Short Stories & Tall Tales by Tom Sheehan
Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry Regiment, Korea 1951 and graduated from Boston College in 1956. His print/eBooks are Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans (from Press 53); A Collection of Friends; From the Quickening (from Pocol Press).
Books from Milspeak Publishers include Korean Echoes, 2011, nominated for a Distinguished Military Award and The Westering, 2012, nominated for a National Book Award.
His newest eBooks, from Danse Macabre/Lazarus/Anvil, are Murder at the Forum, an NHL mystery novel, Death of a Lottery Foe, Death by Punishment and An Accountable Death.
His work is in Rosebud (6 issues), The Linnet’s Wings (7 issues),Literary Orphans (4 issues including the Ireland issue), Ocean Magazine (8 issues), Frontier Tales (9 issues), Provo Canyon Review (2 issues), Western Online Magazine (9 issues).
His work has appeared in the following anthologies: Nazar Look, Eastlit, 3 A.M. Magazine, Appalachian Voices, Jake’s Monthly Recollections, Lady Jane’s Miscellany, Loch Raven Review, Rusty Nail, Red Dirt Review, Erzahlungen, R&W Kindle #2 & 4, Peripheral Sex, Storybrewhouse, Wheelhouse Magazine, Home of the Brave, Green Lantern Press, River Poets Journal , Writers Write and A Tall Ship, a Star, and Plunder.
He has 24 Pushcart nominations, and 375 stories on Rope and Wire Magazine. A new collection of short stories, In the Garden of Long Shadows, has gone to press with solid pre-release reviews and will be issued by Pocol Press this summer.
His personal site is being developed.
Find his Authors Herald page Here »
Read his Rope and Wire interview Here »
Snake
By Tom Sheehan
The name stuck. It was that simple.
The slim, black-clad stranger was thereafter referred to as Snake. Not a soul in town used his real name, Thomas Pitchpen, once of Tennessee, but, for all that matter, the town of Asheville, Utah was looking for a killer, a hired gun if they could get him for free, to stand up to the sly, devious, and artful gun-hand who came to town every so often and often tore it apart with death at the end of a challenge.
Tale of Two Trail Blazers
Tom Sheehan
As evening descended on Bartonsville, Texas, smoke and steam issued in cloudy funnels from the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad Company steam engine and was quickly absorbed by dusk. In the shadows cast by one passenger car, a man stood still and alone, a small night bag in one hand, his other hand close to a revolver holstered on his belt, under his coat. He stared up the tracks toward the engine puffing away in place, and waited in the darkest spot, hidden from all eyes.
Caves of the Gods, Heart of the Mountain
Tom Sheehan
Puma-Dog, heavily burdened, yet bound in belief, wondered about the inside of the mountain he was climbing, and the trail so old in the making that he could not begin to measure its age. Even the old chief and man of wisdom, One-Wing-Gone, told him the mountain was as old as the gods themselves.
The Dam at Wasahoa
Tom Sheehan
The settlement of Wasahoa in the Utah Territory sat on the Wasatch Plateau and was ripe with game. This cool forest high above the San Rafael Swell provided refuge for an incredible amount of prey, which also included all manner of criminals on the run, from all over the western region. One establishment in Wasahoa was reserved for bank robbers only, the owner figuring her clients were able to spring with cold cash.
Grandpa’s Tale from Johnson’s Ranch
Tom Sheehan
Me? I’m Brady Cross, the 4th, and I am going to tell you a story told me by my grandfather, Brady Cross, Jr., as told to him by his father, the first Brady Cross in the line that ran from Heatherford, Oklahoma to this old saloon practically on the edge of nowhere, but still in Nebraska.
The voice of the story, if you get what I mean, has never changed since the first telling, which happened to be in a saloon much like this one.
The Freighters’ Return Engagement
Tom Sheehan
Earl Friscoe and Buckeye Davidson were freighters for a long time and had weathered a few storms along the way, but the one they endured on the Shiloh Two road from Friscoe’s hometown of Mesa Cappo was the only one they went back to and spent time on; all the other losses were written off as part of the big gamble from the beginning.
There was something different about this one.
The 2nd Dead Horse Saloon
Tom Sheehan
It sits at the fork of a river in Texas, The 2nd Dead Horse Saloon, and at a fork in the road. Water and wherever go two ways at once whenever you get here and look around. The name of the town is Bapst and there’s nobody who knows where that name came from, at least not living here now.
Secret of the Cave
Tom Sheehan
Mountain Jackson, no other name known by the few men he met in the mountains or saw at re-supply time or pelt trading, was bigger than his mule, a stubborn but hard-worker, the only kind of an animal that Jackson would lavish any affection on. “You smell that sweet water, Hildy? Smell it like I do? Up here’s someplace hidin’ on us. You be still here and I’ll have a look around. ‘Bout time we had a treat.”
Chronicle of a Bank Robbery
Tom Sheehan
Note: The following record has been reconstructed by Wm. Longley, Sheriff, Houston, as “Information assumed and/or sworn to by witnesses and a recovered victim, all the parts depending on each other like an overview reading of trail signs, and presented at resolution of the incident involved.”
Horse
Tom Sheehan
John Joseph “Jack” Mabry, wrangler for the Cross-Bed Ranch in the Texas Panhandle, was as outspoken as any wrangler could be, demanding that his horses be given their honest due and good care “lest that cowpoke not doin’ so be fixed one way or another. I ain’t raisin’ and runnin’ chickens for the drive, but horses good as men and smarter that some I’ve known.”
Cowboys, we know, can say a hundred ways they’re in love, and here are a few of them:
He weren’t born, mister, he was made for me. Just for me. My horse.
