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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CONTEMPORARY WESTERN SHORT STORIES
Sweet Horn Creek
Lee Landers
When I think of my Grandparents, I hear a sound in my mind: a haunting solitary note than says, “Come home, Come home.” I think of it as music from Sweet Horn Creek.
Grandma and Grandpa, Earl and Mildred Butts, were residents of the micro-town of Oakwood in western Oklahoma. In 1957, the Oklahoma City Independent School District delivered me into the clutches of old Mrs. Garret and her fifth grade mob of flying monkeys. Every summer, and several times during the school year, I escaped with my single mom and my older brother. Rocki wanted a brain, Mom needed a man, and I just had to get away. During spring break we fled the one hundred miles northwest to Granny’s hideout.
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WILLOW CREEK
Mary Scriver
“You got any hooks?” asked Tad Pinfeathers.
“I think I got three. You got any line?” said Elmer Arrow Hits.
“Lotsa line. And I saved a really good fishing pole I cut last time. Let’s go down to Willow Creek.”
The creek meandered through the town, wandering under a bridge and into a culvert before coming out on the other side of the east boundary. It was a wet year with lots of late snow and the grass and brush were thick and tall. July poured down on the boys’ ball caps and t-shirts as they crashed along, heading for the part of the creek beyond where people had dumped in old tires and bedsprings. They caught grasshoppers as they went, giving their heads a good squeeze to make them behave and stuffing them into a plastic bag that had been waving from a bush.
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Aunt Tildy
Mary Scriver
The little village of Twenty Mile is about twenty miles from McKinley, or it used to be before McKinley grew out that way. Twenty miles was about as far as a team and wagon can travel in a day, at least comfortably, so there was a little mercantile store there, not much more than a provisioner but also a post office, more by evolution than by design. The post office is gone now. Caused a major fuss when it was closed because people hate to lose evidence of their pasts even when they’re over and done with.
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Jonquil in Spring
Wesley E. Swaincott
His mother, her brain slightly addled by the incessant West Texas wind, was overly fond of flowers. When she first glimpsed the tiny face of her new-born son, with its delicate creases, it reminded her of daffodil petals. So she named him “Jonquil.” His father did not object to this sissified name because he did not know what a jonquil was. Besides, he left all such matters up to his wife.
His grandfather was Lt. J. B. Stallings, CSA, aide-de-camp to General John Bell Hood. At the battle for Fredericksburg, his staff around him, Hood was singled out by a Yankee sniper. Lt. Stallings flung himself in front of his general and the ball passed clean through his side. All in attendance declared that it was a supreme act of bravery. Lt. Stallings was granted a medical discharge. He returned to a grateful state of Texas, whose legislature awarded him a huge piece of property. The South was winning the War and could afford to be generous. This parcel was not measured in acres but in square miles; being only slightly shy of the size of Delaware. Lt. Stallings called his ranch “Delaware” and adopted the “Diamond D” brand.
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Cowboy-Up
By Patricia Probert Gott
Friday evening, my boss Greg Fallon who owned the dude ranch where I worked, told me he wanted me as an extra wrangler on a pack trip that would leave Sunday.
He explained, “There’s a lady named Sara who has booked a trip for her father, two brothers, sister and herself. They’re from New York City and have never been on a horse pack trip before. I’m thinking I need you to go along and hold her hand and smooth things over if things get rough.”
Me a PR person! That’s different, I thought. However, I smiled and said, “Sure, I’ll be glad to.” I looked forward to a week’s break from ranch work.
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Rascal
By Larry Menlove
The scent of fall woke him. That particular dank aroma. Deke Faldergrass had tried to define it for seven decades, spirit out what that sodden smell was that let him know summer was over. It wasn’t a sad smell or a bad smell, though it may very well have been decay, rot, summer broken under the boot of autumn stepping in. Deke loved the smell. The wet old earth fragrance that tickled more than his olfactory imagination. One day out of the year smelled like fall. And Deke had breathed in 71 of them. Fall brought him up out of bed this morning.
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Fixing Fence
By George Seaton
Gus Klynkee sighed, studied the sagging fence line through the pickup’s cracked windshield. The fence had sighed a bit itself against the nature of winter in the High Plains of north central Colorado—snow, felled aspens and pines rested on and, in places, had snapped the barbed wire; the obvious evidence of the passage of critters over, under and through the fence. Damned elk was where Gus assessed the majority of blame. He huffed a gray plume against the windshield from the nub of the Camel glowing between his lips. Pushed his SHELL ball cap up a bit, brushed his palm against his three-day growth of stubble, massaged the ache in his neck. Hell, he’d seen them do it. Unlike deer and antelope, elk wouldn’t even try to jump the fence. What’s a fence to a bull elk, anyway? Critter would walk right through it, like it wasn’t even there.
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Down To The Frenchman’s Place
By Mark Mellon
Pierre rose with the cock’s crow at dawn. The rooster had crowed all night anyway, indifferent to the sun’s absence or presence, and really had nothing to do with Pierre’s early arisal, in contradiction to all prior habit. He’d done so from the belief that the owner of the Rocking M Ranch should be up early to set an example for his “hand.” He donned the beat up, broad brimmed, brown hat Yoko bought for him to celebrate the ranch’s purchase.
Outside, the air was still night-cool, no hint yet of the powerful heat to come. A small red disc topped the Clan Alpine Range and bathed the valley in soft, golden beams. There was the sweet smell of sage grass. Light and air, piercing and clean, filled his eyes and lungs.
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THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF TOM SHEEHAN
The Horse Keeper
Tom Sheehan
Jake Caylen came into a strange town, Crossed Roads, not in a saddle, not on a horse, not walking in boots, and not wearing much of anything. He kept muttering, “I’m cold, mean, thirsty, hungry and mad as hell.”
There had been a kick and a punch and a knock on the back of his head. He remembered that much. On his forehead and down the side of his face, into three months of beard growth, he could feel how the blood had dried and hardened on his skin. At odd moments he could swear the blood had become so stiff he could peel it off, but was afraid it would start flowing again. Half his face felt like it was cast in a mold.
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Freighter’s Holiday
Tom Sheehan
They were paired up for six years in a freighter’s seat, content with each other’s attitude and contribution, survivors of scams, battles, life’s threats on their persons by a scattering of road agents, brigands and renegades of different orders. Harry Molson and Gobi Manfred were partners in the Molson & Manfred Movers, which became known as The 3 Ems across the territory. The team sported four of the biggest, grandest, handsomest Percheron horses in the whole land. The two freighters had done well in their time, but they realized the railroad, in many growing branches and lines, was chasing them clear across the territory and would one day boost them right out of place.
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Incident at Devil’s Claw
Tom Sheehan
A friendly freighter passing by the ranch told Trace Gibson to expect his brother Turner in town Friday week. Turner had gone off a few years earlier after a stupid family argument. Trace missed him a great deal.
Waiting for Turner a whole day in Devil’s Claw, Trace had ridden out to greet him in the tail part of the day and found him dead. Turner, as life made its demands on a 20-year older, had been cut down by a bushwhacker or by someone he knew who got close enough to kill him. It was no gunfight to end gunfights. Go figure, Trace thought.
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The Howling Beast of Catlo County
Tom Sheehan
The moon slipped behind a cloud black as a bat. It was midnight and a breath of air, cool as a deep hole, swept downhill from the mountain range above Chandler Springs. At the darkest part of the night, at the very stroke of midnight, the cry of some malevolent beast broke free of the mountains and came down over the prairie and all the nearby ranches the way a rampant disease might come. Any ranch hand still awake, whether in the bunk house or out on the grass, curled in his blanket and shook in his bones. None of the listeners had ever heard such sounds before, not in Chandler Springs, not near it.
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No-Hugs Calhoun
Tom Sheehan
Calhoun, the road agent, brigand, robber, any of those obscene names you could throw at a man, and which often were publicly received by him, for starters wouldn’t hug anybody. As it turned out he wouldn’t hug his mother on her death bed. That aversion also went for the two sons he fathered and a daughter that could have been the light of his life, never mind the woman who brought those children into the world. She was no quitter on loves’ sake, just as her husband, No-Hugs Calhoun, carried on in his horrible life of not knowing a person close enough to hug.
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The Start of Hansen’s Beer, Best in the West
Tom Sheehan
Michael Delahanty Hansen, scrounger, miner, laborer, dreamer, had taken his wagon and team off the dusty road for a meal break and a decent night’s sleep. It had been a long tough journey for him and the team. In a thickly wooded area he found an old campsite and unhitched his team from the wagon, gave them water, and tied them to a line near the fire. He’d let no preying animal near them. He went to sleep in the bed of the empty wagon, under a few blankets. His whole load had been delivered, as stated by the freight agent, to Hattie Comersford at her ranch and he was on his way back to Crossed Roads, deadheading or empty, to find another load.
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The Teller at Waco Grand Bank
Tom Sheehan
At one minute before 8:00 o’clock on a Monday morning in April, Jasper Wills opened the front door of the Waco Grand Bank, not off by a minute from all his mornings for almost a year, since Mr. Powell gave him his own key and his new assignment. In that time Wills married Powell’s daughter Samantha, had a son he called Lawrence, and built a new house on a piece of land just on the edge of town. That piece of land had been held by Powell since he had bought it almost 20 years earlier.
Both men were looking down the sunny trail.
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High Stakes Teacher
Tom Sheehan
The six-foot tall man stepped down from the Brazos Stage and stood in the dust of the road that cut right through the town of Molten Meadows, a town barely five years old. Dust clung to his boots and pants legs, and continued to swirl about him. Not more than 30 feet away, at the door of his small jail, a rather small wooden structure with one side of it formed by the livery in a mark of economics and labor shortcomings, Sheriff Carl Oberlin noted the tall, athletic-looking arrival. Despite the collection of dust working about the man, he did look like a teacher. Oberlin was pleased at the arrival and thought about the search that had brought the new teacher to town, the word having been sent up and down the line by whichever way was available, rider or driver or stagecoach passenger.
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Part Sioux, Part Soldier
Tom Sheehan
Arizona Tyle, rancher along the Squash River, rode into Fort Sunbury screaming that his wife Olive had been taken by Indians while he was chasing down loose horses up along the river. His two ranch hands had been driving a small herd of cows down the river to meet up with other stock.
