|
Short Stories & Tall Tales
TRADITIONAL
WESTERN SHORT STORIES
THE FROG
Don Chenhall
William “Frog” Edwards jerked conscious, gripped in panic. He had dreamed of torture, where he was spread-eagled in the blazing sun while ants crawled over him. He tried to wet his flaking, peeling lips with his swollen tongue, but there was no wet. Sprawled on his back on a gentle incline of fist-sized rocks, he vaguely considered that he no longer felt discomfort from their sharp edges.
Read Full Story>>
Poisonous Revenge
James P. Hanley
Sheriff Dave Nelson of Carter’s Crossing stared at the dead man on the saloon floor. There was no visible blood, no bullet hole in the body and no one saw the killing.
“He just fell over,” the puzzled bartender pulled on his gray-speckled beard and explained, shifting his bulk from leg to leg, “He ordered a whiskey, swallowed it and about ten minutes later, his head struck the bar and he went down.”
Read Full Story>>
The Rustlers of Alpowa Pass
Kevin Carson
Deputy Albert Allen was tacking up his horse in the livery stable owned by the Sheriff. He retrieved his saddle and slung it over the sorrel he preferred to ride.
“I’ll rig him up for you if you like,” offered Billie Lloyd, the stable hand.
Allen bent over working to tighten the cinch, “Almost done now Billie, you just keep on cleaning up.”
Billie watched, resting on his pitchfork while Allen finished up, “Where are you bound?”
“I have business to attend to out Covello way. After that, we’ll see,” Allen replied.
“What’s going on?”
Read Full Story>>
The Attempted Robbery at Joshua Gulch
by Joseph Mogel
The sun was just cresting the mesa on the edge of town, as the men rode past a sign emblazoned with the words Joshua Gulch. Tents dotted a hill that sloped south of buildings set in the small valley. The dust from the men's horses settled in front of collapsed mine entrances as they rode into the small village. A handful of sleepy townspeople strolled around the packed earth Plaza.
Read Full Story>>
The Rescue
By Jim Hanley
Clint Barker listlessly filled the shot glass with the cheapest whiskey in the saloon and watched the tipsy cowboy pour the rotgut down his throat. “’Nother,” the man demanded.
“You haven’t paid for the last two,” Clint said.
The man scowled and reached across the mahogany counter to grab the bartender’s shirt. Others at the bar looked at the commotion with the same expressionone that said mistake.
Read Full Story>>
It takes a Woman
By William S. Hubbartt
“Too rich for me blood,” said the miner, in a distinct Irish brogue, as he laid his cards face down on the table and scooped up his remaining two gold nuggets. “I’m tapped out.”
“Unfortunate, my dear man. It’s been a pleasure, as always.” The portly man in the dirty sweat stained white suit and red vest quickly pulled the nuggets and coins from the center of the table to the pile just inches from his round belly. “Perhaps your luck will be better tomorrow.”
The dejected miner stepped back from the table, his red hair and beard, both long and matted, reflected the rough dirty life of a gold prospector seeking his fortune in the California Sierras in 1850.
Read Full Story>>
The 10 Horse Drive
Von Harter
Brantmeyer shifted in the saddle. With a small wince for the strength of the sun, he tried to will away the dark haze of last night’s drink. He tipped the sombrero back to scrub a little wet mud from his face.
“Lordy.” On his head, the fancy black sombrero was a lead weight. Designs of silver thread that made it so special now made the hat weigh twice as heavy on a brittle skull.
The horses walked with heads down and ears unmoving. The remuda. Brantmeyer forced a long hiss through his teeth and winced at a glimpse of burning sky. Mountains closed in. He forced his eyes to focus.
Hung-over or no, Brantmeyer stood in the stirrups to look around.
Read Full Story>>
Deviant of Circumstance
C.LYNN CHRISTIAN
Medford Dornan crouched behind the boulder high on the ridge, shoulders hunched against the chill of the downdraft from the twin peaks above. Pulling the collar of his Confederate great-coat higher, he peered through the scraggly cedar rooted in a crack in the rock.
Dark eyes a prism of pain, sorrow and desperation, he scanned the draw’s opening a thousand yards away and three hundred feet below for movement, knowing they who sought him would come.
Read Full Story>>
Von Dair’s Mirror
Warden Kriss
Wellington snorted as the boy entered the gray’s stall. The boy was small, fourteen, pale blue eyes with cottonish blond hair that curled a bit around his temples. He spoke to the ex-cavalry horse in gentle tones like Daddy had. Mommy should’ve never sold him to Mr. Pane. Daddy would have never wanted that big tombstone, anyway. Daddy never wanted anything besides Mommy and his liquor it couldn’t even be said that he had much cared for Von or the newborn baby either. Mommy had named the baby, Benton -after Daddy. Von thought it was to try to make Daddy like the baby. It hadn’t worked.
Read Full Story>>
Redemption
William S. Hubbartt
“Ok Clay, here ya go. Four rocks, forty yards,….now!”
BAM,…BAM,…BAM,…BAM
“Dangit, I missed the last one,” said Clay as he spun the Army Model 1860 Colt into his holster. “But I done better ‘n’ you, Kenny.”
“I’d a had four if’n I hadn’t slipped in the grass here,” replied Kenny.”I done four last time.”
Shooting river rock pebbles placed on a fallen tree down by the creek south of Sedalia, Missouri was one way to pass the time in the summer of 1865. When you’re 17 years old, you try hard to prove you’re a man, and one way is honing your skills with a Colt.
Read Full Story>>
Six Shooter City
Bruce Harris
Pa told me not to worry, that everything was make-believe, pretend, or just for show. He said that everything would be okay in the end. Nothing was real. That’s what he said. I believed him.
Read Full Story>>
Revenge of the Prophets
Tim Tobin
When the Prophets caught Sailor Jack, no law existed for a hundred miles. So Matt and Josh Green hanged the sailor in an East Kansas ghost town because Jack murdered their brother for a few silver dollars and his gun belt.
Sailor Jack died denying he killed Noah Green.
***
“Trips, “ he declared. “Aces.” With that pot, Will Wormley won almost $20 on the night. Willie the Worm, as he was known, played poker well and honestly. Willie didn’t have to cheat. He could read a flush just as easily as a bluff.
When Jason Rafferty wandered into the bar and introduced himself the four men at the round table invited him to sit down.
“New money might change the game,” said one of the losers. The Worm smiled to himself at the thought of fresh meat.
Read Full Story>>
The Ballad of Judas Kane
Lee Wright
A kid from somewhere up in Oregon winged me a few weeks back. I put a bullet through his heart sure enough, but not before he took a pretty good chunk out of my left bicep. Had he lived long enough, the kid might have enjoyed the considerable honor of being the first man to get off a shot against the great Judas Kane. ‘Course that kind of reputation can make a man cocky, reckless. And, if I hadn’t killed him, some other gunny would have done it soon enough. Kids like that rarely last long, no matter how fast they are.
Read Full Story>>
Rustlers at Cedar Springs
Paul Peppers
About twenty head of desultory looking cattle bunched up at the wire fence. Two men on horseback came up close behind them. The biggest of the men was mounted on a buckskin that shifted from side to side nervously as he spoke. “Ho, neighbor,” he said and displayed a big fake looking smile. “I’m Joe … McMillon. We are just passing through sir. If you will be kind enough to open your gate we will be on our way.”
