother worked as a waitress on one of the Ferry Boats going from Seattle across Puget Sound to Bremerton, Washington and back several times daily.
The trip is one of awe inspiring beauty today, even with almost every island occupied by several homes. I can only imagine what it looked like back in the 1800’s when the population was much less dense, the islands lonely and primitive in their natural state.
Read Full Story>>
Sabroso
Maureen Gilmer
Ishmael shoveled manure all day, every day. He awoke at sunrise to feed all the boarded horses, then go back to the rake and wheelbarrow for the rest of the day. He'd work his way down the pipe corrals slowly lifting every road apple out of the sandy ground.
He knew every horse, their behaviors and personality. He named one stall-kicker Bruce Lee. Another big bone black quarter horse became Oso Negro. His quiet observations during the eleven PM check revealed where each horse preferred to lie down in its paddock.
Ishmael was illegal. He was brought across the border by coyotes in a van. He quickly learned that those who survived to work in El Norte were small and quiet and lived under the radar of most Californios.
Read Full Story>>
PIG EYE
Maureen Gilmer
He heard them go that morning, Pap and the little brothers loading the horses for Saturday jackpot roping down valley. Glen feigned sleep to avoid his father's sad eyes that spoke of his most promising son's fall from grace. When it was quiet again he got up and hobbled out to the dusty back porch to lean against a fly stained post. He remembered so vividly what his life was before that saddle bronc went endo on him and broke him all to hell.
Read Full Story>>
Wild Souls of the Ochocos
Cynthia Murphy
“The moon is at her full and riding high, floods the calm fields with light; the airs that hover in the summer sky are all asleep tonight”
William C. Bryant
Bryant perfectly captures the enchantment of the evening as this passage trips lightly across my mind. I can feel the heavy descent of nightfall in his words. Pulling my sweater close, I let my eyes follow that mystical glow rising above the silhouetted pines in this Oregon forest. Our equine companions shuffle contentedly on their high lines, chewing softly. Two humans, two mules, and an Arabian mare are only a few of the many temporary visitors that have descended on this world of willow covered streams. We have all come together in this place for the annual summer count of the wild horses found deep in the Ochoco Mountains of Central Oregon. Eighty volunteers with one objective are camped strategically over almost 28,000 acres of National Forest land, waiting to ride.
Read Full Story>>
My Mother and My Horse
Teresa Owen
I was blessed with a very good mother. She was kind, thoughtful, generous, creative, and a great cook. When she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease at age 65, I tried my utmost to return her many caring gestures.
For two years she declined. As she regressed from a vibrant, outgoing caretaker to an immobilized, unspeaking dependent, I began to reflect on our happier times together. Easily, the best times of my life were when I was about 10 years old on the family farm.
Read Full Story>>
THE TRADITION THIEF
BV Lawson
It was like patterns on a Navajo crystal rug--rays of azurite blue and ochre red from the morning sun forming a backdrop behind the tumble-down shanty. Scott Drayco squinted at the cracked beams of the small hut, marveling it was still standing. Neither a trailer home like so many others in Chinle and on the Rez nor a traditional hogan, it was an architectural half-breed.
Read Full Story>>
Pulling Leather
Kent Hanawalt
Pull leather / pul lethər/ v a disparaging term used to indicate that an off-balance rider has been forced to grab his saddle with his free hand in order to prevent falling off his horse
Sitting a well-broke cowhorse when he is working is always a joy. But it can sometimes be a real challenge stick with him, and no cowboy wants to be accused of having to pull leather to stay aboard. One day, however, I had to grab my horn not once, but twice in order to maintain my seat atop my horse. First, a little background:
Read Full Story>>
Looking For Tonto
Benson Parker
Jared grew up in cycles. His parents alternated every six to eight months going from religious obsession wherein they went to church several times a week, read the Bible every night, and lived a right righteous life, to going on a full-tilt, months-long drunk. Bourbon replaced the Bible. Singing in church was replaced by singing to the moon. The only middle ground was when Jared’s parents would sometimes reach a stage of drunkenness where they fought, then Jared’s father would stagger the fifty yards to the railroad tracks, hop a freight train, and be gone for several weeks. Then one day they would look up, and there would be Dad walking up from the tracks, all dried out and contrite, ready to go to church.