“She was only alone for a few hours,” he said to the captain, “Everything’s been quiet for months. No sign of any Indians. I tried to trail them, but when they crossed the river, I lost them. I could be looking for them all day, so I thought I better come in here and get some help.”
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Biography of a Cowboy
(or The Nevada Nuisance)
Tom Sheehan
At two minutes past midnight of October 13, 1858, in the back of a Conestoga wagon en route to western plains, to an Indian maiden was born a son. His father, a dreamer of wide expanse, named him Colin Hardy Cosgrove, Jr. His mother, Full Wing Up, named him Dark Horizon, part Irish boy, part Sioux warrior, who was bound to find his way in the darkness.
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A Soldier’s Legacy
Tom Sheehan
The rider sat awkwardly in the saddle as he came onto the Benedict Road, his horse moving as though he was hobbled. Clara Wilson, at the reins of the ranch wagon, her father flat in the back of the wagon after a visit to Doc Traverse in town, eased her own horse to a halt. The rider, in a gray sombrero, black vest and faded gray shirt, did not notice her approach. Clara had a rifle at hand, but did not reach for it. As ever she was ready for surprises, recalling at that instant her grandmother saying happiness and sadness come in the strangest shapes and at the strangest times. She wondered if this was one of those times.
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The Mysterious Passenger
Tom Sheehan
The four road agents had come out of the trees at a bend in the road, rifles aimed at the driver and shotgun rider of the stagecoach. The driver pulled the coach to a halt, and then put his arms in the air. The other man in the driver’s box, the shotgun rider, put his rifle down and also raised his arms. None of the passengers offered any resistance, as they climbed down the carriage steps.
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Shooter in Buckskin
Tom Sheehan
Stories are still told in the mountains of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado and in many ranges that connect with high outposts, how the shooter in buckskin always came out ahead in shooting matches. He’d show up on the day of a shoot, nobody knowing how he found out, and drop his gear at the shooting site and wait for things to get going.
The man, dressed head to toe in buckskin, answered to any and all names, as if saying he was all of them, at least to those speaking to him. Most people, wanting for his real name, just called him Buckskin.
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The Ghost Riders of Calico County
Tom Sheehan
A trail of dust swirled out behind her as a young girl came galloping into Wells Springs on a Sunday afternoon. People on the outskirts of town heard her screams coming from the prairie before they even saw her, and she went right past all of them to the Marshal’s Office in the center of town.
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The Texas Legend Makers
Tom Sheehan
Up from Texas they came, a whole railroad carload of experienced deputies and posse men, with their horses, to chase down a most dangerous gang of killers in the “Four Corners” of the country where Colorado bordered the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The war was over for a dozen years, but in places like Durango and Cortez and Teec Nos Pos and Littlefield, the war had not stopped, and no signs been seen that it would end soon. It was 1877 and the day started with sunshine and ended with a raid on the train by a gang of outlaws who were banished by heavier gunfire than they had ever seen. The response was deemed by the gang leader as “military, organized, knowing what they’re up to. We got our hands full,” he might have said to his gang.
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The Texas Shadow
(or the Hoodlum Hill Hideout)
Tom Sheehan
Every person in the area around Pecos, and west of the river, knew that a gang of robbers and brigands and desperadoes always retreated to their hideout somewhere in the West Texas high ground after their escapades. The hideout was up there in a region of lost hills, missing men, and trails that disappeared too hurriedly in mazes of rocks, landslide debris, and toppled cliffs. The gang had robbed and ravaged many people of the territory between the Pecos and the Rio Grande Rivers. Residents were most apt to call the hideout Hoodlum Hill because this gang had little pity for their victims. Some people even said it was as if the gang was out to wreak revenge and vengeance on the whole population on the west side of the Pecos River.
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Posting to Oregon
Tom Sheehan
The rope was around his neck, his hands were tied behind his back, the crowd in front of him was as quiet as a rabbit in his tracks, everybody holding their breath, and the hangman was standing by. Out beyond them he saw a swirl of dust on the road coming into town. It was a single rider, he decided, out and about on his day, and he wondered what that day would be like for that rider.
He was pretty sure what his was like.
The crowd shuffled around, making little noise, waiting for the end of a dreaded killer’s life, the notorious Will Burke whose story ran ahead of him everywhere he went, from Texas up to Montana and here in Oregon.
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A Saddle in the Desert
Tom Sheehan
He was in the sparse land between shifting sands of the great desert and the last tree bearing green when he saw the vultures descending from their high flight. Breward Chandler, “Brew” to friends back in the mountains where breathing was much easier than here in the midst of little life, sat bareback on an Indian pony he had freed from a natural corral behind a blow-down. Chandler had learned that the horse would obey pulls on his mane and in this manner he had escaped from sure capture by heading into the desert, with his pistols loaded and a lariat and a canteen he had grabbed on the run. He was not sure who was after him, either renegade Indians or renegade whites out for the kill, looking for guns, clothes, saddles, anything for free. He was hoping that they’d measure the little he might have against the rigors of a chase in the desert. Perhaps, he also hoped, they were smarter than he thought they were.
The canteen was almost empty and water had to be found.
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A Fulsome Moon for Abby Newt
Tom Sheehan
Her father, Adolph Newt, told her that when she was due to be born she was going to be either Andrew or Abigail. So Abigail Newt became Abby Newt in one big hurry, and stayed Abby Newt right up through her 18th birthday, for that’s the day she married Tom Chisholm of the San Antonio, Texas Chisholms.
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Roscoe Drummond to the Rescue
Tom Sheehan
His name was Roscoe Drummond, a rugged, quick-spirited veteran of the Great War that lay in shambles at his feet as he prepared to take off his uniform. The sounds of war had almost disappeared from the air about him, though he had been wounded twice on the very last day of the war. Blood now crusted on his uniform as he sprawled in the hay of a barn, ready to don some clothes he had already stripped from a clothesline when the second stray round hit him. The shot had been meant for the man who was now stretched out in the barnyard. The dead man’s pleas had not been heeded by his killers, their thinking the war would go on forever, as if war was their due, war was their passion.
All of it was a sign, he believed, a sign that would send him on a mission for the remainder of his life.
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Empty Saddle at Dawn
Tom Sheehan
Some days, Sally Purcell knew, the sun wouldn’t come up. This was one of those days. Her husband Clint was a week overdue, more or less, and she could hardly stand the worry. The small amount of money he was carrying did not seem to be an attractive gain for robbers in her mind, but how would they know the difference. Word across the range said that at least three small gangs were responsible for many thefts and robberies. And Clint Purcell, man of men, would protect all his goods, small or large, against any foe or thief. Since the first day she met him, at the dance in Jeff and Wilma Calgary’s new barn, she knew what he was made of. Five years of marriage, hard work, cutting a home and a ranch into the wide open spaces of the Shag River Range, had not changed her first impressions of him or her knowledge of him.
The loan from his cousin would take care of the ranch mortgage for the foreseeable future, but any dent in it would hurt them.
The weight of this thought would fill her mind as she tried to work her way through the day: watching little Greg, baking, sewing, feeding the animals, brushing down the horses, being her ranch-wife best. Just as she had done through the past six days of worry. The pain of worry was genuine; the expectations almost as real.
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Yuma Tranquility
Tom Sheehan
“Nothing’s out there, boys, as far as you can see or ride in three days,” said the jail keep of Yuma Territorial Prison as he locked the first iron gate behind Paulson and Newberry, convicted of robbing three banks in the territory, killing one teller, and another robbery, a botched one, in which two customers did not live past sundown.
Their short saga at robbery was known far and wide in the territory, and their trial was meat and potatoes for local papers all the way to St. Louis and Chicago. The two men could not cast more difference in their appearances than what came to the jail keep’s eyes right from the first. Hubie Newberry, meek and mild looking, with an innocence locked into his eyes, was a stark contrast to an up-and-at-‘em type of scoundrel everybody saw in Russ Paulson… but not harsh or mean or with a killer instinct.
They had loudly protested their innocence before and after their trial, which was completed in short order.
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A Shivaree for Goldilocks
Tom Sheehan
Two mountain men, Berle Pauper and Smudge Henry, seeking pelts of any kind, found the baby girl at the tail end of a narrow canyon, her cries bouncing off the palisades of stone. The men were heavily covered even for a summer day as if they wore sleeping covers for the coming night. They evoked an aroma that was known by mountain animals of all kinds, and saloon patrons upon their immediate entry, which was about two times a year. Their sight was as good as it can get, their hearing without flaw and they could tell an animal solely by smell on the trail. That included town people before they came into sight.
“What the hell is that? Smudge Henry initially said, as he drew his mule to a stop. “Sounds like a baby, and just around the bend of the canyon. It’s got to be deeper in there. Let’s go.”
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Bugle Calls from Graves Hill
Tom Sheehan
“Mommy,” 4-year old Billy Baird yelled at midnight for the third night in a row. “I heard the horn again.” An August night hung its heaviness over the ranch house, between mountains in Utah.
Billy’s father Hal rolled over in bed and said, “Hannah, will you get him squared away. I did it last night, but I have corral work all day tomorrow. Would you please?” He patted her on the backside and rolled back where he had been sound asleep, and was soon gone that way again.
Hannah Baird had a blanket wrapped around her as she went to the little room where Billy was whimpering again about hearing horns in the night. It was the third night of hearing the horns and the boy was still restless, she thought.
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Boot Hill Legacy
Tom Sheehan
Byron “Legs” Mackler told everybody when he was about thirteen years old that he would be buried in Boot Hill just outside Sawchuck, Nevada with no mourners hanging around the edges of the hole in the ground. “That’s because I’ll be the worst dude around, meaner ‘n’ hell ‘n’ whatever ‘n’ that’s how folks’ll pay me back for what I’m gonna be …plain mean ‘n’ ornery.”
The words had come out in a hurry, run up the way he wanted them.
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Falcon Eddie
Tom Sheehan
The two men had stepped from behind the barn with guns drawn and aimed at the family of cowman Jiggs Marion, sitting on the porch of their ranch house. Marion sat beside his wife Merle and their daughter Alva and son Eddie sat on the steps. Alva was nine years old and Eddie was soon to be fourteen.