I examined the two hombres with a cynical eye. I was in no kind of a charitable mood and decided they were both probably tall. I have developed a profound dislike for men bigger than I am and, since I am only five foot six and weigh around a hundred and sixty pounds, that includes just about everyone. “I ain't about to allow you two through here with them scrubs,” I said. “Where’d you boys get them cows anyway? Some of them brands look a might chancy.”
Read Full Story>>
Death of a Prophet
Tim Tobin
As Noah Green galloped across the rain-swept Kansas plain, his slicker kept some of the rain off, but not much. He spurred his horse onward hoping to reach camp before the thunder and lightning started. The cowboy had no reason to suspect that his killer rode about a quarter mile behind him.
The shot hit Green in the middle of his back. He lurched forward and grabbed for the mane of his horse. He missed it and fell face down on the muddy prairie. The rear hooves of his horse trampled his legs as it sped by.
Read Full Story>>
Wrangler Required for the Deadfall Saloon
by Michael McGlade
Grady squeezed through the narrow alley between two wooden buildings. Best not to attract attention. Seven o’clock in the morning. The air thick with mesquite and dense as water. You didn’t walk somewhere, you waded. The blue sky was a lazy blue, like some artist had squirted it from a tube. The day already too hot for Grady to argue. In the sagebrush, among the yuccas, through the dirt streets in the frontier town of Red Oak, stillness. Even the birds had slept late.
At the end of the alley, the Deadfall Saloon stood across the street. A huge man with a leathery face the color of burnt brick blocked Grady’s path.
Read Full Story>>
Mack’s Winter
Dorman Nelson
The birds, overhead, were making no progress against the wind. It had been blowing cold, then colder all morning and now with the sun slanting down in the west through the trees the shadows were chilling fast. Felt like a frost coming on.
Mack shook his auburn hair out of his face, and tied on his hood. His ears were tingling as he realized this year would be the first Christmas he would spend out of St. Louis. It took him most of the summer and the start of fall of 1861 to get up to the Montana Territory without resorting to boating along the Mississippi or Missouri thus avoiding most travelers…McClelland was a loner; as it was with most of his family. The men seemed to wander off into the world, the women making home and hearth, stirring the heart and latch strings of the men so they eventually didn’t wander so far…and still there were numbers of children every generation feeding upon that wanderlust that continued the Clan of McClelland that had started so long ago in the Highlands across the sea.
Read Full Story>>
A Good Man
Kristen Lynch
It was the unexpected sight of that dead coyote that caused a great amount of shock, even to us, who lived out here in Wyoming and could proudly profess a rather impervious armor acquired by a lifetime of sandstorms, bitter snowdrifts and the constant threat of piercing arrowheads. But, for us to come across something so offensively dead or in this case, intentionally killed, produced a profound quandary among the eighteen of us students (make that seventeen, for we were short one student that day). We, the students, had been the first ones in the schoolhouse on what we thought was a typical Monday morning and instead of finding Mr. Stratham at the blackboard writing out the lessons for the day ahead or in his seated position at the head of the class, correcting assignments at his desk, there was something else in his place. A riotous, sweet stink of death, swallowed up in a cadaverous silence save for the frenetic buzz of bumbling black flies, who propelled themselves out of the putrefying hide and sought escape by continually bumping into the glass window panes.
Read Full Story>>
Selling Out
By William S. Hubbartt
“This is a hold-up! Everybody against the wall…over there…Now!” yelled Tawny.
Three customers at the teller windows turned quickly, backing away from the gruff looking dusty brute waving a colt. Gasps were heard, and one woman holding a parasol that matched her floor length royal blue taffeta dress let out a fearful shriek.
Trail dirty, big boned with solid muscles, and a pocked complexion, Tawny looked threatening with or without a brandished colt. The tellers, two middle aged men in white shirts with high collars and sleeve guards, instinctively raised their hands.
Read Full Story>>
Four Corners
Johnny Gunn
Few noticed when the tall, lanky man rode into town, after all, trail weary men find their way to Four Corners often, what with trails leading off to all the cardinal points, taking people, bringing people, giving the town its purpose in being. His horse, all black but for a small star in the middle of its forehead, was tired, but gave the impression that it still had lots of go left in him, and the rider, also tired, dusty, had that look about him that said, “don’t rile me, don’t ask questions, stay back some.” He was his own man, he knew it, and you would be better off if you knew it.
Read Full Story>>
On the Heels of Carter Gray
By J.J. Daniels
Rumors had circled for weeks predicting his arrival. Circled like buzzards gliding in a dead noon sky. They grew in number and ferocity as he drew near, sensational stories of cruelty and wonder that would soon be shaped into legend as time caressed them with sand and tongue. Door locks were reinforced, valuables stashed in dark places, and a watchful eye set on the horizon for the coming of Carter Gray.
He arrived in blistering heat and, though he rode in more than a hundred yards from the outskirts of town, the bartender was the first to lay eyes on him. His skin was rough and weathered, his clothing torn and dusty. He pulled a wide-brimmed hat down lower than seemingly possible as he strode purposefully into the run-down saloon. All eyes followed him from the door to the bar.
Read Full Story>>
Donovan’s Dream
William S. Hubbartt
Donald Donovan woke with a start, with a vivid memory of the painful screams of his wife, Kathleen. He looked around, in a grey fog, again hearing high pitched screams. Up the hill he saw a ringtail, half out of its hole, squealing noisily. To his left, down the hill, he heard a rustling sound, a momentary flash of movement, showing reddish brown fur, which he recognized as a fox chasing another ringtail into the safety of its hole in the ground. That one got away, but the fox would find another.
The pounding pain in his head and the ache in his back from sleeping on the hard ground caused his thinking to be as thick and foggy as the morning sky above. He shivered momentarily, feeling the dampness of his clothes and the cool air overhead. An awareness crept into his mind, assembling some the events of the previous night. The rig was parked and the horses stabled. Then, he had ridden the dun bareback to the saloon in Marysville. Whiskey, it seemed, was the only thing that pushed Kathleen’s painful cries from his memory.
Read Full Story>>
Mirage
Herschel Cozine
A blazing midday sun, its tentacles of fire reaching down to sear the scorching earth, raged in the cloudless sky. There was no breeze, and the wilted mesquite stood motionless along the desert trail. A cloak of silence was thrown over the terrain, eerie, surreal. Heat waves gave a life to the rocks and cactus; a slow steady shimmering like that of a ghost.
A cloud of dust billowed on the horizon, listless; settling back to earth in a lazy contempt of the force responsible for its disturbance. Slowly, lethargically, a figure appeared; first a spot in the distance, becoming larger, forming two spots, shimmering through the heat.
Read Full Story>>
Souls in the Wind
Jeremy Lane
James Briscoe stood looking out the window of his study. He often came upstairs in the midmorning and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. It wasn’t an honorable practice to be drinking this early in the dayhe knew thatyet he found it relaxing. It was his time to think.
On this particular morning he watched as Polly Ann, the daughter of Smoke Jackson, his most reliable and highest-paid farmhand, walked out of the barn, where his son was tinkering with an old wagon. Normally he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, except that James had witnessed several suspicious things of late and was watching with a careful eye.
Read Full Story>>
Winter of `93
Dorman Nelson
There was a time when he'd just ride up and say hello.
She would flash a nice, but shy smile and welcome his company.
