A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"
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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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!”

Sven didn’t hesitate. He practically yanked him out of his clothes and pushes him into the tub next to mine.

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-a genuine Daisy Red Ryder BB air rifle and a coonskin hat made of real rabbit
fur. Even the tail looked right.