The men were hatless, wore no gun belts, and blood was evident on the shirts of both men, looking as if they had escaped from prison somewhere in the territory and had a bad run of it.
“Don’t move,” one man said. “All we want is some food and a couple of horses. We won’t hurt anybody if you just do as we say. No tricks. No going for your guns.” He was pointing at Marion’s side arms. “Throw them down, mister. We won’t hurt anybody.”
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The Legend of Bear-with-Wings, Kiowa
Tom Sheehan
A lone rider, Parker Cartbridge, on his way home from visiting a comrade wounded during the Civil War that ended three years earlier, came up out of a wadi and saw the column of smoke far down the river. The smoke rose almost arrow-straight, not an extra breath of air to be known coming down from the mountain or across the river. He closed down on the source, riding in an easy manner, alert, his horse Big Jip enjoying the leisurely moves. Rugged as stone in his features, Cartbridge was broad at the brows that were thick as maize, alert of eyes and ears with slight movements of his head, and sat the saddle as if he was born in it. His alertness on the trail was a sign of the times; readiness was the first requirement, and demand, of any man on the move. Brigands and road agents and renegades had been around for a long time, but in this part of Wyoming they had thinned out in recent years, as well as Indian surprises.
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Doc Hannah Goes to Town
Tom Sheehan
The small sign, hardly visible from the road, said, “Wm. Hannah, MD.” It was hand-painted, almost saying so by the quality of the script, loose, off-hand, all things tolerable. And Doc didn’t wear a tie, never wore a suit, wanted nothing ornate in a life that touched life and death, sometimes in turn. The only doctor “near to town” was thirty-five on his next birthday, unmarried, “as good looking as a man can get,” one woman had said in Caliper, Texas, a mile or so down the road. He was a born Texan, sent east by his parents to discover new things on the horizon, found doctoring, came back to settle about 100 miles from home.
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Doc Hannah’s Honeymoon
Tom Sheehan
The marriage of Beth Neville and Doc Hannah had taken place, guests and the balance of the wedding party had departed a few hours earlier from Doc’s house outside Caliper, Texas, and night, darkness and ultimate romance fostered in the mix. Beth was in the bedroom changing for comfort and Doc Hannah was cleaning up a few odds and ends left over in the kitchen. The clatter at the porch threw everything out of kilter and the door was thrown wide open.
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The Kidskin Killer
Tom Sheehan
He was standing at the edge of the ravine on the great river, the late morning sun beating at him stiff as arrows. The strange call had come out of the ravine, the way panic might sound with a voice. Austin “Boots” Mallory, a mountain man by choice, had never heard the sound before. In his kidskin outfit, rabbit fur hat, and his hand-tooled kidskin boots that spawned his nickname, he thought he had heard all that nature could offer.
Locked in that thought, he came aware of another sound, from his backside. When he spun around, alarmed, the sun catching his eyes, the force of an object hit him in the chest. In one move, he fell and rolled over the edge.
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Fast-draw Hickey
Tom Sheehan
When the Quantrill Raiders left Bob’s Village ablaze near Sherman, Texas in 1864, the only person left alive was a 14-year old boy who was working in a neighbor’s well. He stayed in place, just above the water line, for almost four hours as the raiders killed all the inhabitants, young and old. He heard the voice of the leader (later declared as William Quantrill) giving orders to destroy everybody and everything. The smell of smoke and burning flesh descended to his hideaway during the four-hours.
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The Mystery of the Grafton Stagecoach
Hold-ups
(or The Whipping Bandit of the Road)
Tom Sheehan
For a dozen years, from the time she was eleven years old, a girl carried the solution to the mysterious hold-up of the Grafton Stagecoach headed to Abilene back in August of 1867. She kept it to herself because she didn’t know what to do with it. The girl’s name was Madeline Coombs. She was a bit slow in most things, mute for much of her life, though she had a magical eye for graphic images. She was in the company of her aunt Sophia Coombs who was taking her home in the stagecoach after her father and mother died in a runaway wagon crash.
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The Stomping on Boot Hill
Tom Sheehan
Some members in my family think this is a love story before it’s a cowboy story. William Andrew Dickersby, called by all as Wadi, handsome as a new arrow or a new saddle, was a lonely young man working on his father’s ranch. He was 18 and never dated, never danced with a girl, spending all his time learning about the animals on the ranch, and he knew just about everything his father knew. And then, the way it sometimes happens in a story, a niece came to live on the neighboring Pumphrey ranch, the Ox-Bar-X. Her name was Winifred Alice Pumphrey who could sit a horse prettier than the sunrise on the prairie, or a prairie flower high in blossom. She answered to Winnie with a smile each time, and with each smile woke young Wadi Dickersby from a youthful slumber.
He was never the same after that rousing.
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The Battle at Ford’s Creek
Tom Sheehan
Many Quigley descendents still live in Nevada, and when they gather the stories abound about the old days and the Quigley place in local legends as well as across the globe.
We know this; that the Quigley history in Nevada began in 1864: Graham Quigley, Australian by birth, shanghaied aboard a clipper ship through the ruses of a siren of sorts, managed to jump ship off California and swim five miles to freedom. His sole theft once ashore was a horse, with a saddle in place, which took him away from the sea after a year of torturous work for an evil captain. His one great desire thereafter was to avoid evil men. But, as fate make demands and presents choices, he ended up in Ford’s Creek, Nevada, a small and newer town not with a shortage of evil men pursuing mining and cattle riches, preferably by illegitimate means.
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Sunset Duel by Demand
Tom Sheehan
Shy, still-slim, handsome as a new coin, Davie Gantrill, just turned 16 by a week but trail-wise all the way, heard the warning while he was trying on a pair of pants behind a curtain in Slade’s General Store in the Texas town of Torn Creek. He pictured one of Clint Caswell’s crowd shooting his mouth off the way they usually did, bullies punching out demands at will, the bunch of them squeezing the town almost to its knees in little more than a year. He also pictured old man Slade taking himself across the store so as not to be in hearing range of what was being said. It was, Gantrill decided, a move to protect himself and his family. “Nothing heard, nothing to admit,” he summed up silently, as he noted the pants fitting him the way he liked. Tricia Reagan, he brought back in his mind, like a signal had been flashed, he’d caught looking at him recently with a funny look in her eyes, yet staying pretty as a prairie flower in June.
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Revenge of a Lonesome Lady
Tom Sheehan
Each day was as bleak and as lonely as the previous days to Mary Pearl Scott, rancher’s daughter and a Texas beauty of the first order. No matter where she turned a vision of her once-promised husband appeared, in a shadow, beneath a tree, at the far end of a fence line he might have been recently working on. Clyde Bennett, son of her father’s best friend, had been gut shot at a line cabin just a week before their wedding was to take place. Rio Lobo had been gearing up for the biggest event in years.
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Jeremy Slade’s Trip to Oblivion
Tom Sheehan
Never had the search for his father seemed so impossible, so calamitous. It was supposed to be a long search, he always believed, but also a fruitful one full of contemplation of what the end would be like, his getting hugged for the first time in more than a dozen years by a soldier missing since the great war a dozen years earlier. Many times he felt that hug, the power of a loving squeeze, the worldly smell of a man surrounding him and his joy.
It would be worth it all.
But now!
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Great Sky
Tom Sheehan
Nothing showed as splendid and wide as the sky he slept under every night, counting stars, watching the moon develop anew every time out, listening to the ballad and chorus of wolves and coyotes. To him they seemed to enjoy the same grandeur that grabbed him by his boot straps while he dreamed of home beside the river back in Kentucky. Tim Hotchkins, now and then, slept the grandest sleep imaginable. Yet that sleep was full of images, scenes and faces from the past as he moved on his long journey across the middle of America. The one face that stayed the longest, and truest, was his mother’s. The Great God above had touched her with a grace he found nowhere else on his journey.
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Posse for the Taking
Tom Sheehan
The wind was fierce. The desert was an animal. The riders of the posse had slowed because of heat, sand like sandpaper on the fly, rough going for horses in the random sandy soil, a full day away from Bison Springs and the few cool spots it offered to a man with a dry throat and a hot brow. All of it went along with the general feeling of ill spirit that grabs men not all in full agreement of a mission. Behind the posse, his eyes alert to every move, Chad Thornlick, part of a posse looking for his own father, reflected on the actions that had brought him to this point. The posse, as if in escape of the elements, had entered a canyon and out of the harsh wind the desert seemed to employ in its defense against intruders.
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The Cimarron Split
Tom Sheehan
In the wild west of our recent history, some days went without the great dangers and escapades we continually read about. Thoughtful decisions at specific times often cemented the future and deeded the past. Such is this story about a man of vision in the westward plunge, in America’s splurge into open spaces and unclaimed land. The pot at boil that was America continued its mixture, becoming what it would be by individual desire and hunger for a better life, and every now and then was reinforced by a collective decision that changed a trail, chose a road, set a marker.
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The Horseman of The Davidos
Tom Sheehan
Legends begin in strange settings with strange characters in strange times. This was such a story, in the shadows of The Davidos, where it began and where it ended on a very mysterious note.
And it was a time when the west was wild and wooly; sheep wars raged, stagecoaches and banks in small towns were objects of quick riches in the minds of scattered gangs, murder became commonplace in saloons at the drop of an ace of spades not fitting the deck, and out of the Davidos Mountain Range, in the Utah shadows, a black clad horseman, a single horseman, came off the rocky skyline and thwarted a series of holdups, robberies and thefts of all magnitudes. In a short time, the way legends move at breakneck speed, he became the dream of maids and maidens, the envy of sheriffs and marshals of the territory, and the figure young boys imagined when they looked down-range on their future.
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Jail Break at Bear Creek
Tom Sheehan
Not a soul in the whole west, including Bear Creek, where the desperado Cleve Hallows was jailed and waiting trial for numerous murders and robberies, had any idea of the man’s ingenuity and wiles. Hallows, for all intents and purposes, was ahead of his time and his capture this time was due to good old-fashioned luck on the part of Bear Creek’s sheriff who once operated on the other side of the law, “was saved,” and like a reformed drinker or smoker, could not stand to see any other bad man make good. It became his sole aim to make sure that development did not occur in his territory, in his town.
