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Western Short Stories
William MacLeod Raine

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Western short stories Bio. of William MacLeod Raine

From

William MacLeod Raine was born in , the son of William and Jessie Raine. After his mother died, his family migrated from England to  when Raine was ten years old, eventually settling on a cattle ranch near the -Arkansas border. In 1894, after graduating from , Raine left Arkansas and headed for the western U.S. He became the principal of a school in  while contributing columns to a local newspaper. Later he moved to , where he worked as a reporter and editorial writer for local periodicals.

At this time he began to publish short stories, eventually becoming a full-time free-lance fiction writer, and finally finding his literary home in the novel. His earliest novels were romantic histories taking place in the English countryside. However, after spending some time with the , Raine shifted his literary focus and began to utilize the American West as a setting. 

Raine died on July 25, 1954, and is buried at  in Denver.

He was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1959.

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On the Long Overland Trail

William MacLeod Raine

Withrow, sitting his saddle loosely with the plainman’s easy seat, let his quiet gray eyes sweep the irregular, shifting line of restless broncos. Tough as whalebone, they were built for hard pounding, and showed to the experienced eye stamina in every line. The riders, too, tanned and weather-beaten to a leathery brown, wore the sign manual of the West. Most of them offered no picturesqueness of costuming, but they were fit to the minute for the six-hundred-mile race before them.

The starter’s strident voice cut into the kaleidoscope of dusty animation as the nervous ponies were being maneuvered for position.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Read the full story HERE>>

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The Sheriff's Daughter

William MacLeod Raine

He stood on the threshold of the open door, breathing deeply but quietly, muscles tense, and hard eyes alert. That he was a hunted man was clear. The haggard face, the cactus-shredded and adobe-spattered clothing, the wary glitter under the narrowed eyelids, all contributed to this assurance. But there was some dynamic quality of force in him that forbade any impression of helplessness. In desperate plight he might be, but he was still quite cool and master of himself. Read the full story HERE>>

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