Read Full Story>>
Portland Sale
Leslie Johnson
BD traded for a real nice, seven year old saddle horse, a term generally meaning he was gaited, in this part of the country. He had two real good quarter horse two year olds he’d bought somewhere back country, and since we didn’t fool much with non-gaited horses, the trader who owned the gelding offered to take a loss on his good horse by taking the two we just didn’t need. BD went into the deal with more than a little caution, Talouse had burned him but good a few trades back, and wasn’t one to pass up any opportunity to do it again. He brought the horse over, stepped him off and had him saddled to prove he was, indeed, as broke as he claimed. He was a black Saddlebred, not really a plus around here, and had been a show horse until very recently. There were the rubbed places on his chest, withers and hind legs where a tail set had been in place a long time, and his tail was cut, or “broken”, as some say. It hadn’t been down long enough to grow all the hair back, and was cocked at a crooked angle. I never liked that part of showing gaited horses, anymore than I liked what foolishness went on with “padding” them up and nearly crippling them to get that awkward butt down and front legs flying they thought was so fine. But that’s where the big money is, and you’ll never stop abuse rewarded with cold cash.
Read Full Story>>
The Voice of Experience
Leslie Johnson
He’d worked the colt for three or four days, lunging and ponying him with one of our older, more experienced horses, to no avail. Put a saddle on him and the fireworks began, he’d buck until he threw the saddle off or you snubbed him to another horse and made him trot off. BD’s profit margin was so thin, the more time he had to work with one, the more money he’d have in it. You could get away with the general term “green broke” to cover a multitude of sins, but flat out bronc bucking wasn’t one of them.
Read Full Story>>
Ugly Dog
Nancy Steele
It was the ugliest dog Tate had ever seen. Scruffy, wiry hair covered its scrawny frame, sticking up in random tufts. A scarred lip pulled one side of its mouth into a permanent sneer, revealing uneven teeth set in an undershot jaw. The sneer was accentuated by a dark moustache of hair drooping from the dog's upper lip, giving it the look of a villain from a John Wayne Western. It turned its head slightly and Tate noticed it was missing an eye. Yep, it was the ugliest dog he had ever seen, and all ten pounds of it was perched on his duffel bag.
Read Full Story>>
A Western Story
By Terrell Brown
Clay Hobbs was upset about the economy. The price of hay would go up a few cents a bale. He supposed that was good for someone up the line, but it was bad news for him. His business was raising beef, and if it had not been for Wendy’s and McDonald’s he’d have gone under. Under was right. He looked through the windshield at three or four cows and their calves grazing over a stretch of high ground ahead beyond the windshield. The meadows and flats where he had once cut most of his winter feed were flooded by the overflow of the once shallow lakes. The abnormal amounts of rainfall the past few years had had nowhere to go but down into the basin where this small ranch and neighboring ones had taken root and clung to the land tenaciously for a century of long working days for one generation after another. The ranch was mortgaged. He didn’t own anything anymore. What remained for him now was a lifestyle and the long hours of work and frustration bequeathed to him by father and grandfather and Cassie. He had Cassie, and she had him. Thank God for Cassie, he thought, finding it an odd thought, since he was, in his own estimation, a nonbeliever.
Read Full Story>>
Sweet Horn Creek
Lee Landers
When I think of my Grandparents, I hear a sound in my mind: a haunting solitary note than says, “Come home, Come home.” I think of it as music from Sweet Horn Creek.
Grandma and Grandpa, Earl and Mildred Butts, were residents of the micro-town of Oakwood in western Oklahoma. In 1957, the Oklahoma City Independent School District delivered me into the clutches of old Mrs. Garret and her fifth grade mob of flying monkeys. Every summer, and several times during the school year, I escaped with my single mom and my older brother. Rocki wanted a brain, Mom needed a man, and I just had to get away. During spring break we fled the one hundred miles northwest to Granny’s hideout.