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Gregory Tolliver, Tascosa Gunsmith
Tom Sheehan
In his heart and mind, down in the core of his nerves, Tolliver knew momentum had started anew in Tascosa.
The newest stranger in a black hat and a vest matching its color and trim was riding into Tascosa on a magnificent black with one white sock. Only Tolliver the gunsmith took note of everything as he sat in front of his shop, the evening sun sloping on him and the rider, shadows getting long legs. It was said of Tolliver, settled in Tascosa for almost ten years, like a native son, that he had the eyes of a Pawnee scout and the fingers of a piano man. Those eyes measured the stranger on the big black, as his fingers twirled on the makings of his own smoke.
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Portrait of a Bushwhacker
Tom Sheehan
The bullet, from unknown source and direction, had penetrated his thigh, passed through a clutch of meat and muscle, ricocheted off a piece of saddle, and killed his horse. Ben Stovall and the roan were flat on the canyon floor of the Paley Range breakout to the Cross Box spread’s home grass. Rolling under an overhang, he knew help, if it ever chanced by, was an hour away. Serious doubts existed that any Cross Box rider had heard the gunshot.
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The Rousting at Circle Creek
Tom Sheehan
Hubey Danforth, a kid wrangler for the Jay-Bar-Jay, bloody as all hell, fell off his horse right in front of the bunkhouse, the August moon rays folding over him gentle as a blanket. It was three in the morning, a southwest breeze coming off the grass smoother than chewed leather. Hurt ran through him with abandon, touching every which way, perfecting the art of pain, triggering him aware of body parts he often paid little heed to … the back of his legs, the back of his shoulders, the hip line on his left side, his left elbow feeling yet the blows that had rained down on him.
He could have cried, but called, meekly, for help. “Amos,” he cried. “Amos.”
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The Game
By Tom Sheehan
The black trey fell on the table with the crack of a gunshot, directly across from young Hal Kirkness. His jaw dropped open. As suddenly, the door to the saloon creaked as a young cowpoke rushed to spread the word and night shadows as well as silence fell with velvet touch into the room. Unseen dust rose from the road that cut through the heart of Ben’s Retreat, a fast-growing cow town only a mile from the Snake River. On one bare horizon the moon, breaking the far mountain’s hold, leaped up swift as a candle in a back room. Coal smell crawled into the air from a train engine on a spur rail puffing little more than idleness. A few “railhead cowboys,” not prairie huggers, not real trail drivers, temporary hires from the same dusty road cutting the town in halves, had about finished the loading of cattle into slatted boxcars looking half a mile long. The wind, with the rise of the moon, shifted to the northwest, pulling the dust and the scent of the engine in tandem.
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The Ladies from Kitesville
Tom Sheehan
In a cave deep in the mountain range, past some circuitous canyons that seemed a maze of comings and goings without an exit at times, Myrna Williams, a rancher’s daughter of 17, was still under a blanket, hands trussed at her side, her ankles bound. Not hurt yet, not “bothered” either, she did not know who her captor was: had not seen him, not a glimpse; had not heard him, not a sound. She felt some consideration for him, though, after her abduction.
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The Miner’s Son
By Tom Sheehan
Few people in Gallop Springs, a plain old mining town along the Ridgely Range, realized it was Sunday. Sundays seemed to have no place in Gallop Springs where one rich mine had created the whole town, almost in an instant. And now the mayor was waiting the stage bringing the mine owner’s son to town, confirming the news that his father was dead in the mine, four days imploded, four days dead, no known survivors of the mine’s collapse.
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Little Man, Big Gun
By Tom Sheehan
He was checking the canyon for stray cattle yet to be rounded up from a stampede, when a single shot tore the Stetson off his head. It damned well hurt and he expected to see a lot of blood. Bigelow, hitting the ground in a roll, was glad he was short, glad he was just barely five feet tall, glad he was still alive. The bullet had creased his scalp. Blood flow was minimal, but if he was an inch taller he’d be an inch dead. Nothing moved out and beyond him in the passage of the canyon, tight as a stall, in the Bear Mountain area. For long minutes, waiting another shot, he stayed prone and still on the ground. The bushwhacker, he realized, would not show himself, telling Bigelow it was likely someone he knew, not just a down-to-earth coward looking for a horse or another saddle.
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Revelations 1, 2 and 3
By Tom Sheehan
John Grocker, minister of the Anywhere Church of God, clad in a dark suit and bow tie, black hat, and riding the biggest, blackest horse in all of Arizona, rode up to the Yuma Territorial Prison to visit the first female prisoner ever locked in one of Yuma’s cells. From which there was only one escape in the history of the prison, at least to his knowledge.
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Music Slow Enough for Dancing
By Tom Sheehan
Clutch Maynard, still saddle-worthy though he had too much to drink, heard the music coming from Saddler’s barn, where the dance bounced against the walls, shaking Wells’ Ford to the joists. The fiddles, enough for an army, set his feet moving in the stirrups in an odd rhythm. He didn’t care how drunk he might be, he was going dancing. “A bit of dancin’ s what I need now,” he said, knowing his horse understood every word out of his mouth. “I been too far, Big Jack, doin’ too much, seein’ one side of hell, not to have a piece of music for my own, slow down and lazy like I’m hearin’ right now.”
The buzz in his head was telling him to hold his mouth when he got inside. No need to let the whole town hear what happened.
They’d know soon enough, what he had come across, what had happened at the Bar J.
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A Rescued Boy
Tom Sheehan
She was right, and pleading, when she said, “The storm is coming. We can’t get out of here, not all of us. Take my boy with you. You have the only horse. Our horse broke his leg and we had to kill him, and then we ate a lot of him. Four of us can’t make it on one horse, and my husband’s sicker than I thought.” She nodded at him, bundled in old rags, a heavy jacket and blanket parts, a sicker man I had not seen since the war. With cheekbones like two rocks on the trail, his eyes had stayed shut for more than two hours as she argued with me, finally winning her way. “Take the boy,” she said again, “and give him some kind of life. Don’t let him be vagabonds like us.”
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Hostage on Horseback
By Tom Sheehan
In a gift from providence or, the least of chance, from someone’s carelessness, Cody Burrill had found a coiled lasso hanging on a small rock, as if it had all been planned, which he wouldn’t believe in a hundred years. He found himself in a steep canyon as narrow as a rifle bore. As a cowboy, married to the plains and herds, rope and leather were his world, and now and then a shirt of denim, or, if his luck was better, some finery of lace once touched never letting go. Fabric held sway for cowboys, getting to town or just leaving town, no matter what the situation. And his situation was, or had been, as close to final as it might get. The coil of rope gave him hope.
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The New Balkan Empire
By Tom Sheehan
The show-down came in the middle of Cross Corners, a small town that no longer exists in Texas, and a stray bullet from that face-off hit a lamp hanging lit in the livery. When wind whipped the resulting fire with a frenzy, coming in the open front door and out the back door, while the small gathering of townsmen and ranchers were watching Jerry Zambaza and Gus Luongon staring down each other. Zambaza had been ranching here for 25 years, from a country in far Europe, and Luongon was the shiftless son of a Zambaza contemporary.
The fire, with so much wind behind it, had too much headway to be beaten down before it consumed half a dozen buildings.
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The Legend of the Old Man of the West
By Tom Sheehan
At the Gila City Saloon that very night, hard-working, long-time rancher in the region Everett Jensen entered to laughter and glee and was hailed not as a new hero of the still wild west but as the wily old man he was.
“Hey, Everett, you old man of the west, how’d you figure on all that stuff today?” said one man at the bar, nodding his head in a salute and, with a broad grin on his face, offering up a glass of whiskey.
Jensen sipped the offered drink. “Well, Harry, you don’t hang around out here for 50 years and not learn something. If it looks like you’re not learning anything, better move on to someplace else. And you better not take 50 years to learn that much because you won’t last that long in the first place.” Jensen showed his run at age with his gray hair that twirled over his ears, the long years of saddle-riding and sun-beating on his face, and a slight infirmity just now touching his left knee, a long-ago throw from horseback. But his blue eyes had not lost a second of clarity, or powers of observation.
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The Vigil at Coffin Corners
By Tom Sheehan
His name was Clint Vaughan, closing on 20 years of age, working a small ranch outside of town that had been left to him by his parents, killed in an aborted robbery a good twelve years ago. An aunt had raised him on the ranch until she had died a year earlier. For those intervening dozen years, he had come into Coffin Corners every weekend and checked out every strange rider who entered the town. He thought he was discrete at these actions, but the word had long sifted around the town, and eventually found an avid listener in Sally Burroughs, who was a fairly new arrival in town. She was lively, lovely with golden tresses worn long and curly, inquisitive about people and “things” that were unsaid, and didn’t dodge much in the way of conversation, overheard or involved.
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Trouble on the Paper Trail
By Tom Sheehan
There was a reason why Wesley Helms had gotten into this current predicament, with the full weight of the load sitting squarely on his shoulders. It was more than his being a bright young man, but something intrinsically good about him touched those who knew him for even half a day. All the people at the settlement were depending on him. And here he was, at The Portage at the lower end of the Reece River, on the raft ready to cross the troubling waters, a gun stuck in his back, jammed in by an unknown character. Through the thin material of his shirt, he could feel the thrust of the barrel, the cold steel and the hot promise it carried. For a moment the danger caught his breath in place, though his mind worked as quickly as ever.
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Lament of a Lonely Cowboy
By Tom Sheehan
The “thing” on the skyline was still in place. And in four days at the line camp Jack Harbors had herded 57 loose cows into the small corral against the cliff face and he’d keep them there until the crew came this day, or tomorrow at the latest, to run them into the main herd. The boss, Harold Ledgewick, had told him, “Anything beyond 40 head is a small bonus, and anything less will be the subject of a discussion between me and you. That was always my least favorite job, out there alone, but it has to be done. You’ve got a shot at something good here, a little extra, because there’s always been some strange activity around that canyon and I need a good man to keep an eye out for me.”