Now the old cabin was empty and winter's fingers had frosted even the inside of the once cheery room.
He reined up on a knoll above the bench of land where the log fence ended in a scattering of timbers. He thought about her. Wondered what she and her children would be doing this cold, cloudy day. He got off his horse, squatted there holding the reins, just letting his mind wander.
Read Full Story>>
Gold Belly
Nathan Oser
Three Foot Flats was a bushel of bad apples. It was the smallest patch of town in the whole blistering desert, and hideaway to a wily round-up of thieves, rogues, and scoundrels thick as prickles on a cactus and meaner’n scorpions in your boots.
My pa had fit in like a cork in a bottle. Wish I could say he was a good man in his day, but then I’d be a liar just like him. Fact was, he was more than a liar--he was a murdering, thieving rascal to shame all others. He was known and wanted in more states and territories than I had digits to count, and I reckon it was due to his widespread notoriety that the folks in Three Foot Flats got to calling me Drake’s Boy.
Read Full Story>>
Death Sentence
William S. Hubbartt
“Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?”
The room became silent. Hesitantly, Joshua, a middle-aged farmer rose from the corner of the room, nervously holding a small slip of paper. He looked down, unfolded the paper, and then his eyes rose and scanned across the room and locked onto Johnny Floyd. Someone coughed over by the bar, and a glass clinked a little too hard onto a table in the back of the room.
In 1873, more often than not, justice in Kansas was meted out on the street. This time, because street justice had been perverted, justice was administered by a travelling circuit judge in the local saloon, the only room large enough to accommodate an angry citizenry. While the serving of whiskey was suspended during the trial, observers were permitted to consume drinks ordered before the trial began. On the western plains in July, a man needed liquid refreshment to make it through the day.
Joshua’s jaw set, and a sneer formed on his lips. A chair shuffled in the crowded and stifling room. Outside, a horse whinnied and stamped its foot.
“The jury finds Johnny Floyd guilty,” read juror Joshua, “guilty in the murder of Sarah Gorman… Death by hanging!” The roomful of angry citizens erupted, “ Yeh! Yeh!” Above the din, one man yelled out, “Hang ‘m from the ole oak tree!”
Read Full Story>>
The Mountain Man
R. Howard Trembly
There was, many years ago, a mountain man by the name of Seth Edwards, a man of enormous height and strength. He had fought the Shoshone of the Great Basin, the Comanche of the South Plains, and the Utes in the Rocky Mountains of the continental divide. He even searched for gold in the Superstition Mountains when no white man had ever gone into these spiritual sentinels of the Apache and come out alive again.
Read Full Story>>
The Padre
Jason Hunt
Kyle William Lees rode slowly in the darkness through the center of town. The Cantina at the far end was well-lit, but something was different. The horse hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Kyle muttered. “It’s just there ain’t no piano tonight.”
Kyle’s brow furled beneath the brim of his hat. He did not like the silence any more than the horse did.
He dismounted and teethered the horse to a rail outside the Cantina. He felt that both .45s were in their holsters and pushed through the swinging doors into the light.
Read Full Story>>
Three Fingered Jack
by Johnny Gunn
It ended with the singular blast from the muzzle of a Colt, the clatter made when the body, flung backwards with the force of a rock slide, clattered through chairs and tables, making a decided thump on arriving face first on the bar room floor, bleeding its last onto the rough boards. The silence that followed, while feeling like eternity in length, ended quickly, in fact, with the jostling of men and women making for the swinging doors, open windows, or staircase, and with no thought for their fellow man. Three-fingered Jack found himself alone, except for the dead one, of course, and stood quietly at the long oaken bar wondering if anything had been proved.
Read Full Story>>
HANGMAN’S NOOSE
Larry Payne
Part I
The stifling heat hung over the makeshift courtroom enveloping the twelve men walking from the open door of the saloon’s back room. Angling up the staircase, they resumed their seats on the stairs facing the three tables in front of them.
To the right of the staircase, at a lone table, sat Judge Thomas Becker, who regularly held court in The Lucky Lady Saloon on his visits to the town of Sweetwater.
To the left of the staircase, facing Judge Becker, were two tables. The one closest to the staircase was presently unoccupied. At the near end of the other table sat attorney Jacob Wyatt, Marshal Cooper Smith at the far end and Wyatt’s client, Charlie Gilson, who was accused of killing a man in a saloon fight, sat between them in shackles.
Read Full Story>>
THE SILVER FREIGHT
Edward Massey
The boy rested the shotgun butt on his right thigh, barrel extended above his head. He held his right hand high on the butt, resting his finger lightly on the trigger guard. He kept his finger clear of the barrel. It was dead cold. The boy’s posture was as erect and stiff and straight as the shotgun. Together, the shotgun and the boy formed a totem sitting next to a man.
The deep blue tissue of cold sky stretched high above him. He followed the sky’s edges out as far as the eye could carry. Moonlight and white hills combined to provide enough light to see the trail across the frozen rock. He could see they were alone out in the open. Someone could be hiding behind the scruffy sagebrush and scrawny pines up in the foothills. Not much cover, but someone could be there.
The totem boy’s breath streamed out ahead. He measured how he felt inside. Calm. He measured his breath. Normal.
Read Full Story>>
Milagro
Maureen Gilmer
Alma knew from the stories of her people that there had been dry times before. The stench floating on the winds told her every day that cattle were dying all over the valley. From her small adobe atop a long, low rise just north of the massive Tejon Ranch, she could see the condors circling where carcasses littered the low lands. The great dark birds were her spirit guides, a part of her world since birth. They came close to her house in the early winter mornings, perching like great sentinels of death on fence posts and dead trees. There they opened their enormous wings to the rising sun as it cleared the High Sierra peaks to the east. For what seemed like hours they stood, the black plumage efficiently absorbing the heat until they took flight for the day.
Read Full Story>>
AND HELL CAME WITH HIM
Larry Payne
Part I
Lightning streaked the darkened sky above the solemn group around the grave. The preacher, standing at the head of the grave, read passages from his worn bible while four men, dressed in black suits, grasped the ends of the two ropes stretched under both ends of the wooden coffin. Slowly, they moved the coffin over the open grave and began to lower it. A woman’s white-gloved hand appeared from the coffin, slid the lid to the side and reached out to the group above.
“WIL, NO. DON’T LET ME GO.”
Wil Sunday sat upright in his bed. He looked around the moonlit bedroom, a chill running over his sweat soaked body. The recurring nightmare became a frequent part of his nights since he buried his beloved wife, Cassie.
Read Full Story>>
Ten Miles from Town
Raymond Maher
Ann felt the winter cold seeping through the sod house, penetrating to the very cook stove itself. The cook stove had proved to be weak and often overwhelmed by the extreme cold that blanketed the prairies these last few weeks. It was the heart of winter and the thin line between frostbite, freezing, and death was sod walls and a cast iron cook stove. The winter had proved its powerfulness by battering their sod house with cold and scorn for its meager heat and shelter. It seemed at times as if nature itself was against their intrusion into the vast prairie. Yet, Ann was determined that they would make a home there on the prairie despite its endless emptiness. She would keep swallowed any discouraging words that at times overwhelmed her. She would look to her God for help to comfort her thoughts and attitude. She would look to her husband to share his strength and determination for homesteading.
Read Full Story>>
4:15 Fiasco
By Joe Mogel
“We ought to rob a train.”
