Tales Of The Old West, Western Movies and Cowboy Poetry

Cowboys, indians, humor and hardships, living life on a ranch or under the open sky.
The following short stories are written by published Western authors. If you enjoy these
stories, visit our links page to find out more about these great Western authors.

TOM SHEEHAN

The Western stories of Tom Sheehan can be found at the bottom of this page.
Tom is a very talented and prolific writer who has submitted over a dozen great stories to the Rope and Wire website. Because of his continued commitment to this site, we thought he deserved his own section. You can go directly to it by clicking on the link below. Enjoy!

Justice
By Christopher Scott

The floor dropped out from under Corbin Jeffries feet as the trap door swung free. Like the gaping mouth of hell, it opened fast and wide for Corbin Jeffries, and he obliged it without a moment’s hesitation. He dropped like a fat sack of rocks. It was a short free fall that ended quite abruptly as he hit the end of the slackened rope. His boots continued their acute descent, hitting the ground with a loud thud and a cloud of dust. It happened real fast, and for all but a slight sway of his lifeless corpse, Corbin Jeffries didn’t move. He just hung there, in his dirty, worn out socks.

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Freckles in Love
By Ryan Bruner

I’s already in the bathhouse when Freckles comes in, gun on his hip, arms poised like he’s about to have a gun fight. Course, he ain’t never been in a gun fight in his life. He’s nineteen, but he carried himself like he’s in charge of his life with no one to stop him.”

“G’morning, boys,” he says, grinning like a man on tequila. “Time to get all gussied up. I got myself a date!”

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The Wild Ride of English Jack
By Celia Hayes

If English Jack had another name - or even if that was his real one - only Fredi Steinmetz., the trail boss for the R-B outfit knew of it. He had turned up at their camp, just as the hands were preparing to swim the herd across the Colorado River a little south of Austin on a fine spring morning; about eight hundred feral, long-legged, long-horned cattle, every one of them as wild as deer and worth ten times as much in Kansas than they were in Texas. It was the first year that the R-B had sent cattle north up the trail, a full year after the end of the War. Times were hard, all across the South, and none harder than in the Texas hill country. A lot rode on this venture, and none knew it more than the R-B owners and investors.

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Palm Sunday, 1836
By Celia Hayes

The Mexican soldiers came to march them away from the old citadel on the seventh day after Colonel Fannin had surrendered under a white flag. His little command of volunteers and militia had fought doggedly and hopelessly for a day and a night, pinned down in the open just short of Coleto Creek, tormented beyond endurance by gunfire, thirst and grapeshot. It was the grapeshot that did it finally and Carl Becker, all of sixteen and a bit had stood in the ragged ranks of the Texas Volunteers, the Greys, Shackelford’s Red Rovers and the rest, next to his older brother Rudolph. They silently watched Colonel Fannin march out of the ragged square under a tattered white banner made from someone’s shirt.

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Cadburn’s Return
By Alfred Wallon

I stared through the prison bars of the little cell in Parson´s Creek. No-one was on the street. It was hot at noon, and the townsfolk preferred to stay indoors. I was sweating, but at least I was in shade, and that was a lot better than being outside.

"You want something to drink, Gentry?", asked Deputy Roscoe Craig. "I just got a bucket of cold lemon squash. I'll be happy to share it."

Lemon squash! I felt like telling the lawman what he could do with his lemon squash, but I still had four days to serve before they set me free, and right then I'd have spent every last cent I had for a cold beer. But lemon squash?

Perhaps I should have been more cautious when I entered the saloon two days earlier.

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Triangle of Desire
By Connie Vigil Platt

It was time to get ready for her performance; Bianca tied a flame red scarf around her neck and arranged her long ebony hair so the bruises wouldn't show. She knew the bright color would detract from the discoloration on her throat and cheek where Carlos had slapped her for not getting him a drink fast enough. Never a day passed that Carlos didn't find some reason to slap her. There were times when he hit her with a closed fist and blacked her eye. This would be the last time that pig Carlos would mistreat her that way. Today was the day. Today she would ask for more than money to be thrown in the tambourine. Today she would ask for blood.

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Pretty Dance
By Michael Fontana

Small street in Laredo. I knew the drill. Heel-toe, heel-toe. Spurs with insect flutter in tortuous breeze. Still, the Sailor hadn’t spilled out of the canteen doorway. His name a joke because he had never even seen a splash of ocean water. Half Cherokee and half Spanish. Gold tooth in front. Turquoise eyes. Hay in his black hair from a passing wagon. Menace of silver guns clinging to either hip.