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Will Halfloaf, the Bumbler
By Tom Sheehan
His name was Will Halfloaf and he was known by everybody in Craterville most simply as The Bumbler, or The Halfwit, or The Idiot. Tordlique the blacksmith, around for ages it seemed, said, “I saw the kid the day he came into town on that half dead mule he was riding, the pair of them as out of place as they could be. Nothing’s changed for Will the Bumbler since that day, take it from me. He was wearing these dang spurs, on a mule if you can imagine. They were more like leg irons on him, like they were dragging him down and the mule too. And him dressed like he stole his duds off half a dozen clothes lines or out of stolen luggage, they were so different, like he was never going to be himself, and that’s just about what it’s come to. I don’t think there’s two good slices in him, but he won’t hurt a fly, and that, my man, might get him into heaven. Not much else will.”
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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. Mike Hankler, the swift gun hand, usually hunkered out up in the hills in an abandoned line shack. Nobody in Asheville seemed to know what else he was up to, except he killed often and in earnest, after cajoling and teasing a man into going for his gun.
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Last Stage From Crow's Hill
By Tom Sheehan
It all started when Gentleman John, a Comanchero of double mix, hot as his Mexican blood, cold as his Comanche stance, advised the mayor of Crow’s Hill that he would attack the town at noon the next day. “I will burn the town to the ground and take all the horses,” was written on a note in a decent and easily-read handwriting.
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The Legend of Blue Soldier Riding, Kiowa
By Tom Sheehan
The High Chief of Clouds, he was sure, had sent the landslide, and vengeance was left to him and him alone. All the others were gone. Gray Dove was gone. One Wing was gone. Puma Path was gone. His best friend Eagle Claw and all the others were gone. For his own life, he said his thank you to The High Chief of Clouds, “Aahóow” it was said. In a soft chant deep in the cave, he sang his thanks repeatedly. But when he tried to chant “in the language” the names of those he had lost in the raid, they jumped around like hummingbirds and caught in his throat, threatening to choke him. “I will die with a hard memory,” sounded in his head, but strong Kiowa vengeance tossed it away like a feather from a nest, no more to be remembered.
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Plumbeck the Fiddler
By Tom Sheehan
Watching every move about the campfire, studying each face lit up by the flickering flames, the fiddler Sam Plumbeck idly held onto his instrument, waiting for the proper moment. Time, he could feel, was pressing down on him; it had different parts that moved in different ways. The stars all the way to the horizon dip were many and miraculous, the horses silent for the most part even though a coyote cry filtered in now and then, and the darkness beyond wrapped them like a giant robe spread under those stars. He had ridden in, apparently aimlessly to all the trail hands, and joined up with them on their way back to their ranch, the promise of music being hailed by all the hands who had delivered the herd, were through with the drive. He alone, out of all these trail hands who had hit the jackpot, knew what was coming down on them. Nothing is supposed to be perfect or fair; at least this side of heaven, or the mass of a blue sky, or the dash of sunlight on a rainy day. And he, just a picker of strings, with not a coin of the gold in the lot having his name on it, could only wait it all out, hoping for the best and only seeing the worst coming up.
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Cross on the Hill, Hawk in the Sky
By Tom Sheehan
Bang! And the masked bandit fired from the saddle just as Harry Bantry reached down on the stagecoach boot to grab his rifle. The driver, Jim Foster, tasted Harry Bantry’s blood as it spurted on his face; blood brothers forever was the first thought that hit him. A better brother he could not have chosen, but cold before he knew it. The only other memory of that sad day was the cry of the hawk as it rolled over on a thermal edge high above them, marking the place forever, that limitless and phantom space in the western sky. The sound stayed with Foster as if it was a monument of sorts, the cry as mournful as a late evening bugle call brought back from his 7th Cavalry days. He imagined the quivering lips of the bugler playing “Retreat.”
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The Shoshoni Sheriff
By Tom Sheehan
For a long time Jimmy Ditson nursed a deep desire to become sheriff of Sunquit. It sat in him like a tree had taken root, socked down deep, making way. Behind it was a love of the land that did not need to be nurtured: rather, providentially, that love had been in him since the beginning and that love continued to flourish. He was only 18 years old at election time but every knowledgeable person in Sunquit knew he was the best rider, the best roper and, most important, the best shooter in the whole Snake River region. He’d be the best sheriff, of course. Hadn’t he by himself faced up and beaten off five rustlers who wanted a piece of his father’s herd, had driven them clean across the valley and up along the river like a banshee was chasing them? Nobody ever heard from them again, the way stories eventually come back to their point of origin, the way crooks somehow have to come back to the scene of the crime.
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The Gentleman Banker from Calico Split
By Tom Sheehan
Calico Split, out in Wyoming territory, is less than a ghost town now, a few stone foundations of fireplaces or hearths might be found with arduous search, and not much is known of its people, neither the upstanding types that establish and characterize all such places, and others, like those who hung at the edges, dark caretakers of secrets and enmity and the great unknown, but Gentleman George Q. Piersoll hangs on in legend and stories.
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The Aztec Raiders
By Tom Sheehan
It was, all of them would agree later, as if they had passed through a sense of time. And few of their countrymen, and few occupants of the first saloon they’d go to to singe their thirst, would believe where they had been and what they had accomplished … gone deep into Mexico and brought home a chunk of the Aztec treasury, right out of one of Montezuma II’s formidable Holy Caissons dug for eternity. Where many historians attested to the grand structures the Aztecs had raised in the midst of jungles, Pappy Dyk, in his own right, knew about the secret caissons the Aztecs had dug and chiseled into Mother Earth herself. No one in Hidalgo but Pappy Dyk knew from what tribe he had come on the land, coming a whole year earlier to Hidalgo to plan the expedition, now coming back from Mexico.
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The Hangmen
By Tom Sheehan
Floyd Prescott, hardly able to sit the saddle, yelled out to his middle son Jasper, “Damn it, boy, is that your brother Joshua up there hanging by his neck?”
The world of Utah, life itself, had come to a standstill in the middle of the road passing through the center of Pembroke, a growing town that felt too frequently all kinds of muscle, mayhem and mischief. A man was hanging from the loading arm of the town livery stable, and the lynch mob was still gathered beneath its victim.
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An Incidence of Alliance
By Tom Sheehan
The Mogollons towered beside him for over three miles of trail when a cougar leaped from hiding. His horse reared, slipped and was tumbling. Noah Brittington fell off the edge of the trail, above Silver Creek, and went down into the mad current. He thought 16 years on this Earth was too short a lifetime for anybody to bear. If the good Lord was cheating him, what had he done for such a quick end, this simple run for gold?
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Fair Exchange
By Tom Sheehan
When Marshal Max Preshong walked into the biggest saloon in Waco, after being out on a posse for almost three days successfully chasing down a rustler and killer, a small man, not a cow man, slipped out the side door. Nobody saw him leave except Max Preshong. From outside the door for a short time he had noticed the man sitting alone at a corner table studying every man in the room, every new-comer, all the while playing make-believe with a deck of cards, waiting. Preshong was sure the man was waiting for him, waiting to scramble and tell someone that the marshal was back in town.
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The Dragoon's Adventure
By Tom Sheehan
The cowman Oliver Weddle sat his horse on a small hillock, looking out over his ranch, the grass running off to the hills, Texas itself stiffening his backbone as it always had. He tried again to count the help he’d need to get the ranch back in prime order after his return from the war, wishing that some of his command had come along with him when he separated from the service. They were good soldiers, good riders, and courageous and loyal to the duties; but had their own visions of search. Three foremen in a row had failed him and their mission, one or two of them he suspected had complicated issues on purpose. So glaring were the failures that they cost him a good deal of his money. Now he was contemplating what would happen if he did not get a good man for the job.
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Trouble in The Sycamores
By Tom Sheehan
The Sycamores, the whole awful mountain range of trouble and turmoil, were behind him, and trail signs of the bushwhacker, who tried to gun him down in near darkness, led Marshal Jonas Northcross out of The Sycamores and right to Calico Tail, a small and seemingly insignificant cowboy town near the Tongue River and the Bighorn Mountains in the high distance. The scarred bark of the trees that gave the region its name, sometimes growing in heavy groves, kept reminding the marshal of old men gathered in saloons wearing their hard years.
He had tracked alone, rode alone, and ate alone at the river’s edge or at the foot of escarpments and overhangs, no longer an easy target. He was as alert as his horse Birmingham, a big red and as powerful as they come. They were, he had long affirmed, a formidable pair. His mind had been made up; he would follow the coward until the end, taking it all personal, putting his badge in his shirt pocket, putting The Sycamore assignment to bed for the time being; someone wanted him out of there, out of the mix of actions. The actions seemed in concert.
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The Blue Trooper
By Tom Sheehan
The whole bizarre situation and all its facts have been buried under a ton of hush and red tape of one sort or another since the murder took place not long after the Civil War came to a halt; a cavalry trooper, a Bluecoat on his way to report to a new assignment at Fort X west of the Mississippi River, well west, was shot in his sleep in the haymow of the lone livery stable in a small town in the Arizona Territory. The trooper, Private First Class Josh Harding, was two days dead before three boys, playing hide ‘n’ seek, found his body and went screaming to the sheriff’s office.
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The Last Juror Standing
By Tom Sheehan
Harvey Walton, sixtyish, slightly bent, white beard as full as a good poke, was still wearing his outer coat, as the last juror in the last row in Elmer Gentil’s Saloon, though it was warmer inside than outside. But his attention had not been lost for one minute in the on-going trial of Karl Rickert, a young man he had known a few years here in Daw’s River. He fidgeted, squirmed and tormented himself with the nature, manner and intent of the murder trial. Everybody in the room had heard him gasp loudly several times at statements made by the sheriff, by one supposed witness (who was “nearby” when the commotion or crime was in progress), and even some legal folderol and ministrations tendered by the judge. And he knew everybody in the room but one big gent near the back wearing a Mexican-type sombrero and the sleazy looking fellow leaning on the bar as if he thought the bar would open in the middle of the trial.
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The Wagon Master
By Tom Sheehan
Stall Pillings, man of the world, had allowed it to happen; a woman had gotten under his skin, and the discoverable joy was his gain. Astride his horse, motionless, he stared into the high ground and wondered how it happened. Then another mysterious awareness took place; she had been as sly and as furtive as Indians and that thought brought him straight up in the saddle, to his full senses, on full alert.
