A Drifter Named Lew
L. Roger Quilter.
He was a loner. He didn’t look like he had much of a personality, even looked downright characterless, but I think that’s the way he preferred it. He sat slumped in the saddle on a piebald mustang that showed its age; a weary mount with its head lowered as if to graze. Horse and rider seemed indifferent to everything around them. Nobody could figure how old either of them were, or just how fit or run-down. All they saw was just an old saddle tramp on an aging cayuse drifting through, looking neither left nor right.
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Black Hills Gold
L. Roger Quilter
Tom Adams reined in his horse and gazed around, as he carefully searched the landscape, but nothing disturbed the tranquility of the rolling prairies spread around him. The early summer of 1869 was dry and the long grass shimmered back and forth in the light breeze.
Tom, a slim man with lean features, burnt dark brown from exposure to the elements, his wrinkled skin belied his true age of thirty. He squinted from the glare of the harsh sunlight, searching for any signs of his quarry.
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Luke’s Legacy
L. Roger Quilter
“He weren’t much to look at; thin, short and wiry, showed all of his sixty years as he shuffled along, but thar wuz somethin’ about him that drew yer attention.” Rusty swallowed more of his beer as he regaled the three men, seated at a table in the Black Stallion saloon in Cimarron. The person in question was Rusty’s friend, Luke, who passed away the day before. Falling off a horse, chasing cattle kills a man, especially when his head strikes a rock.
“Now I know you didn’t set store with him fer quite a spell, thet’s yer misfortune, but I knowed him since we were young, long afore your time, and he and I got along jest fine.”
Rusty consumed beer swiftly to quench his insatiable thirst, while the others, staid, severe in appearance, sipped theirs distastefully. Rusty had insisted at holding a wake for Luke.
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The Preacher of Dubois
L. Roger Quilter
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Intoning the burial service with a catch in his throat, Reverend Michael Reilly stood in the pouring rain as three coffins slowly descended in the newly dug graves in Dubois Cemetery, or Boothill as the town’s population knew it.
The graveyard sat on top of a hill west of the town, where exposure to the chill winds blowing from the nearby Teton Range made it an unpopular place to tarry for long, especially in early march.
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The Stranger’s Business
L. Roger Quilter
The sun slipped behind the western mountains as he rode into town. If you glanced at him, you could see a tall, middle-aged man, slumped in the saddle of a sturdy horse. Lashed to the pommel, a lariat connected to his packhorse hung slack as the animals strode together at a walking pace.
Lean of figure, with a nondescript air about him, he rode through the deserted main street to the hotel. Dismounting, he tied the lead horse’s reins to the rail in front of the edifice, grabbed his satchel and entered the foyer.
The desk clerk looked up in surprise, as business was quiet in this town. Only the odd drummer and stage passengers stayed overnight, and the stage was not due for a few more days.
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The Phantom Beast of Montana
L. Roger Quilter
Joe Simmons raised himself up in his stirrups, to see better over the tops of the bushes surrounding him. As he looked around his horse shied and whinnied.
“Stand still, you dumb ol’ hoss,” Joe shouted, “What’s the matter with you?”
One of a crew of cowhands searching for a lost bull, Joe shielded his eyes against the glare from the late afternoon sunshine.
“Hey Dan, Barney,” he yelled, “Where are yer?”
There was no reply, and he realized his two partners were no longer in the vicinity.
He freed a foot from a stirrup to look back, when a terrifying roar from close by, caused his mount to rear and tip him out of the saddle. Joe fell heavily with the breath driven out of him.
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Black Stetson
L. Roger Quilter
1. Gunshots in the Dark.
The thundering sounds of two horses galloping at breakneck speed shattered the twilight silence above the canyon’s rim. Two men leaned over their mounts’ necks oblivious to the foam streaked flanks and labored breathing of the animals.
Texas Ranger Jim Hill reined up at the edge and flung himself from the saddle, grabbing his lasso as he dismounted. Meanwhile, Mike Williams, aged twenty with red hair and a slim build also got off his horse and yelled, “Right here, Ranger, this is where my sister fell. I know she’s alive because I heard her; must be on a ledge or somethin’.”
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Tex McShane’s Last Ride
L. Roger Quilter
There was no wind. The fierce storm that raged for several hours overnight left a path of destruction and devastation in its wake. Large branches, ripped from the trees by the sheer strength of the gusts, lay across the trail that wound through the hills west of the normally arid Texas desert. Shreds of juniper bushes were scattered in all directions. Previously dry riverbeds now showed swift, flowing water as the hills drained.
Bright sunlight prevailed where thick, black clouds had dominated during the morning. No bird flew across the empty sky, and no animal showed itself. After the violence, peace and tranquility descended on the ravaged landscape, but not for long.
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