The piano was tinkling as the saloon patrons milled through the poker room. Among the tables of barflies and high rollers, there sat a group of six rumpled, middle-aged men. An empty pitcher of beer and a bowl full of nuts stood over the cards and poker chips.
“Rob a train? You can’t even dig a proper silver mine! How are you supposed to rob a train? You’re out smarted by dirt!”
“Hobble your lip!”
“It isn't as if you were successful. Remember the horse ranch?
Read Full Story>>
A Season in the Brush
Steven Clark
August 1864 North of Liberty, Missouri
The devil incarnate.
At the outset of July he had been relatively unknown to the Federals, referred to in their reports simply as “the guerilla Anderson.” Now, less than two months later, they were calling him a host of colorful names: the devil incarnate; the murdering fiend; the most desperate of desperate men; or as one newspaper put it, “the most heartless, cold-blooded bushwhacking scoundrel that had operated in Missouri since the outbreak of the war.” All were fairly accurate descriptions of William T. Anderson, the man most knew lately as Bloody Bill.
Read Full Story>>
The Calling
Jim Hanley
Tom Hayden sat in the sacristy in his t-shirt and black pants, his Mass vestments draped over a folding chair in St Michael’s Church in Brooklyn, New York. A bottle of Irish whiskey was on the floor beside his chair, and he held a quarter-filled glass in his other hand. Tom stared at a Sheriff’s badge in his hand; he kept the badge from his days in Brig County, Kansas in 1883. He contemplated how his life had gone: lawman, seminarian, parish priest; what was next? Surely, he thought, Monsignor Brenner was coming to “defrock” him.
Read Full Story>>
A Stranger in Branchwood
Mike Smith
Intro:
Anyone who's anyone in Branchwood know's the tale of lil' Ben Sutter. He was everone's favorite fool. All of the other children were quite cruel to lil' Ben. They'd hit and kick him. They'd even stone him with rocks. More than once Ben came home with dirty clothes and a busted lip. As far as anyone could tell, they picked on him 'cause of his weight. It went on for several years.
One day lil' Ben came home from school to find his father's corpse sat upright in his favorite chair. The man had a severe heart attack and died. By the time the coroner discovered the death, Ben Sutter had disappeared.
The townsfolk speculated that the boy, distraught with grief, wandered off and got lost in the woods. They figured he was probably eaten by wolves. The boy was never seen again. Folks soon forgot about the tragic affair.
Read Full Story>>
Sundown
Cody Wells
In the small town of Bitter Creek, a gunshot followed by a high pitched scream echoed through the night air like a banshee taking flight. Tom McKlusky lay in dirt outside of the Red Dog Saloon on Main Street, blood oozing from a hole in his gut. A large number of the townsfolk had gathered around the dying man.
“Someone get the doc,” an old woman cried out.
“Too late for that!” another countered.
Read Full Story>>
“THE SKELETON BAR GOLD MINING CO. (LIMITED)”
Vincent J. Maranto
Every small town in the west contains at least a half dozen adventurous and gold thirsty individuals---come from the ends of the earth maybe---who, on the slightest provocation will abandon their businesses, pool their hard earned savings and brave any danger in an expedition that promises quick and large returns.
The imagination, once inoculated with the virus of sudden and immense riches, usurp every function of rationalism, and the victim, deprived of judgment, will listen with a marvelous faith to stories incredulous to any save a crazy person. To be cocksure, where there is grave uncertainty; to discount impossibilities, to reach conclusions to variance with calm reason and cold logic, are mental conditions for the ardent reception of such a story as was presented to four young men in the town of Pony, Montana one rainy day in the spring of 1896.
Read Full Story>>
Tommy Typhoon - Part One
The Dicken’s Proposition
Andrew Stuchlik
It’s hot tonight, most like every other night here. The sweat on my head- just under the brim of my hat- is jus’ a gentle reminder that I’m home. There really ain’t more to expect from a place where rocks and cactuses outnumber the people living here by the hundreds. The kinda place where the sand is never far, and the idea of green is jus’ a memory of another time and another place, that surely ain’t here. ‘Spose it would be kinda depressin’ to someone who ain’t been here for too long. But, I’ve become pretty fond of this place- and to me- it’s kinda comfortin’ knowin’ by heart every buildin’ and every soul who’s ended up here for one reason or another.
I walk into the bar and see the same faces I do most every other night, ‘cept this one that is. It‘s been a while since we had a guest in this sleepy little town, but I don‘t think much of it at the time. He’s tall, prolly six foot two give or take an inch or two depending on which stool he’s sittin’ at. The man’s wearing a battered, dust covered, and sun bleached overcoat sitting on his shoulders, and for now, he seems pretty content at the end of the bar waging a silent war with the alcohol in his glass. Well, whatever was in that glass didn’t seem to be faring very well against the rock hard stomach of the man who was treating it like a child’s juice.
Read Full Story>>
Tommy Typhoon - Part Two
The Death Of Tommy Typhoon
Andrew Stuchlik
I stand with the glaring, beaming sun at my side. I slow my breathing to calm my body, to focus it into the actions that are to follow. I can feel the eyes of everyone around me, all of them staring at me, all of them are waiting in anticipation of what would happen in the next few seconds. My wife and my son are standing out in the audience. Annie’s praying and my son smiling, still too young to realize what was going on. The sight of his father’s face provides a comfort and security with just a smile; it was like he felt nothing could go wrong with his father near by.
I turn my head and stare down the man standing in front of me, a young face to be sure. He couldn’t be more than twenty years old. I see him looking at me but through his confidence, I can see the boy whose mouth and self-assurance had gotten him in deeper than he would’a liked. While I- on the other hand- am a more kind of experienced- secure.
I’ve done this, stood face to face with death and come out standing, more times than I can count now. This is how I provide for my family. This is how I give us the life that keeps us comfortable. Although, Annie would argue about how comfortable she was with my chosen profession. But, I’m a gunfighter and I am very good at what I do.
Read Full Story>>
Tommy Typhoon - Part Three
The Life and Times of Thomas Sanderson
Andrew Stuchlik
I still find myself sufferin’ in the thoughts of what I coulda’ done differently. A cold chill runs right through me when I picture their faces. Surely, if anything, it’s my arrogance that’s got me here. If only I had been stronger, if only I was a better man than what I was, than who I have become, things would be different.
I know that the past is what’s passed, ain’t no changing’ that; but I can’t help but find myself there more times then not. I ain’t a good man, hard as I try, I jus’ can’t seem to be him. Thought I’d said goodbye to that beast, but every now an’ then, I can still see him staring back at me. He’s jus’ waitin’ for a time when my will is weak, and my heart is sufferin’, bidin’ his sweet time; waiting till he can surface again. Waiting for the time when he can take over again, waiting till I need him too.
He’s a part of me, I can feel him inside ‘a me, and I can’t seem to ever make him go away. I can see him in my reflection, I can feel him coursin’ through me. Maybe I ain’t strong enough, or maybe I jus’ ain’t ready. Either way, I can’t seem to let him go yet. He reminds me of where I came from, and where I’m headin’. For that I’m grateful, and for that, I’ll always hate myself. Why can’t I be strong enough? Why do I feel like I still need him? I go back and forth in my head, but I always find myself in the same place where I started from. Nowhere.