It was at an abrupt realization where he found himself, and the real wagon master took over as he shucked off the woman in his mind.
But he didn’t throw her far.
He sat his horse on the skyline, a brazen silhouette to three braves sitting their ponies bareback, at the dip in a wadi, who uphill watched him with solemn curiosity. They were only 200 yards away.
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Max Braden, Trail Blazer, Bronc Buster
By Tom Sheehan
He first hired out as a drover when he was 14, mother and father dead just weeks from unknown causes, sister married off quickly to advantage, the small cabin and plot of ground his to sell to the first bidder. He took 50 dollars and ran to the first meal ticket he could find, a herder’s chuck wagon at a round-up in a canyon a few miles away, adventure calling him by name, escape as well. The cattle, at a standstill, filled his mind with their immensity, the long drive sitting in the field of his eyes. On his cheek was a solid black birthmark he had fought over a dozen times. It was as big as a silver dollar and for a long time it was as ugly as dung. He managed the difference, control a natural dictate for him, given to him at birth and always well employed.
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The Gambler from Norcross, Wyoming
By Tom Sheehan
My grandfather Johnny Igoe said it was so. On many occasions, as we sat side by side listening to “The Lone Ranger” on the radio long before there was television, he told me about “The Gambler from Norcross,” out there in Wyoming, his perky pipe throwing off its Edgeworth aroma or, in darkness only lit by the radio dial, a single and momentary glow from that small briar as he puffed at it, a faint star pointing its location on the far horizon. Oh, how that little old man loved the Lone Ranger and the cowboy west of his youth. Those hours, on a dark porch or a dim room by firelight, were magic and mythic, framing so much around the two of us.
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Full Flight From Yuma
By Tom Sheehan
Crackbak Mellon-Mellon sang the song endlessly, “Ain’t No Jail Aholtin’ Me,” sang it, mouthed it, uttered it, yelled it, from one minute of the day to the next. For his five years in Yuma Territorial Prison the guards always knew where he was, in what disposition, secure in one cell or another, or laboring on a prison work detail. Prisoner #127 was known by the only name ever used by him, Crackbak Mellon-Mellon, but history had other versions that are worth unveiling if the man is to be known if not understood. Yuma Territorial Prison, as described by some Arizona folks in the know, was “200 miles of nothing between here ‘n’ there,” and about the driest and hottest place in the territory. He was 24 years old when he was brought to Yuma, the prison then just over a year old, and 29 when he escaped, in 1881.
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The Worst Bandit in the West
By Tom Sheehan
There was hell to pay out west. Clogner was an abomination. A curse. Evil itself. The ultimate danger on the loose. He’d shoot a dog if it made too much noise. Or a horse. And a good horse wouldn’t make any difference at all. The bankers wanted to shut down their banks, but they couldn’t. Posses didn’t want to get into the chase for him, but they had to. And sheriffs hoped that Ditch Clogner, the worst bandit in the west, the deadliest, the meanest, the craziest, would never come into their towns.
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Gun Hero Comes Clean
By Tom Sheehan
The territorial telegraphs hummed, the once-a-week presses rolled out their sheets one page at a time, and every saloon, barbershop, general store and bunkhouse in the reachable west called it, in varying degrees, “The Waco Walk,” “The Waco Walk-away,” “A Waco, Texas Treat,” or, as simply said as The Bridger Herald put it, “Jigger’s Out of Jail.” That issue of the Herald put all of Bridger, Nevada into a week-long party celebrating the escape of their hero.
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Covana From Wolf Hill
By Tom Sheehan
It was July of 1869, the day already beset by strange sights and signs, like human bones and animal bones found on the trail aside the hill flanking the wagon train, flesh long-gone to carrion seekers, long-bleached by the sun, and the howls of unseen wolves as if they were stalking each individual.
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The Badger
By Tom Sheehan
The man leaning on the bar that Marshal Clint Cogswell was after was not making the move with his right hand. But the second man on his right was slowly dropping his hand toward his holster. The move was in real slow motion, deceptive, almost hidden. Cogswell knew his badge, shining on his chest all the way from the state capital for nearly 25 years, had cowed a number of men over the years, but the fugitive’s pard was not of that breed. The marshal kept his eyes on his quarry. Those eyes were hazy and burning with two months of trail dust and a sun that often felt it was burning his face right through the brim of his Stetson. But he was aware of the last dip of hand of the fugitive’s apparent henchman.
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The Salt of Vatcher's Mine
By Tom Sheehan
Crusty Yancy “Yank” Palmer, “sixty if a day” he was always saying, was telling himself under his breath that a good dream never dies. He was riding down a long crest-line finger two days from Pikes Peak, looking for the site of the old Vatcher Mine. The continual awareness hit him that he was once again in a two-way discussion with a one-way mind. It made him snicker with small delight and his heart was keeping time with the excitement of the dream being uncovered again.
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The Bridle Couples
By Tom Sheehan
The Torson brothers, Jack and Chad the younger, part of the original posse pursuing the Clevold gang that robbed the Great Red Bank, had been split from the main party by rifle fire from atop Mercy Canyon. They dove in under the slightest cliff overhang after hiding their mounts in a small growth of trees. They had their rifles and enough ammunition to fight a decent sized gang, but only two days of water. This was their fourth posse in a row in only two months, because their part of Kansas was on fire, with brigands and desperadoes in every corner. They carried on the way their father would want them to; for fourteen years he had been a no-holds barred sheriff with a deep secret,
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The Jug at Chaco Canyon
By Tom Sheehan
For much of his youth and all of his adult life, 48-year-old Bart Tarpin had heard the music of the spheres, as his Uncle Charlie called it. And Charlie had told him, in a hearthside talk that “The ancient people who lived in the caves and cliff-side rooms of Chaco Canyon once conversed with the gods, and brought the holy music away with them, down to Earth. A gift it was, the most memorable of all gifts, humming with heaven itself.”
His eternal interest was aroused.
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The Kelly Green Colt
By Tom Sheehan
....The day that Bracko had come away from seeing the new colt at The Dublin, he went in haste, his stories suddenly fortified with the most mythical of his tales. It was something the Little People must have weaved for The Dublin, and he himself had seen the physical proof of it all… a stark, green-all-over colt, born to the mare Cavanish shipped all the way from Shaun Treacy’s birthplace in the old country.
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Deadeye Dolly Provident
By Tom Sheehan
She had carried the vision with her practically all her life, since she was a six-year older on a ranch in Copa Verdi, Texas, and in the sights of her rifle that vision brought itself back to life. Dolly Provident, her accurate eye set on the sights of the rifle, felt the first tear begin to crowd itself into being. The whole scene from the past terror spread across the back of her mind; she had been tending new kittens in a corner of the barn’s hayloft where they had been born, when she heard the argument first and then the shot. In a hurry she ran to the open loft load door and looked down and saw the stranger, tall, in a dark Stetson and a black shirt, standing over her father flat on the ground. The stranger reached down and took her father’s gun belt and then a fold of money from his pocket. He looked around, saw no one, remounted his horse, a big black stallion, and rode off as if hurry did not exist.
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The Osage Company Well
By Tom Sheehan
The young man’s name was Dante Aliberti. He came from Italy on an overcrowded boat on a chilly March day in 1879, and hit Ellis Island running. Grabbing a train heading west, he ended up in Missouri and on the very next day attached himself to a wagon train heading further into open land, putting himself out to hire for any kind of work, in the Promised Land or on the way there. He could work with marble, limestone, wood, and knew the warp and set of good steel under heat. He could dig with a long handled spade as long as the sun lasted and on a few pronounced days might even feel the thriving and promise in a forked stick at water dousing.
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Lizard Mountain Waterhole
By Tom Sheehan
The sign was stuck in the ground on a stick, and read, in a rough hand not used to lettering, “Water 5 cents a canteen, or else.” What happened to look like a bullet was hair-pin drawn across the bottom of the sign. The first sight of anything civilized he had seen in weeks of trailing a murderous fugitive caught Pretend Hardy by surprise.
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Death Too Quick For a Hurry
By Tom Sheehan
Tova Van Dorn, known simply as Swede in his few days in town, with a rope around his neck for a murder he did not commit and without a merciful cover over his eyes, saw three men walk to the edge of the crowd, and yelled out, just before the hangman ran the horse out from under him, “The man I saw is back there in the crowd.” The rope shut off his voice, his wind, and his life as a broken bone slammed up into his brain.
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The Barber of Copa Verdi
By Tom Sheehan
Just after the break of dawn, a cool September morning, Stem Swensen rode into Copa Verdi with a near empty saddle bag, a rifle without ammo, and no change of clothes. He looked the part he announced, or announced the part he looked… on the skids, on the run, on the take if he could find an angel with gifts. Even with all that, some people of the town took notice when he entered Paulie’s Tonsorial Palace. His beard was, without doubt, a month’s worth of bush.
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Man With the Black Hearse
By Tom Sheehan
His new black suit was as shiny as his hearse back under the cover of the barn he had rented, but Alibert Pumphrey was on a strange errand as he entered the jail the morning of his arrival in town. The mayor had set up this visit with a young convicted murderer who was slated to be hanged at high noon the next day. The first thing that had touched Pumphrey, the new undertaker in town, was the scheduled time of the hanging. Noon was a cruel time to begin with, dragging half a day along with all the baggage the fairly new town of West Sentry might muster. It would be most tolerable, he thought, to hang a criminal at dawn. The schedule gave him a chance to talk to the prospective customer, his first one in a new location.
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Dead Pony Lookout
By Tom Sheehan
Darkly Armitage, astride Bullet, a magnificent stallion he had corralled himself when he was just 16 years old, sat atop Dead Pony Lookout, a two day ride from the Bar-B ranch where he earned his pay and keep these days, just a scad over his 20th birthday. Rustlers had been active for more than three months in many points of the territory and cautions were about. The marshal said he thought all the troubles were being done at the hands of different pieces of the same gang. Their timing was more than adequate to fluster posses and private searches, “coming,” like he said, “at opposite ends of the clock and the compass… morning here, night there; northerly here, southerly there.” Darkly had been posted by Bar-B boss Devon Armstrong and his wife Barbara to a week long search for any signs of the gang.
