Contemporary Short Stories of Mary Scriver

The little village of Twenty Mile is about twenty miles from McKinley, or it used to be before McKinley grew out that way. Twenty miles was about as far as a team and wagon can travel in a day, at least comfortably, so there was a little mercantile store there, not much more than a provisioner but also a post office, more by evolution than by design. The post office is gone now. Caused a major fuss when it was closed because people hate to lose evidence of their pasts even when they’re over and done with.

Contemporary Short Stories of Mary Scriver

“You got any hooks?” asked Tad Pinfeathers. “I think I got three. You got any line?” said Elmer Arrow Hits. “Lotsa line. And I saved a really good fishing pole I cut last time. Let’s go down to Willow Creek.”

Traditional Short Stories of Mary Scriver

At first the horseback Indian thought that the patch of yellow on the prairie was just flowers, but it wasn’t quite the right season for that size and color of flowers, so he went a little closer in order to investigate -- though not close enough for the patch to be dangerous. It was some kind of garment. Sprawled. No sign of a person. Had it been discarded? Was it a trap?

Traditional Short Stories of Mary Scriver

The winter had been long, harsh and cold beyond memory. Snow was deep; the wind did not blow to clear the ridges so horses could get at the grass. Instead there were occasional hard bright days that made an ice crust on top so the horses’ fetlocks left red on the snow.

Traditional Short Stories of Mary Scriver

There was a buffalo carcass on the prairie. Small piles of internal organs, appearing to have been sorted, lay alongside in the grass. No sign of a person.

Then the carcass began to rock slightly and out crawled a small Indian woman. She was red from head to toe, but her grin when she saw him was white as bone. Francois thought he’d seen everything but as he sat there on his horse -- which was as braced as he was -- he was staring like a transfixed prairie chicken. “La femme rouge!” he exclaimed.

Traditional Short Stories of Mary Scriver

Sheila Moira May O’Hara stood in her saloon with her hands on her hips, stood there right under the painting of a very pink and voluptuous nude. Probably some people thought it was her, but it was not. It was her mother. But it was an understandable mistake since the background looked quite a bit like her saloon, which she had carefully modeled after that of her mother, who had been dead these many years. Sheila Moira May O’Hara was no spring chicken but she was in much better shape than her mother had ever been.

Traditional Short Stories of Prairie Mary

He had no idea at all how he’d gotten to be so old. Maybe he just lucked out. It sure wasn’t skill or good looks. He’d never expected to see the backside of forty and here he was over fifty, kinda reaching for sixty. Of course, he had no home, no family, no one to miss him if he did die, so probably it was Fate playing her nasty little games with people’s lives.