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Side Trail
From satire to science fiction.
I hope you enjoy your ride down the Side Trail.
Blue Glacier Beer
Tom Sheehan
And so it had come to this… nothing would ever take him from his steely promise to extract, once and for all, total redemption from his old pal and teammate, Geg Lumbada, payment of the highest order, Amontillado on the instant air. So be it.
When Danton Fuller took his first taste of Blue Glacier Beer he experienced, that very night, the first of his memorable dreams. It did not take him long to discover the beer was the instigator of his wild dream of comeuppance. This was a brew he could always count on for diversion. The quality taste grabbed him with an old-world power, bringing back memories of beer in a crock his father had kept in a back hall, “for visitors,” as the old gent had said. To himself he said, “It has deep character.” To begin with, he acknowledged, the dread amber was a knockout color in a tall glass, the words eye shattering, staying on his tongue. The sun jumped through Blue Glacier Beer at crazy angles, made assumptions of deeper prisms and geometric shapes, sometimes loosed curves in the straightest world. Did he find things he was not initially looking for, or did they find him? He was not sure. Yet it was like a collar had been snapped about his neck, as if all had been ordained. And in all of it, Greg Lumbada came second to none in ceremonial matters. Life had deemed revenge appropriate, though it need be covert and consume years of planning.
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Cabesa de Muerte
Leslie Johnson
In the part of the country I’m from, they don’t like bald faced horses, especially ones with a blue eye, or two. They call them Cabesa de Muertes, or “Deaths Heads”, and they are bad luck and bad news. No vaquero or his American counter part will pick one in a remuda, no matter how trained it is supposed to be, and to do so is to court sure disaster. No wrangler kept such a horse around, and the wise ranch owner didn’t insist on it. If he or she did, it would always be the horse they got, and nobody wanted to ride with them. Just superstition, but it was a firmly grounded as any other, such as throwing a hat on a bed, or breaking a mirror. It was just better not to do such things, that was all.
My Yankee husband wasn’t aware of such wisdom as this...
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A Rattlesnake Hat Band
Leslie Johnson
The whole time we’d been riding, Mac had done nothing but whine about getting a rattlesnake hat band. If he could get one of those bad boys, he’d be punchy for sure, and people would start taking him seriously about being a cowboy.
“I’m not sure a hat band is what makes a cowboy.” I mused, letting Siego step over the log the shorter Quarter horses had hopped over. “Maybe you shouldn’t wear Doc Martin’s and a surfer shirt, if you think clothes make a difference.”
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Hotshot
Leslie Johnson
The rage around gaited horse shows was mule racing, and it was a serious sport to those involved. A mule can run, despite rumors to the contrary, but being a sensible creature they don’t bother with it unless absolutely necessary.
Like a quarter horse race, the course was fairly short, usually three laps around the show ring (depending on it’s size, of course), with barrels marking the penalty zone to keep the thundering pack from cutting across, or cutting into a turn to shallow to be fair. It was a lot harder than it sounds, mules don’t have a problem with shouldering or ramming another mule if they get in the way, and they are running flat out and hot. Long ears peeled straight back, neck stretched, teeth bared and eyes glaring, they were a thrilling, though sometime comic sight to see.
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The Greatest Horseback Ride I Never Had
by Terrell Brown
(from Range magazine)
Over forty years ago, through some remote acquaintances of my mother, I got a job on a cattle ranch on the eastern plains of Colorado. I traveled north out of New Mexico by Greyhound bus through Raton Pass and was picked up from the Colorado Springs depot by my employer and his wife in what was even then an old Chevy car. He and his wife were in their mid-70s and the lonesome spread of 17,000 acres southeast of Colorado Springs sprawled across the undulating range miles from the nearest town.
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The Mean Black Bull
John Duncklee
In the early sixties, my partner and I bought some registered Brangus cattle from a breeder in Yuma. We leased a bull to service the heifers. The day the cattle arrived via truck from Yuma I was not at the ranch, but doing errands in town.
Seeing the truck parked at the loading chute when I returned, I drove to the corrals eager to see the heifers that we had purchased in order to start a breeding herd to hopefully sell registered bulls to Mexican ranchers from Sonora. The ranch bordered the highway between Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.
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Pay Day Poker
John Duncklee
I was nineteen years old in 1948 and working on the E4 Ranch near Big Horn, Wyoming. Every pay day I went to Sheridan to cash my hundred dollar check, put eighty dollars from it into my account at the bank, ten in a separate pocket for Bull Durham, a couple of beers, and other expenses. With the other ten I would try my luck at some poker table.
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Dnieper Pass
Hunter Liguore
“We’ll not spare either our souls, or our bodies to get freedom, and we’ll prove that we brother’s are Kozak kin.” –Palvo Chubynsky, 1863
The sky was clear over the borderland, where golden hills, covered in sunflower and lavender, could be found in plenty. From the alpine forests and snowcapped mountains, down through the grasslands, the Dnieper River traveled south, cutting a natural boundary through the east and west. The land near the river was highly prized for its black, fertile soil. Farmers fought to keep their land, despite Tartar raids, or the high taxes imposed on them by noble landlords.
Tucked away beside the dense cypress forest, past the castle ruins, through the grove of apple trees, there lived a family of peasant farmers. Two brothers, Erich and Semerin, tilled a new tract of land to plant a crop of watermelons. Semerin, older by a year, wore a gun strapped to his back, as he planted seeds in the smooth rows. Erich, kept a pouch of iron darts fastened to his belt, always fearful of a raid, as he steered horse and till across the plot.
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THE ADVENTURES OF BURTON AND BERNICE
John Duncklee
The two buzzards were members of a flock of buzzards that were soaring through the sky searching for carrion. But, there was something special about these two. They had paired, but so did others. They flew together, but so did others. They could communicate, but not like others. They could actually speak. They could also read. However, they never learned to write.
Burton and Bernice Buzzard were deeply in love, and shared every moment of their lives together, whether it was soaring looking for carrion, or making a nest for the winter in Mexico. They had seen a lot from their vantage point high in the sky, and their memories served them well. So, when their eggs hatched they had lots of bedtime stories to tell their children.
One of their favorite stories happened one day when...
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FLYING PIGS
John Duncklee
High in the Sierra Madre Occidental the streams are small, finger-width where they begin. As they trickle their way down they join to form larger streams. Then the larger ones join others to become rivers. This pattern of stream marriage happens all the way to the Gulf of California. Only then does it stop. This pattern streams make from the summits of mountains to the gulf or ocean is called a watershed.
Erosion constantly changes the watershed. Erosion is a natural occurrence unless something unnatural like humans interferes. Sometimes a stream may meander down a mountain slope and where there are curves, caves can be found.
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