Short Stories & Tall Tales by Big Jim Williams
“I love the Old West’s history, people and tales,” said Big Jim Williams.
“What an exciting time it would have been to be in California’s ‘49 Gold Rush, ride the Oregon Trail, or explore with Lewis and Clark. That’s why I love writing westerns.”
Williams is the author of the audio books, THE OLD WEST, and TALL TALES OF THE OLD WEST. His westerns have appeared in Rope And Wire, Western Horseman, The Cardroom Poker News, Livestock (Texas) Weekly, American West, Sniplits, Short-Story.net, and Shoot! Magazine.
He has also contributed stories to Orchard Press Mysteries, Suspense Magazine, and the books, At Home and Abroad: Prize-Winning Stories, and Murder to Mil-Spec. His sci-fi story shares pages with Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe in the The Last Man Anthology.
Nonfiction credits include Writers’ Journal, Radio World Magazine, and WritersWeekly.
Williams usually begins writing before 6 a.m., a habit acquired during 20 years as a morning radio announcer.
Big Jim and his wife, Joan, also a writer, have two sons, and four grandchildren. Williams writes, reads, haunts bookstores, overeats, watches old Western movies, drinks beer, lunches with friends, naps in California, and welcomes emails at
The Stag-Horn Pistol
Big Jim Williams
The new pistol with stag-horn grips rested on a small back table in Brodie’s Saloon, its cylinder open and empty. Two men on opposite sides of the same round poker table occasionally looked at the weapon. Both had envious eyes.
It was a Colt .44, the latest and most powerful of handguns. Several cartridges were by its side.
A deck of cards was stacked in the middle of the pockmarked table, each pasteboard covered with grime and sweat from a thousand dirty hands.
Yancy Boone's Epitaph
Big Jim Williams
“I don’t wanna die!” The rail-thin rustler squirmed in his saddle, his hands tied behind his back. A rope stretched from his red neck to a thick cottonwood limb overhead.
“Most people don’t.” Captain Yancy Boone of the Texas Rangers leaned forward in his saddle. “You don’t seem keen on it, either.” The sun glinted off his badge.
“No, sir.” The man gulped. “I’m...I’m sorry for what I done.” Ripped and bloodstained clothes covered his body. Barbed-wire cuts extended to his face and hands.
Marshal Caleb Thorne
Big Jim Williams
“There’s gotta be a special place in Hell for people who would do something like this,” said Marshal Caleb Thorne.
The aging lawman gently spread his blanket over the body of a child, crumpled face down in the desert sand. Her yellow dress and blond hair were spattered with crimson. A shoe was missing from her left foot.
Deke Wells, the Marshal’s young Deputy, wiped his eyes. He looked sick.
Buckshot's Mail-Order Bride
Big Jim Williams
Lonesome cowboys on the Texas Frontier often married mail-order brides.
--The author
"I have decided," said Buckshot Jones, "that I need a wife.”
“What?" sputtered Shorty Hightower, raising a shaggy eyebrow.
"A wife," repeated the lanky Buckshot. He grinned and stuffed his boyish face with morning eggs and biscuits in the Running Iron’s cookhouse.
"Like One-Eyed Mollie at the saloon?" whispered Shorty.
"Nope, a real wife.” Buckshot lowered his empty tin coffee cup and wiped his chin with his sleeve.
Escape From Fort Challenge
Big Jim Williams
“Ain’t takin’ no more.”
Judd Rutledge examined his blistered hands. Then wiped grime and sweat from his baked forehead.
An unmerciful sun scorched two other Army Privates grudgingly attacking the hard soil with picks and shovels of what would soon become Wyoming Territory.
The Last Mountain Man
Big Jim Williams
Mountain Men roamed America’s unexplored West, trapping beaver, from about 1820 to 1840. This breed of rugged men, with their buckskins and long rifles, faced hostile Indians, wild animals, hunger, and often death, hundreds of miles from their families and civilization.
They often hunted together as employees of big Eastern fur companies. But sometimes they hunted alone as "free" trappers in the rugged Rocky Mountains, or along remote rivers and streams, relying on their own cunning and courage to stay alive. This is one such story.
Hutch Higgins Ain't No Horse Thief
Big Jim Williams
“Colonel, I won’t do it!” exclaimed Hutch Higgins. “I ain’t gonna hang a man for stealing cattle, especially a kid.”
“Then you aren’t much of a man,” growled Colonel J. B. Griffin.
“The law should be deciding this, not us,” argued Hutch.
“Then get out of the way and let men do their work.”
The Jackstraw Stagecoach Robbery
Big Jim Williams
The short pock-faced bandit with brown teeth shoved a big pistol in Hutch Higgins’ face.
“One move out of you Cowboy,” he growled, “and your momma will be putting flowers on your grave tomorrow! You understand?”
Hutch gulped and nodded.
The outlaw ripped a pistol from Hutch’s holster, but overlooked a one-shot derringer inside his right boot, a whiskey flask in the other.
Sergeant Max Striker
By Big Jim Williams
There was only one thought on Lacy’s mind. Find Sergeant Max Striker and kill him! Kill the man who had murdered his friend and brutalized Lacy in the southern hellhole called Andersonville Prison.
Lacy rubbed the stub of his left arm. The sleeve was empty. Sometimes he felt pain in the arm and hand that weren’t there.