Read Full Story>>
Law Comes to Sentinel Butte
Kent Kamron
With the arrival of the railroad into Sentinel Butte, the locals knew this lazy town of hearty settlers lying near the border of the Dakotah and Montana Territories was about to blossom. Without a doubt, this midge on the prairie landscape would double in size every year, and within a decade, the people were sure this town would become the jumping off station to the West. After all, the railroad was a measure of prosperity. It brought wood, cement, steel, more settlers, and every product imaginable for the home and ranch house.
And what a grand location for a growing community.
Read Full Story>>
The Stranger
Clifton Bush Jr.
I
The rising sun found him lying on his side, unconscious. He was weak with thirst, and had lost some blood as well. There were dried spatters of it following him up the sandstone ledge to where he had finally collapsed. Who he was or how he got here he had no clue. He didn't even know what had happened to him in the past few days. All he knew was that he was hungry, thirsty, tired, and dizzy from loss of blood.
He finally awoke, and blinked his eyes, adjusting to the brightness of the sun, now a third of the way up in the deep blue sky. He got up on all fours, and immediately regretted it. A wave of nausea hit him, and he laid back down again, shielding the brightness from his eyes.
Read Full Story>>
The Card That Won
Clifton Bush Jr.
He rode through the sudden rainstorm, the wind whipping his slicker and threatening to tear the hat off his head. He pulled the oilskin tighter about himself, and pulled his hat down to keep the water out of his eyes. Lightning crackled in the background, and the thunder boomed in response. His horse plodded on through the nasty weather, each leg movement rewarded with a fresh slop of mud upon his skin. They rode together into a canyon, trying to find shelter from the abrasive storm. Soon they came across an overhang, and man and horse gratefully hid underneath the rock ledge, dodging most of the pellets of water.
Read Full Story>>
Cold Steel
Clifton Bush Jr.
Ben Farnsworth rode through the canyon, his left arm in tatters. He held the pommel of his saddle with his right hand, and steadied himself. On either side of him the cliffs rose to tremendous heights; how he got to this place he did not know. He had lost a lot of blood and his mind was wandering. His horse kept plodding through, going forward to where he knew not. The dizziness was getting stronger with the loss of blood, and he knew he had to do something. He stopped the horse and got off, dropping to his knees on the rocky soil and grunting in pain. He got back up, and taking the leather thong that held his bedroll on the horse, untied it. He used that to tie a tourniquet on his arm, lest he bleed to death.
He thought of his predicament. Five to one, and they all had gold fever. He had five hundred dollars worth of gold in his saddlebags, and they were itching for every last dollar of it. How the hell was he to get out of this one?
Read Full Story>>
Outlaw's End
Joe Mogel
The pounding on the door was loud but brief. Priest Fransisco, in a nightshirt and holding a candle, groggily shuffled through the mission church to the front door.
It was around four thirty in the morning and Fransisco could hear some of the orphans rustling from the noise. The last thing Fransisco wanted to deal with at this hour of night was a dozen, cranky eleven year olds. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when the knocking stopped. He paused for a moment and listened. Silence. The orphans were back asleep. Fransisco quietly shuffle up to the door.
The sound of the door opening echoed through the adobe building. The high ceilings of the church were reflecting the slight glow of the early morning. There was a large mahogany cross in the sanctuary behind a simple wooden alter and a bookshelf with bible, hymnals and various book of catholic philosophy. The orphanage was a large timber framed adobe wing off the back of the church and adjacent to the rectory.
Fransisco opened the large, iron shod door to the church. There was the crack of whip and the whinnying of a horse as a carriage rushed off. Fransisco stared, bleary eyed.
As the dust trail disappeared he took a step forward to get a better look and stubbed his foot into something. He stepped back in pain, almost dropping his candle. He looked down. There was a small wooden chest with a sheet of paper pinned to it.
Read Full Story>>
The Man inside the Alamo
Mike Kearby
Author’s note How did David Crockett die at the battle of the Alamo? This question has been the catalyst for much rancor among historians, Americans, Mexicans, Texans, and history aficionados. The story below while fictional, offers a plausible explanation of what could have happened that Sunday morning in San Antonio and might well satisfy both sides of the Crockett question.
The man from Tennessee, tall and well-poised, marched across the Alamo courtyard with long, lively strides. Poet, teacher, attorney, and merchant, a noticeable agitation furrowed his brow this day, and his mouth twisted in brooding expectation as to the reason behind his summoning. He gripped a Kentucky flintlock in his right hand with such force that his knuckles whitened around the walnut stock. Upon each stride, the eight-pound rifle swung forward in such perfect rhythm that man and gun appeared to be one. Beside him, a fellow Tennessean, although considerably shorter, and rounder, matched the man’s brisk stride step-for-step.
Read Full Story>>
The Kid in the Cold
by John S. Craig
He had known many kinds of cold, and this was the sunless and bitter kind. He had known the cold of the Indiana and Kansas prairie as a boy, and the snowy cold of Colorado as he and his family marched to Denver along the Federal Road west into the dry, frigid winds that swept down from the distant Rockies onto the stark plains. He had known the cold of the Arizona deserts as he lay huddled in a pit of sand beneath a steady wind with little more than a saddle perched over his chest and tattered wool blankets around his legs, but this was the worst kind of cold. This was the cold of late December, 1880 the bitterness of chill, dark, and entrapment in eastern New Mexico Territory.
Read Full Story>>
No Name on the Bullet
Maddie Holthe
Death came to Rawlins the day I turned thirteen. Tall and skinny I was, all hands and feet, fast outgrowing my britches. Pa was long of limb too so I reckon I took after him; that was fine by me, for no better man lived than my Pa. For fifteen years he’d kept the peace in Rawlins. Although folks in town knew him as a gentle man, to drifters and troublemakers he was a man not to be called less’n they could back their play with a gun.
Read Full Story>>
The Deputy of Allentown
Stephen G. Lonefeather
I was sitting in my wheelchair watching from the window of my room. I’d just rolled myself up to the glass to get a little sunshine when all hell broke loose on the boardwalk across the street.
Now it might only be a guess on my part as to what the deputy was thinking exactly, but I’d known him for eleven years … I once even wore the same badge he does. … so I watched him do just what I thought he would do I saw him run for cover.
Read Full Story>>
THE MEDICINE SHOW
Larry Payne
Marshal Cooper Smith stepped out onto the boardwalk in front of Della's Café. He'd just finished his favorite breakfast of hotcakes, warm syrup and coffee. Only one thing could make it better. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out the fixings and rolled a cigarette, sticking it between his lips. After a short search, he found a match, striking it against the side of the building, lighting the quirley. What could be better, he thought, taking a long drag and stepping off the boardwalk, walking across the street in the direction of his office.
Stepping up on the boardwalk, he noticed a merchant's wagon coming toward him. Driving the wagon was a skinny, middle-aged man wearing a derby hat cocked at an angle. Beside him sat the prettiest young blonde woman Cooper had ever seen. Her golden hair seemed alive as the curls in her hair bounced to the rumblings of the wagon. Cooper stood at the edge of the boardwalk as the driver reined the wagon up in front of him. The colorfully painted wagon proclaimed DOCTOR MCDERMOTT'S MAGIC ELIXIR.
Read Full Story>>
Horse or Human
By Asher Ellis
The sting from a sharp slap to the horse’s haunches made the animal sprint even faster across the desert plain. Its broad hooves thundered against the hard clay ground as it sped along like a living locomotive. The beast didn’t know where it was going nor that it had become the latest prize of Sam Cornet, the self-proclaimed greatest horse thief in the West.