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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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THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF CHRISTOPHER SCOTT
Picks’ Folly
By Christopher Scott
Sheriff John Stone stepped out from the shade of his office into the heat of the noonday sun.
Reaching into the pocket of his vest he pulled out a wooden match and struck it on a nearby
post. He lit the smoke he had just rolled and inhaled deeply. Good tobacco and a quiet
afternoon. Just the way sheriff Stone liked it.
But the day was not over yet and little did he know his quiet afternoon was soon to be
disrupted.
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Jacob's Ladder
By Christopher Scott
The two men stood in the shadow of the boarding house staring intently at the young preacher. They were not contemplating Jesus and they were not there for the service. They had come to even a score.
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Gold Fever
Christopher Scott
It was 1849 and Jim Jenkins was on his way to California.
Establishing a presence in the Western territory was of prime interest to the U.S. Government and the discovery of gold in California was a perfect “opportunity” to entice people to head west. The Eastern press seized upon the gold topic. Sensational articles and headlines about the rush for gold in California and the ease at which one could become wealthy not only sold a lot of papers, it also convinced a lot of people to go West.
And so it was with Jim Jenkins. A young man caught up in the madness. He was one of tens of thousands, on his way to California with dreams of striking it rich.
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The Drovers
By Christopher Scott
The Redeye saloon was as quiet as a church on Monday morning. Necks were craned forward, heads were slightly cocked, and all ears were straining to hear the young drover’s response. If this had been a Sunday morning sermon, the towns preacher would have been in seventh heaven to receive the same rapt attention these men were paying to this stranger in their midst’s.
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The Wealth of Heaven
By Christopher Scott
It was mid summer on the high plateau. The days were long and hot, but the heat disappeared with the setting sun leaving the nights dark and cold. And so it was on this summer night. Matthew Condie was awake, but deep in thought, next to a fire that was all but out. A few glowing embers were all that remained of the once roaring flames that kept the evening chill at bay, and one thin blanket was not much comfort to a man camped out in the deserts’ night air. Mathew laid on his back with a hard saddle propped under his head. It was nothing like the soft bed and the feather pillow he was used to.
It was a moonless night, but a million silver stars lighting up the heavens more than made up for the loss. To Mathew, a star filled night was a sight to behold. Like a million shimmering diamonds strewn upon a black satin cloth.
When Mathew was a young boy he would gaze upon these very stars with his father. He could still hear the whisper of his voice, as they would sit with their eyes transfixed on the beauty of the night.
“Matthew”, came the hushed voice...
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Hellfire
By Christopher Scott
“Yahoo, come on Sam, you can do it.”
The men of the Circle B lined the corral fence to watch the spectacle; hooting, hollering and waiving their hats in approval as young Sam Perry rode upon the back of the meanest, orneriest and rankest horse ever to leave its mark on Circle B soil.
There was no doubt among the men lining the fence. Sam Perry was just the man to take the wild out of this beast.
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Too Close For Comfort
By Christopher Scott
“Get him up here on the table boys,” ordered the Doc.
The two young cowboys hoisted their friend onto Doc Colby’s emergency table.
“How is he doc? How bad is it? Will he be alright?”
Eldon was the excitable one of the Bar Zero boys. Whenever he got nervous or scared, his mouth would get to runnin’ non stop till someone eventually threatened to plug it up with a fist full of knuckles, which worried him all the more and tended to make things worse. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had the gift of gab. He could talk the spots off an appaloosa if given half a chance. The gift had saved him on more than one occasion.
“How the heck do I know,” answered the Doc. “Why don’t you two give me and your partner here some breathin’ room and let my nurse move up to the table to help me out. You boys need to leave this room now.” Doc Colby went right to work. “Let’s get this shirt off of him, Sara, so I can take a look at this hole in his chest.”
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The Arizona Kid
By Christopher Scott
The great horse lunged ever forward as its thundering hooves pounded the earth beneath its rider. The high-desert brush whipped at its forelegs as the surefooted beast raced dangerous abandon through unfamiliar territory. Its massive chest heaved as it gasped for air. Its mouth was thick with froth and its hair glistened heavy with sweat.
The rider leaned into the horses’ shoulder, shouting for the animal to give more. Forcing him onward, pushing him for all he was worth, refusing to slow down.
To lessen the pace could mean his death, or even worse…capture.
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Freedom Fighter
By Christopher Scott
In 1854, seven years before the Civil War officially began, the Kansas-Nebraska act was signed. This act repealed the Missouri compromise and reopened the issue of extending slavery further north allowing the Kansas and Missouri territories to decide the matter for themselves.
The volatile issue of slavery between abolitionists and pro slavery factions continued to grow. 1854 marked the beginning of the Kansas/Missouri Border War.
In 1860 Kansas officially abolished slavery and in January1861 Kansas became the 34th state. By April of that same year the Civil War began.
Many consider the Kansas/Missouri border war a precursor to the Civil War.
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Dry Well Reunion
By Christopher Scott
Frank Canby stood at the crossroads. His horse nickered and scuffed at the dirt. The animal had better sense than Frank as it tried to shy away from the trail to the west. It wanted to head in the opposite direction, toward the safe and friendly town of Prairie View. Unfortunately, that was not the way Frank intended to go. It was the trail heading west he needed to travel.
It was called the “D.C.” trail for the simple reason that it followed the rim of the treacherous Devils Canyon; a narrow slit in the ground that split the high plateau it ran through, like a jagged, open wound cutting deep into the barren landscape, it ran on for miles until it ended at the plateau’s abrupt edge, opening itself up to the Striker Valley far below.
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Maggie's World
By Christopher Scott
The house was small and unimposing. Livable, but it showed its need for some long overdue repairs. It sat on a bone dry patch of worthless dirt in the middle of nowhere. The only spot of green was a rather dismal looking vegetable garden at the back of the house. The combination of a high desert altitude and hot, dry summer air made it difficult for most living things to thrive, and that included Maggie, the lady of the house.
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El Diablo
By Christopher Scott
Thomas Packer rode into Cedar Grove early one morning. He had come from up North. He was a man on a mission and that mission was moving him South. Tom was pretty much a loner these days and constantly on the move. But it wasn’t always that way. He once had steady work and a few acres of his own. Unfortunately, all that change the day El Diablo came to town…
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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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Witness to a Death
By Christopher Scott
My name is Jason McCord. The year is nineteen and thirty-seven and the following tale is a recollection of something I seen with my very own eyes when I was quite young. I’m seventy-six now but I remember it as if it were yesterday. The year of this recollection was eighteen and sixty-six. My pappy, Marcus McCord, was the sole owner and resident bartender of the “Muddy Boot” saloon in a small Arizona town called Sage City.
Now Sage City was a town not much different than the transient bloom of an Arizona cactus. It quickly blossomed and was as pretty as could be, but then just as quickly, it died out and withered away. It was left to the elements where it stood for some time as an empty shell of a town long gone, and ever so slowly it gave way to the harsh and unforgiving desert from which it had once blossomed. Eventually, it disappeared as if it had never existed.
But I remember it...I remember when that town had life, and plenty of it.
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The Bounty Hunter
By Christopher Scott
The Callaway brothers had always worked alone. They were a callous duo, ruthless and underhanded, never trusting anyone and never hesitating to shoot a man in the back if they thought it would be to their advantage. That’s why it was such a surprise to those who knew the men, to hear they had teamed up with another notorious outlaw named Johnny Bad.
Together the three hombres were tearing up the countryside in the Southern Arizona region of Pima County. Wanted posters were distributed all around the area offering a bounty for the men, dead or alive. The Calloway brothers were pretty impressed to see they were worth five hundred dollars each. Johnny Bad on the other hand was more than a little upset to see he was only worth three hundred. He moaned about it for quite some time and threatened to kill a couple more people, thinking it would boost the reward being offered for him.
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The Last Ride
By Christopher Scott
Owen Edwards slowly led his injured horse toward home. The big roan was favoring its left front leg again. This was the third time in the past year Owen had to walk back to the house, but this time was different as the pace was much slower and more solemn. Owen knew this day would come but he dreaded it just the same. The situation was forcing him to make a decision he had been putting off for some time now. The slow pace gave him ample time to think over all his options once again. They never changed. The only difference this time around was that, this time, he actually had to choose one.
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The Lone Stranger
By Christopher Scott
Plumes of dense white steam shot out from beneath the train’s engine as it released pressure from its huge boiler. Behind the engine, eager passengers cautiously stepped from the railcars onto the old wooden platform, grateful to finally be able to stretch their legs.
The station bustled with activity as passengers met loved ones and workmen unloaded luggage onto the old wooden platform. They removed freight from boxcars that had been pulled along behind the passengers and transferred it onto waiting freight wagons.
As the travel-weary passengers anxiously stepped off the train, they instinctively clutched their coats about the neck or pushed their hats down tight upon their heads as they were suddenly hit by a gust of cold October wind. The brightly painted sign hanging above the station door danced in place as it silently announced to all that they had arrived at the little boomtown of Placer Valley.
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The Hunter Creek Incident
By Christopher Scott
Justin Bradley and his younger brother, Bill, were heading into town bright and early one Saturday morning. They were on their way to the Winfield General Store to pick up their good friend, Ellis Pratt. The three boys had planned to spend the day at their favorite fishing hole. The morning air was crisp and cool, but the cloudless sky would soon prove itself to be a beautiful, warm and sunny summer day.
As the two boys rode down Main Street, they could see the Sheriff, the Banker and a few other men gathering in front of the Winfield Bank building just across the street from the store. They were too far away to make out the exact conversation but from the tone of their voices, they could tell it was something serious.
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The Vision
By Christopher Scott
Silas quickly sat up in bed. He listened intensely, but heard nothing past the pounding of his own heart. He rubbed his face and ran his hands over his thick black hair. It was wet. His whole body was wet, drenched in the sweat of a reoccurring vision. A vision so clear, he swore it was real. But he knew better, he was still in bed.