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A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"

The Road Agent
By Stewart Edward White
1873-1946

The Sierra Nevadas of California are very wide and very high. Kingdoms could be lost among the defiles of their ranges. Kingdoms have been found there. One of them was Bright's Cove.

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Fury At Sundown
By Rye James

Tom Connors rode down the street noticing that there wasn’t much activity going on. He only saw a couple riders and only a few old-timers sitting in chairs outside the barber shop. The town seemed devoid of any life or energy. He’d seen it before though. Sundown wasn’t the first town he’d been hired to clean up. He stopped his horse in front of the Sheriff’s office and dismounted his Thoroughbred. Connors took a look back toward the town before slowly making his way into the office. He could tell it hadn’t been occupied in some time.

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Son of Gaucho
By Ben Henry Swadley

Horses screamed in the distance. Something was terribly wrong at the corral. Ross mounted his horse, Gaucho, and sped though the cactus flats towards the ranch. A long branch from an ocotillo hit his face, the needles whipping painfully into his cheek. Gaucho was taking a beating from the cactus as well, but he ran fast, without hesitation.

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A Rope and Wire "P D Classic"

A QUESTION OF POSSESSION

By Andy Adams
1859-1935

Along in the 80's there occurred a question of possession in regard
to a brand of horses, numbering nearly two hundred head. Courts had
figured in former matters, but at this time they were not appealed to,
owing to the circumstances. This incident occurred on leased
Indian lands unprovided with civil courts,--in a judicial sense,
"No-Man's-Land." At this time it seemed that _might_ graced the
woolsack, while on one side Judge Colt cited his authority, only to be
reversed by Judge Parker, breech-loader, short-barreled, a full-choke
ten bore. The clash of opinions between these two eminent western
authorities was short, determined, and to the point.

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By Andy Adams
1859-1935

There was a painting at the World's Fair at Chicago named "The Reply,"
in which the lines of two contending armies were distinctly outlined.
One of these armies had demanded the surrender of the other. The reply
was being written by a little fellow, surrounded by grim veterans
of war. He was not even a soldier. But in this little fellow's
countenance shone a supreme contempt for the enemy's demand. His
patriotism beamed out as plainly as did that of the officer dictating
to him. Physically he was debarred from being a soldier; still there
was a place where he could be useful.

So with Little Jack Martin. He was a cripple and could not ride, but
he could cook.

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Partners
By Jim Griffin

"Looks like those hombres headed right into the canyon, T. That shoe with the piece chipped out of it shows plain enough," Texas Ranger Jack Blanchard told his buckskin paint gelding. Blanchard had dismounted and was carefully studying the hoofprints left by the horses of the men he'd been following for the past three days.

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A Rope And Wire "P.D.Classic"

BAD MEDICINE
By Andy Adams
1859-1935

The evening before the Cherokee Strip was thrown open for settlement, a number of old timers met in the little town of Hennessey, Oklahoma.

On the next day the Strip would pass from us and our employers, the cowmen. Some of the boys had spent from five to fifteen years on this range. But we realized that we had come to the parting of the ways.

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GUNFIGHT AT TAYLOR RIDGE
By James J. Griffin

After what seemed like weeks of dreary, rainy weather here in New England, Sunday dawned warm and sunny, so after attending 7:30 Mass I decided to take my horse Yankee out for some riding and patrol time. Yank and I are volunteers with the Connecticut Horse Council Volunteer Horse Patrol. Members of the patrol help park rangers and personnel from the Connecticut D.E.P. in assisting visitors to the state parks and forests.

Once I saddled up, Yank and I headed for the Town of Clinton Land Trust properties of Buell Forest and Taylor Ridge, which are close to the stable where I board Yankee. The trails in those areas aren't heavily used, so I didn't bother with my uniform. I just put on my jeans, long sleeve denim shirt, neckerchief, and my cowboy boots and hat. Due to the prevalence of Lyme Disease in this area, which was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut, which is only about ten miles from Yankee's stable, I always dress this way to help avoid picking up ticks, no matter the time of year or how hot the weather.

I had been riding for about an hour and was alongside the Indian River when Yankee pricked up his ears and sniffed the air, a sure sign that someone or something is nearby.