Read Full Story>>
The Espantosa
By Mark Mellon
The travelers drew near the lake before sundown. Suggs and Mendoya rode ahead to scout a camp. The leaders of the Anglo and Tejano factions, they resembled a frontier Don Quixote and Sancho: Suggs, lean and wiry in a frock coat and plug hat, long rifle slung over one shoulder, and the dour, rotund Mendoya in his black sombrero, saddle adorned with silver conchos.
"Enrique," Suggs said, "how come your folks look so glum?"
"Que?" the Tejano barked. "They look like always."
"That is exactly my point. Look at 'em, miserable as ever. Ain't they pleased we come to water?"
"Oh," Enrique said.
He gracefully swiveled on his horse to look at the motley train behind: Anglos in buggies and buckboards and Tejanos in two-wheeled jinetas.
"They scared of the lago, the Espantosa."
"Scared, huh? Eye God, that's rare!" laughed Suggs. "What’re they scared of, the water gyppy or what?"
"There are ghosts," replied Enrique.
"Spirits? What do you mean? Haints and such?"
Enrique said no more.
Read Full Story>>
Mary’s Twenty
By Steele Campbell
Even though I awoke when he stirred the topmost step, I feigned sleep until my father stood next to my bed and spoke.
“It’s morning and those horses won’t harness themselves.” He went back up the creaky stairs, leaving me to have heard and obey.
I sat up, hanging my legs off the bed. Pulling my sleep heavy head from my hands, I looked at my brother. He hadn’t budged. He continued sleeping with no intention of venturing into the dewy morning, which would be cold until the sun’s rays peaked over the mountains and rehearsed movements warmed tired muscles. He probably didn’t even hear father. He would soon. As soon as I could escape I would, stow away into the service or get myself a gig up north on a lumber crew; then the summons would be his alone.
Read Full Story>>
The Hat
By D. L. Chance
He died like he’d lived: In the saddle. A heart attack got him.
I didn’t know the man, but since he was the uncle of a friend’s wife I went along with them to the funeral when they asked. Except for a dozen or so months in the army in his late teens, he’d spent his whole life on his ancestral ranchlands way out on the Eastern Colorado prairie, and the drive out to the town closest to his spread took us almost two hours.
The little church was already packed when we got there.
Read Full Story>>
Cowpoke Trail
By Jay Miller
1870 on the California Trail. Gold was amuck, whiskey was abounded, women were not plentiful, and the cattle herds were being driven hard.
Jed sucked his last sip of whiskey from the bottle and tossed it into the fire.
“Dang,” he whispered to himself. ‘I should have stayed in town a little longer. Next time I’ll take more money and do things differently. I should have never started gambling until I had spent a little time with Lily Rose. I should have listened to her when she tried to get me to go up stairs with her.
Read Full Story>>
The Double Z
By John Kelly
The skin of the canteen was leaking and he figured he had four swallows before he ran out. He tipped the canteen vertical and swallowed. Four times. And was out. He looked down as sweat dropped onto the horn of his saddle, smiling wryly. He stuffed the canteen into a rear pouch and shifted in the saddle, titling his hat back. A grove of trees was in the distance. But there was just scrub brush and dirt between here and there.
Read Full Story>>
Legend Of Blazing Rock
By Herschel Cozine
It was late summer, 1879. The fierce desert sun left Will weak and near delirium. He had survived for three days by carefully rationing his water. But with only a few swallows left, he knew it was just a matter of time before the desert claimed him. The few cactus plants that grew in this part of the desert offered little in the way of water; surely not enough to keep a man alive.
Read Full Story>>
Comanche Reckoning
By Ben Bridges
Link Dayton was out back, chopping wood, when he heard the young boy shout, “Rider comin’, Pa!”
He was a bulky man forty summers old, with a mess of black hair spilling from beneath his loose-brimmed hat and a shaggy black beard that covered a square and stubborn jaw. He sunk the axe into the stump nearby, straightened to his full six feet two, wiped his over-large hands on the bib of his stained coveralls and headed for the house.
Mary - a tired, prematurely-aged woman with auburn hair pulled back in a bun - was waiting for him when he entered the parlour. Dayton ignored her as he took the old Burnside carbine down from the brackets over the hearth.
Read Full Story>>
Brothers
By Shaun Ryan
The elongated shadow cast by horse and rider seemed to dance across the long grass, an eerie caricature stretched by the rising sun. The rider’s weary gaze twitched from its impossible shape to the ridges on either side of the valley, searching for any threat. The new day’s peachy glow warmed Nate Loorde’s back as he rode west. It was a welcome sensation. His aching muscles soaked in the warmth, protesting the long ride a little less as he stretched in the saddle. He was bone tired, having ridden through the night.
Read Full Story>>
Wild Horses
By Pat Gott
Upon returning to Cody from a recent horse pack trip into the lower east corner of Yellowstone Park, Bertha and Charlie Daye hurried into their favorite bar at the Irma Hotel to tip back a few shots of whiskey.
Bertha, long on aggression and short on tolerance, said, “I wonder if all eastern dudes wanting to experience a bit of our west will be as delicate as those four guests of Buffalo Bill’s. If so, maybe we’d better be re-thinking taking guests pack tripping into the mountains…that sure was trying on my patience.”
Usually the quiet one, Charlie’s tongue began to loosen with drink. “You done fine, honey. I wasn’t sure for a while, whether Lady Alice was gonna make it back to Bill’s ranch without havin’ another bout of the vapors. You musta done some real sweet talkin’ for her to give you a hug whilst we was sayin’ our fare-the-wells,” Charlie said with a grin.
Read Full Story>>
The Race
By Pat Gott
After counting wild horses on the Crow reservation for the U.S. Government last fall, Bertha and Charlie Daye stayed the winter at their homestead on the North Fork of the Shoshone west of Cody, Wyoming. He was in his forties, clean-shaven showing his weather-lined gentle face, tall, lanky, reticent, loved mules and the mountains. She was in her early thirties, an attractive woman who received seven grades of schooling before her parents were killed in Johnson County and she went on the run. She was independent, outspoken, and an excellent horsewoman. Together they made a good team.
Read Full Story>>
A Good Name
By Bob Burnett
The boy, Will McRae, was first to see the rider on a sorrel horse trotting up the wide valley, still a half mile south and sitting erect in the saddle. “Rider comin’,” he said.
The Dutch oven had cooled to the touch and one warm biscuit remained. The boy held the biscuit with his front teeth while he wiped out the inside of the Dutch oven with a piece of sacking. He knocked the ashes out of the lid and replaced it, setting the oven away from the dying campfire. Squatting and wrapping the sacking around the handle, he pulled the frying pan away from the edge of the coals and sopped up a bit of remaining bacon grease with the biscuit, then wiped out the frying pan with the sacking and put it aside with the Dutch oven. Absently, he munched on the greasy biscuit as he watched the approaching rider.
Read Full Story>>
Buffalo Money
By Ian Rogers
Felix rode into town, the reins clenched in one hand and Wedgy Weiss's letter in the other.
So this is where Wedgy ended up, Felix thought as he took in the dilapidated buildings with their weather-scrubbed boards and crumbling facades. The whole place looked as if a strong wind would knock it down and sweep it away. Platinum Flats, he thought. A town at home with the past tense.
