Your Blues by Bill Baber
It wasn’t the kind of place we would normally go into. But we were out for an evening and neither one of was ready to call it a night. The truth of the matter was Trish and me weren’t getting along all that well. Dinner had been a little tense and neither one of us […]
A Near Miss by Lauren B. Fawcett
Two days after I found John at Kelson’s Ledges, his innards hanging out like a gutted pig, the horde swarmed. I was still in shock when his sister descended on the house, her husband and children in tow, packing the four-room house so tight that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to breathe much past […]
Newton’s Law by John M. Floyd
Hobbs burst into the one-room cabin, slammed the door behind him, and leaned back against it, his eyes closed and his chest heaving. “Apaches,” he said. “Other side of the river. At least a dozen.” Old Amos Bassett, who had already jumped to his feet, spit out half his biscuit and swallowed the rest whole. […]
Big Jim’s Secret by David Cousland
Along with thousands of other hopeful or desperate men, Big Jim Montgomery trekked across the mountains forty years earlier at the height of the California gold rush, before staking his claim and setting up camp near Longridge in the spring of 1850. He never discovered the big seams that made a few others very wealthy […]
The Unholy; or, How the Gowan Gang Died: A Hawthorne Tale by Heath Lowrance
This is how the Gowan gang died. They ambushed Hawthorne near Greek Pass, a desolate cluster of rock and hard-packed dirt in west Texas. It was a perfect spot for a bushwhacking. The six of them set up in the high rocks in the morning hours, and by early noon Hawthorne came through. He rode […]
One Town Too Many by Tom Sheehan
A town boy burst up to Sheriff Wilkins’ office yelling out, “He’s dead, Sheriff. He’s dead. Mr. Purley ‘s dead in his store. I peeked in the window and he’s on the floor and blood all over him!” The sun had barely warmed up Carver Grove and small bunches of the story came back to […]
Amanda Lynch by Rich Osburn
Black Ridge, Wyoming, 1861 The thoroughfare through town was a coursing stream of mud, cutting and forking as the clumps gained a foothold. The steady downpour had been feeding the soil for hours, and looked to continue well into the night. As the lantern lights flickered, so did the veins of lightning, washing the storm […]
Demon’s Road by Gareth Spark
The fire came over the prairie as if the anger of a God gone mad and every living thing in the whole world ran before it; Coyotes, deer, antelope, all rushing mad through the night, like Hell’s own children. Rye Lee dashed back from the well too hastily and tripped. The bucket he held crashed […]
Pine Tree Bluffs Justice by Bruce Harris
The rifle rack behind Sheriff Tommy Denton’s desk was empty. The one-of-a-kind rifle the Sheriff had won in a special Winchester-sponsored shooting contest in Pine Tree Bluffs was missing. The unique prize had been found laying next to a murdered man, a murdered Sheriff to be precise. That was two weeks ago. Sheriff Roy Byrd […]
A Hundred for the Crows pt. 3 by Nik Korpon
Inside the quarry building, Lester found an office housing only two desks and a row of filing cabinets. A pad of blotter paper sat on each desk, along with a pen set and blank name plates. A thick layer of dust covered everything, as if all the workers had simultaneously quit or just disappeared. He […]
A Hundred for the Crows pt. 2 by Nik Korpon
The midnight desert always held a special holiness for Lester. In the time after Jacob had left home, he’d tiptoe around his father’s drunken mass and out to the porch to watch the stars poke holes in the darkness, sky that same color as the onyx pieces he’d find when digging in the fields. He’d […]
A Hundred for the Crows pt.1 by Nik Korpon
When Lester returned to his land after the twelve-hour ride back from re-burying his daddy, he found his house vibrating with emptiness. His voice echoed off the wood floors, off the tin dishes sitting in soapy water in the ceramic sinks, off the bare wood walls adorned with only two photographs. He stood in the […]