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A Rope and Wire "P.D. Classic"

THE DOUBLE TRAIL
By Andy Adams
1859-1935

Early in the summer of '78 we were rocking along with a herd of Laurel Leaf cattle, going up the old Chisholm trail in the Indian Territory. The cattle were in charge of Ike Inks as foreman, and had been sold for delivery somewhere in the Strip.

There were thirty-one hundred head, straight "twos," and in the single ranch brand. We had been out about four months on the trail, and all felt that a few weeks at the farthest would let us out, for the day before we had crossed the Cimarron River, ninety miles south of the state line of Kansas.

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The Story
by Dave P. Fisher

The man stood alone at the end of the bar, his boot on the brass rail
while his elbows rested on the polished hardwood, and between his
hands was a beer mug. He stared absently into the amber liquid that
filled the bottom half of the mug and the white foam still clinging to
the upper. He was lost in thought, of which there was over half a
century of its accumulation behind him.

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The Jail Break
By Terry Burns

The jail in Lincoln County New Mexico was on the second floor above the Sheriff’s office. I had been given the opportunity to talk to one of the most famous killers in history, Billy the Kid. I admit it, as I ascended the stairs I was thinking national exposure, in spite of the fact that normally I do articles for newspapers back east and the occasional dime novel. With the kid set to hang the following morning, this was sure to be his last interview . . . and my big break.

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The Herd Cutters
By Dave P. Fisher

It had been a hard winter. Mort Seever sat at the little table and ran the stub of his pencil down the line of figures.  The oil lamp laid the pencil’s shadow across the paper in a way that emphasized the dark reality of the numbers.   He tapped the pencil tip on the paper and sighed deeply.

Mort was a young man as ranchers go; he had only turned thirty a couple months back.  His wife of three years stood silently across the table from him and studied her husband’s weary eyes.  She knew without asking that the prospects for the year were not good.

Mort looked up, “Darcy, we’re busted.  The winter killed over half the cattle, we might see a few new calves this month, but the cows are in pretty poor shape for it.  Even if every one of them threw twin calves it wouldn’t do us any good this year.”

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Rights of Passage
By Dave P. Fisher

“The man at the livery told me you were hiring, I need a job.”

The unexpected voice broke Duncan Wells out of his thoughts. He turned around expecting to be looking at eye level with a man; instead he had to look down at the boy standing in front of him. He took in the cut of the boy; he was big for his age with a wild tangle of black hair matching his steady black eyes. He was impressed that the boy would look him in the eye, but he needed men – not boys.

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THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF TOM SHEEHAN

Jehrico's Tub
By Tom Sheehan

From the top of the ravine wall, in a remote canyon of the Drago Mountains, Jehrico Taxico spotted an old wagon on the canyon floor, hundreds of feet below him. It was hidden from any lower view by a few trees and brush and a huge chunk of palisade wall that had fallen long ago like a dish on its edge. He judged that the wagon had not fallen from the high escarpment because it looked to be still in one piece. Probably its driver and occupants had sought safety by hiding in that place, he thought, only to get caught by whatever they were hiding from, or yielded at length to animals or nature getting as cruel as it could. No survivors lurked in the scene, or any horse or mule or ox that had hauled the wagon to this point. Only the long shafts for a single animal hitch appeared solid still sitting at an angle on the ground. A fallen rock had crushed one of the rear wheels. There were no other traces at all. And not a bone to be seen.

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The Bridge to Maggie's Meadow
By Tom Sheehan

Margaret Brody, on the rim of the huge ravine that plunged hundreds of feet down to the dark earth, studied the far side. Her hat thrown back, blond and beautiful, her horse as still as silence, she sat her saddle with ultimate ease. Any fall from the edge would be certain death, yet she concentrated on the opposite wall, a seemingly blank facade but one with slight discolorations in the strata, lines that moved in strange fashions if she changed her position or her line of sight. Even the slightest move on her part provided additional information to her inquisitive mind. She read the strata colors as if she was reading ancient hieroglyphics, each turn or shift having something to say to one who is observant. Abruptly, in the swift light of the mind, in one swift moment she would remember forever, the magic was on her.

Heaven was at hand.

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Before The Morning Star
By Tom Sheehan

The old man, beggar of drinks, spittoon cleaner, dung shoveler, was shot and killed behind the livery. Taylor Maxon rushed from his card game. He was kneeling over the town drunk when the others came from the card game. “He’s dead,” Maxon said, “and he said he felt a whole lot of curses coming right up from his belly and then he said Shearwell did it. In his last breath he said Shearwell did it. Called him a liar and then shot him.” He looked up from where he still knelt over the dead man. “I heard a galloper heading out of town. Round up a posse!”

