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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 day—he knew that—yet he found it relaxing. It was his time to think.