He followed the sound of honky-tonk piano to a squat building that looked as if it hadn't seen the business end of a paintbrush since the time of the Crucifixion.
Hitching his horse to the rail out front, Felix glanced up at a sign over the awning that proclaimed this place The Night Owl Saloon. The batwing doors were missing, probably torn off their hinges in some long-ago brawl, and the music poured out like water through a busted dam.
Felix went in.
Read Full Story>>
Tadpole
By Bob Burnett
The day had been a complete bust, as far as I was concerned. Pa had sent me off to find a strayed Percheron mare, heavy with foal. Said I needn't bring her home, just see was she all right. I wasn't near the tracker Pa was, him being raised mostly by his mama's people, but he had been teaching me the ways of a trail ever since I could remember. I figured he could track a snake over solid rock in a rain storm, but tracking a mighty heavy horse with hoofs the size of a dinner plate was something I could have done when I was four years old.
Read Full Story>>
The Old Dogs Day
By Lee Aaron Wilson
Most days Old John Jordan sat in his rocking chair in the sun and watched the world pass by. The scent of the lilacs and roses, planted by his wife, Ellen, and mostly tended by her, surrounded him. He sipped iced tea or lemonade, or coffee when the weather got chilly, and talked to his old dog, Shadow, and passersby. He and Shadow were taking a little sun when a big brindle dog trotted up the street, swinging his head from side to side as he surveyed his kingdom. Shadow's tail stopped moving as he watched the younger dog.
"New top dog in town," the old man commented.
Shadow turned his head to look at Old John and his slender tail made three listless slaps on the wooden porch floor. He was a good hunter, which implied some trace of hound in his ancestry. His black coat with occasional white spots, and huge head suggested Black Labrador somewhere in his background, too. But mostly he was "dog."
Read Full Story>>
The Downfall of Ross Dent
By Lee Aaron Wilson
The sensation of flying, of being lighter than air, twisting lazily in the warm summer sun was wonderful. With his arms outflung and back arched, Ross Dent flew to meet the clouds. The sky receded. The flight came to a sudden stop as he thudded to the pounded ground in the middle of the breaking corral.
Oh my Gawd, Ross thought, I'm killed. My back. My laigs. He wanted to scream, but his lungs wouldn't work. His throat rasped when he tried to get his breath.
Read Full Story>>
Learning Gentle Ways
By Bob Burnett
It took me the better part of a day to drive that cow and calf to town. The old brindle cow was rank and wild and wanted no part of me, but would not stray far from her calf. Mostly I drove the calf and kept a sharp eye on the cow, for she would stick a horn in my horse if she could.
When I first saw the reworked brand on that calf, I felt the old familiar call to battle well up inside of me, the rage narrowing my mind to the single purpose of causing serious bodily harm to whoever crossed me. The old me, the man I was trying not to be, said it was time for a gun and a rope. The new me, the man I wanted to be, said it was time to give the matter to the law. The new me won out, but it was a close thing for a little bit.
Read Full Story>>
Grandma Gives No Quarter
By Charlie Steel
Frances Stevens’ steady hand did not betray her eighty-two years as she stood in the kitchen ladling soup into a bowl for her daughter-in-law. The two women talked lightly about chores that had to be completed and food to be preserved before Frances’s son, Charles, and his cowhands returned from a small cattle drive to Abilene. Except for old Stumpy, the cook, and George and Sam, the two old-timers who cared for the stock, the ranch was devoid of hands.
Ever since Whitey Stevens died of old age and hard work, Grandma Frances helped run the ranch with an iron hand and she knew how to handle the shotgun hidden behind the curtained kitchen pantry. Grandma may have years on her side, but her resolve and spirit were as young as ever. So, it was no surprise to her, with her lifetime of experience in the hard west, to see outriders come galloping up to the house, six-guns thundering.
Read Full Story>>
Old Man in the Rocking Chair
By Charlie Steel
I first spotted the old man when he came riding into Colorado City on a lame paint. His gear was faded and worn. When he sold horse, saddle, and bridle to the hostler at the livery, not much money was exchanged. Everything about him was well used---including himself. He was a tough old man, the leathery kind. He had a face weathered by the sun, and it looked like he had lived a hard life and earned every wrinkle. There sure were a lot of them.
Read Full Story>>
Death of a Hunter
By Charles T Whipple
As a soldier, Jimbo had mowed down countless scores of enemy troops
with car-jack machinegun fire. As a red chief, he'd brought home frogs
and slow-swimming carp with his homemade cedar bow and cattail arrows.
But Christmas 1949 brought a new dimension to Jimbo's life
Read Full Story>>
Freckles in Love
By Ryan Bruner
I’s already in the bathhouse when Freckles comes in, gun on his hip, arms poised like he’s about to have a gun fight. Course, he ain’t never been in a gun fight in his life. He’s nineteen, but he carried himself like he’s in charge of his life with no one to stop him.”
“G’morning, boys,” he says, grinning like a man on tequila. “Time to get all gussied up. I got myself a date!”
Read Full Story>>
The Wild Ride of English Jack
By Celia Hayes
If English Jack had another name - or even if that was his real one - only Fredi Steinmetz., the trail boss for the R-B outfit knew of it. He had turned up at their camp, just as the hands were preparing to swim the herd across the Colorado River a little south of Austin on a fine spring morning; about eight hundred feral, long-legged, long-horned cattle, every one of them as wild as deer and worth ten times as much in Kansas than they were in Texas. It was the first year that the R-B had sent cattle north up the trail, a full year after the end of the War. Times were hard, all across the South, and none harder than in the Texas hill country. A lot rode on this venture, and none knew it more than the R-B owners and investors.
Read Full Story>>
Palm Sunday, 1836
By Celia Hayes
The Mexican soldiers came to march them away from the old citadel on the seventh day after Colonel Fannin had surrendered under a white flag. His little command of volunteers and militia had fought doggedly and hopelessly for a day and a night, pinned down in the open just short of Coleto Creek, tormented beyond endurance by gunfire, thirst and grapeshot. It was the grapeshot that did it finally and Carl Becker, all of sixteen and a bit had stood in the ragged ranks of the Texas Volunteers, the Greys, Shackelford’s Red Rovers and the rest, next to his older brother Rudolph. They silently watched Colonel Fannin march out of the ragged square under a tattered white banner made from someone’s shirt.
Read Full Story>>
Bowdeezer
By John B. Fincher
It was a dry, slightly cloudy day in the early fall of the year when we were working a few unbroken Mustangs. The weather was cool with a feel of oncoming rain and the ponies were frisky.
"Red River" James Thorpe and Victor Garza were putting a saddle on a roan pony. Red was holding the pony's hackamore and Victor was working with the cinch.
Read Full Story>>
Cadburn’s Return
By Alfred Wallon
I stared through the prison bars of the little cell in Parson´s Creek. No-one was on the street. It was hot at noon, and the townsfolk preferred to stay indoors. I was sweating, but at least I was in shade, and that was a lot better than being outside.
"You want something to drink, Gentry?", asked Deputy Roscoe Craig. "I just got a bucket of cold lemon squash. I'll be happy to share it."
Lemon squash! I felt like telling the lawman what he could do with his lemon squash, but I still had four days to serve before they set me free, and right then I'd have spent every last cent I had for a cold beer. But lemon squash?