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Mrs. Binnie Minn of Shangri-La
By Tom Sheehan

For the third time in a month, Crater Barnes had not seen Mrs. Binnie Minn at her home up in the end of Grob’s Canyon. But this was the first time that his suspicions were aroused. The man who answered the door to the huge house was the third man in a row who said that “Binnie, being sick, is not able to see anybody, or have any visitors.”

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Mother McCree and Me
(or Dynamite in the rough)
By Tom Sheehan

The early sun was late arriving for Hannah O’Toole. She’d been more than an hour saddled when she saw the sun strike on the crest of Stalwart Mountain in the chain of the Rockies as if someone had spilled a bucket of light. “Lazybones,” she muttered in momentary joy. She was glad to be safely up-range after the trouble the night before. Then she spoke of her awe, half and half, part in the old way and part in the new way, saying her blessing for the day, “Mother mo chroi,” meaning “Mother of my heart”, and it came out, as always, as “Mother McCree.”

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Josiah Weaverlake and the Dog Pack
By Tom Sheehan

“That damned dog almost bit my leg off.” The cowpoke, Sledge Burke, noisy as his pals, and getting as drunk, swinging his arms around, was making excuses about a near fight with an old man beside the livery stable. He and his trail-hard pals, dust squeezing out where they walked and talked, were making a racket as they drank at Gee Buff’s Open Tavern. The three young herders were hardly 20 years a piece, made room for themselves with false noise and bluster, and were therefore extended some tolerance by older hands in the saloon, men who had grown the same way with the same sudden leaps of confidence, and the same paltry mistakes.

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The Rose Bar
By Tom Sheehan

Ben Gammee, story teller, standing back against the saloon wall, was the point of the gathering.

Some of the cowpokes in McColley’s Saloon might not admit it, but they had come to hear Ben Gammee spin a few of his yarns. Of course, they’d have a shot or a beer, or two, in the process, all softening the end of day for most of them. The clink of glasses or mugs had lessened as attention swung to the lean but blond-bearded cowboy whose reputation as a story teller had leaped ahead of him no matter where he went west of the Mississippi. And right here, to the foot of the Rockies where I live. His eyes, I had heard, were almost as expressive as his mouth, as though they carried more of the trail in them than was allowed for one man not yet 25 years old.

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Micah Topaz, Born Sheriff
By Tom Sheehan

Some men, whether you believe it or not, come bidden by fate to fill holes in the human condition. So it was with Micah Topaz, born in a wagon train heading to California. He never got much further on the family journey than the place of his birth, a small corner of Nevada with the mountains staring them in the face. When the dispute among the wagon train leaders erupted, and deep factions developed, Micah’s family decided to stay pretty close to where they were at the time. The place was called Mattsville.

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A Western Proposal
By Tom Sheehan

A fanatic reader of western stories, a dreamer of the wide and far land and what it had to offer, Fenwick Mercer had come all the way from Boston to find his way in the western plains. Early on he was proper, courteous, well-dressed, but that demeanor, raiment and habit became old, worn, discolored, faded, as the west introduced its real self.

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The Giant Lobo Killer of Howza City
By Tom Sheehan

Ten-year old Sarah Gregson screamed in her bed at the back of the cabin where she lived with her mother and father and younger brother Teddie. Her mother Millie rushed from her bed, half asleep. “I saw him,” Sarah screamed again. “I saw him, up there on the hill, against the moon. I saw him. I saw the Lobo Killer. He’s the biggest wolf I ever saw.” Her mother hugged her. “You’ve been dreaming, darling. It’s only a dream.” Sarah settled deeply in her mother’s arms, struggling to find extra warmth. She exhaled a soft sigh, “It was him. It was.” Her eyes closed softly, accepting the comfort and security of her mother’s arms, the known odors sweet around her head.

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The Craterville Catastrophe
By Tom Sheehan

Craterville came up like the rock came down, in one helluva hurry. When the dust cleared, there was a town where the hole used to be, and a hundred or more shafts were slicing down into the earth. After six men were shot, five of them bushwhacked, one surprising a thief deep in his digs, the saloon owner, Harry Wilkes, called a meeting of town businessmen. Wilkes once was a conductor who got off his train one day outside Omaha and never got back on.

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Mission in the Desert
By Tom Sheehan

Out to avenge his brother Max’s death and two days deep into the desert on the trail of a bushwhacking rat, the last thing Justin Tolliver could remember, as he fell over the edge of the cliff, was wondering why a stranger had taken a shot at him, a man he did not know, had never seen before.

