Tag: wild west

All Stories, General Fiction

Two Fathoms Down by Tom Sheehan

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“Though curious, be you kind to yourself, and leave here now, lest you ….”

Anton Chalkov thought he chased only a dream out of Siberia, a dream and nothing more. He boated across the Bering Strait, with divine intervention on few occasions, and into Alaskan waters. Once ashore in Alaska it was obvious he had not gone far enough and set out, overland for a portion of his journey and then back on coastal waters in the company of fishermen, for the New World of America. All this travel in pursuit of the dream. The dogs he bought for the overland portions of his trip were masterful, they too having good blood in them, born for the snow and the task. The dogs got him all the way through a few of Canada’s territories, before he swapped them for one horse in Montana territory of America, where he had been headed all the time.

He’d been a Cossack, now he wanted to be a cowboy.

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All Stories

Death in the Shadows by Tom Sheehan

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The Texas evening carried grace and expectation as the sun moved on its last legs; soft shadows fell from all heights as though they were cotton balls shaped into vague contours, and a hush moved across the land the way mystery crawls, unknown, unsure of where to put down its feet, looking for contestants in the arena where life is lived a good part of the time. In Trinity Cove, Texas, it was The Wild Eye Saloon, a catch-all for what the west brings to dry throats, hungry cowpokes, desperate criminals, sneaky card players, and a few ladies lost in the game of life.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Soldier’s Crusade by Tom Sheehan

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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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All Stories, General Fiction

The Craterville Catastrophe by Tom Sheehan

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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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