Perhaps I should have been more cautious when I entered the saloon two days earlier.
Read Full Story>>
Ghost Rider
By Connie Vigil Platt
The west is full of ghost stories that have been handed down from generation to generation, some have a basis of truth and some are merely entertaining. Stories of mysterious lights where there should be no lights, specters that rise from the grave to visit the ranch house on stormy nights, point bony fingers and float on filmy wings, tales of hidden treasure guarded by phantom spirits or sometimes a beautiful woman that would lure you into the dark regions, shadows that would leave gold coins for you to find in the morning, witches that change into animals, howling dogs that warned of impending death. Tales told around the fireplace on cold winter nights that made you shiver in delighted horror, at things that go bump in the night. I will let you be the judge of which one this is.
I will tell you this, it is true and it did happen to me.
Read Full Story>>
Triangle of Desire
By Connie Vigil Platt
It was time to get ready for her performance; Bianca tied a flame red scarf around her neck and arranged her long ebony hair so the bruises wouldn't show. She knew the bright color would detract from the discoloration on her throat and cheek where Carlos had slapped her for not getting him a drink fast enough. Never a day passed that Carlos didn't find some reason to slap her. There were times when he hit her with a closed fist and blacked her eye. This would be the last time that pig Carlos would mistreat her that way. Today was the day. Today she would ask for more than money to be thrown in the tambourine. Today she would ask for blood.
Read Full Story>>
Pretty Dance
By Michael Fontana
Small street in Laredo. I knew the drill. Heel-toe, heel-toe. Spurs with insect flutter in tortuous breeze. Still, the Sailor hadn’t spilled out of the canteen doorway. His name a joke because he had never even seen a splash of ocean water. Half Cherokee and half Spanish. Gold tooth in front. Turquoise eyes. Hay in his black hair from a passing wagon. Menace of silver guns clinging to either hip.
Read Full Story>>
A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"
The Road Agent
By Stewart Edward White
1873-1946
The Sierra Nevadas of California are very wide and very high. Kingdoms could be lost among the defiles of their ranges. Kingdoms have been found there. One of them was Bright's Cove.
Read Full Story>>
Fury At Sundown
By Rye James
Tom Connors rode down the street noticing that there wasn’t much activity going on. He only saw a couple riders and only a few old-timers sitting in chairs outside the barber shop. The town seemed devoid of any life or energy. He’d seen it before though. Sundown wasn’t the first town he’d been hired to clean up. He stopped his horse in front of the Sheriff’s office and dismounted his Thoroughbred. Connors took a look back toward the town before slowly making his way into the office. He could tell it hadn’t been occupied in some time.
Read Full Story>>
Son of Gaucho
By Ben Henry Swadley
Horses screamed in the distance. Something was terribly wrong at the corral. Ross mounted his horse, Gaucho, and sped though the cactus flats towards the ranch. A long branch from an ocotillo hit his face, the needles whipping painfully into his cheek. Gaucho was taking a beating from the cactus as well, but he ran fast, without hesitation.
Read Full Story>>
A Rope and Wire "P D Classic"
A QUESTION OF POSSESSION
By Andy Adams
1859-1935
Along in the 80's there occurred a question of possession in regard
to a brand of horses, numbering nearly two hundred head. Courts had
figured in former matters, but at this time they were not appealed to,
owing to the circumstances. This incident occurred on leased
Indian lands unprovided with civil courts,--in a judicial sense,
"No-Man's-Land." At this time it seemed that _might_ graced the
woolsack, while on one side Judge Colt cited his authority, only to be
reversed by Judge Parker, breech-loader, short-barreled, a full-choke
ten bore. The clash of opinions between these two eminent western
authorities was short, determined, and to the point.
Read Full Story>>
A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"
IN THE HANDS OF HIS FRIENDS
By Andy Adams
1859-1935
There was a painting at the World's Fair at Chicago named "The Reply,"
in which the lines of two contending armies were distinctly outlined.
One of these armies had demanded the surrender of the other. The reply
was being written by a little fellow, surrounded by grim veterans
of war. He was not even a soldier. But in this little fellow's
countenance shone a supreme contempt for the enemy's demand. His
patriotism beamed out as plainly as did that of the officer dictating
to him. Physically he was debarred from being a soldier; still there
was a place where he could be useful.
So with Little Jack Martin. He was a cripple and could not ride, but
he could cook.
Read Full Story>>
A Rope And Wire "P.D.Classic"
BAD MEDICINE
By Andy Adams
1859-1935
The evening before the Cherokee Strip was thrown open for settlement, a number of old timers met in the little town of Hennessey, Oklahoma.
On the next day the Strip would pass from us and our employers, the cowmen. Some of the boys had spent from five to fifteen years on this range. But we realized that we had come to the parting of the ways.
Read Full Story>>
A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"
THE DOUBLE TRAIL
By Andy Adams
1859-1935
Early in the summer of '78 we were rocking along with a herd of Laurel Leaf cattle, going up the old Chisholm trail in the Indian Territory. The cattle were in charge of Ike Inks as foreman, and had been sold for delivery somewhere in the Strip.
There were thirty-one hundred head, straight "twos," and in the single ranch brand. We had been out about four months on the trail, and all felt that a few weeks at the farthest would let us out, for the day before we had crossed the Cimarron River, ninety miles south of the state line of Kansas.
Read Full Story>>
The Story
by Dave P. Fisher
The man stood alone at the end of the bar, his boot on the brass rail
while his elbows rested on the polished hardwood, and between his
hands was a beer mug. He stared absently into the amber liquid that
filled the bottom half of the mug and the white foam still clinging to
the upper. He was lost in thought, of which there was over half a
century of its accumulation behind him.
Read Full Story>>
The Jail Break
By Terry Burns
The jail in Lincoln County New Mexico was on the second floor above the Sheriff’s office. I had been given the opportunity to talk to one of the most famous killers in history, Billy the Kid. I admit it, as I ascended the stairs I was thinking national exposure, in spite of the fact that normally I do articles for newspapers back east and the occasional dime novel. With the kid set to hang the following morning, this was sure to be his last interview . . . and my big break.
Read Full Story>>
The Herd Cutters
By Dave P. Fisher
It had been a hard winter. Mort Seever sat at the little table and ran the stub of his pencil down the line of figures. The oil lamp laid the pencil’s shadow across the paper in a way that emphasized the dark reality of the numbers. He tapped the pencil tip on the paper and sighed deeply.
Mort was a young man as ranchers go; he had only turned thirty a couple months back. His wife of three years stood silently across the table from him and studied her husband’s weary eyes. She knew without asking that the prospects for the year were not good.
Mort looked up, “Darcy, we’re busted. The winter killed over half the cattle, we might see a few new calves this month, but the cows are in pretty poor shape for it. Even if every one of them threw twin calves it wouldn’t do us any good this year.”
Read Full Story>>
Rights of Passage
By Dave P. Fisher
“The man at the livery told me you were hiring, I need a job.”
The unexpected voice broke Duncan Wells out of his thoughts. He turned around expecting to be looking at eye level with a man; instead he had to look down at the boy standing in front of him. He took in the cut of the boy; he was big for his age with a wild tangle of black hair matching his steady black eyes. He was impressed that the boy would look him in the eye, but he needed men not boys.
Read Full Story>>
|
|
|
|
|
Send this story to a friend
|
|
|
|
|
