Portland Sale
Leslie Johnson
BD traded for a real nice, seven year old saddle horse, a term generally meaning he was gaited, in this part of the country. He had two real good quarter horse two year olds he’d bought somewhere back country, and since we didn’t fool much with non-gaited horses, the trader who owned the gelding offered to take a loss on his good horse by taking the two we just didn’t need. BD went into the deal with more than a little caution, Talouse had burned him but good a few trades back, and wasn’t one to pass up any opportunity to do it again. He brought the horse over, stepped him off and had him saddled to prove he was, indeed, as broke as he claimed. He was a black Saddlebred, not really a plus around here, and had been a show horse until very recently. There were the rubbed places on his chest, withers and hind legs where a tail set had been in place a long time, and his tail was cut, or “broken”, as some say. It hadn’t been down long enough to grow all the hair back, and was cocked at a crooked angle. I never liked that part of showing gaited horses, anymore than I liked what foolishness went on with “padding” them up and nearly crippling them to get that awkward butt down and front legs flying they thought was so fine. But that’s where the big money is, and you’ll never stop abuse rewarded with cold cash.
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The Voice of Experience
Leslie Johnson
He’d worked the colt for three or four days, lunging and ponying him with one of our older, more experienced horses, to no avail. Put a saddle on him and the fireworks began, he’d buck until he threw the saddle off or you snubbed him to another horse and made him trot off. BD’s profit margin was so thin, the more time he had to work with one, the more money he’d have in it. You could get away with the general term “green broke” to cover a multitude of sins, but flat out bronc bucking wasn’t one of them.
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Ugly Dog
Nancy Steele
It was the ugliest dog Tate had ever seen. Scruffy, wiry hair covered its scrawny frame, sticking up in random tufts. A scarred lip pulled one side of its mouth into a permanent sneer, revealing uneven teeth set in an undershot jaw. The sneer was accentuated by a dark moustache of hair drooping from the dog's upper lip, giving it the look of a villain from a John Wayne Western. It turned its head slightly and Tate noticed it was missing an eye. Yep, it was the ugliest dog he had ever seen, and all ten pounds of it was perched on his duffel bag.
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A Western Story
By Terrell Brown
Clay Hobbs was upset about the economy. The price of hay would go up a few cents a bale. He supposed that was good for someone up the line, but it was bad news for him. His business was raising beef, and if it had not been for Wendy’s and McDonald’s he’d have gone under. Under was right. He looked through the windshield at three or four cows and their calves grazing over a stretch of high ground ahead beyond the windshield. The meadows and flats where he had once cut most of his winter feed were flooded by the overflow of the once shallow lakes. The abnormal amounts of rainfall the past few years had had nowhere to go but down into the basin where this small ranch and neighboring ones had taken root and clung to the land tenaciously for a century of long working days for one generation after another. The ranch was mortgaged. He didn’t own anything anymore. What remained for him now was a lifestyle and the long hours of work and frustration bequeathed to him by father and grandfather – and Cassie. He had Cassie, and she had him. Thank God for Cassie, he thought, finding it an odd thought, since he was, in his own estimation, a nonbeliever.
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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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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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