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The Lone Oak
By Christopher Scott
The old red oak tree was majestic. That went without saying. It had had over two hundred years to perfect itself. Its mighty branches covered most of the quarter acre lot assigned to it and the massive trunk was an impressive chunk of timber. The lone tree stood atop a small rise, next to an old dilapidated barn in the middle of what was once a forty-acre horse pasture. Two men, land developers, stood at its base, contemplating its fate.
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OUTLAWS LUCK
By Christopher Scott
Mean Webb Dixon blew on the smoldering tinder as his partner, Little Jack, looked on in total disbelief. He knew this was a bad move, but his disagreement with Webb over the idea of building a fire went nowhere. Neither of them had eaten solid food in almost two days and Webb wasn’t about to eat his fresh killed rabbit raw. He had taken the risk of firing the shot that killed the hare and now was willing to take his chances with a fire. But then that’s how Webb was. He was always willing to take a chance on something, even if it meant putting someone else at risk.
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THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF DON EMIGH
Poco Muerte
By Don Emigh
Reinert put his elbows on the bar and leaned across and stared at the bartender. He said, "I got three men out there, amigo. I'm going to ask again, where's El Cerdo? I know he's somewhere here in Poco Muerte. You know where he is since you got the only saloon in town. Where is . . ."
On the street in front of the saloon the quiet of the afternoon siesta hour was abruptly shattered by a swelling riot of shouts and curses. The growing commotion was emphasized by several shotgun blasts and the crashing bang of revolver fire. At the rail along the front of the saloon horses reared, pawing and screaming in panic. All of this lasted only a minute or two and then, after two more belated revolver shots, there was silence.
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Prairie Wells
By Don Emigh
Not quite long enough to be considered a Novelette, This story is told on five parts.
Part One of Five
What Really Happened at Prairie Wells
Parker threw a small stone into the fire and watched the sparks fly. He said, "How come everybody calls you 'Sheriff,' Dade? You're no more a sheriff than I am, or Cookie over there. We're all jes' wranglers an' pokes. How'd you come by that handle, anyway? You don't even look like a sheriff, my way o' thinkin'." He tilted his hat back on his head and looked across at Foster.
.........."You know, I think I'm going to get rid of this 'Sheriff' moniker once an' for all. Right here with you gents. Because when I'm through tellin' you what happened, you'll see..........
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Part Two, Dade Foster, Gunfighter>>
Part Three, The Lord's Protector>>
Part Four, The Wichita Kid>>
Part Five, Three Riders>>
THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF JAMES J. GRIFFIN
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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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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The Youngest Ranger
By James J. Griffin
Texas Ranger Clay Taggart reined his black and white overo to a halt atop a low hill. The view took in the settlement a short distance south. Taggart swung out of the saddle and pulled off his Stetson. He lifted his canteen from the saddlehorn, opened it, and poured most of the contents into the hat. He placed the hat in front of the horse’s muzzle. The gelding drank greedily.
“That’ll be Uvalde just ahead Mike,” he told the horse. “We’re headin’ into Travis Burnham’s home grounds. Mebbe we’ll finally catch up with him. Boy howdy, he’s led us a chase for fair.”
Taggart had been trailing the renegade for almost two months, from San Marcos, where Burnham had robbed and killed two cattle buyers, through Boerne, where he’d robbed the bank, badly wounding the clerk, to Kerrville. Taggart had missed finding the outlaw in that town by two days. Word had reached Burnham a Ranger was on his trail, so he left town on the run.
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The Wind
By James J. Griffin
I awoke with a scream loud enough to wake the dead. I began to leap from my bunk, butinstead settled back down, shaking with fear and covered with sweat. The full moon sent its vivid light through the bunkhouse window and directly onto my bed, while a steady wind moaned through the pines. That wind had blown open the door and slammed it against the wall.
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Railroad Canyon
By James J. Griffin
Lucy Squires Taggart gazed distastefully at her Texas Ranger husband while he dressed.
“Clay, please tell me you’re not going to wear that shirt,” she said.
“Why not? What’s wrong with this shirt?” Clay responded.
“It’s all faded and worn. The elbows are ready to wear through, and it’s been patched too much. And those old bloodstains. They’ll never wash out completely,” Lucy explained.
“What does it matter?” Clay protested as he snapped the shirt closed and tied a bandanna around his neck. “I’m gonna be on the trail for weeks. In two days it’ll be all dusty and sweat-stained anyway.”
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Banker's Bluff
James J. Griffin
The sun was setting over the rugged, arid landscape of far west Texas. Young Texas Ranger Pete Natowich pulled his horse to a halt, not quite sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
“Trooper, unless I’m seein’ things, that’s a lake just ahead, off to the left. Who’d ever have thought we’d find this much water around here? We’re gonna spend the night here, boy. Can’t make Rankin until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest anyway.”
Pete put his big bay gelding, with the half-crescent star and strip on his face, into a trot. Sensing water and rest ahead, Trooper responded eagerly. Both man and horse were tired, having been on the trail from Austin for several long, hard days. Pete had been a Ranger for little more than a year. He was barely over eighteen years old, lean, blue-eyed and blonde-haired. This was his first solo assignment, an assignment which would have been handed to one of the more experienced Rangers, if any had been available. The long ride had taken its toll.
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THE WESTERN SHORT STORIES OF CHARLES D. PHILLIPS
HIDE TOWN, 1876
by Charles D. Phillips
Cotton Simpson and the First Sergeant chatted amicably as they walked toward La Cantina, a saloon in The Flat. The Flat was a raw town on the Texas plains situated next to Fort Griffin. Separating the troopers stationed at that post from as much of their $13 to $18 a month as possible was its sole reason for existence.
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The Wedding Toast
(Pflugerville, Texas, 1882)
by Charles D. Phillips
Almost all the community gathered in the Heldfeldt’s barn, where fresh straw covered the dirt floor and battled the smell of dried horse sweat and dung. Old Axel played the fiddle nestled in the crook of his left elbow. Reinhardt brought his battered washboard, and Big Herman played his spoons. Erhardt called the dances and sang traditional songs. After an hour, Erhardt’s dry throat and sweat-soaked shirt required a break.
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A Prairie Song
(1879)
by Charles D. Phillips
The morning has started out just fine. With only a two-day ride left to Buffalo Gap, Jake had found a spot last night where a wet creek pooled and created a stand of mesquite perfect for a pleasant overnight camp. He spent the next morning giving his buckskin gelding, Paco, a good rub and brushing, knocking a week of trail grit out of his coat. He cooked the last of his bacon, made a pan of biscuits, and boiled himself a pot of coffee. A good breakfast in the soft mesquite shade and lingering over a cup of good coffee, while his pony grazed on sweet bottom grass was a luxury he knew only rarely. He had filled all his canteens the night before, and the remainder of the biscuits and bacon would last until he reached the traders’ camp at The Gap.
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The Hunters Story
(North Texas, 1879)
Bt Charles D. Phillips
“Captain,” the Trooper said, “we got something strange up ahead.” The Trooper, a newly-minted cavalry man assigned to the forward picket detail had reined in just late enough to send up a cloud of caliche dust that floated into the faces of his officers. Captain Grantham coughed, looking to his First Sergeant and nodding. The Sergeant touched his cap. If this wasn’t a life-and-death situation, that Trooper would spend the rest of this patrol riding at the end of a hundred-man column moving forward four abreast across the dry Texas plains. The reward for his impetuousness would be far more than his fair ration of dust.
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LA PALOMA BLANCA
by Charles D. Phillips
Matamoros, Mexico
December, 1862
One evening some months after his arrival in Mexico from Texas, Jurian Becker was seated at the table farthest from the door of his favorite place in Matamoros, La Paloma Blanca. It was a cantina that served good drinks and better food. The cantina and kitchen occupied the front of the abode building. The owner and his family lived in the rear portion. Behind the main building were a vegetable garden, some pens for goats and chickens and a smaller building that had been divided into three casitas the family rented out. The entire property was surrounded by tall, armless Saguaro cactus planted so closely together that they built an impregnable fence. The only entrances to the yard were through the main hallway that ran the length of the main building and a gate hung just to the side of the mail building. Jurian rented one of the casitas. He liked the family, the food, and the safety of the arrangement. He boarded his big, buckskin saddle horse, Jitters, at a nearby stable.
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The Western Short Stories of John Duncklee
THE BLIZZARD
John Duncklee
The storm unexpectedly rolled in with a fury. I had listened to the weather report the evenin' before as usual. The weather reports are not always right. Last night and this morning proved to be one of the wrongs.
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THE DOVE AND MR. McCall
John Duncklee
As he did every morning for the past six years, Jack McCall sat in his
old, tattered, wicker rocking chair on the front porch of his old adobe
ranch house in the foothills of the craggy, desert mountains. And, like
every morning, he was reminiscing to himself about his life as he waited
for Kate to bring his mug full of steaming coffee, and set it on the old nail
keg he used for a table. She would always say, “Mornin’ you old rascal.
What are you dreamin’ about this mornin’?”
Always McCall would reply, “Nothin’ much, just thinkin’ about how it
used to be.”
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CHICARO
Horse Trading with Ginger Ale
John Duncklee
During the early 1960's many cattle deals and horse trades became finalized on the bar stools or booths in the El Dorado Bar. "Chema" witnessed a good many transactions from his position behind the bar. "Chema" didn't say much, but his friendly smile made customers feel welcome.
Since my business was a combination of cattle and horse trading I came to know "Chema", and one day I expained that I didn't believe in mixing booze and business. The arrangement "Chema" and I made insured that my trading instincts came from a clear mind. Should I order a Scotch and water while sitting with anyone, he would bring me just that, a Scotch and water. If I ordered a Scotch and soda, he would bring me a glass of ginger ale.
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The Cowboy Poetry of John Duncklee
CHICO
John Duncklee
Chico was a cowboy, the only trade he knew
He rode in to my camp one day, from then our friendship grew
His home was down in Mexico, where the Rio Yaqui flows, but he
crossed the "line" when just eighteen with his saddle and his clothes
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OFF IN THE CORNER
John Duncklee
Off in the corner of the corrugated shed
The old saddle lay unnoticed, half hidden by its layer of gray-brown dust
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OLD
John Duncklee
She was one of the old ones with rings on each horn
Hide close to her bones
Cockleburrs matting her tail, cholla on her nose
In her eye a look of forlorn
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