Tom Sheehan

“No way,” Jed Lawson screamed, his voice full of hate and anger not heard in Tally’s Pass all summer. He swung around at the bar and looked directly into the eyes of River Rowan as if either pair of eyes would ignite. “He ain’t ours. He’s mine. I raised him from the runty colt you wouldn’t look at a second time. No way you claimin’ him back from me.”

Tom Sheehan

Matt Durgin sat with his wife Grace on the porch of their ranch house, evening taking hold for good, the heat of the day still in place, the mountains to the west of them keeping months of rain away from the grass, the eventual winter feed for their animals.

Tom Sheehan

Luke Hammard slid off his mount in front of the Lazy Bull Saloon without anyone taking the least notice, dropped the reins over the hitch rail and fell on his face in the dust of the main street of Morgan’s Bend, Texas. At that, on the other side of the dusty road, holding her child’s hand, a young mother screamed for the sheriff.

Tom Sheehan

Me and Tozzer was lookin’ to go to Canada, or at least Montana, which we called Montan, and know the Indians the way they ought to be known like face front and real as us. Course, we had some problems along the way, folks steppin’ on our toes and their kids spittin’ at us bein’ us, but not them older folk, a black and a white kind of cowboy types.

Tom Sheehan

“Sheriff,” the stranger said to the man with the shiny badge, a big, robust man with twin pistols on his belt and a coffee cup in one hand, name of Burt Hollister, “they took my pistol and my rifle and my boots, two men did after gettin’ me in a crossfire position.

Tom Sheehan

Random reflections of light from Mount Groban made Sheriff Link Colburn think they were caused by something other than natural. A signal for help? A signal for danger? Either one should be checked out, even by any man with the slimmest curiosity and merest concern for a fellow human.

Tom Sheehan

He came west from Boston-town and carried his own bit of history with him, that history being varied, complex, and somewhat international.

Tom Sheehan

Great Caves, from the beginning, I can tell you, was Sheriff Jonathon Digsby’s town. Every foot of it, all the way from beautiful and sultry Ma Taylor’s Suitable Emporium of Taste at one end of the town to puckish Noah Cunningham’s Mortuary of the True Stillness at the other end. One time, before Ma Taylor came along off a stagecoach like she was dropped casually from heaven, Cunningham called his place The Fallen Star.

Tom Sheehan

“They didn’t know who I was or where I came from or what I’d done and left undone somewhere else, and they didn’t care.”
Orchards of Almonds
Donald Junkins

Tom Sheehan

They said it was all up to Cawdy Bellrock now. New sheriff. Married the widow of the last sheriff, Rod Baker, gunned down in front of the bank. Standing there, he was, that old sheriff, a dumb look on his face. Three men coming out the bank door, one man holding their horses. No rifles. Just hand guns. All their guns going off at once. The sheriff’s mouth still open. Him in the dust as they rode out of town. Dust behind them. Dust on the sheriff’s body. A slight breeze playing dusty games around his head.