And never out in the torrid Mojave, as though neither one of them belonged here. There was a twist of irony floating in his thoughts; it seemed to be pointing at him, making observations that should not be disregarded. He also realized there were days he’d rather shoot than think. This was one of them, but he had been too slow on the draw.

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The Boy From Great Red
By Tom Sheehan

One of the passengers getting off the Grimsby stage, a young man of perhaps twenty years of age, somewhat handsome, was strangely hatless and frowning. The last one off the stage, stepping lightly down onto the dusty road, he visibly fought for recognition of the town of Great Red on which an August evening had established its grip, with a pinyon jay calling from the distance and purple setting its own table.

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The Kid from Crevasse City
By Tom Sheehan

Not one customer in Colbrook’s Saloon paid much attention to the boy with the glazed look on his face, the dumb-looking gape of his mouth, the staring eyes as if he’d just been stung by a wasp.

“Maybe the kid needs a beer,” one patron at the bar said, his guffaw running about the room, gathering up agreement. “Maybe the smell of it might wake him up.” The boy had walked into the bar and looked at every customer with the same stupid grin, as if all the while he was enjoying his way of life. “Give him a smell, Bart. Mine’s gone again.” He laughed at the man standing beside him at the bar as the boy continued his walk around the room. “Kid’s got nowhere to go, that’s for sure, and he ain’t getting’ there in any hurry.” He laughed again. Others laughed with him, some self-consciously.

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Death of the Pale Rider
By Tom Sheehan

Life had its full range of artillery out for him, front and center. Oh, Death of the Pale Rider sounded anew in the silence of Briggs Thornton’s mind, even as the day bore itself harsh as a frozen thunderbolt, a huge icicle with breath and as cold as the bank was to his latest overture. Around his neck the muffler was not a comfortable wrap, a trade-off of an itch to keep the chill off his nape.

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Odyssey of a Saddle
By Tom Sheehan

1. Jim Chaliver

The single shot, from lower down the valley, rang out in the late afternoon stillness when one would think there was no war. Jim Chaliver, hidden in a thicket, saw the rider fall out of the saddle even as the horse rolled into a hole and came down on both front legs. He cringed, swearing he could hear bones snap at the impact. The fallen rider did not move, but for long, long minutes the horse made the sad and almost endless noise of dying. The uniform of the rider he had not determined.

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The Lonely Line Rider
By Tom Sheehan

Dutch Malick was lonely; for a deck of cards, a friendly voice cracking with warm humor or saddle gibes, for something that would tell him he was not the last person about in the world. For most all his life he was a line rider, low man on the totem pole, singular but almost invisible, a dot on the prairie or up a strange draw or wadie, a ghost of a person…

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Jacques Cree and the High Camp Stand-off
By Tom Sheehan

In the midst of deep thought in the fire-lit line cabin, solitude pleasantly surrounding him, ranch hand Pete Binchey heard the low, menacing, yet alerting growl of Jacques Cree come from the corner where his bed was. Slowly, in the shadows, as if not even disturbing the air or the meager illumination about his body, the wolf dog rose from rest, lowered his head, set his eyes on Binchey as though demanding attention, and stood immobile. In a quick series of images, the middle-aged cowboy saw the past history of the animal and the forebears that had nurtured the wolf dog’s being.

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From The Other Side of the Saloon Bar
By Tom Sheehan

I pour and they drink, and I am always mesmerized by their desires, their needs, their dry heaves between drunks so calamitous they’ll never know the impact till they get to the great beyond. I’m a bartender, barman, pourer, scoop setter, sudsman, but I will say at the same time that this menial job, though one with a great overview of the human soul, has saved my own soul for the long ride into the hereafter, though my travels don’t go beyond the 25 feet of the bar.

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High Canyon Deadlock
By Tom Sheehan

Bart Mastiff lowered his rifle off the top of the stone rim and sat back on the rocky ground. Sweat poured off his brow, his back ached, and the sun seemed to reach its fingers into each extremity of his body. Trying to continually advise himself to accept the pain, he was twisted in position, the one wound having seeped two days of redness at his side where the dry remnant toasted in the sun. Two days without water and he knew they were near the end of the trail, both him and his nephew Mark, also wounded, lying a dozen yards away. They had been delivering the deed to his niece’s little ranch to the district land office when they had been jumped.

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