Read Full Story>>
Jonquil in Spring
Wesley E. Swaincott
His mother, her brain slightly addled by the incessant West Texas wind, was overly fond of flowers. When she first glimpsed the tiny face of her new-born son, with its delicate creases, it reminded her of daffodil petals. So she named him “Jonquil.” His father did not object to this sissified name because he did not know what a jonquil was. Besides, he left all such matters up to his wife.
His grandfather was Lt. J. B. Stallings, CSA, aide-de-camp to General John Bell Hood. At the battle for Fredericksburg, his staff around him, Hood was singled out by a Yankee sniper. Lt. Stallings flung himself in front of his general and the ball passed clean through his side. All in attendance declared that it was a supreme act of bravery. Lt. Stallings was granted a medical discharge. He returned to a grateful state of Texas, whose legislature awarded him a huge piece of property. The South was winning the War and could afford to be generous. This parcel was not measured in acres but in square miles; being only slightly shy of the size of Delaware. Lt. Stallings called his ranch “Delaware” and adopted the “Diamond D” brand.
Read Full Story>>
Cowboy-Up
By Patricia Probert Gott
Friday evening, my boss Greg Fallon who owned the dude ranch where I worked, told me he wanted me as an extra wrangler on a pack trip that would leave Sunday.
He explained, “There’s a lady named Sara who has booked a trip for her father, two brothers, sister and herself. They’re from New York City and have never been on a horse pack trip before. I’m thinking I need you to go along and hold her hand and smooth things over if things get rough.”
Me a PR person! That’s different, I thought. However, I smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll be glad to.” I looked forward to a week’s break from ranch work.
Read Full Story>>
Rascal
By Larry Menlove
The scent of fall woke him. That particular dank aroma. Deke Faldergrass had tried to define it for seven decades, spirit out what that sodden smell was that let him know summer was over. It wasn’t a sad smell or a bad smell, though it may very well have been decay, rot, summer broken under the boot of autumn stepping in. Deke loved the smell. The wet old earth fragrance that tickled more than his olfactory imagination. One day out of the year smelled like fall. And Deke had breathed in 71 of them. Fall brought him up out of bed this morning.
Read Full Story>>
Fixing Fence
By George Seaton
Gus Klynkee sighed, studied the sagging fence line through the pickup’s cracked windshield. The fence had sighed a bit itself against the nature of winter in the High Plains of north central Coloradosnow, felled aspens and pines rested on and, in places, had snapped the barbed wire; the obvious evidence of the passage of critters over, under and through the fence. Damned elk was where Gus assessed the majority of blame. He huffed a gray plume against the windshield from the nub of the Camel glowing between his lips. Pushed his SHELL ball cap up a bit, brushed his palm against his three-day growth of stubble, massaged the ache in his neck. Hell, he’d seen them do it. Unlike deer and antelope, elk wouldn’t even try to jump the fence. What’s a fence to a bull elk, anyway? Critter would walk right through it, like it wasn’t even there.
Read Full Story>>
Down To The Frenchman’s Place
By Mark Mellon
Pierre rose with the cock’s crow at dawn. The rooster had crowed all night anyway, indifferent to the sun’s absence or presence, and really had nothing to do with Pierre’s early arisal, in contradiction to all prior habit. He’d done so from the belief that the owner of the Rocking M Ranch should be up early to set an example for his “hand.” He donned the beat up, broad brimmed, brown hat Yoko bought for him to celebrate the ranch’s purchase.
Outside, the air was still night-cool, no hint yet of the powerful heat to come. A small red disc topped the Clan Alpine Range and bathed the valley in soft, golden beams. There was the sweet smell of sage grass. Light and air, piercing and clean, filled his eyes and lungs.
Read Full Story>>
|
|
|
|
|
Send this story to a friend
|
|
|
|
|
